"Gregort Maguire - Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maguire Gregory)

afternoon here," she hisses. "Iris, don't show such hunger in your eyes. Your greed betrays you."
"We haven't eaten a real pasty since England, Mama! When are we going to eat again? Ever?"

"We saw few gestures of charity for us there, and I won't ask for charity here," says the mother. "We are
gone from England, Iris, escaped with our lives. You're hungry? Eat the air, drink the light. Food will
follow. Hold your chin high and keep your pride."

But Iris's hunger—a new one for her—is for the look of things as much as for the taste of them. Ever
since the sudden flight from England . . .

THE OBSCURE CHILD

—running along the shadowed track, panting with pain in the chest, tumbling into a boat in the
darkness—running, with the fear of hobgoblins at their heels. Imps, thwarties, grinning like demons,
hungry to nip their ankles and sip their blood—

And what if an imp has secreted itself in the Harwich ship and follows like a skulking dog, to pester them
in this new land all over again?

To keep from a panic, Iris says to herself- Look at how things are, look: there, there, there. . . . We
are someplace new, someplace else, safer.

Ruth stops. She is older than Iris, a solid thing, already more than normal adult size, but simple. A
pendulum of spit swings out and makes a tassel. Iris reaches and wipes Ruth's mouth. Ruth has a set of
shoulders that would grace an ox, but she doesn't have an ox's patience. Her brown eyes blink. She
lunges toward the nearest rack of produce, a tray heaped with sun-spotted early pears.

"No, Ruth," says the mother, and pulls her back.

Iris has a sudden notion of how she and her family must look, as stolid Englishers: Englishers in this
European other-world, with its close, rich hills of architecture. The lumpy Fisher family, traipsing like oafs
on a pilgrimage: —The spiky mother, Margarethe, tugging at her gigantic firstborn. —Ruth, heaving her
lungs like a bellows, working up to a wail. —And Iris herself, gaunt and unlovely as a hermit, shrinking
into herself as best she can.

The men of the market duck their heads to keep from

CONFESSIONS OF

AN UGLY STEPSISTER

watching a woman's woes. The wives of the market, however, stare and don't give any ground. No one
offers a bruised apple or a smallish pear to calm Ruth or to make Margarethe's plight easier. The market
women tuck their hands in apron pockets to mind their small clutches of coins. There's no habit of charity
here, at least not for the ugly foreigner.

Strong Ruth is less pliant than usual. She nearly succeeds in breaking out of her mother's grip.
Margarethe, sorely tried, pitches her voice low. "Ruth! God's mercy, that I'm harnessed to such a beast!
Give way, you willful thing, or I'll beat you when we get to Grandfather's. In a strange place, and no one
to wipe your eyes then, for I'll keep Iris from cozening you!"