"Kate Wilhelm - Somerset Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

Somerset Dreams by Kate Wilhelm

First published in Orbit 5, ed. Damon Knight, 1969

I AM ALONE in my mother's house, listening to the ghosts who live here now, studying the shadowed
features of the moon that is incredibly white in a milky sky. It is easier to believe that it is a face lined
with care than to accept mountains and craters. There a nose, long and beaked, there a mouth, dark,
partially open. A broad creased forehead... They say that children believe the sun and moon follow them
about. Not only children... Why just a face? Where is the rest of the body? Submerged in an ethereal
fluid that deceives one into believing it does not exist? Only when this captive body comes into view,
stirring the waters, clouding them, does one realize that space is not empty at all. When the moon
passes, and the sky clears once more, the other lights are still there. Other faces at incredible distances?
I wonder what the bodies of such brilliant swimmers must be like. But I turn my gaze from the moon,
feeling now the hypnotic spell, wrenching free of it.

The yard has turned silvery and lovely although it is not a lovely place any more. Below the rustlings in
the house I hear the water of Cobb's Run rippling softly, breaking on the remains of an old dam. It will
be cool by the flowing water, I think, and I pull on shorts and a blouse. I wonder how many others are
out in the moonlight. I know there are some. Does anyone sleep peacefully in Somerset now? I would
like to wander out by the brook with nothing on, but even to think of it makes me smile. Someone would
see me, and by morning there would be stories of a young naked woman, and by noon the naked
woman would be a ghost pointing here and there. By evening old Mr. Larson, or Miss Louise, would be
dead. Each is waiting only for the sign that it is time.

I anoint myself with insect repellent. It is guaranteed to be odorless, but I can smell it anyway, and can
feel it, greaseless and very wet, on my arms and legs.

I slip from the house where my mother and father are sleeping. The night is still hot, our house doesn't
cool off until almost morning, and there is no wind at all, only the moon that fills the sky. Someone is
giggling in the yard and I shush her, too close to the house, to Mother's windows on the second floor.
We race down the path to the pool made by damming the run and we jump into the silver-sheened
water. Someone grabs my ankle and I hold my breath and wrestle under the surface with one of the
boys. I can't tell which one it is. Now and then someone lets a shriek escape and we are motionless,
afraid Father will appear and order us out. We play in the water at least an hour, until the wind starts and
blows the mosquitoes away, and then we stumble over the rocks and out to the grass where now the
night is cool and we are pleasantly tired and ready for sleep. When I get back to the house I see the
door closing and I stop, holding my breath. I listen as hard as I can, and finally hear the tread on the
steps: Father, going back to bed.

I slip on sandals and pick up my cigarettes and lighter without turning on the light. The moonlight is
enough. In the hall I pause outside the door of my parents' room, and then go down the stairs. I don't
need a light in this house, even after a year's absence. The whole downstairs is wide open, the kitchen
door, the front door, all the windows. Only the screens are between me and the world. I think of the
barred windows of my 87th Street apartment and smile again, and think how good to be free and home
once more. The night air is still and warm, perfumed with grass and phlox and the rambling rose on the
garage trellis. I had forgotten how much stronger the fragrance is at night. The mosquitoes are whining
about my face, but they don't land on me. The path has grown up now with weeds and volunteer
columbines and snapdragons. By day it is an unruly strip with splashes of brilliant colors, now it is silver
and gray and dark red.
At the creek I find a smooth rock and sit on it, not thinking, watching the light change on the moving