A Gift of Sanctuary

　　Author: Anonymous

　　A little boy, scion of a wealthy house, oncewent to the lake shore with his parents on holiday. While the elders sippedwine in a cabin with their snooty fellows, the boy was left to play in the sandand mud. He was terribly sad at being so scorned, and went searching for afriend.

　　The boy did not have to search long. He founda wonderfully chatty duck in the reeds who told him stories of places the boycould only dream of. Though he was quickly enchanted by the tales, the boybecame melancholy that he would never see such a place with his own eyes. Theduck laughed and told him that this was not so! They would build one together!

　　The boy and the duck waded out to a smallisland on the lake and together they built a tiny house of sticks and sand.This sufficed for an hour, until the duck suggested that a house was not afitting place for the boy. He deserved a palace! The mortar of mud would not beenough, but one of the adults might help.

　　The boy went back to the cabin and found anoble who had stepped outside to relieve himself, so inebriated he was. He waseasily coaxed into following the boy back to the island, where the duck leaptand tore out his throat to use blood and flesh for the mortar and bones for thebeams. The boy was delighted, but the palace had to be bigger!

　　Back he went, again and again, to collect thedrunken folk to show them the magnificent palace. Again and again the duckadded their bits to the wondrous palace, whose spires and arches dried tobecome alabaster and gold.

　　When the boy's parents came to collect him,he took them to see his magnificent palace out on the lake. They screamed andscreamed and ran, leaving the boy alone with the duck. He was not sad! Togetherthey made merry on the island until the mists closed in around it and spiritedit away to a land of cheer and mirth for all time.

　　該文本出自上古卷軸OL，一個血腥而詭異的故事。在UESP的頁面上則直接寫上了A twisted tale of a boy'sencounter with a duck(一個關于男孩遇見鴨子的扭曲故事)這樣的副標題，因為有劇透之嫌就沒放在標題處翻譯。

　　關于題目的翻譯，原本將A Gift of Sanctuary直譯成“圣所的禮物”，但總感覺怪怪的，于是按文章內容將其轉譯成“鴨子的禮物”

　　本文初讀給人一種《鵝媽媽童謠》里那些黑色童話的感覺，于是我便嘗試著按照童話故事的風格來翻譯這篇短篇小說。