"Carol Emshwiller - Water Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Emshwiller Carol)

side. Suddenly the air is clear and the skyтАФsuch a dark blue. Below me, everything is all fogged in. I
can't see our town at all.
I look ahead. I'm at the edge of a lake. I gasp. I can't help it. This is it, the lake. Our lake. Here's where
everything comes from. Without this lake and the torrent rushing from its dam, there'd be no town.
There'd be no us. Here it is, all shiny in the sun. Little lapping waves. And here the dam itself. The dam of
life, the water roaring out.

I fall on my knees (I don't mean to do it, but I do) I fall and look and keep looking, and keep thinking:
This is it. It! It's it!

The lake is nestled in a bowl. A golden bowl because, on each side, aspen are in their most golden
phase. I'm not exactly on the shore. I'm up above the dam. The lake is longer than I had imagined, I can't
see where it ends, in the distance there's a row of snowy mountains.

I finally come to myself and look away. Now where is that big house? All I see is a hut partly built into
the granite. Even my own little place is bigger than this.

And where's that orchard and all those roses? Nothing here but stunted lupine and pennyroyal. (I don't
see the pennyroyal, but I can smell it.)

I knew it, I knew it. There has always seemed to me to be something wrong with Amos Acularius being
our Water Master. He doesn't look right. He looks more like a half starving, beaten down servant than
lord of the water. Here he is living like a sheep herder. At the mercy of his dam and his lake and his
torrent.

And here comes the Water Master, himself, come to lift me to my feet. I see up under his hat for the first
timeтАФthose blue, blue, blue eyes. I knew they'd be like that. I get all shaky again. I feel a rush of heat.
It's the eyesтАФthat must be the reason he's Water Master.

And the scars. He has scars all over him, face, hands and all. Perhaps that's why he always keeps his
head down and his hat pulled low and always wears long sleeves down there in town. Scars and blue
eyes. He's wearing a torn T shirt and I can count all his bones.

I'm so trembly I can't get up even with him pulling at me. His hands are rough and callused, but his voice
is clear as water. "Come. Come, get up." If we were any closer to the dam and he, not leaning so close
to me, I'd not hear him at all.

I can guess the reason for the scars and scrapes. I'll bet he went down in his raging torrent. That's what
the scars look like anyway. He couldn't have come down from here, right under the dam. Nobody could
live in this torrent. It must have been farther down, much nearer the town.

(If he came part way down in his raging river, he'd have ended up by my house. You'd think he'd have
come to me for help. Did he walk away after? Right past me? I wish I'd known to look out the window. I
could have been harvesting my tepary beans and he could have walked by me all bloody and bruised,
head ducked down as usualтАФthough probably hatless for once in his life.)

When I can't get up, he says, "It's always that way when you first see it." But that's not the reason
(anymore) that I can't get up. It's that I'm looking straight up into eyes that exactly match the sky behind
him. His face is a combination starving shepherd and yet Water Master, too. He needs a shave, and his
cheeks are deeply lined, his eyes have crow's feet at the sides, but his nose is a Water Master kind of