"Nancy Kress - Summer Wind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

She knew better, now, than to call to him. She stared at his hacking
and slashing, at the deadly Hedge, and then closed her eyes. She let the wind
roar in her ears, and through her head, and into the places that had not
existed when she was young. Not even when she heard him scream did she open
her eyes.
But finally, when the screams stopped as quickly as they had come, she
leaned through the tower window and scanned the ground far below. The prince
lay on the trampled grass, circled by kneeling, shouting men. Rose watched
him wave them away, rise unsteadily, and remount his horse. She saw the
horrified gaze he bent upon the Hedge.
Later, after they had all ridden away, she made her way back down the
steps, over the drawbridge, across the grass to the Hedge. It loomed as dark,
as thick, as impenetrable as ever. The black thorns pointed in all
directions, in and out, and nothing she could do with the wind could change
them at all.
****
But then, one day, the Hedge melted.
Rose was very old. Her silver plait had become a bother and she'd cut
it, trimming her hair into a neat white cap. There were ten hairs on her
chin, which sometimes she remembered to pull out and sometimes she didn't.
Her body had gone skinny as a bird's, with thin bird bones, except for a soft
rounded belly that fluttered when she snored. The arthritis in her hands had
eased and they, too, were skinny, long darting hands, worn and capable as a
spinning shuttle. Her sunken blue eyes spun power.
She was sitting on the unchanging grass when she heard the tumult
behind the Hedge. Creakily she rose to start for the tower. But there was no
need. Before her eyes the black thorns melted, running into the ground like
so much dirty water from washing the kitchen floor. And then the rest of the
Hedge melted. Beside her a sleeping groom stirred, and beside the drawbridge,
another.
The prince rode through the dissolving Hedge as if it had never been.
He had brown hair, gold sash, a chestnut horse. As he dismounted, the solid
mass of muscle in his thighs shifted above his high polished boots.
"The bedchamber of the princess -- where is it?"
Rose pointed at the highest tower.
He strode past her, trailed by his retinue. When the last squire had
crossed the drawbridge, Rose followed.
All was commotion. Guards sprang forward, found themselves dressed in
embroidered velvet, and spun around, bewildered, drawn swords in their hand.
Ladies bellowed for pages. The falconer dashed from the mews, wearing a
doublet of white satin slashed over crimson, the peregrine on his wrist fitted
with gold-trimmed jesses with ivory bells.
Rose hobbled to the stableyard. The king's roan pawed and snorted.
Men ran to and fro. A serving wench lowered the bucket into the well, on her
head a coif sewn with gold lace.
Only Corwin noticed Rose. He stood a whole head taller than she --
surely it had only been a half head difference, once? He glanced at her,
away, and then back again, puzzlement on his fresh, handsome face. His eyes,
she saw, were gray.
"Do I know you, good dame?"