"Hearn,.Lian.-.Otori.01.-.Across.The.Nightingale.Floor.txt,.v3.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hearn Lian)

"Tomasu."

"That's a common name among the Hidden. Better get rid of it." He said nothing for a while, and then spoke briefly out of the darkness. "You can be called Takeo."

And so between the waterfall and the top of the mountain I lost my name, became someone new, and joined my destiny with the Otori.

***

Dawn found us, cold and hungry, in the village of Hinode, famous for its hot springs. I was already farther from my own house than I had ever been in my life. All I knew of Hinode was what the boys in my village said: that the men were cheats and the women were as hot as the springs and would lie down with you for the price of a cup of wine. I didn't have the chance to find out if either was true. No one dared to cheat Lord Otori, and the only woman I saw was the innkeeper's wife who served our meals.

I was ashamed of how I looked, in the old clothes my mother had patched so often it was impossible to tell what color they'd been to start with, filthy, bloodstained. I couldn't believe that the lord expected me to sleep in the inn with him. I thought I would stay in the stables. But he seemed not to want to let me too often out of his sight. He told the woman to wash my clothes and sent me to the hot spring to scrub myself. When I came back, almost asleep from the effect of the hot water after the sleepless night, the morning meal was laid out in the room, and he was already eating. He gestured to me to join him. I knelt on the floor and said the prayers we always used before the first meal of the day.

"You can't do that," Lord Otori said through a mouthful of rice and pickles. "Not even alone. If you want to live, you have to forget that part of your life. It is over forever." He swallowed and took another mouthful. "There are better things to die for."

I suppose a true believer would have insisted on the prayers anyway. I wondered if that was what the dead men of my village would have done. I remembered the way their eyes had looked blank and surprised at the same time. I stopped praying. My appetite left me.

"Eat," the lord said, not unkindly. "I don't want to carry you all the way to Hagi."

I forced myself to eat a little so he would not despise me. Then he sent me to tell the woman to spread out the beds. I felt uncomfortable giving orders to her, not only because I thought she would laugh at me and ask me if I'd lost the use of my hands, but also because something was happening to my voice. I could feel it draining away from me, as though words were too weak to frame what my eyes had seen. Anyway, once she'd grasped what I meant, she bowed almost as low as she had to Lord Otori and bustled along to obey.

Lord Otori lay down and closed his eyes. He seemed to fall asleep immediately.

I thought I, too, would sleep at once, but my mind kept jumping around, shocked and exhausted. My burned hand was throbbing and I could hear everything around me with an unusual and slightly alarming clarity--every word that was spoken in the kitchens, every sound from the town. Over and over my thoughts kept returning to my mother and the little girls. I told myself I had not actually seen them dead. They had probably run away; they would be safe. Everyone liked my mother in our village. She would not have chosen death. Although she had been born into the Hidden, she was not a fanatic. She lit incense in the shrine and took offerings to the god of the mountain. Surely my mother, with her broad face, her rough hands, and her honey-colored skin, was not dead, was not lying somewhere under the sky, her sharp eyes empty and surprised, her daughters next to her!

My own eyes were not empty: They were shamefully full of tears. I buried my face in the mattress and tried to will the tears away. I could not keep my shoulders from shaking or my breath from coming in rough sobs. After a few moments I felt a hand on my shoulder and Lord Otori said quietly, "Death comes suddenly and life is fragile and brief. No one can alter this, either by prayers or spells. Children cry about it, but men and women do not cry. They have to endure."

His own voice broke on this last word. Lord Otori was as grief-stricken as I was. His face was clenched but the tears still trickled from his eyes. I knew who I wept for, but I did not dare question him.

I must have fallen asleep, for I was dreaming I was at home, eating supper out of a bowl as familiar to me as my own hands. There was a black crab in the soup, and it jumped out of the bowl and ran away into the forest. I ran after it, and after a while I didn't know where I was. I tried to cry out "I'm lost!" but the crab had taken away my voice.

I woke to find Lord Otori shaking me.

"Get up!"

I could hear that it had stopped raining. The light told me it was the middle of the day. The room seemed close and sticky, the air heavy and still. The straw matting smelled slightly sour.

"I don't want Iida coming after me with a hundred warriors just because a boy made him fall off his horse," Lord Otori grumbled good-naturedly. "We must move on quickly."

I didn't say anything. My clothes, washed and dried, lay on the floor. I put them on silently.

"Though how you dared stand up to Sadamu when you're too scared to say a word to me..."

I wasn't exactly scared of him--more like in complete awe. It was as if one of God's angels, or one of the spirits of the forest, or a hero from the old days, had suddenly appeared in front of me and taken me under his protection. I could hardly have told you then what he looked like, for I did not dare look at him directly. When I did sneak a glance at him, his face in repose was calm--not exactly stern, but expressionless. I did not then know the way it was transformed by his smile. He was perhaps thirty years old, or a little younger, well above medium height, broad-shouldered. His hands were light-skinned, almost white, well formed, and with long, restless fingers that seemed made to shape themselves around the sword's handle.

They did that now, lifting the sword from where it lay on the matting. The sight of it sent a shudder through me. I imagined it had known the intimate flesh, the lifeblood, of many men--had heard their last cries. It terrified and fascinated me.

"Jato," Lord Otori said, noticing my gaze. He laughed and patted the shabby black sheath. "In traveling clothes, like me. At home we both dress more elegantly!"

_Jato_, I repeated under my breath. The snake sword, which had saved my life by taking life.