"Thomas A. Easton - Stones of Memory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

STONES OF MEMORY
by
Tom Easton

PROLOGUE

For millennia, the New England. coast had been a place of rock and
sea. Of island and storm-wave, of boulder and slab. Of crevice and
hollow, homes for crabs and periwinkles and other living things, some
of which had always scanned sky and sea for danger, for storms, for
anything visible.

The islands remained, though they were a little smaller, the sea a
little higher on their flanks. The storms came a bit more often, and
the waves crashed higher on the shores. There were as many boulders
and crevices as ever, but there were many fewer of the creatures that
hid among them. The dangers had changed to ones watchful eyes could
not avoid. There were invisible poisons in the air and water, and even
in the sunlight. Some killed; others only injured, reducing health and
vigor and fertility.

The eyes that now stared from under rocks above the high-tide line were
of another, less paranoid, less vulnerable kind, much like those that
hid in tangled briar heaps and among the witch's brooms of fir trees.

They watched the sky, stained unrelenting yellow by the dust of distant
barren-lands. They watched the sea that surged against the shore and
struck spray from pockets between the boulders. They watched the
swirling bladderwrack.

They watched the clots of froth that reached like fingers toward the
child who danced from rock to rock, teetering as she avoided the clumps
of slippery weed, peering into clefts and tide pools.

"Mommy! Mommy! Is this good?"

God's Promise looked at what her three-year-old daughter had found.

Because this time it was edible, a small crab, she picked it up and put
it in the gleaning basket she carried in her left hand. One of the few
gulls wheeling overhead cried out as if in protest. She gripped the
handle of her basket a little tighter, for the pickings were not much
better for them. If she set it down even for a moment...

"Mommy!"

"Yes, Ruth." She used her sleeve to wipe sweat from her forehead and
cheeks. She pushed a few strands of dark hair that had escaped from
the coiled braid beneath her fishskin hat back where they belonged.