Jo Clayton - Moongather
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- Название:Moongather
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Dinafar caught that infection and gradually managed to relax into a drifting dreaming state beyond irritation and anger. She ate slowly and when she was finished she brushed bread crumbs from her mouth and lap, then sat quietly across from the meie, her hands folded in her lap, letting the stillness of the shurim shrine-place and the serenity of the meie bring her a peace unlike anything she’d felt before.
The tiny valley was filled with sound-the macain cropping at the short succulent grass, the wind whispering through spindly trees growing in a thin line along one cliff, the water gurgling in its basin, an occasional bird singing a soaring song, a lazy insect drone. The sun was hot as it slid off zenith, but it was not uncomfortable. In a little while she stretched out on the grass and slipped into a deep sleep.
The Child: 4
She was beginning to know him. After three years in the tower she knew his moods, when he could be coaxed into talking about himself, when he was unwilling to be touched in any way. That he had some affection for her she knew. That it was shallow rooted she also knew. She was never too secure with him, aware always that his feelings for her would stand little strain. She knew these things without working them out; in her eighth year she still had no words for much of what she knew from instinct, not logic. She watched him, tried to please him, gave him the love that filled her and tormented her, the love that no one had ever been willing to accept from her-no one but her animals. She struggled to be what he wanted her to be although often she couldn’t be sure just what that was.
He was cool and precise with a passion for detail and a demand for perfection that sometimes drove her into angry rebellion. During the past two years he’d tested her again and again to find the limits of her special talents, what the organ behind the eye-spot was capable of, how far its influence reached and the number of things it could do. She worked herself to utter weariness to please him but he was insatiable. She survived and thrived because she shared with him his thirst for knowledge. She learned small spells to handle wind and water. She learned to deflect lightning and lift small stones. She watched the Noris dip into the sub-worlds and call forth demons, even talked with them when he let her. He continually touched the eye-spot, stroking his fingers over it, resting them on it as if he tried to absorb its substance through them. Sometimes he hurt her; sometimes he frightened her; sometimes it seemed to her that he was trying to slip into her skin he probed so deep into how she felt and what she knew when she woke the spot.
Everything he learned about that organ she learned also. She already knew that she could call animals; the Noris told her how she did it-enticing them through their pleasure centers, giving them a pleasure reward when they did what she wanted. The longer she knew a particular animal, the stronger her control grew until it went far beyond the original crudity of the pain-pleasure response-almost as if she and it grew together into one complex being. She learned also that the organ could find anything she desired, the finding and desiring being reaction and trigger. Anything she could picture in her mind, the could locate, establishing a direction line and following it until she came as close as she could to the thing. This need to have the image in her mind limited her to things she knew, but her limits were rapidly broadening as she learned to read.
Her days passed quickly, were packed with activity. She studied her books, tended the plants that always died no matter how much care the lavished on them and were always replaced, played with her animals, fed them, talked to them, kept them healthy. She knew them all now, even the sicamar. In the evenings she’d let him out of his cage. He’d run wildly around the court, leaping and teasing invisible prey like a great savage kitten, he’d lick her with his rough tongue until he nearly rasped her skin off, he’d butt his head against her, he’d stretch out on his back, four huge feet waving in the air, and beg her to scratch his belly. Sometimes in the roughness of his play he’d knock her sprawling, sometimes he sat with his front end in her lap, purring frantically as she scratched behind his ears, her hands buried in his thick green ruff. Of all the animals, though, her favorites were the chinin. They had free run except when the simmer was out of his cage, she took them up the stairs into her room while she studied, the three pups slept on her bed, curled up at her feet.
To her astonishment, she found that there were more languages than there were kinds of speakers. She could puzzle out five of them now, though she couldn’t speak them. She spent long happy hours bent over the scrolls stored in her room, drinking in knowledge of strange things and strange places.
Evenings she joined the Noris to talk a little, get his answer to things that puzzled her, or simply sit in quiet companionship. He was her father, her family, her teacher. She trusted him, finally, as much as she ever would trust anyone. And she loved him in spite of the unexpected chill he could wake in her when he went away, retreated into that mind space where she couldn’t follow.
She was rolling on the floor of her room, playing with the new batch of pups when the Noris opened the door and looked in. Serroi sat up, startled, then jumped to her feet. “Ser Noris?”
He looked around the littered room, lifted his brows, then beckoned to her, eyes twinkling. “I’ve brought you something else to play with, Serroi. Come see.”
The rock opened for them again, melting into a narrow spiraling staircase that circled high into the tower until they came to a bronze slab blocking off further rise. Serroi ran up the last stairs, then jerked to a stop. There was no hook. She looked over her shoulder at the Noris.
“You’ll have to have my servants open this for you when you come here.” He leaned over her and touched the bronze. The door swung slowly open.
The room inside was much barer than hers. There were a bed and a chair, some pegs on the wall with small tunics hanging on them. The window was high on the wall and barred. There was nothing else visible until a small blond boy came around the end of the bed and stood staring at them, sucking on his thumb, his eyes wide and frightened.
Serroi hated him immediately. Pressing against the Noris’s leg, she said, “I don’t want him. Send him away.”
The Noris patted her curls and pushed her forward. “No, Serroi. We’re done with animals for a time. I want you to learn to command him as you do your chinin.” He stood in the doorway watching her.
She glared at the boy. He was three or four, almost as tall as she; his eyes were a deep blue like distant seawater; his tunic was as blue as his eyes; his feet were bare; his skin shone a golden glowing brown like amber in sunlight. He was frightened of the Noris, even frightened of her. She socked her fists, onto his hips and scowled at him. “Boy, come here.”
“Nescu-va?” The shrill voice trembled, tears filled his eyes.
“Hal” She pounced on him, pinched his arm, then pulled him out into the middle of the room. “What’s your name, boy?” She poked his finger at the middle of his chest. “Name.”
He stared silently at her; his thumb came up and he put it in his mouth; the tears crept down his dirty face, cutting runnels in the dust.
“Serroi.”
At the sound of her name she turned. The Noris was watching her, a lazy amusement in his eyes. “Use this.” A shiny black pebble was suddenly in the palm of his hand. She took the thing and scowled up at him.
“I don’t like that boy,” she said.
“No matter. Learn to control him.” The Noris bent and brushed his fingers gently across her eye-spot. “When you want to leave, call the servants.”
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