"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - Past the Size of Dreaming" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

“Oh.” Her skin glowed, its natural darkness illuminated by a layer of orange flame. Flame washed
over his hand, curling and curving calligraphies of fire.
Just then the tuning stopped, and her fire faded.
It had been so long since she’d been to a concert hall. She had music in her life every day, one way
or another, but a full orchestra? Tonight’s program had some of her favorite orchestral pieces on it, ones
she hadn’t heard live in more than fifteen years, some she’d never heard live. Since she had met Harry
ten years before, they hadn’t spent much time doing normal things, but she had seen this concert listed in
the paper, and mentioned to Harry that she’d like to go, and he got tickets.
She wanted to hear the music more than anything.
“We’d better go,” she whispered.
The conductor came onstage, and applause swept through the audience. It was the right moment to
duck out.
“Look,” he whispered. He pointed up toward the back of the concert hall. Some of the pieces the
orchestra was playing tonight were pretty obscure, and there were rows of empty seats in the nosebleed
section, on the second balcony.
She gripped his hand. They stood up, left their seats, and ran for the stairs.
Maybe, maybe, if they sat all the way in the back, and no one turned around, she could lose herself in
the music after all.

“What do you make of this?” the boy asked Terry Dane.
The college bar was noisy and dark, and the band was loud and bad. The kid was dressed in baggy,
pleated thrift-store pants and a light blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, not a look Terry could
ever remember being fashionable.
He had shaggy dark hair that looked like he had hacked it off himself without consulting a mirror. His
eyes, too, appeared dark; maybe they’d be some other color if there were enough light to see them by.
How old was this guy? Fifteen? Sixteen? Terry knew the bouncers carded people coming in; the cops
had been cracking down on underage drinking lately. He had to be older than he looked.
She sipped her beer and peeked at the thing the boy held out to her. It was dark, glassy, and vaguely
oval with bumps, and it filled his palm; his fingers curled around it. She couldn’t see details in the lousy
light, except for a few spots of reflected shine from the neon beer ads behind the bar.
“I don’t know. What is it?”
“You’re the witch. You tell me.”
“Excuse me?” Terry set her beer mug on the bar with a thunk. She had heard a lot of pickup lines in
the past eight years since she turned legal, but this one took her by surprise. She blinked and leaned
forward to peer into the kid’s face. His skin was pale, and he looked like a teenager, except that the
dead expression on his face spoke of someone who was either older or had been through hell or both.
“Who are you?”
“You can call me Galen if you like.” His voice came out in a monotone, each syllable equally
unstressed, except for a faint upward tone at the end of the sentence.
He smiled.
Terry felt something strange and dark flutter in her chest. His smile charmed her—more than she
meant to be charmed. She could tell it wasn’t even a good smile, just a movement of muscles, and yet,
unaccountably, she warmed to him. She hated that. “Is there any particular reason why I might like to call
you that? Does it hear any resemblance to your actual name?”
“Yes.”
“I get this feeling I know you—” Terry began, a faint echo in her mind. She had seen this boy before,
a long time ago. Maybe for just a minute.
“Hey, baby!” said somebody with the build and number jersey of a football player. He leaned heavily
on Terry’s shoulder and breathed alcohol fumes into her face. “Wanna have some real fun? Ditch Junior
here and come play with the big boys.” He wagged his crewcut head toward a group of large men by