"Sheri S. Tepper - The Fresco" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tepper Sherri)

THE FRESCO
Sheri S. Tepper

[25 aug 2001 - scanned for #bookz]
[10 oct 2001 - proofed for #bookz тАУ by bookleech, v 1.0]

Things that go bump in the night
Along the Oregon coast an arm of the Pacific shushes softly against rocky shores. Above the waves,
dripping silver in the moonlight, old trees, giant trees, few now, thrust their heads among low clouds, the
moss thick upon their boles and shadow deep around their roots. In these woods nights are quiet, save for
the questing hoot of an owl, the satin stroke of fur against a twig, the tick and rasp of small claws
climbing up, clambering down. In these woods, bear is the big boy, the top of the chain, but even he goes
quietly and mostly by day. It is a place of mosses and liverworts and ferns, of filmy green that curtains the
branches and cushions the soil, a wet place, a still place.
A place in which something new is happening. If there were eyes to see, they might make out a bear-
sized shadow, agile as a squirrel, puckering the quiet like an opening zipper, rrrrip up, rrrrip down, high
into the trees then down again, disappearing into mist. Silence intervenes, then another seam is ripped
softly on one side, then on the other, followed by new silences. Whatever these climbers are, there are
more than a few of them.
The owl opens his eyes wide and turns his head backwards, staring at the surrounding shades.
Something new, something strange, something to make a hunter curious. When the next sound comes, he
launches himself into the air, swerving silently around the huge trunks, as he does when he hunts mice or
voles or small birds, following the pucker of individual tics to its lively source, exploring into his life's
darkness. What he finds is nothing he might have imagined, and a few moments later his bloody feathers
float down to be followed by another sound, like a satisfied sigh.
Near the Mexican border, rocky canyons cleave the mountains, laying them aside like broken wedges
of gray cheese furred with a dark mold of pinon and juniper that sheds hard shadows on moon glazed
stone, etched lithographs in gray and black, taupe and silver.
Beneath feathery chamisa a rattlesnake flicks his tongue, following a scent. Along a precarious rock
ledge a ring-tailed cat strolls, nose snuffling the cracks. At the base of the stone a peccary trots along
familiar foot trails, toward the toes of a higher cliff where a seeping spring gathers in a rocky goblet. In
the desert, sounds are dry and rattling: pebbles toed into cracks, hoofs tac-tacking on stone, the serpent
rattle warning the wild pig to veer away, which she does with a grunt to the tribe behind her. From the
rocky scarp the ring-tailed cat hears the whole population of the desert pass about its business in the
canyon below.
A new sound comes to this place, too. High in the air, a chuff, chuff, chuff, most like the wings of a
monstrous crow, crisp and powerful, engine-like in their regularity. Then a cry, eerie and utterly alien, not
from any native bird ever heard in this place.
The peccary freezes in place. The ring-tailed cat leaps into the nearest crevice. Only the rattler does
not hear, does not care. For the others, staying frozen in place seems the appropriate and prudent thing to
do as the chuff, chuff, chuff moves overhead, another cry and an answer from places east, and west, and
north as well. The aerial hunter is not alone, and its screams fade into the distance, the echoes still, and the
canyon comes quiet again.
And farther south and east, along the gulf, in the wetland that breeds the livelihood of the sea, in the
mangrove swamps, the cypress bogs, the moss-lapped, vine-twined, sawgrass-grown, reptile-ridden
mudflats, night sounds are continuous. Here the bull gator bellows, swamp birds call, insects and frogs
whir and buzz and babble and creak. Fish jump, huge tails thrash, wings take off from cover to silhouette
themselves on the face of the moon.
And even here comes strangeness, a great squadge, squadge, squadge, as though something walks
through the deep muck in giant boots on ogre legs, squishing feet down and sucking them up only to