Электронная книга - «The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection». Краткое содержание книги:
This acclaimed series, winner of numerous World Fantasy Awards, continues its tradition of excellence with scores of short stories from such writers as K. W. Jeter, Karl Edward Wagner, Terry Bisson, S. P. Somtow, Charles de Lint, Kobo Abe, Jane Yolen and many others. Supplementing the stories are the editors' invaluable overviews of the year in fantastic fiction, Edward Bryant's witty roundup of the year's fantasy films, and a long list of Honorable Mentions—all of which adds up to an invaluable reference source, and a font of fabulous reading.
Richard sat on the edge of the bed, brandy forgotten in his hand. Alec never spoke of his family. Richard didn’t know he had a sister. He listened.
“My sister was married—to a man chosen for her, a man she didn’t like, a man she was afraid of. Those goddamned horses waited for her in the orchard, waited all night for her to come to them. They would have borne her anywhere, for love of her—but she never came . . . and then it was her wedding day.” Alec lifted the book high, slammed it against the far wall. “I know all about it.”
The girl was looking at Alec, not at her broken book. “And where were you?” she said. “Where were you when this forced marriage took place—waiting in the orchard with them? Oh, I know, too—You took them and you escaped.” Holding herself stiffly against her cuts, she bent over, picked up the book, smoothed it back into shape. “You don’t know. You don’t know at all. And you don’t want to. Either of you.”
“Alec,” Richard said, “come to bed.”
“Thank you for the lesson,” she said to the swordsman. “I’ll remember.”
“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he told her. “You’ll have to find someone else. That’s the way it is. Be careful, though.”
“Thank you,” she said again. “I will be careful, now that there’s something to be careful for. You meant what you said, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” Richard said. “I don’t usually get that angry. I meant it.”
“Good.” She turned in the doorway, asked in the same flat, cold tone, “What’s your sister’s name?”
Alec was still where he’d been when he threw the book, standing stiff and pale. Richard knew that his reaction, when it hit, would be violent.
“I said, what’s her name?”
Alec told her.
“Good. I’m going to find her. I’ll give her this”—the book, now fingerprinted with dried blood—“and your love.”
She stopped again, opened the book, and read: “ ‘I was a girl until tonight. I am a woman now.’ That’s how it ends. But you never read it, so you’ll never know what comes in between.” She smiled a steel-biting smile. “I have, and I do. I’ll be all right out there, won’t I?”
“Come to bed, Alec,” Richard said again; “you’re shaking.”
THE RAGTHORN
Robert Holdstock and Garry Kilworth
Two of England’s finest writers have collaborated on the following dark and splendid tale, which is inspired by the original Anglo-Saxon text of the Old English poem “The Dream of the Rood.”
Garry Kilworth has published thirteen novels for adults, four for children, and numerous excellent stories collected in The Songbirds of Pain, In the Hollow of the Deep-Sea Wave, and most recently, In the Country of Tattooed Men. Kilworth’s semipermanent home is in rural Essex, but he has traveled and lived abroad for much of his life and currently resides in Hong Kong.
Robert Holdstock is the author of several novels and collections, including The Bone People, Lavondyss, and Mythago Wood, which received the World Fantasy Award in 1988 and was aptly hailed by Alan Garner as “a new expression of the British genius for true fantasy.” Holdstock was born in rural Kent and now makes his home in London.
“The Ragthorn” is reprinted from the pages of my co-editor’s anthology, A Whisper of Blood.
—T .W.
Quhen thow art ded and laid in layme
And Raggtre rut thi ribbis ar
Thow art than brocht to thi lang hayme
Than grett agayn warldis dignite
Unknown (c. a.d. 1360)
September 11, 1978
I am placing this entry at the beginning of my edited journal for reasons that will become apparent. Time is very short for me now, and there are matters that must be briefly explained. I am back at the cottage in Scarfell, the stone house in which I was born and which has always been at the centre of my life. I have been here for some years and am finally ready to do what must be done. Edward Pottifer is with me—good God-fearing man that he is—and it will be he who closes this journal and he alone who will decide upon its fate.
The moment is very close. I have acquired a set of dental pincers with which to perform the final part of the ritual. Pottifer has seen into my mouth—an experience that clearly disturbed him, no doubt because of its intimacy—and he knows which teeth to pull and which to leave. After the inspection he muttered that he is more used to pulling rose thorns from fingers than molars from jaws. He asked me if he might keep the teeth as souvenirs and I said he could, but he should look after them carefully.
I cannot pretend that I am not frightened. I have edited my life’s journal severely. I have taken out all that does not relate forcefully to my discovery. Many journeys to foreign parts have gone, and many accounts of irrelevant discovery and strange encounters. Not even Pottifer will know where they are. I leave for immediate posterity only this bare account in Pottifer’s creased and soil-engrimed hands.
Judge my work by this account, or judge my sanity. When this deed is done I shall be certain of one thing: that in whatever form I shall have become, I will be beyond judgement. I shall walk away, leaving all behind, and not look back.
Time had been kinder to Scarfell Cottage than perhaps it deserves. It has been, for much of its existence, an abandoned place, a neglected shrine. When I finally came back to it, years after my mother’s death, its wood had rotted, its interior decoration had decayed, but thick cob walls—two feet of good Yorkshire stone— had proved too strong for the ferocious northern winters. The house had been renovated with difficulty, but the precious stone lintel over the doorway—the beginning of my quest—was thankfully intact and undamaged. The house of my childhood became habitable again, twenty years after I left it.
From the tiny study where I write, the view into Scardale is as eerie and entrancing as it ever was. The valley is a sinuous, silent place, its steep slopes broken by monolithic black rocks and stunted trees that grow from the green at sharp, wind-shaped angles. There are no inhabited dwellings here, no fields. The only movement is the grey flow of cloud shadow and the flash of sunlight on the thin stream. In the far distance, remote at the end of the valley, the tower of a church: a place for which I have no use.
And of course—all this is seen through the branches of the tree. The ragthom. The terrible tree.
It grows fast. Each day it seems to strain from the earth, stretching an inch or two into the storm skies, struggling for life. Its roots have spread farther across the grounds around the cottage and taken a firmer grip upon the dry stone wall at the garden’s end; to this it seems to clasp as it teeters over the steep drop to the dale. There is such menace in its aspect, as if it is stretching its hard knotty form, ready to snatch at any passing life.
It guards the entrance to the valley. It is a rare tree, neither hawthorn nor blackthorn, but some ancient form of plant life, with a history more exotic than the Glastonbury thorn. Even its roots have thorns upon them. The roots themselves spread below the ground like those of a wild rose, throwing out suckers in a circle about the twisted bole: a thousand spikes forming a palisade around the trunk and thrusting inches above the earth. I have seen no bird try to feed upon the tiny berries that it produces in mid-winter. In the summer its bark has a terrible smell. To go close to the tree induces dizziness. Its thorns when broken curl up after a few minutes, like tiny live creatures.
