"George R. R. Martin & Tuttle, Lisa - Windhaven" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin George R R)

WINDHAVEN

George RR Martin and Lisa Tuttle

Lisa Tuttle:

This book is dedicated with love and gratitude to my mother and father, even if they don't read it.



George R. R. Martin:

This one is for Elizabeth and Anne and Mary Kaye and Carol and Meredyth and Ann and Yvonne and
the rest of my Courier troublemakers, in the hope that they will continue to make trouble, ask questions,
and get thrown out of offices.

Prologue

PART ONE
Storms

PART TWO
One-Wing

PART THREE
The Fall

Epilogue

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward;
for there you have been,
and there you long to return.

—Leonardo da Vinci

Prologue

THE STORM HAD RAGED through most of the night.

In the wide bed she shared with her mother, the child lay awake beneath the scratchy woolweed blanket,
listening. The sound of the rain against the thin lemon-wood planks of the cabin was steady and insistent,
and sometimes she heard the far-off boom of thunderclaps, and when the lightning flashed thin lines of
light leaked in between the shutters to illuminate the tiny room. When they faded, it was dark again.

The child could hear the patter of water against the floor, and she knew that the roof had sprung another
leak. It would turn the hard-packed earth to mud, and her mother would be furious, but there was
nothing to be done. Her mother was not good at patching roofs, and they could not afford to hire anyone.
Someday, her mother told her, the tired cabin would collapse in the violence of the storms. "Then we will
go and see your father again," she would say. The girl did not remember her father very well, but her
mother spoke of him often.