"Gene Wolfe - Peritonitis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wolfe Gene)

or cunning, that which made him go forward and not back. This it was
that made Deepdelver a hero, that brought him into Everdark, and to the
light again alive.
As to Singing, what can an old man say? Her beauty cursed me, if you
will, though I was then but a little child. I have never seen another and
never shall--she ennobled us all; wherever she stood was for that time a
place of peace and beauty. Of the crime that befell her I was then too
young to know, but I give it as I received it.
With others of her age and a guard of men, of whom Deepdelver, then
called by another, lesser, name, was one, she journeyed to the Eyes to
bathe. Now at that time men no longer went into the haunted Hair to
reach the lakes from the north. But not yet were they so bold as to come
too near the corners of the Mouth--no, the accepted path, then deemed
safe, was to skirt the southernmost spinney of the Hair, near the Ear, and
thence to climb to the Eyes by an oblique ascent.
Now this party of young men and maidens were so doing when there
came upon them such a calamity as we, of this latter age, have so much
more knowledge than they. An overflow from the nearer lake, forming
itself into a great mass of water, came hurtling down on them; and they
scattered--none looking to the others, but each fleeing in that direction
that seemed to him easiest. Now it so happened that Singing's path led
her to the Mouth.
When the Tear had passed the young men and maids joined again,
laughing and each telling their tale of escape until, as they reckoned their
numbers, their laughter hushed. Wide they quested then for Singing, but
not to the Mouth until with the passing of time it grew upon them that if
Singing had not, indeed, been washed away, then it was there that they
must search for her. None spoke this knowledge, but it waxed among
them; and at length they would not look at one another for the shame of
it--but already Deepdelver was gone.
No one had he told of his plan, going alone to the very precipices of the
Lips, and from those dark, ill-omened heights, staring, alone, at the Teeth
themselves, the dread portals of the sunless realm, found within him the
strength to enter there; such a man is not like us, though he walk among
us; the ghosts who wander forever through the Hair might, if they saw a
living man walking unafraid where they are accustomed to take such ease
as is permitted the Dead, believe him to be a ghost even as they: but--if we
are not all specters now--it would not be so, because he would have life in
him. Just so such men as you and I, seeing a Deepdelver, think him but
our peer.
Often I questioned him--young as I was, and shameless--of what he
found within the Teeth, and the rescue of Singing. Little would he tell me.
There are watery caves beneath the Tongue, by his saying. There he swam
in halflight through waves clearer, yet thicker, than those of the lakes; and
met a gentle race who begged him to go no farther, offering in the stead of
Singing milk-pale maidens, languid, gentle, and enamoured of love, whom
he spurned.
We call ourselves the People of the Neck, but who but Deepdelver ever
knew the extent of that kingdom; who but he ever, in the long song of
history, went down the Throat? That road he took, leaving the last of the