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

winters on the ridges, grown into your height, you might be the mountain king, with your pick of Ma'ams
to roll with. Maybe someday be an old Preach, live a good long life dipping your woodstick into more
Ma'ams and boyos than you can ever keep count of."

That didn't sound so bad, either, when I thought about it. Live long enough to see the world move
through the years.

"And that's one more choice than most boyos get, I can tell you. But..." She held up one great finger, fat
as an elk's woodstick. "You got another choice. One most boyos never hear of."

"Da," I said, the word rolling unfamiliar in my mouth. I knew what it meant, but I hadn't heard it spoke
upwards of five or six times in my life. There was just Ma'ams and boyos, and rare as an albino salmon,
women-girls.

"Da," she said, smiling. "Ain't no bigger job in the world. Big Man comes into a boyo, when he sets out
to become a Da. I won't lie, ain't a long job, for no Ma'am can abide a Da once she's ready to pop out
boyos for the rest of her days, but a woman-girl just set out, she needs a Da. For a little while."

"Where do old Das go?" I asked.

Ma'am's smile closed down, her lips settling like a grandfather catfish. "Once Big Man comes into a Da,
He never really leaves. When a Da is done, Big Man takes him back."

That dream-hand would close in a fist around me, and squeeze like the biggest sometime studs could
squeeze an acorn, and I would be no more than a blood drop on Miracle's chin.

My woodstick slipped back up like a trout backing into sand, and my shoulders fell. I wanted to live,
smell the pines at every season and see winters in their dozens and play through every spring. I didn't
want to work and sweat and fight on the mountaintops, and I sure didn't want to Da my way to a grave
as early as any lost nestling ever found.

Her face closed down like her smile, and Ma'am touched her fat fingers together. "You go, Larkin
Grouselegs, Heart-of-the-Aspen, and you think on what I said. If it pleases you, ask Preach or Miracle
for their thoughts, or climb the new deck and see if Big Man blesses you again. I'll hear your word when
the mask comes off your face and we see what Inker wrote there."

I ran from her, without even a kiss or a farewell, through our little village of huts and tipis, along the
muddy beach of the beavers' pond, past the reedy shore of our big lake beyond, and for miles up into the
canyons and valleys. I didn't want to speak to Miracle or Preach, I didn't want Big Man's words or
Ma'am's encouragement.

All I wanted was to be a boyo forever, just like I was, no knife cuts, no running off for a sometime stud,
and sure as hell no Da to Miracle's Ma'am, or any other woman-girl that Ma'am might dreamwalk me
to.

But the whole time I ran, my chin itched where Miracle had touched me, and the salt-blood smell of her
never left.

***