"McKinley, Robin - A Pool In The Desert" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKinley Robin)

Ruth said, "Wait. Wait. I'm still thinking. I'll help you with supper." Her head was bowed, and the hand that wasn't holding Hetta's was still trailing in the pool, and she flicked up water drops as if her thoughts were stinging her. "You know, I think there's a newt trying to get your attention. One of these big red fellows."
"Yes, I've met him before," said Hetta, trying to sound lighthearted, trying to go with Ruth's sudden change of subject, trying to accept that there was nothing to be done about Damarian dream-legends, and that this was her life.
"Not very newt-like behaviour," Ruth said. "Look." There was a newt swimming, back and forth, as itЧhe or sheЧhad swum before. "Watch," said Ruth. She dabbled her fingers near the newt and it ducked round them and continued its tiny laps, back and forth, in front of the place where Hetta sat. Ruth dabbled again, and it ducked again, and came straight back to Hetta. "Put your hand in the water," said Ruth.
Hetta was still in that half-trance mood of having told her secret, and so she put her hand into the water without protest. The newt swam to her and crept up on the back of her hand. She raised her hand out of the pond, slowly, as she had done once before; the newt clung on. She stared into the small golden eyes, and watched the vertical pupil dilate as it looked back at her.
"Maybe Queen Fortunatar of the Clear Seeing is trying to send you a message," said Ruth.
Hetta dreamed again that night. She came through the door she had first entered by, when Zasharan had saved her from the storm. She came in alone, the sand swirling around her, and closed the door against the wind with her own strength. She felt well and alert and clear-headed. She dropped the scarf she had wrapped around her face, and set off, as if she knew the way, striding briskly down the corridors, the sand sliding away under her soft-booted feet, and then up a series of low stairs, where the sand grated between her soles and the stairstone. The same dim light shone as it had shone the night that Zasharan had guided her, but she often put her hand against the wall for reassurance, for the shadows seemed to fall more thickly than they had done when she was with him. She was not aware of why she chose one way rather than another, but she made every choice at every turning without hesitation.
She came to the spiral stair, and climbed it. When she put her hand to the door of the Eye's chamber, it opened.
Zasharan was standing on the far side of the pool. Hetta raised her hands and pushed her hair back from her face, suddenly needing to do something homely and familiar, suddenly feeling that nothing but her own body was familiar. She let her palms rest against her cheekbones briefly. The sleeves of the strange, pale, loose garment she was wearing fell back from her forearms; there was a shift beneath it, and loose trousers beneath that, and the soft boots with their long laces wrapped the trousers around her calves. Her right ankle throbbed.
Zasharan made no move to approach her. From the far side of the pool of the Eye, he said, "I thought you would not return. It has been a sennight since you disappeared. If there had not been the hollow in the sand beside the pool where you had lain, I might have believed I had dreamed you. I went back to the little room by the lowest door where I first brought you, and the dressings cabinet still lay open, and the needle lay beside it with the end of the thread I had used on your ankle, and one bandage was missing; and I could see where your blood had fallen in the sand, for no one goes there but me, and I had not swept nor put things to rights. IЧwhen you first came, IЧI thought I knew why you were here. I thoughtЧI thought I had read the signsЧnot only in the sand, but in your face. I was glad. But you do not wish to come here, do you? That is what I missed, when I searched the records. That is why your story is different. Sandstorms are treacherous; I knew that; I just did not see what it meant here. It is only the blood you shed here that brings you back, the blood you shed by the treachery of the sand. That is all. I must let you go. I am glad you have come back once more, to let me say good-bye, and to apologise for trying to hold you against your will."
There were tears under Hetta's palms. She smeared them away and dropped her hands. "IЧI dream you." She meant to say 7 only dream you, you are just a dream.
Zasharan smiled; it was a painful smile. "Of course. How else could we meet? You have told me of Roanshire, in a land I do not know. I should have realisedЕ when you never invited me to come to you in your dreamsЕ"
"I only dream you! You are just a dream!" Hetta put her hands to her face again, and clawed at her hair. "I looked up Queen Fortunatar in the library! She is a legend! She is not real! Even if she were real, she would have been real hundreds of years ago! We have airports now, and cars, and electric lights and television and computers!"
Zasharan stepped forward abruptly, to the very edge of the pool. "Queen Fortunatar is in your library?" he said. "You have read about herЧyou sought to read about her in your waking Roanshire?"
"Yes, yes," said Hetta impatiently. "ButЧ"
"Why?"
"Why? Why did 1?Чbecause I wanted her to be real, of course! Because I want you to be real! You do not want to waste your dreaming on my lifeЧyou do not want to visit me there!Чalthough I wish Ruth could meet youЧoh, this is absurd! I am dreaming, and Queen Fortunatar is a myth, a fairy-taleЧshe is not real."
"Everything that is, is real," murmured Zasharan, as if his mind were on something else. Then he walked round the pool and held his hand out towards her. "Am I real? Take my hand."
Hetta stared at him and his outstretched hand. This was only a dream; she had touched him, dreaming, many times on her visits here; he had half-carried her out of the sandstorm, he had dressed her ankle, he had held a cup for her to drink from, he had led her to this room.
She raised her hand, but curled it up against her own body. What if, when she reached out to him, her hand went through his, as if he were a ghost? As if he were only imaginary, like a legend in a book?
Like a dream upon waking?
She held out her hand, but at the last moment she closed her eyes. Her fingers, groping, felt nothing, where his hand should be. She felt dizzy., and sick, and there was a lumpy mattress against her back, and sheets twisted uncomfortably round her body, and a fish-and-chips-and-wood-shavings smell in her nostrils.
