"Elizabeth Hand - Last Summer on Mars Hill" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hand Elizabeth)

to
smile, but he felt only sorrow and a headache prodding at the comers of his
eyes. Moony's head felt heavy on his shoulder. He shifted on the bench,
stroking
her hair and whispering until she grew quiet. Then they sat in silence.

He stared across the room, to the altar and the wall beyond, where a stained
glass window would have been in another kind of chapel. Here, a single great
picture window looked out onto the bay. In the distance he could see the
Starry
Islands glittering in the sunlight, and beyond them the emerald bulk of Blue
Hill and Cadillac Mountain rising above the indigo water.

And, if he squinted, he could see Them. The Others, like tears or blots of
light
floating across his retina. The Golden Ones. The Greeters.

The Light Children.

"Hey!" he whispered. Moony sniffed and burrowed closer into his shoulder, but
he
wasn't talking to her. He was welcoming Them.

They were the real reason people had settled here, over a century ago. They
were
the reason Jason and Moony and their parents and all the others came here now;
although not everyone could see Them. Moony never had, nor Ariel's friend
Diana;
although Diana believed in Them, and Moony did not. You never spoke of Them,
and
if you did, it was always parenthetically and with a capital T --- "Rvis and I
were looking at the moon last night [They were there) and we thought we saw a
whale." Or, "Martin came over at midnight (he saw Them on the way) and we
played
Scrabble. . ."

A few years earlier a movement was afoot, to change the way of referring to
Them. In a single slender volume that was a history of the Mars Hill
spiritualist community, They were referred to as the Light Children, but no
one
ever really called Them that. Everyone just called them Them. It seemed the
most
polite thing to do, really, since no one knew what They called Themselves.

"And we'd hate to offend Them," as Ariel said.

That was always a fear at Mars Hill. That, despite the gentle nature of the
community's adherents, They inadvertently would be offended one day la
too-noisy
volleyball game on the rocky beach; a beer-fueled Solstice celebration