"Zenna Henderson - People 1 - Pilgrimage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Henderson Zenna)

"Sure." Strong hands pulled her away from the railing and nudged her to a seat in a little concrete kiosk
sort of thing.
 "You must be very new here, like on the nine-thirty bus tonight."
"Nine-thirty bus tonight," Lea echoed flatly.
" 'Cause if you'd been here by daylight you'd know this bridge is a snare and a delusion as far as water
goes. You couldn't drown a gnat in the river here. It's dammed up above. Sand and tamarisks here, that's
all. Besides you don't want to die, especially with a lovely coat like that-almost new!"
"'Want to die," Lea echoed distantly. Then suddenly she jerked away from the gentle hands and twisted
away from the encircling arm.
"I do want to die! Go away!" Her voice sharpened as she spoke and she almost spat the last word.
"But I told you!" The dim glow from the nearest light of the necklace of lights that pearled the bridge
shone on a smiling girl-face, not much older than Lea's own. "You'd goof it up good if you tried to
commit suicide here. Probably lie down there in the sand all night, maybe with a sharp stub of a tamarisk
stuck through your shoulder and your broken leg hurting like mad. And tomorrow the ants would find
you, and the flies-the big blowfly kind. Blood attracts them, you know. Your blood, spilling onto the
sand."
Lea hid her face, her fingernails cutting into her hairline with the violence of the gesture. This-this creature
had no business peeling the oozing bleeding scab off, she thought. It's so easy to think of lumping into
darkness-into nothingness, but not to think of blowflies and blood-your own blood.
"Besides-" the arm was around her again, gently leading her back to the bench, "you can't want to die
and miss out on everything."
"Everything is nothing," Lea gasped, grabbing for the comfort of a well-worn groove. "It's nothing but
gray chalk writing gray words on a gray sky in a high wind. There's nothing! There's nothing !"
"You must have used that carefully rounded sentence often and often to have driven yourself such a long
way into darkness," the voice said, unsmiling now. "But you must come back, " you know, back to
wanting to live."
"No, no!" Lea moaned, twisting. "Let me go!'"
"I can't." The voice was soft, the hands firm. "The Power sent me by on purpose. You can't return to the
Presence with your life all unspent. But you're not hearing me, are you? Let me tell you.
"Your name is Lea Holmes. Mine, by the way, is Karen. You left your home in Clivedale two days ago.
You bought a ticket for as far as your money would reach. You haven't eaten in two days. You're not
even quite sure what state you're in, except the state of utter despair and exhaustion-right?"
"How-how did you know?" Lea felt a long-dead something stir inside her, but it died again under the flat
monotone of her voice. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. You don't know anything about it!" A sick
anger fluttered in her empty stomach. "'You don't know what it's like to have your nose pressed to a
blank wall and still have to walk and walk, day after day, with no way to get off the treadmill-no way to
break through the wall-nothing, nothing, nothing! Not even an echo! Nothing!"
She snatched herself away from Karen's hands and, in a mad flurry of motion, scraped her way across
the concrete railing and flung herself over into the darkness.
Endlessly tumbling-endlessly turning-slowly, slowly. Did it take so long to die? Softly the sand received
her.
"You see," Karen said, shifting in the sand to cradle Lea's head on her lap. "I can't let you do it."
"But-I-I-jumped!" Lea's hands spatted sideways into the sand, and she looked up to where the lights of
the passing cars ran like sticks along a picket fence.
"Yes, you did." Karen laughed a warm little laugh. "See, Lea, there is some wonder left in the world.
Not everything is bogged down in hopelessness. What's that other quote you've been using for an
anesthesia?"
Lea turned her head fretfully and sat up. "Leave me alone."
"What was that other quote?" Karen's voice was demanding now.
" 'There is for me no wonder more,' " Lea whispered into her hands, " 'Except to wonder where my