"Gray, Julia - Guardian 01 - The Dark Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gray Julia)

'I remember the feelings sometimes,' she said, 'but never what caused them.'
'You're lucky.' Although his own dreams often faded quickly from his memory, even when he didn't want them to, some images remained all too clear.
'Maybe that's why I can see other people's.'
'Compensation, you mean?'
'If you say so. You're the one who knows all the big words.'
They were silent for a while then, neither feeling the need to fill the void with talk. They were nearly always at ease in each other's company. Alyssa brought a welcome warmth to the room, and Terrel realized that her presence had enabled him to recover from his nightmare almost instantly. His arm and leg still ached, but for once he had not woken struggling to catch his breath, and his skin was not even clammy. At times like this it was easy to imagine that he loved her.
Terrel had never quite been able to work out his feelings for Alyssa. He had known her for almost four years now, ever since she had first been brought to Havenmoon. She had just been a girl then, and because they were - as far as they knew - the only two inmates of a similar age, their friendship had seemed natural enough. It had only recently dawned upon Terrel that Alyssa was female, and thus different from him. His sometimes contradictory emotions when he was with her confused and embarrassed him, but if Alyssa was aware of any change in their relationship she gave no sign of it.
At fifteen Alyssa was a year older than Terrel, and at times she seemed the more mature of the two. Even the signs of her madness - which were real enough - were
nothing out of the ordinary to her. She dealt with them in a calm, adult fashion that Terrel could not hope to imitate. Yet at other times she was like a child, laughing at things that he merely found idiotic, and skipping instead of walking.
This dichotomy was even echoed in her appearance. As Terrel looked at her now she seemed perfectly at ease, almost serene. Her shapeless grey shift covered a body that, while it was as tall as his own, was thin and frail - but which was now developing in ways that he found disconcerting. He felt somehow disloyal even thinking about it. In the last year or so her face had become more finely honed, as if she were growing into her own shape, and Terrel thought she was beautiful - although he had never mentioned this to anyone, least of all to Alyssa herself. And yet her deep brown eyes remained resolutely childlike, so large that the phrase 'wide-eyed innocence' might have been coined with her in mind. Her hair was another reminder of her relative youthfulness. It was blonde, the colour of sunlit straw, and cropped short in ragged, uneven clumps. She cut it herself- one of the few inmates allowed to do so - and although the results should have been comic, the style somehow suited her.
However, the most striking thing about Alyssa had nothing to do with her being caught between childhood and maturity, but was uniquely her own. Not only was she pale and thin, but there was also something altogether insubstantial about her, as if she might blow away in the slightest breeze. When she ran, it sometimes seemed as though she were floating - skimming over the ground like the ghost of a giant dragonfly. Alyssa's body, like her mind, often seemed only loosely tethered to the world.
'It isn't in my cell,' she announced now, looking puzzled.
Terrel was not surprised by this unexpected statement. Alyssa often began conversations in the middle, assuming that her companion had 'heard' her earlier thoughts on the subject. Many people found this extremely irritating, but Terrel was used to it, and even enjoyed the challenges it posed.
'Do you think someone might have taken it?' she went on, fingering her left ear in an abstracted fashion.
'I doubt it.' He already had a good idea of what she was talking about - she had few enough valued possessions - but he wouldn't spoil the game by asking her outright. 'Where did you last see it?'
'I took it off before we went to work for Ahmeza yesterday, but I don't know where I put it.'
Ahmeza was Havenmoon's head cook, a paradoxically stick-like and permanently angry woman who ruled her steam-filled domain like a tyrant. Terrel and Alyssa had both been on kitchen duty last evening, a chore they disliked.
'Well, if we don't find it we can always make another,' Terrel said. In fact he had already decided to make another earring to replace the one Alyssa had evidently lost. It would make him feel good to give her a present.
'When?' she asked abruptly.
'I don't know yet.'
This answer did not seem to satisfy her.
'I don't feel right without it,' she complained, looking crestfallen and touching her ear again.
The missing earring - Alyssa only ever wore one - had been made from a small, twisted piece of wood. She'd carved and polished it herself, and fixed a wire hook to the top, before making a hole in her earlobe using a tiny nail. The fact that this hurl and produced a short-lived flow of blood had seemed to surprise her. Terrel had found her crying, and comforted her as best he could, cleaning the wound and enlisting the help of one of the female warders, who wore earrings of her own. That had been more than a year ago, and since then Alyssa had rarely been without her only piece of jewellery.
'It could still turn up,' Terrel consoled her.
'I don't feel right,' Alyssa repeated.
As always, any hint of unhappiness in her face made Terrel want to go to her aid, to make everything all right for her. There had been so many huge tragedies in her life that any small ones seemed unbearable to him.
'What about something else?' he suggested. 'Until the new one is ready.'
'What?' she asked, her expression brightening immediately.
'Um . . .' Terrel mumbled, looking around his sparse furnishings for something he could fashion into a necklace, a ring - anything.
Alyssa fished a tiny piece of twine from her pocket and held it up.
'Could this help?' she asked hopefully.
The string was barely longer than one of her fingers and didn't seem very promising, but then Terrel had a flash of inspiration. A piece of thread had come loose from one of the seams of his nightshirt and he pulled this free, then held out his good hand for the twine. Alyssa gave it to him and watched, engrossed, as he began to weave them together.
'That too,' she said, pointing.
Terrel twisted round and saw one of his own brown hairs on the pillow. Feeling rather self-conscious now, he added this third strand to the plait, but then found he could not tie the necessary knot. He had adjusted to the limitations of his withered right arm for most things, but such delicate work was beyond him. He passed it over to Alyssa. Even she found it difficult, with the weave constantly threatening to unravel, but she succeeded eventually, and held up the new ring triumphantly.
'You put it on,' she said.
'Which finger?'
'That one,' she replied, indicating the third finger on her left hand.
Alyssa was smiling, looking directly into Terrel's eyes. She was the only one who ever did that. Even in Havenmoon, where the grotesque was commonplace, Terrel's eyes were a source of unease for inmates and staff alike. He understood why, and had developed something of a squint in his efforts to keep them hidden, but Alyssa actually seemed to like looking into them. And as she did so now, her own eyes - which could not have been more different from his, and which often seemed to be the only solid part of her - were as disconcertingly candid as ever.
Awkwardly, Terrel positioned the ring over the tip of her finger, then rolled it down until it fitted snugly at the bottom. Alyssa looked at it happily then glanced up again, smiling mischievously.
'That means you have to marry me now,' she said, and laughed in delight as Terrel blushed crimson.

