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

around my soul. Only Ma'am did, and she wouldn't tell.

"Big Man," I said, and for a moment I had a flash of butt-wrestling and wriggling salmon and the day that
lightning struck the highest spruce, like my real dreams were come knocking. "Welcome to Ma'am's
lands."
He laughed, in the voice that the spring floods use when an ice dam busts somewhere high up, and his
breath smelled like snow on stone. "All the land is mine, Aspenheart. The dirt and the air and every
breathing thing."

I got my stubborn on, that sometimes got me a beating. "Welcome anyhow, since you been away."

"Ain't that me down there?" Big Man asked, "with my metal heart rattling in my open ribs?"

I remembered what Miracle had said. "It's you and the idea of you, but you're here with me."

He laughed again, this time smelling like fir and spruce and the first greens of spring. "It's you with me,
little Larkin Aspenheart. I've come to tell you there's change afoot, and to mind your step. Ma'ams
grow old, and new Ma'ams come. You can take the knife and be a boyo all your life, or you can take to
the hills and be a sometime stud. But every time and again, someone has to be a Da to Ma'am. Just like
I'm Da to the Ma'am that is the world."

When he said that, I swear the mountains smiled and stars gleamed with pride and I heard the trees in the
valleys below us whisper all three of my names, even the one I didn't know.

Then Big Man closed His hand and shook it, like I was a knucklebone fit to be cast into the circle. I
cried to be let out, but when I jumped to my feet, I nearly fell off the new deck and there was only the
lolly rattling against the yet-highest rib, beating out the rhythm of my three names.

***

Later that day, when I was tickling fish out in the lake, Ma'am sent Darling Jack, one of her last, littlest
boyos for me. "The wanth to thee you," he said from a muddy perch in the shallowest shallows, grinning
until drool piddled his face.

I'd been out on the lake for some quiet peace, wanting to be lonely as a pinecone and think on Miracle
and what Big Man had said in my dreams, but there's no running from Ma'am. I smiled at Darling Jack.
"I'll be along shortly."

He toddled off with the news while I bid farewell to the lazy trout. I had thought, but got no more from it
than a little smoke. Ma'am would know, she always did, if I could find the words to ask.

She was on her sandbed in her grotto, leaf curtains half-drawn, being fed stewed wild oats by some of
the boyos. Darling Jack cuddled between her breasts, each one a sack bigger than that almost-littlest
boyo, her nipples pink and huge like sun and moon in a fleshy sky. "Larkin Grouselegs," Ma'am said,
"and welcome to your own home." She shooed Darling Jack and the oat-bearing boyos, then patted the
huge dome of her belly, as if I might want to lie between her breasts as well.

"Ma'am," I said, "thank you and no. I'll stand." My face was prickly and hot, and somehow the salty
smell of her reminded me of Miracle, which made my woodstick stir as if there was boyo butt-wrestling
to be had close to hand. My woodstick hadn't ever before stirred around Ma'am, and I felt my body