"Patricia A. McKillip - Wonders of the Invisible World" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

Wonders of the Invisible World
by Patricia A McKillip
I am the angel sent to Cotton Mather. It took me some time to get his attention. He lay
on the floor with his eyes closed; he prayed fervently, sometimes murmuring, sometimes
shouting. Apparently the household was used to it. I heard footsteps pass his study door;
a womanтАФhis wife Abigail?тАФcalled to someone: "If your throat is no better tomorrow,
we'll have Phillip pee in a cup for you to gargle." From the way the house smelled,
Phillip didn't bother much with cups. Cotton Mather smelled of smoke and sweat and wet
wool. Winter had come early. The sky was black, the ground was white, the wind
pinched like a witch and whined like a starving dog. There was no color in the landscape
and no mercy. Cotton Mather prayed to see the invisible world.
He wanted an angel.
"O Lord," he said, in desperate, hoarse, weary cadences, like a sick child talking itself
to sleep. "Thou hast given angelic visions to Thy innocent children to defend them from
their demons. Remember Thy humble servant, who prostrates himself in the dust, vile
worm that I am, forsaking food and comfort and sleep, in humble hope that Thou might
bestow upon Thy humble servant the blessing and hope at this harsh and evil time: a
glimpse of Thy shadow, a flicker of light in Thine eye, a single word from Thy mouth.
Show me Thy messengers of good who fly between the visible and invisible worlds.
Grant me, O God, a vision."
I cleared my throat a little. He didn't open his eyes. The fire was dying down. I
wondered who replenished it, and if the sight of Mather's bright, winged creature world
surprise anyone, with all the witches, devils and demented goldfinches perched on rafters
all over New England. The firelight spilling across the wide planks glowed just beyond
his outstretched hand. He lay in dim lights and fluttering shadows, in the long, long night
of history, when no one could ever see clearly after sunset, and witches and angels and
living dreams trembled just beyond the fire.
"Grant me, O God, a vision."
I was standing in front of his nose. He was lost in days of fasting and desire, trying to
conjure an angel out of his head. According to his writings, what he expected to see was
the generic white male with wings growing out of his shoulders, fair-haired, permanently
beardless, wearing a long white nightgown and a gold dinner plate on his head. This was
what intrigued Durham, and why he had hired me: he couldn't believe that both good and
evil in the Puritan imagination could be so banal.
But I was what Mather wanted: something as colorless and pure as the snow that lay
like the hand of God over the earth, harsh, exacting, unambiguous. Fire, their salvation
against the cold, was red and belonged to Hell.
"O Lord."
It was the faintest of whispers. He was staring at my feet.
 They were bare and shining and getting chilled. The ring of diamonds in my halo
contained controls for light, for holograms like my wings, a map disc, a local-history disc
in case I got totally bewildered by events, and a recorder disc that had caught the sudden
stammer in Mather's last word. He had asked for an angel; he got an angel. I wished he
would quit staring at my feet and throw another log on the fire.
He straightened slowly, pushing himself off the floor while his eyes traveled upward.
He was scarcely thirty at the time of the trials; he resembled his father at that age more
than the familiar Pelham portrait of Mather in his sixties, soberly dressed, with a wig like
a cream puff on his head, and a firm, resigned mouth. The young Mather had long dark
hair, a spare, handsome, clean-shaven face, searching, credulous eyes. His eyes reached
my face finally, cringing a little, as if he half expected a demon's red, leering face