"Patricia A. McKillip - In the Forests of Serre" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

ONE

In the forests of Serre, Prince Ronan crossed paths with the Mother of All
Witches when he rode down her white hen in a desolate stretch of land near his
father’s summer palace. He did not recognize her immediately. He only saw a
barefoot woman of indeterminate age with an apron full of grain, feeding her
chickens in the middle of a blasted waste full of dead trees and ground as hard
as the face of the moon. It was the last place Ronan expected chickens. He did
not notice the cottage at all until after the hen pecked its way under his horse’s
nose. It flapped its futile wings and emitted a screech as a hoof flattened it.
Startled, Ronan reined in his mount, blinking at something unrecognizable even
as suitable for a stew pot. The prince’s following pulled up raggedly behind
him. A few feathers flurried gently through the air. The woman, one hand still
outflung, golden husks clinging to her fingers, stared a moment at her hen. Then
she looked up at the prince.
His following, a scarred, weary company of warriors, guards, servants,
standard-bearers, a trumpeter or two, seemed suddenly far away and very quiet.
The young prince felt the same stillness gather in his own heart, for with her in
front of him, he had nothing else to fear. As in all the tales he had heard of her,
there was the ox-bone pipe in her apron pocket, the green circular lenses over
her eyes, the knobby, calloused feet that broadened to an inhuman size when she
picked up her cottage and carried it. There, behind her, stood the cottage made
of bones, some recent and still bleeding marrow, others of a disturbing size and
indeterminate origin. A single circular window, its pane as green as her lenses,
seemed to stare at Ronan like a third eye among the bones. The door stood
open. Never, all the tales warned, never go into the witch’s house, whatever
you do… Who, he wondered incredulously, would choose to enter that filthy
pile of bones?
She smiled at him, showing teeth as pointed as an animal’s. Her face, which
could be sometimes so lovely it broke the heart, and sometimes so hideous that
warriors fainted at the sight of it, looked, at that moment, ancient and clever and
only humanly ugly.
“Prince Ronan.” Her voice was the hollow sough of windblown reeds.
“Brume, ” he whispered, feeling a twinge of fear at last.
“You killed my white hen.”
“I am very sorry.”
“My favorite hen.”
“I wasn’t watching for chickens in this part of the forest. What can I do to
repay you?”
“Bring the white hen into my house, ” she answered, “and pluck it for me. I
will boil it in a pot for supper, and you and all your company will drink a cup
of broth with me around my fire.”
He swallowed. Never, never… Those strong pointed teeth had sucked the
boiled bones of warriors, so the tales said. “I will do anything for you,” he said
carefully, “but I will not do that.”
Her eyes seemed to grow larger than the lenses, and disturbingly dark. “You
will not pluck my hen?”
“I will do anything for you, but I will not do that.”
“You will not bring your company into my house to drink a cup of broth with
me?”