Читать книгу Stony Mesa Sagas - Chip Ward - Страница 20

Chapter 13

Bo Hineyman had never felt so light. He was floating now, rising up. All the tension that had anchored him was unknotting. All the questions like who am I and what is my worth evaporated. Shame, doubt, worry gone. Oddly, fear, too. All that striving on earth seemed meaningless now, even silly. He felt the deepest sigh he had ever imagined possible. He looked down on a featureless plain all lavender and green. Sparks as bright as the arc of a welder’s torch fell like soft rain. The sweetest music he had ever heard filled him, except there was no longer anything to fill or to hear, just currents of energy swirling into circles and waves. There was no need for words, nothing left to say.

Below him he saw a radiant being. Still capable of curiosity, he moved closer. It was Grace Buchman. She was bent over another figure, kneading his shoulders. She was working on his old nemesis, Otis Dooley. He felt no anger now, only this lightness, this blessed release. So this is what forgiveness is, he thought, but then there was no thinking at all. He rose suddenly upward, was gathered by the wind and dispersed.

Somewhere on earth, a mother raven felt a tremor beneath her. She stepped back and saw the egg she was tending tremble. A crack appeared and then a beak emerged. Then a head, eyes blinking, and finally a featherless wing, all appetite and longing.