"Zenna Henderson - Pilgrimage2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Henderson Zenna)

feet swinging free in the air-nothing beneath them but air-the same air that
brushed her hair back and tangled her eyelashes as they picked up speed.
Terror caught her by the throat. Her arms convulsed around the two girls'
necks.
"Hey!" Karen strangled. "You're choking us! You're all right. Not so tight!
Not so tight!"
"You'd better Still her," Miriam gasped. "She can't hear you,"
"Relax," Karen said quietly. "Lea, relax."
Lea felt fear leave her like a tide going out. Her arms relaxed. Her
uncomprehending eyes went up to the stars and down to the lights again. She
gave a little sigh and her head drooped on Karen's shoulder.
"It did kill me," she said. "Jumping off the bridge. Only it's taken me a
long time to die. This is just delirium before death. No wonder, with a stub
of a tamarisk through my shoulder." And her eyes closed and she went limp.
Lea lay in the silvery darkness behind her closed eyes and savored the
anonymous unfeeling between sleep and waking. Quietness sang through her, a
humming stillness. She felt as anonymous as a transparent seaweed floating
motionless between two layers of clear water. She breathed slowly, not wanting
to disturb the mirror-stillness, the transparent peace. If you breathe quickly
you think, and if you think-She stirred, her eyelids fluttering, trying to
stay closed, but awareness and the growing light pried them opera She lay thin
and flat on the bed, trying to be another white sheet between two muslin ones.
But white sheets don't hear morning birds or smell breakfasts. She turned on
her side and waited for the aching burden of life to fill her, to weigh her
down, to beset her with its burning futility.
"Good morning." Karen was perched on the window sill, reaching out with one
cupped hand. "Do you know how to get a bird to notice you, short of being a
crumb? I wonder if they do notice anything except food and eggs. Do they ever
take a deep breath for the sheer joy of breathing?" She dusted the crumbs from
her hands out the window.
"I don't know much about birds." Lea's voice was thick and rusty. "Nor about
joy either, I guess." She tensed, waiting for the heavy horror to descend.
"Relax," Karen said, turning from the window. "I've Stilled you."
"You mean I'm-I'm healed?" Lea asked, trying to sort out last night's
memories.
"Oh, my, no! I've just switched you off onto a temporary siding. Healing is a
slow thing. You have to do it yourself, you know. I can hold the spoon to your
lips but you'll have to do the swallowing."
"What's in the spoon?" Lea asked idly, swimming still in the unbeset peace.
"What have you to be cured of?"
"Of life." Lea turned her face away. "Just cure me of living."
"That line again. We could bat words back and forth all day and arrive at
nowhere-besides I haven't the time. I must leave now." Karen's face lighted
and she spun around lightly.
"Oh, Lea! Oh, Lea!" Than, hastily: "There's breakfast in the other room. I'm
shutting you in. I'll be back later and then-well, by than I'll have figured
out something. God bliss!" She whisked through the door but Lea heard no lock
click.
Lea wandered into the other room, a restlessness replacing the usual sick
inertia. She crumbled a piece of bacon between her fingers and poured a cup of