"Michael Swanwick - Urdumheim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swanwick Michael)

I donтАЩt think that Ninsun was my mother, but who can tell? We had not
invented parentage at that time. No one had ever died, and thus no one had
foreseen the need to record the passing of generations. Children were
simply raised in common, their needs seen to by whoever was closest.

Nor was I the child Ninsun thought me. True, when she released me
at last, I did indeed react exactly as a child would in the same
circumstances. Which is to say, I was out the door in an instant and hurtling
across the fields so fast that a shout to come back would never have
reached my ears. My reasons, however, were not those of a boy but of a
man, albeit a young one still.

I plunged into the woods and cool green shadows flowed over my
body. Only when I could no longer hear the homely village noises of
Whitemarsh, the clang of metal in the smithy and the snore of wood at the
sawyerтАЩs, did I slow to a walk.

Whitemarsh was one of seven villages on an archipelago of low hills
that rose gently from the reeds. On Great Island were Landfall, Providence,
and First Haven. Farther out on islands of their own were Whitemarsh,
Fishweir, Oak Hill, and Market. Other, smaller communities there were,
some consisting of as few as three or two houses, in such profusion that no
man knew them all. But the chief and more populous islands were
connected by marsh-roads of poured sand paved with squared-off logs.

By secret ways known only to children (though I was no longer a child,
I had been one not long before), I passed through the marshes to a certain
hidden place I knew. It was a small meadow clearing just above the banks
of one of the numberless crystal-clear creeks that wandered mazily through
the reeds. In midday the meadow lay half in sun and half in shade, so that it
was a place of comfort whatever the temperature might be. There I threw
myself down on the grass to await Silili.

Time passed with agonizing slowness. I worried that Silili had come
early and, not finding me there, thought me faithless and left. I worried that
she had been sent to Fishweir to make baskets for a season. A thousand
horrid possibilities haunted my imagination. But then at last, she stepped
into the clearing.

I rose at the sight of her, and she knelt down beside me. We clasped
hands fervently. Her eyes shone. When I looked into those eyes, I felt the
way the People must have when the first dawn filled the sky with colors and
Aruru sent her voice upward to meet them and so sang the first song. The
joy I felt then was almost unbearable; it filled me to bursting.

We lay together, as we had every day for almost a month, kissing and
fondling each other. SililiтАЩs skin was the color of aged ivory and her nipples
were pale apricot. Her pubic hair was light and downy, a golden mist over
her mons. It offered no more resistance than a cloud when I ran my fingers