Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors Original (pdf) (novels to read in english .TXT) 📖

the answer . . . then, aside from waiting for their bright child to grow

up, there was the possibility that the brat would show no interest in

that particular problem . . .

Genius has a hard life.

But — has my Mob some unspoken goal which is not simply the pursuit of knowledge? It isn’t the sort of thing they would tell their messenger boy. I would not deal with them as easily as the brash Armstrong . . . aside from the emotional problem (yes, there is one)

of having to kill my father.

From first fascination I have declined steadily to distrust of the

Frankenstein game. Call me conservative, but I think we should be

very careful about the contents of the nursery. Despite what I did to

Armstrong, I become queasy at blood sports.

Cave Am antem

©

CARMEL BIRD

The girl is burying the body in the hollow. She has wrapped it in a

scarlet cloak. In the hollow beneath the sweet pines, she is burying

the body which she has wrapped in the cloak. She scatters sweet

herbs across the dead one who is folded and parcelled in scarlet.

The girl scatters herbs and wild (lowers, pine needles, pebbles.

There is a patter of pebbles; there is a rustle of leaves.

Tears. There are tears in her eyes, on her fingers, lightly falling

sometimes, upon the brush of greenery veiling the body in its cloth.

H er pale eyes are filled with tears. Tears glisten on the leaves. In the

hollow, the girl is burying the body, as her tears slide down the

leaves, beading the green. Tears, rolling across rocks, shiver and

settle between pebbles. They make no stain on the scarlet cloth, for

the cloth is grimy, tattered at the edges, toggled with mud. It shows

through the leaves and flowers, now dull red, now brown, and

sometimes, on the edge of a wrinkle, vivid blood. Somewhere, the

girl has gathered twigs of rosemary. She sprinkles the leaves of her

rosemary across the body in the hollow.

In the hollow between the rocks, beneath the sweet pines, in the

heart of the silence of the forest, the girl is burying the body. Her

fingernails, like claws, damaged, stained, scratch at the earth which

she drops, crumbles, on top of the garlands of greenery. Stones,

small rocks, and crumbs of earth, Moist and rotting leaves.

It has taken her all day. In the castle, whole save for the roof, she

wrapped the body in her cloak and carried it and dragged it to the

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Carmel Bird

hollow. She placed it on the rotting floor of the sweet pine forest,

and covered it with leaves and earth. H er arms were strong; she

carried rocks; she marked the place with rocks. She wept when she

buried the body of the wolf.

Isabella had a terrible reputation. She used to go up to the old

castle — there is no roof — with just about anyone. Soldiers, musicians, cripples, foreigners, old men and boys. She was reasonably pretty, in a sly sort of way. Oh, but there was the devil in her eyes.

Light eyes, too light for hereabouts. Black hair, light eyes —

Isabella was always a strange one. Pretty enough, you know, but

strange.

Well, none of the decent young men of the village would have

very much to do with her. Everybody thought she would never find

a husband. But she didn’t care very much about that. She lived

with her grandmother, and she knew she would inherit the house

when the old lady died. Inherit the house and the pigs and the hens

and the few poor olive trees and the little herb garden. The old lady

sold herbs. And she was so good and respectable and proud. There

she was at Mass every day of her life; on feast days she wore a m antilla given to her long ago by the old Count. That is, the father of the present Count. She kept her house as clean as a convent with

white walls and bright blue doors — even on the cupboards. I used

to go there often — the chairs were made from bent withies; the

table was blue. I would collect the eggs and stop for a gossip. Lace,

there