"Doranna Durgin - Wolverine's Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Durgin Doranna)

outer lands, leaving tall tales behind.

Leaving Kelyn's mother behind. LeavingKelyn behind, to teach herself what skills she could, striving
impossibly to live up to her father's reputation.

But despite it all, she survived when others did not, and she hardened into one of the most dependable
members of their closely knit group. Yet . . . this year, something seemed different. Although Frykla was
as stocky and girlish as ever, Kelyn had come to her woman's courses, and her body reflected the
change. And since she'd joined up with the summer hunting band, she'd come to realize that the boys had
changed as well. Cracking voices were the least of it, she thought with some disdain, though the boys
made much of such moments among themselves. A certain . . .witlessness seemed to pervade them, and
at the most annoying times.

Shecertainly had better sense than to sit noisily around a fire drawing the attention of every territorial
flesh-eater in the vicinity, especially now when the creatures were insanely protective of their young.

Kelyn checked that her staff was at hand and wiggled deeper into the moss, ignoring the furtive giggles
from the fire ring. Probably just another crude breast or balls joke. Not that normally she wasn't up for as
much pranking as the rest of them, but this year . . . this year, all she seemed to be able to think about
was her mother, and gathering the best summer harvest of plants and dried meat that she could.

Starting tomorrow. Kelyn had drifted into sleep, secure in her ability to again come instantly awake at
the slightest out-of-place noiseтАФthough she'd never expected to use that skill against someone in her
own hunting pack.

Now, looking back on those thoughts and the events that had followed, she knew. This year . . . things
were going to be different.




Chapter 2
Kelyn ducked her head against the wind that whipped through the Keturan foothills, unchecked by
anything other than a few thin stands of trees fighting to sink roots into the rocky soil. It was a familiar
scourge, this wind, and served to dry her tear-touched cheeks, leaving them tight over her bones and
tingling with cold. She closed her arms more securely around her load of precious wood. She thought
she'd been readyтАФshe'd certainly seen it comingтАФbut the calm practicality that led her to gather the first
of the pyre wood three years before Lytha's death had now utterly vanished.

Kelyn looked back on the summer three years earlier, the summer when the changes started, and shook
her head, a minute gesture lost in the hair that lashed around her face, try as she might to keep it tied
back. Oh, the summer hunting group had adapted to their fitful advance into maturity, had held together
even as they grew to be different. Aside from the loss of Mungo last year, they'd remained successful and
safe, and had even taken a handful of younger siblings on their easier forays. And Kelyn had continued to
deal with her own clumsiness, overcoming it by hours of practice and strength of concentration, until even
Mungo, right before he died, ceased to tease her about those moments she tripped over ruts no one else
could even see.

Those changes meant nothing next to this. Up until now her life had revolved around this thin-soiled
meager subsistence farm, set on the rocky, deeply rolling hills below the rugged peaks of Ketura. Her