"Jo Walton - The Rebirth of Pan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Walton Jo)

turned if he is. I can hardly take it in. Across the crowd I see the woman with the cross enfolded weeping
against the chest of the man with the guidebook. He looks at me over her head, and grins. Grins? Is he
the Irish wizard? I need to talk to him. I try to move towards him, but the crowd is in the way. Soon I
stop, surrounded by people. I can't move or see him any more. Was that magic? I shake my head and
scuff my feet in the yellow dust. I'm still confused. I don't know what to trust, I'm not even sure what's
real.

One of the ubiquitous old women in black is standing near me, tears streaming down her face. "He
will rise again!" she is repeating over and over to a bawling child. I don't think so, madam. I really don't
think so. Not this time.

But I don't feel safe until I get the news on Monday morning that he is still dead.




2. LORD OF THE VINE


A world is more than days and place and folk
a world is dreams and vision, thought and word
a living thing that breathes, and grows and dies
and once the thread is cut will wake no more.


Yanni was not the best shoemaker on the island of Ithyka, but he was the one who made sandals
for the gods.

Ithyka was an island famed throughout all of Greece for its shoes and shoemakers. There the old
craft of shoemaking was kept alive, and the old families of shoemakers handed down the trade secrets to
each new generation. Some said that the sandals made on Ithyka were the same as those worn by
Homer himself. It was true enough that their like could be seen on many an old vase and bowl. The same
was true of sandals made up and down the Aegean, but somehow the reputation of the shoemakers of
this little green westerly island stood above the rest.

As everyone acknowledged that Ithyka was the best island for shoemaking, so everyone
acknowledged that the very best shoemaker on Ithyka was Yanni's uncle Spiro. Spiro could make shoes
that would almost walk on their own, as the saying was, with stitches so tiny they could hardly be seen.
Spiro was so exclusive he made shoes only for shoemakers. Yanni was not the most expensive
shoemaker either. That was his cousin Kosta, with his airy wood-panelled shop and his long waiting list
of rich Athenians longing to wear his handcrafted sandals. Nor was he the cheapest, the cheap cobblers
all worked down at the far end of the harbour near the stinking tannery, in the part of the whitewashed
maze of streets known as the streets of the leatherworkers. All the good leatherworkers had long since
moved from those little cramped workshops and found little cramped workshops scattered around the
town in more salubriously scented areas. Yanni's workshop was only two streets back from the harbour,
on a corner opposite the whitewashed dome of Ag. Nikolaos's chapel and the priest's house. The little
shop smelled of new leather and leathergoods, and of the jasmine which grew wild up the side of the iron
staircase at the back of the building.

All the people who came into Yanni's shop paused, blinked and sniffed. Outside the sunlight was