"Kathleen Ann Goonan - The Bones of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

in her lungs. No wonder her mother wasтАж
Dying. She said it to herself. Dying.
Likelike had cut herself off from the outside. From light, from air.
The constant birdcries and the rustle of the botanical paradise her
father created in the Waikiki swamps were muffled by closed
windows. The faint sea-tang that filled the other rooms of the house
was replaced here by the close cloying smell of sickness. The old
Hawaiian nurse turned and set an empty washpan on a table.
Kaiulani jumped at the sudden clink. Open the windows, she
wanted to shout. Let my mother breathe!
Her mother, a small, shadowed figure on the enormous
four-poster that was swathed in lacy white bedclothes from
England, twisted restlessly, then lifted her head.
тАЬCome, my keiki,тАЭ she said.
Kaiulani ran and flung herself at her mother, kneeling next to the
bed. She could barely feel the weight of her motherтАЩs hand, light as
a birdтАЩs claw, on her hair. Likelike hadnтАЩt eaten for weeks. It was as
if she had simply decided to die.
 The whispers and gossip of the palace and the servants filled
KaiulaniтАЩs mind. For the past few weeks it seemed as if every Manoa
stream bubbling over the rocks was filled with those whispery
voices, as if each plant rubbing two leaves together in the wind
spoke the same horrible, fatalistic thought: Likelike is being prayed
to death by a kahuna. What else could it be? they asked. The royal
doctors, educated in America and Europe, said nothing was wrong,
and Likelike was only thirty-six years old. And just this morning
word had come that a school of red aweoweo had been spotted
several weeks ago off the coast of Hawaii. Her mother had once been
Governor of that island, and the aweoweo was a portent of death for
the royal family. Had she angered someone there, maybe by
marrying a Scotchman and diluting the royal blood? But many
Hawaiian royals had married haoles in the past fifty years.
Kaiulani had asked her father about it and he had become angry,
for he had no patience with Hawaiian superstitions. One careless
servant had said that she should beware, for it was Princess
LikelikeтАЩs own brother, King David Kalakaua, who was behind it.
Kind Papa Moi? Kaiulani couldnтАЩt believe that.
Kaiulani turned at a deep, hollow sound, almost like bells. She
rose slowly, wiping tears with the back of her hand while the nurse
hastened to hand her a handkerchief.
The kahuna, leaning forward, was unwrapping his dank bundle,
which smelled of cold dark earth. He had donned one of the
Hawaiian masks that had always frightened Kaiulani when she
was younger. This was a simple one: black on the left side, white on
the right. No snarling teeth, no terrifying frown. The
straightforward, inescapable gravity of day and night, life and
death.
Kaiulani saw what had to be bones: a pile of enormous bones,
overflowing the woven mat and spilling onto the priceless rug. Too
large to be dog bones, the sacrifice of choice since Kamehameha