Читать книгу The Secrets of Names. Snow Chronicles. Book 1 - Ар'лан ис'Дрекхэм - Страница 7

She became snow.

Not dead snow. Not winter pavement snow. Not the sort that melts on mittens into a damp grey sulk.

A different kind.

Bright.

Living.

Endlessly falling, and at the same time simply existing.

She was every snowflake at once.

And every snowflake knew her.

Below, a world was opening.

Not all at once. Slowly, the way a secret box opens when someone very clever has decided to torment you with beauty first and explanations later.

At first Vera saw only light.

There was no sun. The sky above her was deep as space, but not black. It shone instead with shifting colour, as if stars and northern lights and the coloured glass of old Christmas baubles had all been melted together and poured overhead. The light came from the snow itself. Billions of glittering particles drifted and spun and settled, each carrying its own faint colour – blue, gold, lilac, pink, green – so pure and delicate that it made her chest ache.

Then the shape of the land began to appear.

Though it was not exactly land.

Beneath her lay shining stretches where the snow gathered itself into soft, luminous dunes. Between them ran rivers of light – not water, but something clear and living, as if light had been taught how to flow. Along the banks stood trees made of the finest frost, and on every branch tiny lights chimed like bells.

Farther off there were cities.

They were nothing like her city on the embankment, and yet they were oddly familiar too, as if they were made of its dreams and memories and secret reflections. Their towers were high and slender and looked fragile, though one felt at once that they were not. They seemed not to have been built, but thought into being. Each one had a bright outline, thin and sharp as lightning. Bridges of light stretched between them, with arches and hanging galleries and terraces, all trembling and shifting and shining without ever once falling apart.

In one place the snow was coming down especially thickly, and there the city blazed as if a thousand holidays had all decided to happen together. Elsewhere the light thinned, and the streets looked quiet and thoughtful and almost transparent. Farther still were whole regions where only a little snow settled, and everything there looked older and dimmer, like a song half forgotten but still waiting to be remembered.

None of it was like the ordinary world.

And yet it was like it in a way that hurt.

Because here too there were squares and paths and gardens and towers and bridges and shadows and lamps.

Only everything was more beautiful.

As if the real world had once fallen asleep and dreamed itself as it had always meant to be.

Vera kept falling, and had not the faintest idea how long she had been doing it.

A second.

An hour.

A hundred years.

In that light, time behaved in a thoroughly improper manner. It neither moved nor stood still. It simply did not think it necessary to explain itself.

She drifted over a valley where the snow glowed with soft amber light, and it seemed to her that laughter was rising from it. Over a silver forest where tiny constellations flared and faded in the branches. Over a dark gulf where there was hardly any light at all, only a few cold sparks – and because of that she longed to get past it as fast as possible.

Then the wind – or whatever passed for wind here – began to draw her together.

The snowflakes that were Vera came nearer one another.

At first reluctantly.

Then more quickly.

As if every little part of her had suddenly remembered that it was not alone, that there were other parts close by, and that together they were not merely snow at all, but somebody.

She knew then, with perfect clarity, that the world below was vast and beautiful and dazzling – but if she forgot who she was, it would be perfectly content to leave her drifting in it forever.

That thought was beautiful too.

And terrifying.

Below her, a bright surface was rising to meet her now – soft and snowy and gently pulsing with light.

Vera thought she was about to hit it.

Then she thought that snow had no bones and therefore very little in particular available for injury.

Then she thought it was really much too late for foolish thoughts.

And in the next instant she landed, smoothly and all at once, in every snowflake.

Not as a girl.

As a shining drift of snow spread across the luminous ground.

For some time Vera lay there trying to work out three things at once.

First, whether she was alive.

Second, where her hands had gone.

And third, how long one could reasonably remain a heap of snow before becoming seriously alarmed.

The answer to the first question was, fortunately, much more yes than no. The second was distressingly unclear. And the third appeared not to interest the local laws of nature in the slightest.

She was everywhere, if one wanted to put it beautifully and unhelpfully.

And nowhere in particular, if one preferred the truth.

She could feel every snowflake in the shining heap as herself, and this might have been fascinating if it had not also been extremely awkward.

«Very funny,» said Vera.

What came out was a faint shiver of light.

Not a voice. Not even a whisper. Merely a few snowflakes trembling with such indignation that, apparently, the meaning was obvious even to the air.

Above her stretched the strange sky – deep and endless, with neither sun nor moon. Light did not fall from above, as it did at home, where it generally preferred lampshades and, occasionally, the refrigerator. Here it was born everywhere at once: in each flake, each hill, each thin tower on the horizon. The whole world shone as if someone absurdly generous had scattered coloured secrets over everything.

Ordinarily Vera would have stared herself silly.

But just now she was in no mood for wonder.

Because somewhere back there were Mum and Vadim and Danya and Dad…

And the more sharply she remembered them, the more strongly something inside her began to pull itself together. Not metaphorically. Quite literally. The snowflakes stirred, reached for one another, and packed themselves closer.

Mum, thought Vera.

Something to her left glowed softly.

Vadim.

Several more sparks lifted and joined.

Ilya. Natan. Dad. Domino, you horrid, tailed traitor…

The shining heap shivered. Somewhere inside it came the feeling of shoulders. Then a head. Then something still rather vague, but unmistakably familiar:

I am me.

And this is only a dream.

That was encouraging.

And extremely odd.

A minute later – or an hour later – or whatever counted here as a minute – Vera no longer looked so much like a drift of snow as a very badly made snowman who had grand plans for becoming human. The top half had come together reasonably well. She had arms. She had a head. Her hair, admittedly, still resembled a glowing snowbank that had considered the idea of a hairstyle and then not pursued it.

She had no legs.

Or rather, she seemed to have them somewhere a very long way below, as if the world had decided to store them away until conditions improved.