《The Honeycrafters》作者： - Carolyn Ives Gilman【EPUB】

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All rights reserved. First appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction , October/November, 1991. For the personal use of those who have purchased the ESF 1993 Award anthology only. THE HONEYCRAFTERS Carolyn Ives Gilman The motherhold of Magwin Ghar had prospered for nine journeys, until the day Renata Oblin came out of the west. The band of beeherders had come to the very brink of Dawn to begin their nectar quest. They were erecting their dome tents on a sparse meadow beside a swift, chalky blue meltwater river. The immobile sun hung low in the east; to the west the sunlight touched the tips of ice peaks under the dark bank of clouds that always hung at the edge of permanent night. Here, they were at the beginning of things, where land was born from ice and night. Everything around them was young. The children were playing with their enormous shadows when they saw the stranger coming down the pathless slope of scree. They stood still to stare. She was dressed in barbarian leathers, and coming from the west, where only storm and glaciers dwelt. As word spread through the camp, people stepped from their tents to watch her approach. When she drew near they saw what they had half feared, half hoped: a ceramic broodpot