"Fancher, Jane S. - Moonlover and the Fountain of Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fancher Jane S)

"They won't."
"If they loved you, it wouldn't matter to them."
"No one can love that-creature."
"Nonsense. / do."
A ludicrous comment which deserved no answer.
"You get in there now and tell those leeches to leave, or-"
"Or?"
"Or I will."
I laughed, knowing it for an empty threat. My lovers never saw my blessed Mother. I pulled and pushed myself to my feet, then leaned over to kiss her cheek-carefully, I was still dizzy.
She hissed annoyance, but cupped my face between her clawed hands, matching us lips to lips, and exhaled into my mouth. I didn't resist, felt, as I knew I would, the weakness evaporate from my knees, and the vitality elsewhere returning.
Mother didn't need the Fountain. She drew her strength front deep within the earth itself. Hers was a magic well beyond my understanding, let alone my ability, and I was sincerely grateful for the gift.
I wrapped my arms around her scaled shoulders and held her close, whispered, "Thank you," and bounded for the house.
The last call I recall clearly from that day was her voice in my head as I left the garden: Don't thank me too soon.
The rest of that day is awash-murky-with sensations. Sight, sound, smell . . . my very sense of the lifeblood soared beyond human ken.
I remember running all the way to the baths beneath the ancient tower, rushing to my lovers, so full of energy, I wanted to have them all at once. I recall my poor servants jumping out of my way, clearing the halls before me.
I remember flashes of glowing stalactities, the small streams that crisscrossed the path, the exhilarating rush as I dived, headfirst, into the glowing pool among the smooth, beautiful bodies.
I recall coming up for air.
I recall the horror on their faces.
The fear.
The disgust.
I recall the way they pulled away, pressing themselves to the edges of the pool, and how the cousins, Jhemin and Jharl, leaped out and disappeared up the pathway, screaming for help.
"Cal?" I asked the nearest, oldest and best of my current lovers, and I reached to catch his arm as he, too, pulled away. But my voice was not my own, and my hand, my fingers, my . . . claws ... bit into his arm, scoring deeply before I realized those claws belonged to me and let him go. "Cal, it's me, Tammerlindh." I struggled, forcing the words past a throat that seemed too stiff to make the sounds, but Cal heard, or saw, something that made him pause, at least long enough to look more deeply, past the scales, the claws . . . the fangs I felt pressing my lower lip.
By now, the pool was empty, leaving only Cal, and . . . whatever I had become.
"God of lightning, is it you, Tarn?"
I nodded, afraid to open my mouth lest he flee as well.
"Wha-what happened to . . ." Cal was shaking. I remember how he sank into the pool, seeking its warmth. I remember sensing the flow of the lifeblood to the wounds on his arms and how my own soaring energy drained as the pool sought to heal the deep gouges.
Gouges I had made. "I don't know-"
Cal winced, and I closed my mouth on the unnatural sounds. "What happened?" Mother's voice, a voice very like mine had become, finished for me. The words echoed in the cavern. "Nothing happened, Calwern of Tandoshin, worshiper of ... lightning." And Mother herself appeared-for the first time to one of my lovers-standing on the edge of the pool, her tail whipping from side to side, her scales glimmering in the light from the pool. "This is my child, Tammerlindh."
"Mother, no!" I cried in protest, but it was too late, and I was condemned by my own words. Cal stared at me in horror. "Cal, this isn't . . . I'm human, Cal, as human as you. I was born in Kheroshin. Bastard, yes, but human. My mother hid me for years, but the village women discovered me, stole me from her hut, and left me, naked and bound in the woods. Mother found me, yes. Raised me, yes. But this-" I raised my hands between us. "This is not me! She's done this-" And turning to Mother, I begged an answer. "Why?"
"For truth, child. For love. True love will break the spell."
"Cal loves me. -Don't you, Cal?"
But the horror remained on Cal's handsome face, and the distance between us grew steadily.
"Cal?" I held out my hands, pleading, and something in my eyes must have reached Cal at last, because almost, I swear, he lifted his hand to meet mine.
But at his movement, the pool rippled, sending out waves of light.
The scales on my fingers glittered.
Cal jerked back, shook his head as I reached desperately for him, shook his head again as he stumbled out of the pool and up through the tunnel.
"The garden is dying."
Mother's words: the first sounds I recall from the days following my death.
"So am I."
But in truth, I was already dead, my sleek, scaled form nothing but a mobile tomb.
"Rabbit piss. Get back up there and tend your roses."
My answer was to slither farther into the utter darkness of the cavern depths. Somewhere in that time following my death, I'd left behind the rejuvenating pools. Lack of food and water made my reptilian shell ever smaller, allowing for deeper and deeper penetration into oblivion.
But one day I made one crawl too many. Before me, then around me, the glow returned.
"Too easy, child." Mother's voice in my head, and in the next moment, sunlight blinded me.
Well, not permanently: Mother wasn't a total fool. She transported me into the shadows beneath an arbor, but it took many long minutes for my long-unused vision to return. When it did, I wished for the darkness back.
The garden was, indeed, dying.
I tried to stand, but my body had forgotten how to walk. I crawled slowly to the heart of the garden, where the Fountain ran clear and cold as mountain ice-melt, its lifeblood totally consumed.
I had no knife, my clothing was gone with my skin, but I had the weapons of my new form. I aimed a sharp claw above my wrist, plunged it deep . . .
But there was no blood.
Frantically, I tried again.