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

"Preach, bring Larkin Grouselegs the bucket," she said.

I waited while an ancient Little Man bucket, colored pale muddy blue like water with no holes at all --
something brought up by the tunnel runners -- was set before me by a frowning Preach. He looked like
he wanted to say something, a blessing or a threat perhaps, but no words passed.

"Wash," said Ma'am.

I bent over, plunged my hands in the cold, cold water, then scrubbed my face. Inker's mudpack
sloughed off like a snake skin.

I didn't look into the bucket to glimpse my face. By the light of the fire, the water would have been a bad
mirror anyhow. Instead I stared at Ma'am, letting her see Inker's handiwork.

The boyos gasped, then buzzed among themselves with quiet chatter. Preach stared, his eyes narrow,
but he still held his tongue. Ma'am just looked at me a while, her great face unchanging except for the
shifting shadows of the fire, then she looked over at Miracle.

Miracle nodded once at me, then faded from the bonfire's light.

"Well?" I said. Usually a face was read out to much merriment, that Deadwood John would be a hunter,
or Robin Rascal had the makings of a Tunnel Runner. Most markings were no more than a few lines or
an odd rosette, though some, like Preach, had masks across their entire faces, curling like vines in the
spring. This silence was new to me.

"There's aught to read here but what's in your heart," said Ma'am, her voice rough. "Go up to the new
deck and see what Big Man has to say."

So I left the bonfire and climbed the darkness to the little round platform with the hole in the middle and
the cedar spine rising at the back. I knew I wouldn't take the knife, but the rest of it was still a mystery.
Facing was supposed to be an answer.

When I got to the new deck, it was no surprise to find Miracle there, though she had laid aside her hide
shirt and wool kilt. Her breasts were small, no bigger than my open hand could cover, not like the great
wellsprings of milk that lolled on Ma'am's ample chest. Since our long-vanished Da, no one but the
sometime studs had ever seen the salty cleft of Ma'am's legs, them and Preach, when he brought forth
boyos in our long-borning litters across the years. But now Miracle's legs were folded as she sat, still
showing me a twist of hair dark and curly as what had sprouted around my woodstick.

Which, to think of it, was sprouting as hard as it ever had for butt-wrestling.

Then she opened up her arms and I made my choice under the stars, Big Man's voice booming in my
ears as the wind whispered my three names within the tops of the forest.

***

Dawn came with no dreams, and I found myself tangled with Miracle, one hand closed upon her breast
and the other resting on her back.

"My face," I whispered to her as she slept. "What was upon my face?"