"Patricia A. McKillip - Winter Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

his nose, a chain of little hearts. We laughed. He pointed a stubby finger at me.

"It's time you stopped dancing among the ferns put your shoes on, and learned a thing or two from your
sister's practical ways." He drank his beer, the hearts trembling over his nose. I nodded gravely.

"I know."

"You say that," he grumbled. "But you don't listen." He pushed the flower stem behind his ear, and drank
more beer.

"Because you don't really mean what you say." I dropped all my flowers in Laurel's lap, and went behind
him to put my arms around his neck. "You love me as I am. Besides, when Laurel marries, who will care
for you?"

He snorted, even as he patted my hands. "You can't even remember to close a door at night. What I
think is that you should find someone to care for you, before you tumble in a pond and drown, or fall out
of a tree."

"I haven't," I lied with some dignity, "climbed a tree for years."

Perrin made an outraged noise. "I saw you up a pear tree near the old Lynn ruins only last autumn."

"I was hungry. That hardly counts." I loosed my fa-ther, and reached for bread, being still hungry. He
sighed.

"At least sit down. Never mind about getting the bracken out of your hair, or washing your hands, or
any-thing else remotely civilized. How will you ever find a husband?"

I sat. A face turned toward me out of light, and for just a moment I forgot to breathe. Then I swallowed
bread, while Laurel, gathering flowers on her lap, said amiably,

"Perhaps she doesn't want one. Not everyone does." But her brows had twitched into that little, anxious
pucker. I was silent, making resolutions, then discarding them all as useless.

"I want," I said shortly, "to do what I want to do." We lived comfortably in the rambling, thatched
farmhouse that had grown askew with age. Centuries of footsteps had worn shallow valleys into the
flagstones; the floors had settled haphazardly into the earth; door frames tilted; ceilings sagged. Other
things happen to old houses, that only I seemed to notice. Smells had woven into the wood, so that
lavender or baking bread scented the air at unexpected moments. The windows at night sometimes
reflected other fires, the shadows of other faces. Spiders wove webs in high, shadowed corners that
grew more elaborate through the years, as if each generation inher-ited and added to an airy palace. I
wondered sometimes if they would die out when we did, or leave their intricate houses if we left ours. But
I doubted that I would ever know: My father, with his wheat, and apple orchards, and his barns and
stables, only grew more prosperous, and my sister's marriage at least would provide him with heirs for his
house and his spiders.

Perrin was looking at me with that dispassionate, speculative expression he got when he was trying to
imag-ine who among the villagers might be enchanted by me.

I couldn't think of anyone. They were a hardheaded lot, though they were beginning to come to me for