"Jay Lake - Crimson Mud, Drying Blood" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lake Jay)

"That's not Him," said Miracle. "Not those built-up bones."
I gasped, for Preach would cuff my ear bloody for such talk.

She went on, unconcerned, protected by her woman-girlhood. "It's the idea of Him. It keeps Him here
with us. The real Big Man, He's dreaming, and maybe He's in our dreams."

My dreams mostly concerned themselves with butt-wrestling with Stumpwater Rob or the Firehair twins,
or more often than not, just flickery images of Ma'am's people and lands, like firelight in all the colors of
nature. I couldn't recall ever seeing Big Man in my dreams, but I wasn't going to admit that. "Uh-huh," I
said.

Always safe, that one.

Miracle chewed on another shallot a while, then spat a bit of pulp. Her arm wrapped over mine, skin
close enough for warmth and me to feel her pulse. "Ma'am, she talks to Big Man in her dreams. And
sometimes even Little Men. That's how she knows where to send boyos to find things."

And maybe send the sometime studs to find the lolly, I thought. Had Ma'am done that? "Was it time
for Big Man to have His heart?"

"It was time for you boyos to have your hearts." She smiled, her teeth gleaming in the starlight. "There's
a change coming soon to Ma'am's people." Her other hand slipped beneath her wool kilt, then she
touched my chin with her finger. It was damp and prickly. "Inker left me a spot of color for you."

After she ran into the darkness, silent as a deer, I touched my chin where she had. It wasn't covered by
Inker's work, though my cheeks and nose and forehead were. Her mention of the old man had set my
face to prickling beneath the mask of leaves and mud, but I was vowed and sworn to a week and a day.

I found dampness in her touch, which I tasted.

Musty blood. She'd drawn blood from within the secret places of her body and set it upon me. It was
then that I felt the wind of Big Man's dreaming, so I climbed to the new deck to listen to His lolly heart
rattle against the yet-highest rib in that breeze and feel His breath dance upon my prickling skin.

***

Big Man walked across the mountains like I might step over a stick, His feet striking the ground to dig
new lakes for all the Ma'ams and their people and the animals of the lands. He was grinning fit to split the
sky, teeth chiseled from the dark of the old moon -- for that brightness had to go somewhere -- and eyes
that flared like a summer bonfire.

He leaned down and plucked me from the Earth, like I was an ant and He a child. Big Man laid me in
His palm, and I grew just enough fit to speak with Him, so that the cyclone of His voice would not
bloody my ears, and my own words wouldn't be the buzz of a lacewing to Him. His hand was warm,
and even the roughness of it was like the lines the water made on a sand bank, all natural and firm and in
a rhythm with my ribs.

"Larkin Grouselegs, Heart-of-the-Aspen," He said, calling me by my first and second names. No one
but me knew my second name. No one, not even me, knew my third name, the one that wrapped