"Baxter, Stephen - Manifold 03 - Origin" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baxter Stephen)

Like the one about their engagement, at the end of Malenfant's junior year as a
midshipman at the Naval Academy. He had received his class ring, and at the
strange and formal Ring Dance she had worn his ring around her neck, while he
carried her miniature version in his pocket. And then at the climax of the
evening the couples took their turns to go to the centre of the dance floor and
climb up under a giant replica of the class ring. Filled with youth and love and
hope, they dipped their rings in a bowl of water from the seven seas, and
exchanged the rings, and made their vows to each other...

Oh, Malenfant, where are you now?

Eventually they slept: the three of them, brought together by chance, lost in
this strange quasi-Africa, now huddled together on the floor of a nameless
forest. But Emma came to full wakefulness every time she heard a leaf rustle or
a twig snap, and every time a predator howled, in the huge lands beyond this
sheltering forest.

Tomorrow we have to make a proper shelter, she thought. We can't sleep on the
damn ground.



Shadow:

She woke early.

She turned on her back, stretching her long arms lazily. Her nest of woven
branches was soft and warmed by her body heat, but where her skin was exposed to
the cold, her hair prickled, standing upright. She found moist dew on her black
fur, and she scooped it off with a finger and licked it.

Scattered through the trees she could see the nests of the Elf-folk, fat masses
of woven branches with sleek bodies embedded, still slumbering.

She had no name. She had no need of names, nor capacity to invent them.

Call her Shadow.

The sky was growing light. She could see a stripe of dense pink, smeared along
one horizon. Above her head there was a lid of cloud. In a crack in the cloud an
earth swam, bright, fat, blue.

Shadow stared at the earth. It hadn't been there last time she woke up.

Loose associations ran through her small skull: not thoughts, not memories, just
shards, but rich and intense. And they were all blue. Blue like the sky after a
storm. Blue like the waters of the river when it ran fat and high. Blue, blue,
blue, clean and pure, compared to the rich dark green of night thoughts.

Blue like the light in the sky, yesterday.