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

me, skipping, from the great looming Hanuman temple. A road of white silk had been laid from the foot
of the temple steps to a wooden palace close by. The people had been let into the square and they
pressed on either side of the processional way, held back by the police and the King’s robots. The
machines held burning torches in their grasping hands. Fire glinted from their killing blades. There was
great silence in the dark square.

“Your home, goddess,” said Smiling Kumarima, bending low to whisper in my ear. “Walk the silk, devi.
Do not stray off it. I have your hand, you will be safe with me.”

I walked between my Kumarimas, humming a pop tune I had heard on the radio at the hotel. When I
looked back I saw that I had left two lines of bloody footprints.



You have no caste, no village, no home. This palace is your home, and who would wish for any other?
We have made it lovely for you, for you will only leave it six times a year. Everything you need is here
within these walls.

You have no mother or father. How can a goddess have parents? Nor have you brothers and sisters.
The King is your brother, the kingdom your sister. The priests who attend on you, they are nothing. We
your Kumarimas are less than nothing. Dust, dirt, a tool. You may say anything and we must obey it.

As we have said, you will leave the palace only six times a year. You will be carried in a palanquin. Oh, it
is a beautiful thing, carved wood and silk. Outside this palace you shall not touch the ground. The
moment you touch the ground, you cease to be divine.

You will wear red, with your hair in a topknot and your toe- and fingernails painted. You will carry the
red tilak of Siva on your forehead. We will help you with your preparations until they become second
nature.

You will speak only within the confines of your palace, and little even then. Silence becomes the Kumari.
You will not smile or show any emotion.

You will not bleed. Not a scrape, not a scratch. The power is in the blood and when the blood leaves,
the devi leaves. On the day of your first blood, even one single drop, we will tell the priest and he will
inform the King that the goddess has left. You will no longer be divine and you will leave this palace and
return to your family. You will not bleed.

You have no name. You are Taleju, you are Kumari. You are the goddess.

These instructions my two Kumarimas whispered to me as we walked between kneeling priests to the
King in his plumed crown of diamonds and emeralds and pearls. The King namasted and we sat side by
side on lion thrones and the long hall throbbed to the bells and drums of Durbar Square. I remember
thinking that a King must bow to me but there are rules even for goddesses.

Smiling Kumarima and Tall Kumarima. I draw Tall Kumarima in my memory first, for it is right to give
pre-eminence to age. She was almost as tall as a Westerner and thin as a stick in a drought. At first I was
scared of her. Then I heard her voice and could never be scared again; her voice was kind as a singing
bird. When she spoke you felt you now knew everything. Tall Kumarima lived in a small apartment
above a tourist shop on the edge of Durbar Square. From her window she could see my Kumari Ghar,