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

Jane set the table while her mother finished cooking. Set it for two, remembering
when she'd last set it for three in the morning. Then, her dad had done the cooking,
and it had been Sunday.
He was gone now. He was free.
She ate with her mother, and even helped her clean up afterward.
What about magic, Jane thought, and school passed by her in a blur of voices and
actions and people.
Magic, the woman had said, was a thing that existed in context. If you wanted fire,
you had to be fire. If you wanted lightning, you had to be a storm.
If you wanted freedom, did you have to be free?
And if you wanted love?
What the hell was magic, anyway?
Night was dark, but the stars were out. The air was hazy, so they weren't clear, but
they were there, and Jane could feel each one as if they were right beside her. She sat
on the porch, on an old lawn chair whose plastic strips had almost all fallen off.
Waiting.
"Jane."
She looked up to see the silver-haired woman. Her hair, like rays of light, touched
the porch railing, illuminating everything. Making it beautiful. It almost hurt to look at
her.
"What are you doing?"
"Listening to the house," Jane said softly. "I can hear my mother. I didn't know
how young she was."
"And look how she turned out."
"That's not all her fault!"
The woman smiled gently. "No and yes. But come. We have an agreement, I
believe." She held out a perfect hand.
Jane reached for it and then let her own hand, calluses and all, drop back to her
dirt-stained knee. "I can't come with you."
"No?"
"No. You know why."
"But isn't this what you wanted, Jane? Freedom? Did you not say that you would
be happy if you never saw this house again?"
"Yeah, right. And if I leave, my mother forgets about the stupid fox and
remembers that everyone deserts her. I bet she even thinks she deserves it. You said
yourself that everyone needs magic, and that magic is all context."
She thought the woman would be angry, but the woman only nodded her head.
'Yes. But what will your magic be if you stay?"
"Mine? I don't know. You."
"Not me," she replied with a smile.
"Maybe my mother then. Maybe I can believe in her and she can believe in her, and
we can both hold on for long enough that it'll be true."
"Then stay, Jane. But you will not see me again in this life."
"Yeah, I figured," Jane said, but her throat was tight.
"Let me leave you with a gift." And so saying, she drew out of her robe the silver
pelt that she had given to Jane once before.
"But-but I don't understand. Didn't you hear me? I'm not going with you."
"Yes. You will not be able to wear it, Jane. You will not be able to don it without
my aid, and I will not be here to grant that to you. Because you have made the
hardest decision, you've started a new life. You are not the Jane Thornton that you