"Dixie Lee McKeone - Tales of Uncle Trapspringer" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKeone Dixie Lee)

the tough old trunks.
"Up," Trap said as they reached a huge ancient oak and dashed around to the northern side, opposite
their pursuers. At his gesture she cupped her hands and bent her knees. He stepped into the stirrup she
provided and she jerked herself upright as he straightened his knees. Their combined force threw Trap high
enough to grab the lowest limb. He locked his feet around the limb and dropped, his arms extended as he
reached down for Ripple. She swarmed up his body until she stood on the limb. Then she lowered a hand to
pull him up.
Working together, they reached the higher limbs and lay flat while the soldiers beat the bushes below.
Long, breathless minutes passed before the determined searchers moved out of sight, deeper into the forest.
Trap and Ripple climbed down again, dropped from the last limb and worked their way west through the
thick undergrowth that bordered the road. When they were a few hundred yards away from where the soldiers
searched, the two kender crossed the beaten track and entered the woods to the south. Safe for the moment,
they followed a creek until they reached a beaver's dam. They sat on a log to rest, to the indignation of the
beaver who had just cut down the tree.
"I don't understand," Ripple shook her head. "No one could be angry at us."
"They didn't want us. They said 'kender,' " Trap reminded her. "Either they don't like any kender or...."
"That's not possible," Ripple interrupted. The entire race of kender took justifiable pride in being the
friendliest people on Krynn.
"Or ... do you think there might be kender outlaws?"
Neither had ever considered the possibility. They occasionally heard tales, most of which they discounted
as soon as the stories accused kender of "stealing."
Trap and Ripple knew that every other civilized race on Krynn considered kender to be thieves. Their racial
reputation was totally justified, of course, just as it was patently untrue. Kender were not thieves, they were
handlers. Their curiosity and their insatiable desire to poke and pry and touch led them to handle anything
they could pick up. That same curiosity could draw their attention away from what they held. Anxious for
some new experience, they often, and quite unintentionally, tucked the articles into their pouches. The
oversight usually came from a desire to free their hands for something new, and they often found themselves
with items they could not remember acquiring. In a kender city, an oddly shaped rock or piece of glass, knife,
scarf, or dish could have a hundred owners in a busy week. Outside their own lands they had learned to
make up excuses for unexplained possessions.
"I was keeping it for you."
"It must have fallen in my pouch," or
"You must have put it in my pouch by mistake," were three of the most common used to races who did
not understand the kender habit of handling. If the owner of a purloined object wanted it back, the kender
cheerfully returned it.
"What should we do?" Ripple asked, her brow wrinkling in disappointment. "I wanted to see the city."
Trap understood his sister's feelings. They had been born and raised in Legup, a village in the mountains
of Hylo, and like the rest of the Fargo family, as soon as they had reached adulthood they were stricken with
wander-lust and had set out to see the world. They had yet to see a city of humans and dwarves firsthand.
Their great-grandfather had walked east from Legup to Solamnia and south to Kaolyn and Abanasinia.
After the Cataclysm the geography of Krynn had changed, and now an unnamed sea divided Northern Ergoth
and Hylo from Solamnia and its political and geographical neighbors to the south and east.
Trap and Ripple had left the port of Hylo by ship, intending to travel across the channel to one of the port
towns in Solamnia. A sudden storm had blown the ship south. The wind screamed through the sails and the
sea men dangled from the masts and spars in an attempt to trim the sails. The kender found the trip exciting,
but as the storm blew itself out they grew bored. At the first opportunity they asked to be put ashore. The
captain was glad to do so after he lost his favorite knife, a carved and silver chased inkwell and several maps.
He had not even waited until they reached a port.
He dropped them on a deserted beach. Without knowing their starting point, they had three choices. They
could go north or south, with no idea how far they were from the ports shown on the map, or they could strike