"Hearn,.Lian.-.Otori.02.-.Grass.For.His.Pillow.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hearn Lian)

like fresh snow. She stared, half rose, but in the moment that she
recognized her, the White Goddess, the all-compassionate, the all-
merciful, was gone.

“What is it?” Shizuka heard the movement and ran to her side.
Kaede looked at Shizuka and saw the deep concern in her eyes.
She realized how precious this woman had become to her—her
closest, indeed her only friend.

“Nothing. A half-dream.”

“Are you all right? How do you feel?”

“I don’t know. I feel…” Kaede’s voice died away. She gazed at
Shizuka for several moments. “Have I been asleep all day? What
happened to me?”

“He shouldn’t have done it to you,” Shizuka said, her voice sharp
with concern and anger.

“It was Takeo?”

Shizuka nodded. “I had no idea he had that skill. It’s a trait of the
Kikuta family.”

“The last thing I remember is his eyes. We gazed at each other
and then I fell asleep.”

After a pause Kaede went on: “He’s gone, hasn’t he?”

“My uncle, Muto Kenji, and the Kikuta master Kotaro came for him
last night,” Shizuka replied.

“And I will never see him again?” Kaede remembered her
desperation the previous night, before the long, deep sleep. She
had begged Takeo not to leave her. She had been terrified of her
future without him, angry and wounded by his rejection of her. But
all that turbulence had been stilled.

“You must forget him,” Shizuka said, taking Kaedes hand in hers
and stroking it gently. “From now on, his life and yours cannot
touch.” Kaede smiled slightly. I cannot forget him, she was thinking.
Nor can he ever be taken from me. I have slept in ice. I have seen
the White Goddess.

“Are you all right?” Shizuka said again, with urgency. “Not many
people survive the Kikuta sleep. They are usually dispatched
before they wake. I don’t know what it has done to you.”

“It hasn’t harmed me. But it has altered me in some way. I feel as if