"Robin McKinley - Beauty" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

Beauty
Robin McKinley
1978

ISBN: 0-671-70316-1

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“Good evening, Beauty,” said a great harsh voice.
He straightened himself slowly, but I shrank back. He must have been seven feet tall at full height,
with proportionate breadth of shoulder and chest, like the great black bears of the north woods. With a
sigh as deep as a storm wind, he raised the candelabrum from the table. It lit as he brought it to shoulder
level, and I was staring suddenly into his face. “Oh no,” I cried. When I heard him take a step toward
me, I leaped back in alarm.
“You have nothing to fear,” the Beast said, as gently as his harsh voice allowed.
He was still standing, watching me with those eyes. I realized that what made his gaze so awful was
that his eyes were human....

“A FULL-FLEDGED FANTASY NOVEL.... I WAS IMMEDIATELY CAPTURED.... BEAUTY
IS A WONDERFUL BOOK.”—Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine


To my mother,
because it will be a long wait for Kilkerran;
and to both Mr. Rochesters,
for aiding Mahomet to go to the mountain.




Part One


1

I was the youngest of three daughters. Our literal-minded mother named us Grace, Hope, and
Honour, but few people except I perhaps the minister who had baptized all three of us remembered my
given name. My father still likes to tell the story of how I acquired my odd nickname: I had come to him
for further information when I first discovered that our names meant something besides you-come-here.
He succeeded in explaining grace and hope, but he had some difficulty trying to make the concept of
honour understandable to a five-year-old. I heard him out, but with an expression of deepening disgust;
and when he was finished I said: “Huh! I’d rather be Beauty.” He laughed; and over the next few weeks
told everyone he met this story of his youngest child’s precocity. I found that my ill-considered opinion
became a reality; the name at least was attached to me securely.
All three of us were pretty children, with curly blond hair and blue-grey eyes; and if Grace’s hair was
the brightest, and Hope’s eyes the biggest, well, for the first ten years the difference wasn’t too
noticeable. Grace, who was seven years older than I, grew into a beautiful, and profoundly graceful,
young girl. Her hair was wavy and fine and luxuriant, and as butter-yellow as it had been when she was a
baby (said doting friends of the family), and her eyes were long-lashed and as blue as a clear May
morning after rain (said her doting swains). Hope’s hair darkened to a rich chestnut-brown, and her big