"Michelle West - Under The Skin" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

Under the Skin

By Michelle West

The rain that fell in the city was the color of her eyes, clear and gray where it
blanketed the traffic-strewn streets with the persistence of its fall.
The river that ran between roads, set into a valley that nestled between forked
branches of highway, was swollen with April movement. She came out of that river,
like the first shoots of spring, into air redolent with the speech of cars, strange and
terrible and now, to her alone, ordinary-as ordinary as rain, as snow, as the
movement of leaves in their season.
She had chosen her form, had slept in it, and now, awakened, she tested the air.
And then, at last, she called forth a glimmer of power-power older than even the
valley in which she stood-and fashioned for herself a seeming, a glamour, beneath
which she might do her work.
For in this diminished time, work was all that was left her; she had no court, no
politics, nothing but magic stripped of place, of any context which was not hers.
Hard, to learn the ways of trees. She remembered her youth, and their voices which
were now so very muted. Harder, to learn the ways of squirrels, bears, foxes, of
stags, for their speech traveled with them, died and was born again, was perturbed in
all things by the short bursts of their life.
It was easy-she remembered it clearly-to learn the speech of man. Easy to think that
she understood it, that creatures that barely lived longer than animals could be
understood.
Had she but known.
"Janie, come downstairs now and take the garbage out! How many times do I have
to tell you?"
About as many times, Jane thought, as she shut her book and rolled off he bed, as
you say everything else. "I'm coming!"
"That's what you said fifteen minutes ago, young lady!"
Jane Thornton was not a stupid girl, so she didn't correct her mother. Instead, she
swung the thin door wide, ran out into the hall, pivoted on the banister and
practically sailed down the stairs, all in one continuous motion that ended with the
wall in the vestibule. Her fingers left smudge marks.
Jane's mother was standing, arms folded, beside the microwave in the kitchen. "I
don't know what's gotten into you lately," she said, as Jane lifted the two twist-tied
garbage bags. "All you do anymore is sit up in your room doing God knows what."
She mumbled a "Yes, mother" under her breath and refused to meet her mother's
eyes. They were dark, those eyes, where they'd once been bright. Jane couldn't
remember the last time her mother had smiled, although a cynical grimace was pretty
commonplace these days. Not much to be happy about, really.
It was probably her father's fault, and her father was, damn him anyway, quite
happy in his new life with his lovely new wife and his bright new home. No room
there for either Jane or her mother, although he called Jane regularly and had even
sent an idiotic pink sweater for her last birthday.
On the other hand, it was hard not to understand his choice when her mother was
like this. She dragged the garbage to the can at the side of the house, and then, after
stuffing the two bags into the can, headed down to the curb with it. As she trudged
back up the walk to the house, it began to rain. Warm drops hit her upturned face as
she studied the roiling clouds above without the slightest interest in shelter.