"Lian Hearn - Tales of the Otori 02 - Grass for His Pillow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hearn Lian)

“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. / 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 I don’t know anything—as if I have
to learn everything anew.”

Shizuka knelt before her, puzzled, her eyes searching Kaede’s face. “What will you do now? Where will
you go? Will you return to In-uyama with Arai?”

j “I think I should go home to my parents. I must see my mother.

I’m so afraid she died while we were delayed in Inuyama for all that time. I will leave in the morning. I
suppose you should inform Lord Arai.“

“I understand your anxiety,” Shizuka replied, “but Arai may be reluctant to let you go.”

“Then I shall have to persuade him,” Kaede said calmly. “First I must eat something. Will you ask them
to prepare some food? And bring me some tea, please.”

“Lady.” Shizuka bowed to her and stepped off the veranda. As she walked away Kaede heard the
plaintive notes of a flute played by some unseen person in the garden behind the temple. She thought she
knew the player, one of the young monks from the time when they had first visited the temple to view the
famous Sesshu paintings, but she could not recall his name. The music spoke to her of the inevitability of
suffering and loss. The trees stirred as the wind rose, and owls began to hoot from the mountain.