"Nicola Griffith - Yaguara" - читать интересную книгу автора (Griffith Nicola)

until the rainy season, May or June. Take it or leave it.тАЭ
 The road was a track torn through the tropical forest by
logging skidders, deteriorating to dust and potholes and broken
bridges. Leaves brushed the Jeep on both sides and smeared the
dusty paintwork with sap, leaving Jane with the feeling that the
greenery was closing in behind her and she would be encysted in
the forest forever.
Not long after noon, she stopped to drink water from her
canteen and eat a banana. It was hot; mosquitoes and bottlas flies
whined about her head. Wind, sly as a great catтАЩs breath, stole from
banak to ironwood to Santa Maria pine, stirring hot perfumes and
the iridescent wings of a blue morpho butterfly. When she turned
the key in the ignition, the JeepтАЩs engine roared too loudly, and it
seemed to Jane that when she moved, the breath of the forest
followed.
Over an hour later, the jungle ahead of her thinned abruptly,
melting from dense emerald to sunlit mint. The breeze stiffened
and expelled her into a green-sided bowl floored with dirt-brown: a
clearing. Adobe huts roofed with thatch stood in an irregular
west-east line; a macaw hung in a cage outside the nearest.
Chickens scratched in the dirt and a pig rooted in the undergrowth
at the edge of the clearing. She turned off the engine and found
herself staring into the solemn eyes of a group of thin-armed
children.
Stranger, those unblinking camera eyes said, you cannot hide.
One child wiped his nose with the back of his hand, another
tilted her head at Jane like a bird. Then at some unseen signal they
ran back toward the forest and melted into the trees.
Jane climbed down from the Jeep and began to lift an
aluminum case from the back.
тАЬDonтАЩt do that.тАЭ
 She whirled, found herself facing a lean woman wearing
shorts and boots and vest, muscles showing long and tight over
knobby bones; neck tendons flat and hard; face planed by heat and
hard work; hair in rough curls as black as volcanic rock.
тАЬIтАЩm Cleis Fernandez.тАЭ When they shook hands, CleisтАЩs long
fingers reached past JaneтАЩs wrist. тАЬIt would be best to leave your
things in the Jeep. ItтАЩs another half mile or so to our shack. We can
drive if we go very, very slowly.тАЭ
Our shack. She had prepared for everything but sharing a
room. Jane climbed numbly back into the Jeep.
Jane knew she drove well: poised, unhurried, competent. She
glanced in the side mirror, caught the flash of brown eyes studying
her in turn, and deliberately looked away. She was the observer, not
the observed.
тАЬThis is it.тАЭ It was a square building of breeze block and
corrugated aluminum. They climbed down. тАЬIt was built by the
logging company. Never got usedтАФthey went bust. ItтАЩs more
comfortable inside than it looks.тАЭ
A wooden step led into a single room, low and dark, about