"LeGuin-Olders" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

reedbeds. Then up the steepest slope on Sandry, a low hill of worn granite and
sparse earth, for the view of sea and tidal dams, island fields and green
marshes from its summit, where a cluster of windmills caught the sea wind with
slender vanes. Then down the slope past the trees, the Old Grove, to the
farmhouse. There were a couple of dozen houses in sight from Sandry Hill, but
'the farmhouse' was the only one so called, as its owner was called the
Husbandman, or Farmer Sandry, or simply Sandry if he was away from the island.
And nothing would keep an Islander away from his island but his duty to the
crown. Rooted folk, Hamid thought wryly, standing in the lane near the Old Grove
to look at the trees.

Elsewhere on the island, indeed on all the islands, there were no trees to speak
of. Scrub willows down along the streams, a few orchards of wind-dwarfed,
straggling apples. But here in the Grove were great trees, some with mighty
trunks, surely hundreds of years old, and none of them less than eight or ten
times a man's height. They did not crowd together but grew widely spaced, each
spreading its limbs and crown broadly. In the spacious aisles under them grew a
few shrubs and ferns and a thin, soft, pleasant grass. Their shade was beautiful
on these hot summer days when the sun glared off the sea and the channels and
the sea wind scarcely stirred the fiery air. But Hamid did not go under the
trees. He stood in the lane, looking at that shade under the heavy foliage.

Not far from the lane he could see in the grove a sunny gap where an old tree
had come down, perishing in a winter gale maybe a century ago, for nothing was
left of the fallen trunk but a grassy hummock a few yards long. No sapling had
sprung up or been planted to replace the old tree; only a wild rose, rejoicing
in the light, flowered thornily over the ruin of its stump:

Hamid walked on, gazing ahead at the house he now knew so well, the massive
slate roofs, the shuttered win-dow of the room where Makali was sitting beside
her husband, waiting for him to wake.

"Makali, Makali," he said under his breath, grieving for her, angry with her,
angry with himself, sorry for himself, listening to the sound of her name.

The room was dark to his still sun-bedazzled eyes, but he went to his patient
with a certain decisiveness, almost abruptness, and turned back the sheet. He
palpated, auscultated, took the pulse. "His breathing has been harsh," Makali
murmured.

"He's dehydrated. Needs water."

She rose to fetch the little silver bowl and spoon she used to feed him his soup
and water, but Hamid shook his head. The picture in Dr. Saker's ancient book was
vivid in his mind, a woodcut, showing exactly what must be done--what must be
done, that is, if one believed this myth, which he did not, nor did Makali, or
she would surely have said something by now! And yet, there was nothing else to
be done. Farre's face was sunken, his hair came loose at a touch. He was dying,
very slowly, of thirst.