Читать книгу Moon Music - Faye Kellerman, Faye Kellerman - Страница 6

It was a land—hostile and unforgiving. Vast stretches of savage, alkaline desert where the wind blasted grit in the winters and summers were relentless hours of sweltering heat. Deep into August, the wasteland surfaces withered and cracked, producing deep fissures to a fiery hell. An area so seemingly without heartbeat that it had once been used for atomic bomb testing.

But to the chosen few—like herself—it was a place called home. Because she knew this barren topology as well as she knew every cell in her body. She knew its crevices, its caves, its rocks, and its shelters. As she surveyed the area from above, a tear formed in her eye.

Once, the mesas had held flourishing greenlands—wild grasses and flowers fed by natural artesian springs. So beautiful the Indians had referred to the land as The Meadows, translated into Spanish as Las Vegas. But the White Man grew greedy and raped the ground’s precious resources—the oh-so-righteous Mormons with their all-knowing God, the silver prospectors with their debauchery, the Department of Energy shooting off bombs, the gaudy gangsters bringing crimes and corruption, and the billionaires with their lifeless corporate empires.

All of them—parasites. They may have built the desert, but they couldn’t make it bloom. Because they never gave a thought to the land’s indigenous inhabitants—the majestic bighorn sheep, the powerful rattlesnakes, the playful rabbits, the ancient desert tortoises, the clever coyotes, and the beautiful, athletic birds which soared in the open sky as if gliding to heaven.

Still, she smiled. There was hope. Because the land rapers had been all take and no give, they were in the dark about the true power of the land, unaware of its deep mystery and magical forces. Mired in tunnel vision, they were ignorant that the land and its creatures had power.

But she knew the secret.

The desert could fight back.