"Reed-TheSingingMarine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Kit)

clothes as she crosses her legs; he can't stop blinking. He thinks he can smell
the warm air rising from the hollow at her throat.

What he says next, he says because he can't help himself. The old threnody
always bubbles up at times like this, when he thinks he's close -to what? He
can't say. He just begins. "I was born of blood and reborn in violence. If you
can't handle either, you don't want me sitting with you."

She leans across the table. "You haven't told me what you were singing."

"It's an old thing. I used to think it was sad, but now . . ." He's hurtled into
a complicated thought that he can't finish. There's no way to tell her he has
bigger problems now. Instead he tells the old story: born late to a childless
couple, mother dead in childbirth, wicked stepmother Gerda and the inevitable
murder, if it was a murder. His father was away; he, was never able to get the
truth from his frantic half sister: "You were sitting by the door and your head
came off; what can I tell you, your head came off." They buried him under the
linden tree, Marline and the stepmother, but he rose up, or something did,
leached of memory and stark blind crazy with love; he thinks that was him flying
overhead and singing, singing:

"My mother murdered me;

"My father grieved for me;

"My sister, little Marline,

"Wept under the linden tree . . ."

The woman snaps, "I thought it was an almond tree."

"All depends where you're coming from," he says, blinking until her outlines
emerge from the dimness -- wedge-shaped face as beautifully defined as a cat's
muzzle, long hair falling over long white arms and that neatly composed face
veiling her intentions; he thinks she may be beautiful -- too early to tell.
"Whatever it is, I can't seem to get rid of the song."

"You're still singing?"

He says in some bewilderment, "It sings me."

Even in the shadows the sudden, attentive tilt of her head is apparent. "And
what do you think it means?"

But he slaps both hands flat on the table. "Enough. The stepmother got crushed
in a rockfall. I came back. When being home got too hard, I joined up. That's
all you need to know."

"Yes," she says, perhaps too quickly. "It is."