Ava's Gift. Jason Mott
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Название: Ava's Gift
Автор: Jason Mott
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Зарубежное фэнтези
isbn: 9781474007245
isbn:
“It’s okay,” Wash said. He looked into her eyes. “My guess is that he’s out taking care of what I’m trying to show you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look,” the boy said, nodding toward the window.
Finally she turned and gazed out the window, which overlooked a parking lot that was crowded with cars and vans and people and banners and cameras. There was cheering and shouting and people waving signs. Along the front of the hospital was a row of policemen, standing in uniform, keeping the crowd from coming inside.
“What’s happening?” Ava asked. “What do they want?”
“You,” the boy said softly. “They’re all here because of you. Can you believe that? You won’t believe how famous Stone Temple is right now—how famous you are right now. People are coming from all over to see you. Hundreds of them—thousands, maybe.”
The crowd below her was like an ocean. There were waves of movement, rivulets of cheering, of signs flagging back and forth.
“It’s just amazing,” Wash said.
“Help me back to bed, Wash,” Ava said. There was the lightning of pain inside her again suddenly, and an emptiness in the pit of her stomach that throbbed like a heartbeat. It made her feel as though the center of her did not exist, as though her body wasn’t completely formed. Then her stomach clenched and there was no more strength in her legs. Wash was not fast enough to catch her as she tumbled to her knees. Ava coughed. It was a hard, rattling cough, and there were flecks of blood on the floor beneath her mouth. More came with each cough.
“Nurse! Nurse!” Wash yelled. “Somebody help!” He struggled to lift Ava from the floor and put her back in the bed. Still he called for help.
“It’s okay,” Ava said as he maneuvered her awkwardly into the bed. She did not see the blood that was in the vomit she left behind on the floor. Only Wash saw that.
“It’s going to be okay,” Wash said softly. In the hallway there was the sound of footsteps approaching.
Ava closed her eyes.
“Before they get here,” Wash said, “I just want to say thank you. Thank you for...well...for whatever happened. For whatever you did.”
“I want to go home,” Ava said. Drowsiness and fatigue was a tide rising inside of her. “When I go home everything will be okay,” she said. In her mind there was the image of her father’s small gray house in Stone Temple. The paint was faded and the wood was worn and broken in places, but home is always a thing of beauty to a child. “I don’t want any of this,” Ava said softly. “I just want to go home.”
“Everything’s different now,” Wash said. “Home isn’t quite home anymore.”
By the time the girl is five years old her mother has found the rhythm of things. The two of them have established a pattern where Ava is never far from her mother’s heels and her mother is always smiling when her daughter comes to be with her. Oftentimes, in the warm hours of the afternoon, when the work is done for the day and her husband is still away at the station, it is possible for them both to believe that they are the only ones left in this world. At these times they will disappear into the mountains for the sake of disappearing.
Heather walks out in front, checking the ground for snakes and pitfalls like a concerned parent, and Ava, for her part, does the job of running up ahead and causing her mother to worry just enough. As Heather walks she thinks about how their lives might change in the years to come. She foresees the day when her daughter will not need her. The day when her child will not be a child but will become a woman who runs ahead into the world and, perhaps, does not look back. What will become of her then?
“Come on, Mom!” Ava calls.
“I’m coming,” Heather replies.
The sun is high and the wind is still and the earth is buzzing with the sound of life. The birds sing. The insects hum.
“Mom?” Ava calls. She has flitted around a bend in the trail, and there is something different in her voice now, as she stands in this place where her mother cannot see her. A knot of fear rises in Heather’s throat.
“What is it?”
“Mom!” Ava screams.
Heather rushes through the brush. It is inescapable, the fear she feels now, the fear she did not know was possible. But she has always been afraid; she simply lacked a location to affix to it. Now she has that: she has a child.
By the time Heather rounds the corner she can hear her daughter crying. It is a wet, choking sound, a soft shudder like the sound of ice breaking. “What is it?” Heather asks, just as she sees that her daughter is unharmed. Sprawled in the thick green grass is a deer. It is a female, its pelt the color of the late evening. There is an arrow rising out of its chest. The animal wheezes, slowly.
“Mom...” Ava says. Her face is streaked with tears. “Mom,” the child repeats. The word is a mantra. Heather looks around, hoping to find the hunter, hoping that things might be brought to a quick and less painful end for the animal. But there is no one. “Is it going to die?” Ava asks.
“It’s not your fault,” Heather replies, though she does not quite know why.
Ava weeps. She tries to understand. “How long is it going to take? What happens after? Is anyone going to bury it?” On and on, she gives voice to the questions that dance in her head.
Her mother does not have the answers. And so the two of them sit in silence, sharing this moment of time, this small plot of a large cruel world, with an animal in its last breaths of life. The deer watches them without fear and it does not flinch, does not withdraw when the child reaches out a trembling hand and places it on the animal’s neck. The deer’s hide is smooth.
Heather kisses the top of Ava’s head. They are both crying now.
The animal’s breathing slows. Without asking, Ava reaches up and grasps the arrow that has pierced the animal’s lung. She pulls it and, after a moment of resistance, it comes free. The deer trembles. It releases a sound like the bleating of sheep. Ava tosses the arrow away.
“Ava,” Heather says, “it’s too late.”
Heather can see in the child’s face that all she wants is for the creature to be better. All she wants is for the blood to stop. All she wants is for death to turn away, just this once. Ava places her hands over the wound. The deer’s blood flows in pulses, like a heartbeat. Ava closes her eyes and wants for nothing other than for the deer to be better.
What comes next is a trembling of her hands, like the spark of electricity placed beneath her palms. Then the deer is up, on its feet. It is still bleeding, but it is able to walk, ever so slowly.
Heather takes Ava in her arms and scuttles backward in the grass. Ava is limp. “Ava!” Heather СКАЧАТЬ