Читать книгу Song of the Crow - Layne Maheu - Страница 6

A big black bird is making the most gawdawful racket, for no apparent reason, CAW CAW CAW !!! his entire body bouncing upward with each caw. Perhaps he is singing.

—BEN JACKLET, “CROW MYSTERIES”

Prologue

Happy Noah, singing Noah, eager to do God’s bidding without a single drop from the sky. There’s the story of his miraculous birth, that he came into the world already circumcised, with a full head of hair all long and silver and already combed, and at the age of three could stand and deliver speeches on the virtues of his all-powerful moral authority in the sky. But if it were true, that he was born with the pale signs of Misfortune already sprouting from his head, he wouldn’t boast, not even at the age of three, because it is a wellspring of sadness that grows there, and to carry it around with you always is a burden no one would wish for.

How would I know? And why was I summoned to keep an eye on this peculiar example of his species? It was in my stars, in my sky, and in my bones, and is the story I’m about to tell.