（外文电子版资料）Peter S. Beagle - Two Hearts.pdf

TWO HEARTS by Peter S. Beagle MY BROTHER WILFRID KEEPS saying its not fair that it should all have happened to me. Me being a girl, and a baby, and too stupid to lace up my own sandals properly. But I think its fair. I think everything happened exactly the way it should have done. Except for the sad parts, and maybe those too. Im Sooz, and I am nine years old. Ten next month, on the anniversary of the day the griffin came. Wilfrid says it was because of me, that the griffin heard that the ugliest baby in the world had just been born, and it was going to eat me, but I was too ugly, even for a griffin. So it nested in the Midwood (we call it that, but its real name is the Midnight Wood, because of the darkness under the trees), and stayed to eat our sheep and our goats. Griffins do that if they like a place. But it didnt ever eat children, not until this year. I only saw it once — I mean, once before — rising up above the trees one night, like a second moon. Only there wasnt a moon, then. There was nothing in the whole world but the griffin, golden feathers all blazing on its lions body and eagles wings, with its great front claws like teeth, and that monstrous beak that looked so huge for its head.…Wilfrid says I screamed for three days, but hes lying, and I didnt hide in the root cellar like he says either, I slept in the barn those two nights, with our dog Malka. Because I knew Malka wouldnt let anything get me. I mean my parents wouldnt have, either, not if they could have stopped it. Its just that Malka is the biggest, fiercest dog in the whole village, and shes not afraid of anything. And after the griffin took Jehane, the blacksmiths little girl, you couldnt help seeing how frightened my father was,