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

had become a traitor.

"You have the makings of a fine sometime stud," she said quietly, which took me for a shock. Ma'am
would no more live quietly by choice than a mountain storm, and there wasn't much in the world that
would force Ma'am to anything she didn't choose. Maybe winter's sharp teeth, or a flood, but not much
else.

"Don't want to be a sometime stud," I said, matching her unnatural quiet with my own.
"Figured," she said, and grinned me a few of her teeth. "How was your talk with Big Man?"

"I..." What surprised me was that I wasn't surprised. I knew Ma'am walked in dreams. Everybody
knew that. I just didn't know she walked in mine. "He was big, Ma'am."

"Sometimes," she said, and her voice was even softer, "sometimes I think on Big Man. He's an idea of
the land, more than any kind of person."

"We're building Him, Ma'am. He's our hope, like Preach always said."

She flapped a soft, meaty hand. "Preach ain't nothing but an old sometime stud without the courage of
his woodstick no more. Good as a winter warmer for me, and keeps the boyos in line, but he's an old
sister. Don't be listening to Preach too much."

"Then why we building Big Man?" I asked. Her words made my eyes sting. Ma'am's boyos were in the
world to bring back Big Man, and Big Man was our ticket to Heaven. "His bones are out there, taller
than six sometime studs laid end to end, and that lolly heart's now rattling in His chest. Or did you
forget?"

Ma'am didn't never forget nothing, which I knew, but she just smiled at me. "Did you ever think we were
living in Heaven now, my sweet Heart-of-the-Aspen? Little Men, they lived in stone caves and worked
their fingers to nubs. We get cold in the winter, and wet in the spring, but there's almost always plenty to
eat, and we don't do too much work other than building Big Man. What does Heaven have that we
don't?"

"Blackstone pathways," I said, "and air-voices, and the gift of flight, and all the things the Little Men
had."

"Maybe your Heaven," she said tartly, "but sure as winter ice not mine. Now, listen up Larkin
Grouselegs. In a week your face comes clean and we see what Big Man told Inker to place on there.
But you got to choose."

My woodstick chafed my leather shorts again, like it was listening too.

She smiled at that. "You want to be a boyo the rest of your days, feeding and carrying Ma'am around,
that can be. Preach will cut you and you can butt-wrestle and swim and holler in the trees for the rest of
your natural life."

Just a few days ago, I would have thought that was the future for me, but Big Man had come to me, and
I wanted to see His change afoot.

"You want to be a sometime stud, I reckon there's Ma'ams in other lands that'd take you in now. A few