[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
for only a moment before apparently deciding they had a good idea and sliding into the water himself.
But Colin saw and felt everything, and lay with his feet on one side of the boat, his back braced against
the other, arms outflung around the edges, reveling in it all. He breathed deeply of greenery-spiced air
sweetened with the fragrance of the wildflowers which nodded in a neighborly fashion as the boat
passed. As naturally as he breathed, and smelled, and saw, he started to sing. He sang just to sing, for
the joy of it, imitating the birds and pipes and harps and fiddles, making nonsense sounds, singing lyrics
only half-remembered, and slapping his legs in time with the companionable rhythm of Moonshine's and
Roundelay's hoofbeats in the woods nearby.
From her vantage point at the bottom of the basket, Maggie stared dizzily up at him. "You're daft. You
know that, don't you? We shall be dashed to pieces or drowned any moment now in this ill-begotten
creation of mine and you're warbling away like an overblown relative of Aunt Sybil's Budgie."
He bawled out his chorus before answering, and gave her sodden braids a playful tug. "Don't be stuffy.
This is fun if you'll just relax. Look, why don't you join me in a chorus or two, and maybe you'll forget to
be frightened."
"I'm NOT frightened. I merely have no wish to face death sounding as if I'm on some holiday outing."
"Just pretend a little. Come on now. I'm really quite a wonderful song leader, everyone says so,
particularly on chanteys. Try this. Repeat after me: 'And it's hey-hi-ho and away to the rolling sea.' "
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
That chorus cheered Maggie considerably. At least they were NOT on the rolling sea, merely a little
stream. She sat up and flung her braids back so they streamed over the side of the basket, and favored
Colin with a cautious, somewhat resentful stare. It was all very well for him. He liked water. The same
mer blood that made him like water made him like to sing like a common siren, if without the usual
disastrous results to seagoing vessels.
The boat tipped gracefully round again as his voice soared on a high note and sailed right up there for
awhile. The harmony between the song and the boat's swirling, tilting onward rush caught Maggie too,
and she scarcely knew when it was she started singing. Her voice blended with the raven's as much as
with Colin's, but somehow everything around them made music; their voices, the water's swish and
splatter, the clopping hooves running beside the stream, the dip and twirl of the basket, the raven, who
not only contributed his voice but danced a crazy counterpoint overhead. Whether their voices drove him
to keep his distance or he had simply tired of diving at them was impossible to tell, but he stayed in the
sky and stopped annoying them.
They passed from stands of mostly small trees into vast overhanging canopies of large ones, from mostly
purple flowers to mostly yellow and white ones, from muddy banks to sandy beaches, and from seeing
nothing beyond them but dense trees to suddenly spotting through a break in those trees a glistening
range of snow-capped mountains.
Colin, without missing a beat, pointed out an owl swooping across the stream far beyond them. Maggie
whooped and nearly upset the boat when she spotted a tufty-eared lynx and her kittens drinking within
touching distance of their basket.
Moonshine halted then, and before the mother lynx could be frightened away by Maggie's racket,
diplomatically dipped his horn into the stream to reassure the lynx that they were interested in her welfare,
not in harming her or her kittens.
Some time later they passed a beaver dam which spanned another inlet to the creek. The beaver
popped from his lodge and slapped the water indignantly for silence. He was ignored.
They rode like that all day long, singing and laughing and talking and coming close to a soaking more
than once. As darkness approached, they glided out of a broad meadow with a spectacular view of the
Majestic Mountains. The range was so named, Colin explained, because the explorer who discovered
them wished to honor the King, but Argonia happened to be between kings at the time and who knew
but what the new ruler might not be a queen? So the explorer played it safe and simply labeled his find
Majestic.
A short time later the boat swept out of the meadow and into a woods, and then a peculiar incident
occurred which was to color the rest of their journey.
They heard a thump, as if some creature had fallen from the sky. Moonshine and Roundelay stopped,
their ears pricked forward. The deep, webbed shadows cast by the tamarack and tall cedars appeared
to gather themselves quickly together and leap- to splash suddenly downwards a short distance from
their boat. For just a moment, Maggie had the impression of a booted foot and leg, but she had no time
to see if the rest of the body would follow, since their boat chose that time to turn once more in the
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plalternate.pev.pl
|
