"Wilder, Cherry - Torin 01 - The Luck of Brin's Five UC - part 01" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilder Cherry)

hidden, would never be seen. In the city, as I have since
observed, people live in a different way and have no
Family, no Luck to bind them, and they survive very well,
but as mountain people we followed the old threads.
We did not give up easily. Every day we fought against
our doom by searching for a new Luck. Sometimes Brin
went out as far as the lake, alone or with Mamor. Harper
Roy went out in the night, and we heard him singing
against the storm and harping for our

deliverance. When
the wind died down, they sent Narneen and me to the lake
shore, with instructions to walk in circles, to pray, to call,
to bring back news of any stranger passing.
It is strange to stand in winter by the Warm Lake.
Clouds of steam rise up off the surface into the frosty air,
and where the cold mist from the pass meets the steam they
form spiral patterns. I remember once standing hand-in-
hand with Narneen, letting the water play over our frozen
feet. We looked up and saw two figures watching us from a
crag, Hunter Geer and Whitewing. One fierce and ruddy,
with hair the color of dried blood hanging over a wolf-skin
tunic. The other even more frightening, immensely tall and
thin and white as the snow, for Whitewing had no color.
Whitewing was the Luck of Hunter Geer's Five ...
white-haired, bloodless, from the first showing.
From where we stood by the lake, we co * uld not see those
pink eyes flashing ill-will upon us. I bent down and seized a
warm pebble, then molded snow around it. I flung it at
Whitewing, high on the crag, crying out as it fell short,
"We will find our Luck again!"






Whitewing laughed aloud, a high, jagged laugh that rang
and echoed from the farthest shore.
Two days later we ate the last of the preserved game
birds; there was nothing left but blackloaf and dried
sunner. A blizzard was blowing, and Mamor could not
hunt. Odd-Eye did not speak, and we felt sure our Luck
was dying; but suddenly, towards noon on the second day,
his mind became clear. Odd-Eye spoke to each of us in turn
and prayed for the hidden child. I felt desolate and strange
when my turn came to sit beside him. Odd-Eye had a long
hatchet face; one of his eyes was green, the other brown.
He was short and misshapen, but in all the time I could
remember, he had been so agile I could not think of him as