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

"You may never see her again, Jane; you are being born, and what you will be
when you are finished, I cannot say. Will you not at least say your good-byes in
some fashion? For your mother has hurt you, but she has been hurt as well, and you
will leave her just as your father has done."
"I didn't promise her anything."
"No. Of course not."
Jane didn't argue anymore. Instead, she almost meekly crossed the line between the
driveway and the patio of the backyard. Her mother sat sprawled in a lawn chair, a
magazine over her face and a glass by her side. It was full; not a bad sign. Jane
leaped up on the table just as a cat might, gathering her hind muscles and pushing
hard against the ground as if she had done it all her life. Then, on impulse, she
knocked the glass over.
The magazine fell to the ground in a noisy spill of glossy paper as her mother sat
bolt upright. Jane had never seen her mother's mouth open so wide with so little
noise coming out of it. The thought made her laugh, but the sound that she made
was like a tickle across the air. And then she realized that her mother was staring
right at her, and she fell silent, returning her mother's regard through a set of silver
fox eyes.
 "She can see me," she said, to the woman who stood at her side.
"Yes. But she cannot hear you, alas. It has been a long time." And then the woman
did the strangest thing; she walked up to Jane's mother and very gently touched her
cheek, the way someone might touch a sleeping infant's. "She cannot see me.
Remember what you can, Maria. Remember."
But the Maria to whom the woman spoke didn't need the reminder. She stared at
the fox for a long time, and then she began to cry. Jane had seen her mother cry
several times, but she had never seen tears like this, a mixture of joy and loss that
made her angry, cynical mother seem, for a moment, vulnerable.
The older woman reached out and touched the fox's whiskers. Her hands were
shaking. "Did you come here just to knock the glass over?" Whiskey dripped down
from the table to the cement, and spread into the cracks between the stones- "Are
you trying to tell me something?"
Jane started to speak, but the woman gestured her into silence. "Just listen, Jane."
"I should have listened to you years ago. Am I drunk now? Are you real? Do you
remember the last time I saw you?"
"What last time?" Jane whispered,
"When she was a girl only a little older than you are," her companion replied.
"She saw me?"
The woman smiled. "She saw me." The smile dimmed. "She had no magic in her
life, and a great deal of yearning. I came to her as a little fox for three winter days."
"Then what happened?"
"Do you mean, what did I do next or what did she do next?"
"I mean, why did you stop coming?"
"I? Because she found something else that she thought she could believe
in; some other magic, and some other miracle into which to put heart and hope and
effort."
"What?"
"Your father."
Jane growled, and her mother drew back, speaking in low, soothing tones.
"It was winter. Don't you remember? I wanted proof that magic existed - that life
could get better than what I had. I might've even prayed; I've forgotten. But you