"Jay Lake - A Mythic Fear of the Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

weave which clothed his arm, pits that we had to pick our way around with
frustrating care. There were mites up here, slow, pale things the size of cows, but
their jaws could crush a grown manтАЩs torso, so it didnтАЩt do to fall down their dark
holes.

All of it made for slow going, but Daddy simply walked like time was his to
command. I followed, wondering what it would be like to finally meet the old man.

Soon enough the pits and the troubled surface of the sweater gave way to a
vast crevice. The fold of the Crook. It was dark as any of the mite-dens, but much
more huge. The far side rose at a steep slope, nearly a cliff, to meet the wrinkled
network of the top of GranddaddyтАЩs head where he had it pillowed on his arm.

тАЬHow are we going to cross that?тАЭ I asked.

тАЬFaith, patience and skill,тАЭ Daddy replied with another of his not-so-secret
smiles. He unslung one of his skin-spikes and handed it to me. The thing was
perhaps four feet long, with a curved hook at one end and handle at the other, and a
leather thong. He took the other in his own right hand, slipping the thong over his
wrist.

I stared from his to mine and back again. тАЬFaith, patience, skill and a
skin-spike?тАЭ

тАЬAnd a skin-spike.тАЭ

Then Daddy scrambled down the steepening slope, facing close to the nap of
the sweater, snagging the skin-spike in among the weave for balance.

I learned to climb that morning, down into the Crook and back up.

***

Later we stopped for guavas and sour milk in a fold that rubbed up against the
skin of GranddaddyтАЩs scalp. It was hot by then, and Daddy sweated a river.
Something in the salt smell of him seemed to bring the sea that much closer, or
maybe it was GranddaddyтАЩs great, slow pulse echoing behind me.
 IтАЩd never touched the old manтАЩs skin before.

It was a wall of leathery warmth that towered hundreds of feet above my head
to disappear behind the curve of his skull. So close, the skin was composed of a
mosaic of little islands of pale tan, ringed with paler canals. I studied the back of my
own hand. Surely there was that same patternтАФas if I in turn were built from tiny
bricks of leather. Great brown blotches interrupted the curving surface of his head,
liver spots each bigger than our house.

And Granddaddy was warm. He was warm like the ashes of the Beltaine
bonfire. He was warm like the mown fields of autumn. He was warm like the sun
upon my face.