"G. Howell - Light on Shattered Water" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howell G)

Light on Shattered Water
by G. Howell

Version 1.01


On that unseasonably hot autumn afternoon the sun was riding high in an
endless blue vault, coaxing heat-shimmers from stone and earth. And I was as
lost as I've ever been.

My boots raised small clouds of dust as I followed the rutted and rocky
little goat-trail up the hillside. Unseen insects chirped and swarmed through
the sunwarmed grasses and undergrowth, the razzing of cicadas a continuous
chorus in the summer air. That and the occasional cry of a distant animal were
the only sounds I'd heard for a long while. The heat and humidity sucked the
perspiration out of me as I worked my way around a pile of bleached sandstone
rocks upon which a stunted little conifer had taken root and was putting up a
valiant struggle against the elements. I wiped the sweat away and slogged on
up the trail that climbed the summer-shocked hillside toward the treeline.
Something in my pack was digging into my back.

In the welcome shade of the trees, among pine trunks and a carpet of
fallen needles, I stopped and took the opportunity to catch my breath; and
fiddle with my pack until the load was seated more comfortably. Then I looked
back at the path I'd come and forward at the path still to travel and sighed.
It was a trail I was following, I was pretty sure of that. It was overgrown
and eroded and more suited to mountain goats in places, but it was a trail.
Perhaps it'd take me somewhere that had a phone I could use.

I'd been lost while hiking before, but never like this. I mean, there'd
been times when I wasn't exactly sure where I was, but there'd always been the
inevitable signpost or landmark or town where I could ask directions. Now, I'd
been walking for days and I hadn't even seen so much as a road. The cell link
in my laptop didn't work, but there was always a chance I was outside the
coverage. My maps - paper and digital - neither made sense. They didn't jive
with the Vermont I was walking around in, the landscape simply didn't match
up: When I thought I'd matched a hill to one depicted on my map, a river
turned up that shouldn't be there or a road that should've been there was
missing. I hadn't seen anyone, not a person or a building or even a contrail
from a plane, not after that. . . whatever it was that'd happened to me. Not a
sign of civilization anywhere, but there were still odder things.

On my second afternoon after waking on that hillside without the
faintest idea where I was, I'd been following a ridgeline overlooking a steep
little valley with a stream at the bottom. There was a family of bears down
there, a large one with several cubs in tow splashing through the water. I
went the other way; quickly. Later that day, I realised what I'd taken to be a
black cloud was moving south, against the wind. Birds, a flock of birds.
Millions upon uncountable millions of them flying south. I stripped off my
sunglasses and just stood and stared slack-jawed at that unbelievable specacle