"Marc Laidlaw - Jane" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laidlaw Marc)

The third day dawned in horror. We woke to screaming and woeful calls,
which came from somewhere we could not imagine. Our Father needed not caution
us to silence, for none of us would have made a sound against the awful cries. They
seemed to fill the jungle, echoing from every shadow. And as the sun rose and filled
the dark places with light, the sound grew stronger, moving now this way, now that,
as if buffeted by the wind.

We crept through the woods, away, always away from our homestead, but the
screaming trailed us. My mother wept silently, and OlinтАЩs face was pale and our
FatherтАЩs grim beyond belief. He must have known immediately what the rest of us
did not, for it was hours before mother said,тАФItтАЩs Ash! And he nodded only once.

We did not sleep that night. Nor did Ash by the sound of it, for the
sourceless, ceaseless wailing roamed the dark, ragged and full of pain. On this night
there was no rain, and the clouds kept back as if agreed the moon should shine on
us remorselessly. We cowered in a clearing and tried to rest, and as I looked up at
the moon I tried to make my peace with it and prayed it would keep watch over us
somehow. I did not know what other power to pray to.

Then across the face of the moon, something drifted like a skeletal kite; but
only the bars of the kite, with the sail itself all twisted and in tatters. And then I woke,
thinking it was a dream, but did not wake, for it was not a dream. The kite drifted
untethered, under its own power, and the thing that writhed upon it began to scream
and beg for death and mercy. It cried out in my brotherтАЩs voice:

тАФFather! Mother! Anna! Olin!

тАФJane! it called, for I was always his favorite. Jane!
 We all lay still as it passed above. Something fell from it and splattered on my
face like a raindrop, a tear, or more likely blood. I only stirred to check that AnnaтАЩs
hood was fastened so she would not be too frightened, and then not a one of us
moved. I saw that our Father had put his hand over motherтАЩs mouth so that she
would not make a sound and betray us. And though at first she wept and moaned, in
time she grew quiet.

For hours it hung there. I could study every bared sinew in the moonlight. I
could see how his skin had been peeled away, the muscles severed from tendons
and separated strand by strand from one another. But I could not see how he lived,
let alone cried out with such ferocity.

Near morning, as the moon sank, the wind rose and the clouds regathered,
and a high breeze caught hold of the kite and moved it on. Both sight and sound of
Ash faded away. Our Father took such a deep, shuddering breath that I could almost
believe he had not breathed in hours. Then he said only,тАФThey will pay for this in
kind. The sky above the city will be full of kites!

Our Father took his hand away from motherтАЩs mouth, then looked down and
kissed her eyelids closed, and I saw how she had managed to lie so still through that
terrible night as her firstborn hung flayed and screaming above her. Our FatherтАЩs