And then it was as if his hand bloomed inside of hers; as if she had held a tiny, imperceptible kernel which the heat of her hand had brought suddenly to blossoming; and her feet in their boots were standing on sand-scattered stone, and she opened her eyes with a gasp, and Zasharan drew her to him and he let go her hand only to put both arms round her.
He said gently, "You must find your own way to come. The way is there. I do not know where; I do not know your world, your time, with the cars and the electricity. If you wish to come, you must find the way. I will wait for you here."
She turned her head as it lay against his shoulder., and stared at the water of the pool at their feet. Somewhere deep within it, she thought a golden eye glittered up at her.
She woke feeling strangely calm. It was just before dawn. The first birds were trying out the occasional chirp, and the chimneys across the street were black against the greying sky. She climbed out of bed and put her dressing gown on and crept down the first flight of stairs, careful of the creaking boards, to Ruth's room. Ruth woke easily; a hand on her shoulder was enough. She put her lips to Ruth's ear. "Will you come with me?"
They made their way noiselessly downstairs, past the shop, into the back room and the garden door. There they paused briefly, baffled, for that door could not be opened silently. Hetta stood with her hand on the bolt, and for a moment she thought she saw Zasharan standing beside her, his hand over her hand. He was looking at her. but then looked up, over her shoulder, at Ruth; then he looked back at Hetta, and smiled. I thank you, he said: she did not hear him, but she saw his lips move. My honour is yours, she said, formally. Then she pulled the bolt and opened the door, and it made no sound. "Whew!" Ruth sighed.
When they reached the pool at the end of the garden, Hetta pulled Ruth into a fierce hug and said softly, "I wanted to say good-bye. I wanted someone here when IЧleft. I wanted to thank you. IЧI don't think I will see you again."
"You are going to go live in a legend," said Ruth. "IЧI'll remember the bumblebees. IЧmake up a legend about me, will you?"
Hetta nodded. She knelt by the pool. Its surface was still opaque in the grey dawn light, but when she put her hand to the surface of the water, the newt crept up immediately into her cupped palm. As she knelt, an edge of her dressing gown slipped forwardЧ"You're bleeding!" said Ruth.
Hetta looked down. The scar on her ankle had opened, and a little fresh blood ran down her leg. The first drop was poised to fallЕ
She jerked upright to her knees and thrust her foot out over the pool. The blood fell into the water: one drop, two, three. The newt was still clinging to her hand. "RuthЧ"
"Go," said Ruth harshly. "Go now."
Hetta slipped forward, into the water, and it closed over her head.
It was a long journey, through water., through sand, through storms and darkness. She often lost track of where she was, who she was, where she was going and why; and then she felt a small skipping sensation against the palm of one hand, or the weight of a small clawed thing hanging to the hair behind her ear, or saw a goldy-black glint of eye with her own eye, and she remembered. She swam through oceans, and through deserts. She was swallowed and vomited up by a green dragon in a great stinking belch of wet black smoke. She eluded sea serpents by drifting, for, like sharks, they respond to movement; and water goblins by hiding in mud, because water goblins, being ugly themselves, are determined to notice only beautiful things, even if this means missing dinner. She was guided on her way by mer-folk, who have a strong liking for romance and adventure, and in whose company she sang her first songs, although they laughed at her for only being able to breathe air, and said that her little gold-eyed friend should teach her better. She spoke to sand-sprites, who have small hissing voices like draughts under doors, and she listened to the desert feys, who rarely speak to humans but often talk to the desert. She was almost trampled by the sand-god's great armoured horses till her little friend showed her how to hide in the hollow behind their ears and cling to their manes; but Geljdreth stood between her and what she sought and longed for, and at last she had to face him with nothing but her own determination and wit and the strength of her two hands, and a little friend hanging over one ear like an ear-ring. And, perhaps because she was from Roanshire in the Homeland where there were no deserts, and she had not lived her life in fear of him, she won out against him., and loosed his horses, and crippled his power.
At last her head broke the surface in a small calm pool; and there was Za-sharan, waiting to pull her out, and wrap her in a cloak, and give her tiarhk to drink, as he had done once before, though he had wiped her face free of grit then, not of water. She turned to look back into the pool, and she saw a gold eye looking back at her. and she could not tell if it were a very large eye or a very small one. "Thank you," she said. "I thank you."
SomewhereЧnot in her ear; in her heart or her belly or the bottoms of her feetЧshe heard My honour is yours. "Welcome home," said Zasharan.
Ruth had grown up, married, had two children, and written three best-selling books of popular science concerning the apparent impossibilities the natural world presents that scientists struggle for generations to find explanations for, before she found herself one day tapping the legends of Damar on her computer. Her search engine produced few relevant hits; after a brief flurry of interest for a few years following independence, Damar had again drifted into the backwaters of international attention.
It only took her a few minutes to find a reference to Queen Fortunatar of the Clear Seeing. It described her half-brother, her success as an adjudicator, and the sandstorms that particularly plagued her reign. After a few compact paragraphs the article ended:
One of the most famous Damarian bards also began telling stories during For-tunatar's reign. Hetthar is an interesting figure, for part of her personal legend is that she came out of time and place to marry Fortunatar's Fourth Sandpale Watcher, Zasharan, and it was said that after she came, no one was ever again lost to the storms of the Kalarsham, and that the sand-god hated her for this. But her main fame rests on the cycle of stories she called The Journeying, and whose central character has the strangely un-Damarian name of Ruth.