"Wife of the Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Quartey Kwei)

PROLOGUE

THE FOREST WAS BLACK and Darko was afraid to enter. The trees, covered from apex to root with dry, sloughing scales, beckoned him with their crackling, stunted branches. The forest floor erupted in a charcoal-colored cloud of dust as the gnarled, ragged tree roots burst from the earth and turned into massive, thrashing limbs. Swaying, the trees began to lumber toward Darko. He wanted to escape, but terror paralyzed him. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came.

“Don’t be frightened, Darko.”

He recognized his mother’s voice at once. Relief swept through him and rendered him light and free. Joy swelled in his chest and knotted in his throat as he saw Mama emerge from the shadows. She walked toward him as if floating, her head held high in the assurance that she would allow nothing to harm her boy.

She held out her hand. “Come along. It’s all right.”

Her palm softly and completely cocooned his. He looked up. She smiled down at him, her eyes deep and warm and liquid. She was strong and beautiful. He loved the touch of her hand and the scent of her skin.

And she took him into the musty forest of putrefying trees that walked. The forest floor was carpeted with ashen, lifeless leaves and brittle twigs that snapped underfoot. For a moment, the trees stopped moving and allowed Darko and his mother to pass through silent as ghosts.

“You see?” she said. “They can’t trouble us because we’re not afraid of them.”

One of the trees moaned loudly-a hoarse, wrenching sound full of the pain of approaching death. Roots flailing, its bulbous trunk took on the distorted likeness of a face, eyes cruel and mouth bitter as quinine. Darko shied away, but Mama held him fast.

“No, Darko, you can’t go back now. I’ve led you here to find the truth.”

“I’m scared to go on, Mama.”

“Why, Darko?”

“What if the truth is more terrible than the forest?”

At that very instant, his hand slipped from hers. She faded away, and in the void she left, there was no answer. The tree with the face, suddenly luminous in the darkness, floundered in the soil as it lurched closer.

“Mama?”

His reaching hand touched empty space.

“Mama, where are you?”

Darko turned in circles, straining his eyes to see, but Mama had vanished. The trees grunted, scrabbling at the ground to gain traction as they closed in.

Darko Dawson the boy cried out. “Mama!”

Darko Dawson the man cried out. Gasping, soaked in sweat, he sat bolt upright in bed. “Mama?”

The room flooded with light and he cringed. He felt arms wrapping around him and he tried to fight them off.

“The trees,” he said.

“No trees,” Christine said. “No trees. Just me. In the bedroom, here with you.”

Dawson looked at his wife, startled for an instant before he recognized her. He sighed deeply and let the tension go as he leaned against her. She held him and wiped the sweat from his brow.

“The dream was different from before,” he whispered.

“Was it?”

He nodded. “This time, Mama was in the forest with me. I think she’s calling for me, Christine-no, I’m certain she is. She’s ready for me now. She may have disappeared, but she isn’t gone, and now she wants me to find her.”