"Laura Resnick - Curren's Song" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

He had, of course, known it would rain today. He had seen the soft,
watery sky in his mind, had heard the gentle drumming of the rain many hours
before its arrival. Old Daron had also known it would rain today, and he had
told everyone. No one seemed to find it strange that the gruff, gnarled old
man knew when the weather would turn. Yet everyone had looked at Curren with
contempt when he had once told them the moon would hide the sun in the middle
of the day; and when it had happened, only his position as the king's nephew
had kept the people from burning him alive as a demon.
Curren didn't understand why Daron knew about the coming of the rain
but not the changing of the sky, or why Daron's knowledge was accepted and his
own was not. He didn't understand why no one minded when a flat-bellied woman
suddenly knew she carried a baby inside her, while he himself was loathed for
knowing the color of the glowing mist which surrounded each person. Why was it
normal for a woman to know in the summer that she would bear a child at
winter's end, while it was considered evil for him to know whether the child
would live or die?
So this morning, out of respect, hoping to please, Curren had told
Brude, the king himself, to prepare for the visitor who was coming from across
the water. How was he to know that no one else knew about the big, dark man
whose long journey brought him at last to their village by midday? Why did old
Daron see the coming of the rain but not the coming of the man? Why was
Daron's vision good and Curren's bad?
But Curren had not run from the village and come to hide under the
trees because of the way the king glared at him, the way the women shied away
from him, or the way the other boys whispered about him. No, today he had run
away because of the way the stranger had pointed at him, cried out to the
crowd that he must be cleansed, and ordered him to accept a new god.
Columba was the stranger's name, and Curren hated him already. In shame
and anger, he had run from the village and come here, to the only place in
which he was never lonely. For it was here that he heard the silent songs from
beneath the water, here that he had friends.
"Curren?"
He flinched, turning suddenly at the sound of the wholly human whisper.
It was an intrusion upon the wordless welcome which rose out of the murky loch
and curled around him.
"Curren? Are you here? Please answer."
"Aithne," he said, surprised. He hadn't known she would come. Would
someone else have known? Was he as strange in what he _didn't_ know as he was
in what he _did_ know? "I'm here."
She came toward him through the descending mist, her red-brown hair
gleaming with droplets of water, her cheeks shiny with rain, her dark lashes
sticking wetly together. She was his age, and almost a woman. She was, he
noticed suddenly, ripening quickly. She smiled when their eyes met, then sat
down beside him. "I've looked everywhere for you."
"Why?"
"So you wouldn't be alone."
"I'm not alone here."
Aithne's head turned sharply, looking around. "Oh? Who else is here?"
"They are."
She blinked at him. "They who?"