Weaveworld. Клайв Баркер
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‘I’m Apolline. This is Freddy.’
Cammell made a small formal bow.
‘That’s Lilia Pellicia over there, and the brat is her brother, Nimrod –’
‘And I’m Jerichau.’
‘There,’ said Apolline. ‘Now we’re all friends, right? We don’t need the rest of them. Let ’em rot.’
‘They’re our people,’ Jerichau reminded her. ‘And they need our help.’
‘Is that why they left us in the Border?’ she retorted sourly, the whisky bottle hovering at her lips again. ‘No. They put us where we could get lost, and don’t try and make any better of it. We’re the dirt. Bandits and bawds and God knows what else.’ She looked at Cal. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘You’ve fallen amongst thieves. We were a shame to them. Every one of us.’ Then, to the others:
‘It’s better we’re separated. We get to have some wild times.’
As she spoke Cal seemed to see flashes of iridescence ignite in the folds of her widow’s weeds. ‘There’s a whole world out there,’ she said. ‘Ours to enjoy.’
‘Lost is still lost,’ said Jerichau.
Apolline’s reply was a bullish snort.
‘He’s right,’ said Freddy. ‘Without the weave, we’re refugees. You know how much the Cuckoos hate us. Always have. Always will.’
‘You’re damn fools,’ said Apolline, and returned to the window, taking the whisky with her.
‘We’re a little out of touch,’ Freddy said to Cal. ‘Maybe you could tell us what year this is? 1910? 1911?’
Cal laughed. ‘Give or take eighty years,’ he said.
The other man visibly paled, turning his face to the wall. Lilia let out a pained sound, as though she’d been stabbed. Shaking, she sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘Eighty years …’ Jerichau murmured.
‘Why did they wait so long?’ Freddy asked of the hushed room. ‘What happened that they should wait so long?’
‘Please stop talking in riddles –’ Suzanna said, ‘– and explain.’
‘We can’t,’ said Freddy. ‘You’re not Seerkind.’
‘Oh don’t talk such drivel,’ Apolline snapped. ‘Where’s the harm?’
‘Tell them, Lilia,’ said Jerichau.
‘I protest,’ Freddy said.
‘Tell them as much as they need to know,’ said Apolline. ‘If you tell it all we’re here ’til Doomsday.’
Lilia sighed. ‘Why me?’ she said, still shaking. ‘Why should I have to tell it?’
‘Because you’re the best liar,’ Jerichau replied, with a tight smile. ‘You can make it true.’
She threw him a baleful glance.
‘Very well,’ she said; and began to tell.
Two sentences in, and Apolline was interrupting.
‘That’s just a story,’ she informed Cal and Suzanna.
‘So let her tell it, damn you!’ Jerichau told her.
‘Believe nothing,’ Apolline advised. ‘This woman wouldn’t know the truth if it fucked her.’
In response, Lilia merely passed her tongue over her lips, and took up where she’d left off.
‘It was a garden,’ she said. ‘That’s where the Families began.’
‘What Families?’ said Cal.
‘The Four Roots of the Seerkind. The Lo; the Ye-me; the Aia and Babu. The Families from which we’re all descended. Some of us came by grubbier roads than others, of course –’ she said, casting a barbed glance at Apolline. ‘– but all of us can trace our line back to one of those four. Me and Nimrod; we’re Ye-me. It was our Root that wove the carpet.’
‘And look where it got us,’ Cammell growled. ‘Serves us right for trusting weavers. Clever fingers and dull minds. Now the Aia – that’s my Root – we have the craft and the grasp.’
‘And you?’ said Cal to Apolline, reaching over and retrieving his bottle. It had at best two swallows of spirits left in it.
‘Aia on my mother’s side,’ the woman replied. That’s what gave me my singing voice. And on my father’s, nobody’s really sure. He could dance a rapture, could my father –’
‘When he was sober,’ said Freddy.
‘What would you know?’ Apolline grimaced. ‘You never met my father.’
‘Once was enough for your mother,’ Freddy replied in an instant. The baby laughed uproariously at this, though the sense of it was well beyond his years.
‘Anyhow,’ said Apolline. ‘He could dance; which meant he had Lo blood in him somewhere.’
‘And Babu too, by the way you talk,’ said Lilia.
Here, Jerichau broke in. ‘I’m Babu,’ he said. ‘Take it from me, breath’s too precious to waste.’
Breath. Dancing. Music. Carpets. Cal tried to keep track of these skills and the Families who possessed them, but it was like trying to remember the Kellaway clan.
‘The point is,’ said Lilia, ‘all the Families had skills that Humankind don’t possess. Powers you’d call miraculous. To us they’re no more remarkable than the fact that bread rises. They’re just ways to delve and summon.’
‘Raptures?’ said Cal. ‘Is that what you called them?’
‘That’s right,’ said Lilia. ‘We had them from the beginning. Thought nothing of it. At least not until we came into the Kingdom. Then we realized that your kind like to make laws. Like to decree what’s what, and whether it’s good or not. And the world, being a loving СКАЧАТЬ