"Michelle West - Winter Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (West Michelle)

people make weapons out of anything. It's important that you understand this.
Her mother's voice, sad but firm, was all that remained her. She could not see her
face in the darkness. In the hands of the wrong men, guilt is a weapon. Love is a
weapon. Hope is a weapon.
 You have the ability to make weapons far sharper, far harsher, than others can.
And the only person who can choose how those weapons are wielded is you.
She hadn't understood what her mother meant, then. She had been younger.
Young Caroline makes a weapon of desire every time she wanders past the boys
at the mine. She understands this, but she wants only the power of their adoration.
Others are not so kind.
You cannot be Caroline.
I'm not beautiful enough.
Hush. You are far, far more beautiful. To me. But that's not the point, and I won't
let you distract me tonight. There is a difference between manipulation and
motivation. Sometimes desire is good, sometimes it is bad; she will discover that in
her time.
You must understand it now. You understand love as a young girl does, and not
as an old woman, like me. You must let it come to you; you must never force it
upon another.
But—
I've seen you. I've seen you make Caroline cry because you're jealous of her. I've
stopped you from doing it myself, but I will not always be here to stop it. She will
grow, child. She will change. Let her. Instead of forcing others to respond to you,
become something worthy of the response you desire.
Kayla was silent. In the present, with a child cradled against her, she lay open-
eyed in the dark, hearing his heartbeat as if it were her own. Her mother's words
continued, the past seeping into the present in a way that Kayla would never have
foreseen.
Why do you think I came to Riverend?
Because of Father.
Yes. And no. Why do you think I tell you this, now, when I could keep it hidden?
I don't know.
Because I killed a man, Kayla.
She felt the harsh shock she had felt upon first hearing the words; felt the panic as
she had attempted to deny the truth of them by finding the lie in her mother's
mood. It wasn't there.
B–but why? How?
I forced him to feel my despair, my self-loathing, as if it were his own. He was not
trained; not aware that what he felt came from outside of his core; he could not
cope with what it was I placed there. I did not lift a hand, of course, but the end
was the same as if I had.
And worse.
I look at my hands now, and I see a killer's hands. I look at my hands, and I see
worse: I taught this Gift. I passed it on.
 But—but what does that have to do with Riverend? Nothing. Everything.
The Holds are so dark and so isolated people can go mad in the winters. And do.
But...with my Gift, here, among these people, I can remind them, without words, of
the spring and the summer; I can give them hope. They take hope, and they make
of it what they will, and we survive until the passes open.
But is that so different? If you make them feel what they don't feel