"McVickar-Edwards, Carolyn - The Storytellers Goddess" - читать интересную книгу автора (McVickar-Edwards Carolyn)

murderous mystery. My pleas for inspiration to Volcano Woman as I
walked and chanted Her name early one Sunday morning were answered in a
conversation with the proprietor of the corner store where I had
stopped to buy milk. From a small village in India, he told me, his
family still worshiped five elements: Fire, Water, Air, Earth, and
Metal. And God, he said, was the "Great Balancer of Life and Death."
With this luminous phrase, the how-and-why love tale of Pele was set
suddenly like a jewel in a ring, and I went home to write.

Pele's stone is obsidian and Her colors are red and black. Pele has
helped me accept the force of my own feelings and to live with
questions about natural tragedy.

The Romance of Volcano and Ocean

When the center of the Earth swells red hot and roars to meet the sky
and rivers of fire race down the mountain, the people cry in terror.
Even the old ones who know the name of Volcano Woman bring Her presents
of silk and tobacco with their knees trembling. At the edge of Her
mouth they set their gifts, and though Her steaming cry does not sound
like She is grateful, more than once Her liquid fire has stopped at the
edge of the village and the people and their animals are left alive.

Pele is the name of Volcano Woman, and no one really knows why She
comes from the center of the Earth dressed in Her terrible beauty.

Some people say it is not really Pele that comes from the center, but
Her children instead. Long ago, they say, when Pele was young, the
center of the Earth glowed with Her loveliness. Her skin was black as
coal and Her hair red as flames. Singing

Her song that hissed like steam through a small opening, She was
content for a million years to putter in Her house, stirring Her red
pepper soup in Her huge iron pot. Sometimes She would sleep for a
hundred years at a time, Her arms wrapped around Her brown and yellow
snakes.

Then one day, Pele walked to the edge of the center and pushed Her
hands upward. That was the day Pele met Ocean. For in pushing upward,
Pele made a crack in the center, and through the crack came Ocean's
voice, deep and soft.

"Pele, may I come in?" asked Ocean. Pele drew back.

"I don't know you," She said.

"Then let us meet here again and again and talk until we do know each
other," said Ocean.

That was how the conversations began. For a thousand years, Pele came