Chapter Two

'This stinks!' Elam complained, his voice filled with disgust.
'You don't say,' Terrel muttered.
The two boys had been assigned to mucking out the stables, a job they hated at the best of times - and these were definitely not the best of times. The day was hot, even for summer, and so still that there was no breeze to cool them or lessen the all-pervading stench. Dust from the straw irritated their throats and made their eyes water - and rubbing their faces with hands that were already filthy only made matters worse. There were flies everywhere.
'It's not fair,' Elam moaned. 'Why do we get lumbered with all the lousy jobs?'
Terrel could have told him why, but he was saving his breath - and he knew that the question had been rhetorical. Life within the madhouse was not fair, as they both had reason to know. In some ways, however, the two friends were luckier than many inmates.
'The sooner we finish, the sooner we can get out of here,' he said, lifting another shovelful of manure from the stall and dumping it into the small cart. The handle of his spade was wedged under his withered right arm, while his left hand held the shaft lower down and guided the tool back and forth. Lifting each new load meant that Terrel had to bend his entire body, then straighten up and twist to the side in order to reach the cart. To an observer who did not know of his disabilities this would seem a particularly laborious method, perhaps even slightly comical, but Terrel was used to it. Even so, it was heavy work, and he was sweating profusely. Elam was toiling too, each new effort causing him pain. He would never have admitted it, but Terrel could see it in the way the other boy moved, in his laboured breathing, and he felt another jolt of anger at the injustice with which the world had treated both himself and his friend.
At just ten years of age, Elam had been committed to the madhouse for stealing potatoes. Although the potatoes in question had been left to rot in a muddy field, and Elam's family were on the brink of starvation at the time, his actions had been not only illegal but also in direct contravention of astrological lore. This stated that all root crops must be sown only when two or more of the moons were waning, and harvested only when two or more were waxing. (The opposite was true for crops that grew above ground.) On the night of Elam's arrest, all three visible moons had been waning - which was why the potatoes had been left to rot - and this flagrant disregard for the taboo had angered the authorities. Under imperial law, the boy had been too young to be imprisoned, but the seriousness of his crime was such that the local magistrate had ignored the mitigating circumstances and declared him insane - justifying his own actions by claiming that only an addled brain could have conceived of such a heinous act.