"Laura Resnick - A Fleeting Wisp of Glory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

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A Fleeting Wisp Of Glory
by Laura Resnick
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Copyright (c)1992 Laura Resnick
First published in Alternate Kennedys, Tor Books, October 1992

Fictionwise Contemporary
Alternate History


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Jackie is fascinated by old Jonah, and she can listen for hours to the
stories he tells. Me, I can take or leave him, though I still tag along after
dark when there's nothing else to do and it's not safe to go alone to his
cave. Not safe for Jackie, I mean. She's just a kid, after all. We're pretty
isolated in these mountains, but that doesn't mean we never see Marauders, and
there's no telling what they might do. Especially to, you know, a _girl_.
Jonah was named after a prophet who was swallowed by a whale. A whale
is a big fish that breathes air. It's just a fairy tale, of course. I don't
believe that anything like that ever existed, even before the Armageddon.
Jonah insists that there were such creatures, though, and that they filled the
seven seas with their songs before the waters boiled and the sky caught fire.
He says they could get as big as the giants frozen in Rushmore's Rock. So
Jonah -- the one in the story, I mean -- was swallowed by one of these things
and lived to tell the tale, and then our Jonah was named after him.
Jonah is the oldest person I've ever seen. His skin is so loose it
hangs on him like rags, and it's as dun-colored as his tunic. His wife and
children were killed by Marauders a long time before I was born, and he's too
old and weak to work now. In a lot of places, he'd just be left to die now
that he's no use to anyone; it's hard enough to find your own food, let alone
extra food for some broken old man. But these mountains are better than most
places, and there aren't so many of us to feed as there are down below. So we
bring Jonah food and water, and he tells stories and sometimes fixes things
that no one else knows how to. Not useful things, dumb things. We found a
little box one time, and Jonah fixed it so that now it makes an ugly growling
noise when you push a button. It has a special part that's supposed to go in
your ear, but why bother? I don't like to listen to the growling. It makes me
think of Night Devils, with their glowing eyes and melting flesh, even though
I know that's just a fairytale, too.