"Laura Resnick Yasmine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Laura)

Copyright ┬й 1992 by Laura Resnick, All rights reserved. First appeared in Aladdin: Master
of the Lamp . For the personal use of those who have purchased the ESF 1993 Award
anthology only.


YASMINE

Laura Resnick

I was born to a goddess and sired by the moon. I fed on spirit voices and
drew my strength from the scent of the stars. I ripened in time, over the millenia,
drinking the melting drops of a billion suns, dancing the eternal dance of the burning
ground, and devouring the secrets of my kind, who were the rulers of earth, wind,
fire, and water.
Conceived and born to rule, I now serve, for I trangressed. Yes, I trespassed, I
went astray, I offended most grievously. And for my sins, I was shackled to this
servitude, as my mother was shackled to the wind which bore her away from me
long ago, so very long ago.
There is no time within the lantern, no days or nights, no centuries of change and
terror and joy. There is only the waiting, from eon to eon, only the waiting. I am but
a spirit within this fleshless, ageless, moonless place, caged and waiting for eternity
to pass.
There is, of course, an alternative to eternity's songless hum; but I stopped
believing in it many lifetimes ago. And this despair, I now see, is the true nature of
my punishment.
The first who found me was very old, and a lifetime of bitter loss had stolen his
heart. He touched the lantern with shaking hands, his palms hard and calloused, his
fingers gnarled with twisted pain. He held the lantern as a priceless treasure, for he
had desired it so dearly that he had traded a goat for it, not even bothering to barter,
as if he knew that I waited within.
His touch brought me forth, escaping like a comet, and I took the form of his
kind for the first time, becoming the shape and color and size most destined to
please him. How strange everything looked that first time, how sharp the scents, how
harsh the sounds, how firm the feel of my flesh!
But there was little time to behold the daylight or touch the shape of the world,
for the old man had heard of others like me, and he knew my duty and my destiny.
His wishes were simple: gold, a fertile young wife of great beauty, and the death of
his worst enemy. It took me only a moment to grant them, and it took him only a
moment longer to forget me. But surely, I reasoned, not all men would be like this
one. And, so dismissed, I was again swallowed up by the lantern, to wait.
There was one, I recall, who was very young. And to please her, I emerged
small, thin, and dark before her eyes one night after she had stolen the lantern from
the old man's beautiful, fertile widow. She did not know my purpose, and so I found
a voice and the strange feel of my tongue, and I told her why I had come. She
wanted a rabbit to stroke, some food, and sandals for her scarred feet. She looked
at me as I faded away, but her eyes asked only that I grant her more.
Then there was one who showed me the nature of days and years, of life and
death. I shall not forget her, for after that, I truly heard, for the first time, the echo of
eternity inside the lantern.
She received the lantern as a gift, the spoils of some ancient war, not knowing as