"Janet Kagan - The Nutcracker Coup" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kagan Janet)

“Then open it.”
She did. Inside the paper, she found a carving, the rich wine-red of burgundy-wood, bitter to the
taste and therefore rarely carved but treasured because none of the kids would gnaw on it as they tested
their teeth. The style of carving was so utterly Rejoicer that it took her a long moment to recognize the
subject, but once she did, she knew she’d treasure the gift for lifetime.
 It was unmistakably Nick-but Nick as seen from Tatep’s point of view, hence the unfamiliar
perspective. It was Looking Up At Nick.
“Oh, Tatep!” And then she remembered just in time and added, “Oh, Chornian! Thank you
both so very much. I can’t wait to show it to Nick when he gets back. Whatever made you think of
doing Nick?”
Tatep said, “He’s your best human friend. I know you miss him. You have no pictures; I
thought you would feel better with a likeness.”
She hugged the sculpture to her. “Oh, I do. Thank you, both of you.” Then she motioned, eyes
shining. “Wait. Wait right here, Tatep. Don’t go away.”
She darted to the tree and, pushing aside wads of rustling paper, she found the gift she’d made
for Tatep. Back she darted to where the Rejoicers were waiting.
“I waited,” Tatep said solemnly.
She handed him the package. “I hope this is worth the wait.”
Tatep shook the package. “I can’t begin to guess,” he said.
“Then open it. I can’t stand the wait!”
He ripped away the paper as flamboyantly as Nick had-to expose the brightly colored
nutcracker and a woven bags of nuts.
Marianne held her breath. The problem had been, of course, to adapt the nutcracker to a
recognizable Rejoicer version. She’d made the Emperor Halemtat sit back on his haunches, which meant
for less adaptation of the cracking mechanism. Overly plump, she’d made him, and spiky. In his right
hand, he carried an oversized pair of scissors-of the sort his underlings used for clipping quills. In his
right, he carried a sprig of talemtat, that unfortunate rhyme for his name.
Chornian’s eyes widened. Again, he rattled off a spate of Rejoicer too fast for Marianne to
follow...except that Chornian seemed anxious.
Only then did Marianne realize what she’d done. “Oh, my God, Tatep! He wouldn’t clip your
quills for having that, would he?”
Tatep’s quills rattled and rattled. He put one of the nuts between Halemtat’s jaws and cracked
with a vengeance. The nutmeat he offered to Marianne, his quills still rattling. “If he does, Marianne,
you’ll come to Killim’s to help me chose a good color for my glass beading!”
He cracked another nut and handed the meat to Chornian. The next thing Marianne knew, the
two of them were rattling at each other-Chornian’s glass beads adding a splendid tinkling to the
merriment.
Much relieved, Marianne laughed with them. A few minutes later, Esperanza dashed out to buy
more nuts-so Chornian’s children could each take a turn at the cracking.
Marianne looked down at the image of Nick cradled in her arm. “I’m sorry you missed this,” she
told it, “but I promise I’ll write everything down for you before I go to bed tonight. I’ll try to remember
every last bit of it for you.”
###
“Dear Nick,” Marianne wrote in another letter some months later. “You’re not going to approve
of this. I find I haven’t been ethnologically correct-much less diplomatic. I’d only meant to share my
Christmas with Tatep and Chornian and, for that matter, whoever wanted to join in the festivities. To
hear Clarence tell it, I’ve sent Rejoicing to hell in a handbasket.
“You see, it does Halemtat no good to clip quills these days. There are some seventy-five
Rejoicers walking around town clipped and beaded-as gaudy and as shameless as you please. I even
saw one newly male (teenager) with beads on the ends of his unclipped spines!