"Michelle West - Winter Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

precious candle burning, and sit by the side of her bed.
"What did you dream of, Kayla?"
"The dragon."
She had never seen a dragon; the stories that the old wives told described them as
terrible, ancient beasts who had long since vanished from the face of the free lands.
Books in the hold were so rare they were seldom seen, and books with pictures
tipped in were rarer still.
But there was something in the shape of shadow that reminded her of those
pictures.
"What was he doing?"
"Crying."
"Ah. Try not to listen too carefully, Kayla. Dragon tears are a terrible thing."
"I think...he's lonely."
Her mother's smile was shallow, even by candlelight. "Dragons are lonely; they
sit on their cold, cold gold, their hard jewels, and they never come out to play."
"He would," she would tell her mother, "if he could find us."
"I think it best that he never find us, Kayla. Riverend is no place for such a
creature."

The white dreams were different.
The snows were clearer and cleaner, and the pines that guarded the pass stretched
beyond them to cut moonlight and hide it. But the light was strong enough to see
by, and she always saw the same thing: the white horse.
He was the color of snow, of light on snow. And in the hold, in this place just one
edge of rock and mountain, where spring came and went so quickly and summer's
stretch was measured in weeks, snow was the color of death. Even as a child, she
had understood that.
He did not speak to her until her father died.
"You can talk?"
:Yes. A little. It is difficult now. But... I heard your voice, little one. I heard your
singing.:
"Singing?"
:Aye, song, a dirge, I think, to break the heart for its softness. I heard you sing
years ago, and your song was so light and so joyful, I waned all of my compatriots
to stand, to listen, to feel. There was such love in that song. And in this one. In this
one, too.:
 She knew what he spoke of, and said nothing, but looked down at the back of her
hands. They were child's hands; smooth and unblemished by calluses and dirt.
Because it was a dream, she did not ask him how he had come to hear her heart's
song.
:If I asked you to come with me, what would you do?:
And because she understood something of the nature of dreaming, she allowed
herself to be honest. "If you had asked me as a child, I would have tendered a
child's answer. But I have children now, and they need me greatly, and you are not
a creature to be confined to a place like Riverend."
He had met her eyes with eyes, she thought, that saw whole lives as if they were
the course rivers ran, beginning to end, and he might map them out, might remark
on where the rapids lay, and where the oceans, at last, waited, for the movements
of rivers to cease. And he said, :Tonight then, dear heart, I will not ask.:
But she knew that the time was coming when he would, and she was afraid of it.