"West,.Michelle.-.Memory.of.Stone.(txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

The next day was the day that changed her life.
She came to the workshop later than she usually did; her mother had had a great deal of difficulty waking her, and was concerned that she might have fetched ill. But Cessaly wasn't running a fever; she didn't cough or sneeze, didn't shake much, didn't throw upЧand in the end, her mother had relented and accompanied her to the jeweler's house.
There, shaking off lethargy, Cessaly ran inside, ran to her workbench, and grabbed the box she had made. It was simple, perhaps too simple for a man like Master Sivold. But it was not without adornment; she had carved a pattern around the lip of the lid that made the join between lid and box almost invisible. Only with care could she see it herself.
"What's that, then, Cessaly?" he said, as she approached him.
"Last month you said that you'd run out of space for the thingsЧthe things that you can't bear to part with."
"Did I?"
She nodded. "And IЧyou've done so much for me here, you've shown me so many new things, you've let me make what IЧwhat I have to. IЧ"
His brow rose. "Is this for me?"
"Yes. I made it. For you. Only for you," she added. "It's not for Gerrald. And anyway, it doesn't matter if he does see it. It won't do himЧor anyone elseЧany good."
He smiled and held out his hand. "It's very elegant, but a little
too plain for Gerrald's taste. Or for his customers." He lifted it, examining the carving around its side. "Cessaly, what is this?"
His fingers brushed the trailing strokes of letters, letters hidden in the movement of leaves, the trailing fall of their branches.
"Your name," she told him.
"My name?" He frowned. And the frown deepened. "Why do you say that, child? It does not say Sivold."
"It doesn't?" Her eyes widened then, with panic and fear. She reached for the box, and he must have seen the horror on her face, for his frown eased. But he did not return it to her hands.
"My eyes are not nearly as good as they once were, and your work here is so delicate, child. Perhaps I am misreading." He shook himself, and the smile returned to his face. "I didn't know that you knew how to spell or write."
She didn't. She said nothing.
After a moment, he lifted the lid from the box, and then his eyes grew wide, and wider still; his lashes seemed fixed to his brows.
"Master Sivold?"
He continued to stare.
"Master Sivold?"
And when he finally blinked, his eyes teared almost instantly. He closed the lid of the box with great care, and set it down on the workbench. "When did you make this, Cessaly?"
"Yesterday."
"Yesterday?"
"Yesterday. And a little bit of the night."
He raised his hands to his face. "I knew we were doing you a disservice, child," he said, when he at last chose to lower them. "But I thought that your parents would be happier if youЧif you worked in the Free Towns." He shook his head. "You must send for your parents, child. Tell them I need to speak with them. Tell them it is urgent."

And so she had.
They had come to speak with Master Sivold, and the closed door came between her understanding and their adult wordsЧbut she had waited just beyond the reach of the door's swing, and when it opened, it opened upon her pale face, her wide eyes.
Master Sivold was angry. Her father was angry. Her mother, grim and silent, stood between them, hands curved in fists, knuckles white as the bone beneath stretched skin.
She knew better than to ask what had been said. It was obvious that their anger had had no good place to go, and she wasn't about to provide one.
But Master Sivold's anger was pointed, directed; when he turned toward her, it smoothed itself away from the lines of his face. She almost wished it hadn't; he looked old as it left him.
"Cessaly, I want to ask you a question."
She gazed sideways at her father; his glance spared her nothing, but his nod was permission.
"How did you make the box?"
"How?"
He nodded. Gentle, that nod, as if she were a babe. She didn't like it. "Same as I make anything else."
"Tell me," he said again. "Take as long as you like."
"I chose that piece of wood," she said, "because it was the right wood. It took a little while."
"How did you know what to carve?"
"Wood knows," she said quietly. She never talked about her work, and it made her nervous to speak now. She wasn't sure why. "I wanted to make it for you," she added. "And I started the minute I got the wood home, but it told me to wait. It told me to wait for the longest day."
"And how did you know what day that was?"
"I didn't," she said again. "The wood knew."
Master Sivold turned to look at her father. Her father, whose shoulders seemed smaller somehow.
"And the sun knew," she continued, thinking about it, feeling the wood in her hand, the warmth of that sun on the back of her neck, her head, its light on the dark streaks of grain.
"Tell us what the sun said," Master Sivold told her.
She looked at his face for a moment, seeing in the lines around
his eyes and lips the movement of wood grain. She reached out, unthinking, to touch him, to feel the surface of that skin, that grain.
And when she opened her mouth, when she began to speak, she left bruises there, around his lips, where her fingers grazed flesh. There, and in the dark of his eyes.