"Charles de Lint - Make a Joyiful Noise" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

I walked to the desk where a half-finished model lay covered in dust. Books were stacked on the far
corner with a school notebook on top. I cleared the dust with a finger and read the handwritten name on
the “Property of” line:

Donald Quinn.

I thought of bees and drunk drivers, of being remembered and forgotten. I knew enough about humans to
know that you couldn’t change their minds. You couldn’t make them remember if they didn’t want to.

Why had I said I’d help him?

Among the cousins, a promise was sacred. Now I was committed to an impossible task.

I closed the door to the boy’s room and left the apartment.

The night air felt cool and fresh on my skin and the sporadic sound of traffic was welcome after the
unhappy stillness of the apartment. I looked up at its dark windows, then changed my shape. Crow wings
took me back to the Rookery on Stanton Street.

***

I think Raven likes us better when we visit him on our own. The way we explode with foolishness
whenever Zia and I are together wears him down–you can see the exasperation in his eyes. He’s so
serious, that it’s fun to get him going. But I also like meeting with him one-on-one. The best thing is he
never asks where Zia is. He treats us as individuals.

“Lucius,” I said the next morning. “Can a person die from a bee sting?”
I’d come into his library in the Rookery to find him crouched on his knees, peering at the titles of books
on a lower shelf. He looked up at my voice, then stood, moving with a dancer’s grace that always
surprises people who’ve made assumptions based on his enormous bulk. His bald head gleamed in the
sunlight streaming in through the window behind him.

“What sort of a person?” he asked. “Cousin or human?”

“What’s the difference?”

He shrugged. “Humans can die of pretty much anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, take tobacco. The smoke builds up tar in their lungs and the next thing you know, they’re dead.”

“Cousins smoke. Just look at Joe, or Whiskey Jack.”

“It’s not the same for us.”

“Well, what about the Kickaha? They smoke.”

He nodded. “But so long as they keep to ceremonial use, it doesn’t kill them. It only hurts them when
they smoke for no reason at all, rather than to respect the sacred directions.”