"Gardner Dozois - The Year's Best Science Fiction 23rd Annual Collection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

glimpse of Delhi falling away beneath me. It was every divine vision I had ever had looking down from
my bed in the Kumari Ghar on to India. This was indeed the true vehicle of a goddess. But the demons
whispered as we turned in the air over the towers of New Delhi, you will be old and withered when he
is still in his prime.

When the limousine from the airport turned on to Marine Drive and I saw the Arabian Sea glinting in the
city-light, I asked my husband to stop the car so I could look and wonder. I felt tears start in my eyes
and thought, the same water in it is in you. But the demons would not let me be: you are married to
something that is not human.

My honeymoon was wonder upon wonder: our penthouse apartment with the glass walls that opened on
sunset over Chowpatty Beach. The new splendid outfits we wore as we drove along the boulevards,
where stars and movie-gods smiled down and blessed us in the virtual sight of our palmers. Color,
motion, noise, chatter; people and people and people. Behind it all, the wash and hush and smell of the
alien sea.

Chambermaids prepared me for the wedding night. They worked with baths and balms, oils and
massages, extending the now-fading henna tracery on my hands up my arms, over my small upright
breasts, down the manipuraka chakra over my navel. They wove gold ornaments into my hair, slipped
bracelets on my arms and rings on my fingers and toes, dusted and powdered my dark Nepali skin. They
purified me with incense smoke and flower petals, they shrouded me in veils and silks as fine as rumors.
They lengthened my lashes and kohled my eyes and shaped my nails to fine, painted points.

“What do I do? I’ve never even touched a man,” I asked, but they namasted and slipped away without
answer. But the older—the Tall Kumarima, as I thought of her—left a small soapstone box on my bridal
divan. Inside were two white pills.

They were good. I should have expected no less. One moment I was standing nervous and fearful on the
Turkestan carpet with a soft night air that smelled of the sea stirring the translucent curtains, the next
visions of the Kama Sutra, beamed into my brain through my golden earhook, swirled up around me like
the pigeons over Chandni Chowk. I looked at the patterns my shaadi sisters had painted on the palms of
my hands and they danced and coiled from my skin. The smells and perfumes of my body were alive,
suffocating. It was as if my skin had been peeled back and every nerve exposed. Even the touch of the
barely moving night air was intolerable. Every car horn on Marine Drive was like molten silver dropped
into my ear.

I was terribly afraid.

Then the double doors to the robing room opened and my husband entered. He was dressed as a
Mughal grandee in a jeweled turban and a long-sleeved pleated red robe bowed out at the front in the
manly act.
“My goddess,” he said. Then he parted his robe and I saw what stood so proud.

The harness was of crimson leather intricately inlaid with fine mirror-work. It fastened around the waist
and also over the shoulders, for extra security. The buckles were gold. I recall the details of the harness
so clearly because I could not take more than one look at the thing it carried. Black. Massive as a
horse’s, but delicately upcurved. Ridged and studded. This all I remember before the room unfolded
around me like the scented petals of a lotus and my senses blended as one and I was running through the
apartments of the Taj Marine Hotel.