"Tad Williams - The Stanger's Hands" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Tad)

тАЬDonтАЩt,тАЭ whispered Feliks. тАЬThatтАЩs what the boy did.тАЭ

Father Bannity hesitated for only a moment. Something in the big
manтАЩs strange gaze, something solemn and distant but not unkind,
convinced him. He reached out and allowed EliтАЩs hand to fold around his.

For a startling moment Bannity thought he had become a fish, jerked
thrashing out of the river and up into the daylight, blinded by the sun and its
prismatic colors, dazzled by the burning air. Then, a half instant later, he
realized it was as though he had been out of the water for years, and now
had suddenly been plunged back into it: everything that had withered in him
suddenly sprang back to life, all the small losses of the passing days and
monthsтАФcolor, feeling, ecstasy. The feeling was so strong, so
over-whelming, that he could not even answer FeliksтАЩs worried questions as
he staggered away.
 Bannity knew again. He had forgotten what it felt like, but now he
remembered, and the thunderous force of belief returning betrayed how
much he had lost. God had sent him a miracle in the person of the silent
gi-ant, and with that single touch, a world that had slowly turned gray around
him over the years had been kindled back into flaming life.

God was in everything again, just as He had been when Bannity was a
child, when he had been able to imagine nothing better than to serve Him.

God was alive inside him. He had experienced a miracle.

It was only when the first surge of ecstatic happiness had become a
lit-tle more ordinary, if no less pleasurable, that Father Bannity realized
noth-ing tangible had actually changed. It wasnтАЩt so much that God had
shown him a miracle, a sign, it was more as if touching the giantтАЩs hand had
reawakened him to the love of God he had once had, but which had slipped
away from him.

It was Eli, he realized, although undoubtedly acting as GodтАЩs
messen-ger, who had given him back his love of the Lord, his belief in a
living Cre-ation, and most of all, his certainty that what was was meant to
be.

The silent, damaged man had given Bannity his heartтАЩs desire, even
though the priest himself had not known what it was.

Grateful, renewed, the priest resolved to speak on behalf of the two
prisoners when the Prosecutor General returned to the village, to tell the
truth even if it meant admitting that he had, for a time, lost his own faith.
Father Bannity would undoubtedly have been their only defender, except
that on the day before the traveling lawspeaker rode into town, the boy
named Tobias came back.

He had been, the boy told the villagers (and very gleefully too) in the