"James Herbert - Soul Catcher" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert James)

Katsuk whispered: "I do this for you, grandfather."

Each thing in its own time. The cycle had come around once more to restore the old
balance.

His grandfather had built a medicine fire once. As the blaze leaped, the old man had
played a low, thin tune on his flute. The song of his grandfather's flute wove in and out
of Katsuk's mind. He thought of the boy sleeping out there in the cabin -- David
Marshall.

You will be snared in the song of this flute, white innocent. I have the root of your
tree in my power. Your people will know destruction!

He opened his eyes to moonlight. The light came through the room's one window, drew a
gnarled tree shadow on the wall to his left. He watched the undulant shadow, swaying
darkness, a visual echo of wind in trees.

The water continued its drip-drip-drip across the hall. Unpleasant odors drifted on the
room's air. Antiseptic place! Poisonous! The cabin had been scoured out with strong
soap by the advance work crew.

I am Katsuk.

The odors in the room exhausted him. Everything of the whites did that. They weakened
him, removed him from contact with his past and the powers that were his by right of
inheritance.

I am Katsuk.

He quested outward in his mind, sensed the camp and its surroundings. A trail curved
through a thick stand of fir beyond the cabin's south porch. Five hundred and
twenty-eight paces it went, over roots and boggy places to the ancient elk trace which
climbed into the park.

He thought: That is my land! My land! These white thieves stole my land. These hoquat!
Their park is my land!

Hoquat! Hoquat!

He mouthed the word without sound. His ancestors had applied that name to the first
whites arriving off these shores in their tall ships. Hoquat -- something that floated
far out on the water, something unfamiliar and mysterious.

The hoquat had been like the green waves of winter that grew and grew and grew until they
smashed upon the land.

Bruce Clark, director of Six Rivers Camp, had taken photographs that day -- the publicity
pictures he took every year to help lure the children of the rich. It had amused Katsuk
to obey in the guise of Charles Hobuhet.