Вольные Мальцы

Granny Aching had been wrapped in a woollen blanket, with a tuft of raw wool pinned to it. That was a special shepherd thing. It was there to tell any gods who might get involved that the person being buried there was a shepherd, and spent a lot of time on the hills, and what with lambing and one thing and another couldn’t always take much time out for religion, there being no churches or temples up there, and therefore it was generally hoped that the gods would understand and look kindly on them. Granny Aching, it had to be said, had never been seen to pray to anyone or anything in her life, and it was agreed by all that, even now, she wouldn’t have any time for a god who didn’t understand that lambing came first.

Huge, knobbly flints still turned up in the village gardens, too. Sometimes they were larger than a man’s head. They often looked like heads, too. They were so melted and twisted and curved that you could look at a flint and see almost anything—a face, a strange animal, a sea monster. Sometimes the more interesting ones would be put on garden walls, for show.
The old people called those ‘calkins’, which meant ‘chalk children’. They’d always seemed… odd to Tiffany, as if the stone was striving to become alive. Some flints looked like bits of meat, or bones, or something off a butcher’s slab, in the dark, under the sea, it looked as though the chalk had been trying to make the shapes of living creatures.

Тиффани открыла глаза. Она по-прежнему лежала в грязи, а Королева смеялась над ней, и вверху ревела буря.
Но Тиффани было тепло. Точнее сказать, она горела от ярости, до белого каления. За проплешины на земле пастбища, за свою тупость, за красоту и смех этого существа, у которого есть один-единственный талант: контроль.
Эта… тварь собирается отнять мой мир.
Все ведьмы эгоистки, говорила Королева. Но Третий Помысел Тиффани сказал: что ж, преврати эгоизм в оружие! Пускай твоим будет все! Чужие жизни, мечты, надежды пускай будут твоими! Защити! Спаси! Отогрей в овчарне! Иди ради них против ветра! Не подпускай к ним волка! Мои сны, мой брат, моя семья, моя земля, мой мир! Не смей трогать мое!
У меня есть обязанности!
Ее ярость хлынула через край. Она встала, сжав кулаки, закричала в рев бури, закричала со всей силой бешеного гнева, который переполнял ее.