Cart and Cwidder. Diana Wynne Jones

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СКАЧАТЬ thumps, this way and that. Clennen might have been fat, but he was also strong.

      “Now stop!” said Clennen. “And if you’ve anything more to say about my story, Kialan, say it to me.” He looked cheerfully down at Kialan, angrily sprawled on the roadside sucking his bleeding knuckles. “Well?”

      “All right!” said Kialan. “All right!” Moril could see he was nearly crying. Brid was crying. “You can keep on saying you’ll never forget Ganner – or whatever he’s called – all you like,” said Kialan. “I don’t believe you’ve even met him! You wouldn’t know him if he came walking down the road this minute! So there!”

      The cheerfulness died out of Clennen’s face. It was replaced by a very odd look. Kialan noticeably tensed at it. “Do you know Ganner then?” Clennen said.

      “No, of course I don’t!” said Kialan. “How could I? I don’t suppose he exists.”

      “Oh, he exists all right,” said Clennen. “And I’m sure you don’t know him. Yet you’re right. I’ve seen Ganner three times this month and not known him till this minute.” He laughed again, and Kialan relaxed considerably. “Not a face that stands out in a crowd,” he said. “Eh, Lenina?”

      “I suppose not,” agreed Lenina, and continued calmly slicing cold sausage.

      “You knew him though, didn’t you?” Clennen said. “In Derent, and on the road, and again in Crady?”

      “Not till he said who he was,” Lenina said, quite unperturbed.

      There seemed suddenly to be a situation ten times worse. All through lunch Clennen looked at Lenina in a tense, troubled way. He seemed to be expecting her to say something and, at the same time, carefully not saying all sorts of things himself. And Lenina said nothing. She said nothing so positively and obviously that the air seemed sticky with her silence. It was hateful. The rest of them picked awkwardly at their food, and no one spoke much. Kialan did not say anything. It was obvious, even to Brid, that he was kicking himself for causing the situation – as well he might, Moril thought.

      When the food was finished and the cart packed again, they went on, still in the same heavy silence. At last Clennen could bear it no longer.

      “Lenina,” he said, “you’re not regretting all that, are you? If you want that kind of life – if you’d rather have Ganner – just say the word and I’ll turn Olob towards Markind this moment.”

      Moril gasped. Brid’s mouth came open in her tear-stained face. They looked at Clennen and found he seemed quite serious. Then they looked at Lenina, expecting her to laugh. It was so silly. Lenina was as much part of their life as Olob or the cart. But Lenina did not laugh, nor did she say anything. Not only Brid and Moril, but Dagner, Kialan and Clennen too, stared at her in increasing anxiety.

      They came to a fork in the road. One branch led west, and the milestone said MARKIND 10. “Do I turn here?” asked Clennen.

      Lenina gave herself an impatient shake. “Oh no,” she said. “Clennen Mendakersson, you must be a very big fool indeed to think such a thing of me.”

      Clennen burst into a roll of relieved laughter. He shook the reins, and Olob trotted past the turning. “I must say,” he said, laughing still, “I can’t see how you could prefer Ganner to me. He couldn’t have made the songs I’ve made to you, not if his life depended on it.”

      “Then why did you think I did?” Lenina asked coldly. The trouble was not over yet.

      “Well,” Clennen said awkwardly. “Money and all that. And it’s what you were bred to, after all.”

      “I see,” said Lenina. There was silence again for quite half an hour, except for the plopping of Olob’s hooves and the light rumble of the cart. Kialan was unable to bear it. He got out and walked ahead, whistling the Second March rather defiantly. The others sat with their heads hanging, wishing Lenina would make peace. At last she said, “Oh, Clennen, do stop sitting there watching me like a dog! I’m not going to take wings and fly, am I? It’s lucky Olob has more sense than you, or we’d be in the ditch by now!”

      Then the trouble seemed to be over. Clennen was shortly laughing and talking again. And Lenina, if she was silent, was silent in her usual way, which everyone was used to. Brid and Moril got out of the cart too, though they did not go near Kialan. Brid was still too angry with him.

      

      THAT NIGHT THEY camped in one of the many little valleys Markind abounded in. There were woods up its steep sides and a meadow in the bottom, containing a small peaceful lake full of newly hatched tadpoles. Dagner and Kialan went off to set their snares. Lenina put herbs on the fire against the midges, and the fragrant smoke streamed sideways and settled across the lake in bands. Brid and Moril, quite unworried by insects, waded into the shallows of the lake and tried enthusiastically to collect tadpoles in an old pickle jar. Moril had just lost most of them by accident when he looked up to find his father watching them.

      “You want a bigger jar,” Clennen said. “And both of you want to remember what I said to Kialan about give-and-take.”

      “He doesn’t remember it,” Brid said sulkily.

      “He’s never had to learn it before,” said Clennen. “That’s his trouble. But it’s not yours, Brid. A fight takes two.”

      “Did you hear what he said?” Moril demanded.

      “I’m not deaf,” said Clennen. “He’s entitled to his opinion, like everyone else. And it wouldn’t hurt you to find some opinions of your own instead of borrowing Brid’s, Moril. Now get that slime off your fingers before you touch my cwidder.”

      While Moril was having his lesson, Kialan came out of the woods and into the lake, where he tried to teach Dagner to swim. The sight of them splashing about was a great distraction to Moril. It grew worse when Kialan tried to persuade Brid to learn to swim too. Brid claimed to be afraid of leeches. Nothing would induce her to go above her knees in water, but she agreed to learn the arm movements. Moril could hear her laughing. It looked as if Kialan were trying to make friends.

      Moril became more distracted than ever. Perhaps, after all, Kialan was not bad at heart – only tactless. Moril tried to decide what he thought. It really rankled with him that Clennen believed he borrowed Brid’s opinions. Moril considered that he thought long and deeply – if rather vaguely – about most things. But he knew he had agreed with Brid, quite unquestioningly, both about Kialan and about the Ganner story. And it looked as if Brid had been wrong about both. Moril did not know what he thought.

      “I suppose I ought to be used to you being up in the clouds by now,” said Clennen. “Do you want to swim too?”

      “No,” said Moril. “Yes. I mean, is that story about Ganner true, then?”

      “Word of honour,” said Clennen. “Except it’s the fellow’s face I seem to have forgotten, not his name. I may embroider a detail here and there, but I never tell a story that isn’t true, Moril. Remember that. Now go and swim if you want to.”

      Clennen СКАЧАТЬ