The Moon of Gomrath. Alan Garner

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СКАЧАТЬ memory, and, with the years, a superstition, ghosts and terrors for a winter’s night, and later a mockery and a disbelief.

      “That is why I must appear so hard: do you understand?”

      “I – think so,” said Susan. “Most of it, anyway.”

      “But if you cut yourself off all that while ago,” said Colin, “how is it that you talk as we do?”

      “But we do not,” said the wizard. “We use the Common Tongue now because you are here. Amongst ourselves there are many languages. And have you not noticed that there are some of us stranger to the Tongue than others? The elves have avoided men most completely. They speak the Tongue much as they last heard it, and that not well. The rest – I, the dwarfs, and a few more – heard it through the years, and know it better than do the elves, though we cannot master your later speed and shortness. Albanac sees most of men, and he is often lost, but since they think him mad it is of no account.”

      Colin and Susan did not stay long in the cave: the mood of the evening remained uneasy and it was obvious that Cadellin had more on his mind than had been said. A little after seven o’clock they walked up the short tunnel that led from the cave to the Holywell. The wizard touched the rock with his staff, and the cliff opened.

      Uthecar went with the children all the way to the farm, turning back only at the gate. Colin and Susan were aware of his eyes ranging continually backwards and forwards, around and about.

      “What’s the matter?” said Susan. “What are you looking for?”

      “Something I hope I shall not be finding,” said Uthecar. “You may have noticed that the woods were not empty this night. We were close on the Brollachan, and it is far from here that I hope it is just now.”

      “But how could you see it, whatever it is?” said Colin. “It’s pitch dark tonight.”

      “You must know the eyes of a dwarf are born to darkness,” said Uthecar. “But even you would see the Brollachan, though the night were as black as a wolf’s throat; for no matter how black the night, the Brollachan is blacker than that.”

      This stopped conversation for the rest of the journey. But when they reached Highmost Redmanhey, Susan said, “Uthecar, what’s wrong with the elves? I – don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve always imagined them to be the – well, the ‘best’ of your people.”

      “Ha!” said Uthecar. “They would agree with you! And few would gainsay them. You must judge for yourselves. But I will say this of the lios-alfar; they are merciless without kindliness, and there are things incomprehensible about them.”

CHAPTER 5

       “TO A WOMAN YT WAS DUMPE”

      About half a mile from Highmost Redmanhey, round the shoulder of Clinton Hill, there is a disused and flooded quarry. Where the sides are not cliffs, wooded slopes drop steeply. A broken wind pump creaks, and a forgotten path runs nowhere into the brambles. In sunlight it is a forlorn place, forlorn as nothing but deserted machinery can be; but when the sun goes in, the air is charged with a different feeling. The water is sombre under its brows of cliff, and the trees crowd down to drink, the pump sneers; lonely, green-hued, dark.

      But peaceful, thought Susan, and that’s something.

      There had been no peace at the farm since their return. Two days of talk from Colin, and the silences made heavy by the Mossocks’ uneasiness. For Bess and Gowther knew of the children’s past involvement with magic, and they were as troubled by this mixing of the two worlds as Cadellin had been.

      The weather did not help. The air was still, moist, too warm for the beginning of winter.

      Susan had felt that she must go away to relax; so that afternoon she had left Colin and had come to the quarry. She stood on the edge of a slab of rock that stretched into the water, and lost herself in the grey shadows of fish. She was there a long time, slowly unwinding the tensions of the days: and then a noise made her look up.

      “Hallo. Who are you?”

      A small black pony was standing at the edge of the water on the other side of the quarry.

      “What are you doing here?”

      The pony tossed its mane, and snorted.

      “Come on, then! Here, boy!”

      The pony looked hard at Susan, flicked its tail, then turned and disappeared among the trees.

      “Oh, well – I wonder what the time is.” Susan climbed up the slope out of the quarry and into the field. She walked round to the wood on the far side, and whistled, but nothing happened. “Here, boy! Here, boy! Oh don’t then; I’m – oh!”

      The pony was standing right behind her.

      “You made me jump! Where’ve you been?”

      Susan fondled the pony’s ears. It seemed to like that, for it thrust its head into her shoulder, and closed its velvet-black eyes.

      “Steady! You’ll knock me over.”

      For several minutes she stroked its neck, then reluctantly she pushed it away. “I must go now. I’ll come and see you tomorrow.” The pony trotted after her. “No, go back. You can’t come.” But the pony followed Susan all the way across the field, butting her gently with its head and nibbling at her ears. And when she came to climb through the fence into the next field, it put itself between her and the fence, and pushed sideways with its sleek belly.

      “What do you want?”

      Push.

      “I’ve nothing for you.”

      Push.

      “What is it?”

      Push.

      “Do you want me to ride? That’s it, isn’t it? Stand still, then. There. Good boy. You have got a long back, haven’t you? There. Now – whoa! Steady!”

      The moment Susan was astride, the pony wheeled round and set off at full gallop towards the quarry. Susan grabbed the mane with both hands.

      “Hey! Stop!”

      They were heading straight for the barbed wire at the top of the cliff above the deepest part of the quarry.

      “No! Stop!”

      The pony turned its head and looked at Susan. Its foaming lips curled back in a grin, and the velvet was gone from the eye: in the heart of the black pupil was a red flame.

      “No!” Susan screamed.

      Faster and faster they went. The edge of the cliff cut a hard line against the sky. Susan tried to throw herself from the pony’s back, but her fingers seemed to be entangled in the mane, and her legs clung to the ribs.

       “No! No! No! No!”

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