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

Six days in the woods, and though I was tempted, I didn't pick at my mask nor look for myself in streams
and pools.

Instead, I ran down a deer, taking her life with a prayer to Big Man and a whispered apology to the
flickering of her dying ears. I skinned her, and cut a cloak of her hide, though untanned it drew flies and
closed my nose up right quick. What I couldn't eat or carry I cut and laid out for the coyotes and the
wolves, and a haunch up a tree for old mister bear.

Then I was the deer, ambling through meadows and rubbing against tree bark and sleeping in little
hollows in the ferns. The silent drip of morning in the forest was music to me, and the rank smell soon
became my own. I tried walking on hands and feet, but my shoulders pulled me back up.

It can't be done.

I tried not to dream, for I was afraid of Big Man and what He might say to me, afraid of Ma'am. Afraid
of myself, mostly. Even when I slept, there were only the dreams of the deer who was wrapped me
round like Ma'am wrapped Darling Jack. I nibbled spring shoots and feared the cough of the cougar and
worried the breeze for scented news of friend and foe.

Not much different from waking, really.

Then on the last day I walked back to Ma'am's lands, knowing I must present my face. After that I
could leave, if I wanted to take a skin and live on the land, but I had to come home one last time.

***

Though I arrived bloody and muddy, without the courtesy even of a dive into the lake, the boyos
welcomed me back. They hugged me and touched me, these that had been my friends and brothers
forever, and I found myself thinking that Stumpwater Rob had been cut once, but the Firehair twins had
not yet, and was it different butt-wrestling with one or the other and why did I think some woodsticks
were tastier and sweeter than others, until I had to put the whole business out of my head.

Whatever became of me, I would not be a boyo the rest of my life. The cut was not for me. Sometime
stud, Da, or runaway animal, I would carry all my parts and pieces until Big Man took me home for the
last time.

I shrugged them off, then, throwing my deer hide cloak to the ground and shouting until Stumpwater Rob
took my hand and led me to the creek and laid me down and washed me clean, save for the dried mask
crusting Inker's marks upon my face.

"Listen, my little Larkin," he said, and I knew that Stumpwater Rob had been cut the spring I was six and
I was sure he'd never even been given the choice to be a sometime stud, let alone everything I'd been
offered. His eyes were too far apart and he limped funny and he heard bad from the left, and though he
hugged real nice and kissed sweet as a trillium, he wouldn't have lasted three days on the ridges with the
wild studs.

"Larkin, sweet Larkin Grouselegs." Stumpwater Rob said, combing my hair with his fingers. "Preach has
been talking, telling the boyos you were of a mind to refuse Big Man's gifts. I knew it weren't true, and
when you come back, Preach got real quiet, but ever since you left Miracle's been crying in her tree
house and Ma'am hasn't even let Darling Jack into her grotto."