"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Past the Size of Dreaming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

 One night something had thawed in her winter-iced chest. I wonder if itтАЩs spring at home yet.
She had turned south, found winds to drift her down, and here, close to her old home, she saw small
signs: leaf buds swelling on trees, some of the earliest flowers poking up through sodden forest floor. Too
early yet for frogs to call, but the rain and wind tasted soft with season shift.
A mouse shrieked as an owl caught it. She added that fragment of sound to her collection, then made
a sampler of night scents: Ponderosa pine needles both fallen and still on the tree, the stronger scent of
sap, earth, some spicy herb nearby. The faintest whiff of skunk spray. Fainter, tints and traces of smoke
and food cooking, song and guitar, the murmur of voices across water.
People.
She wasnтАЩt ready to talk to anyone yet. It always took her a while to come back from these
journeys. Here, she felt comfortable. People were over there, not beyond sight and sound, but not close
enough to notice her. She could get used to them gradually.
Wind nudged her from behind. She laughed and let go of her branch, plunged out into nothing. Air
carried her up above the forest.
She looked and listened and smelled and tasted: treetops had a different scent from the scent on the
forest floor, sounds carried differently from this height; starlight painted patterns along the pine needles,
gleamed on the lake.
She blew out over the lake, toward the campground.
тАФWait.тАФShe put out hands, spread fingers, tried to brake, turn, go back to the safety of the forest.
Wooden rowboats bumped a wooden dock below her, and now she could hear conversations. A
dog at one of the campsites barked. Another answered.
тАФNo. Not yet. IтАЩm not ready,тАФshe told Air as it tumbled her toward people.
тАФReally not ready?тАФ
тАФReally.тАФ She hugged herself. She had no clothes. She couldnтАЩt remember how to speak aloud.
She didnтАЩt want to come back to people here, where she knew no one. She wanted to choose her entry.
If Air told her to touch down here and now, she would. She had weathered more difficult things. In
the service of Air, she went everywhere, sooner or later. Why not here?
She hovered twenty feet above the dock. Yard light from the little campground store shone on her,
sheathing her skin in orange glow.
For a moment she was close enough to touch human-built things, close enough to be seen, to be
drawn into local lives.
Air lifted her again.
She breathed out happiness, breathed more in.
She spent the night listening to deep forest.

LIA Fuego leaned forward in her box seat and stared down at the lighted stage, where the first
instruments were tuning to each other. It was starting: the liquid fire that was music, edging upward from
tinder into flame. The instruments joined, one section at a time, each musician searching for and finding
the perfect note.
Harry Vandermeer touched her arm. She glanced at him, let him draw her out of the sound. She
loved the look of him in his elegant dark suit, the long, graceful hands that were like pale lilies at the ends
of his sleeves, the short gold hair that fell neatly against his skull, the gray-blue eyes that held storms and
silence. His face in repose looked like he was amused by everything; now it was animated, his expression
a mixture of worry and laughter. тАЬWeтАЩre in the wrong seats,тАЭ he murmured.
The woman sitting on his other side slitted her eyes at him as if to tell him to shut up.
Lia leaned toward him, her shoulder nudging his, so she could hear a whisper. He bent his head. His
breath touched her ear.
тАЬWeтАЩre in the wrong seats,тАЭ he whispered, тАЬif youтАЩre going to do that.тАЭ
тАЬWhat?тАЭ she whispered.
He took her hand, stroked it gently. She looked down.