Читать книгу Behind the Moon - Madison Smartt Bell - Страница 23

Julie kicked Jamal’s sack of cans out of her way as she tore past it. Kicked it into Jamal’s way possibly, for Jamal was coming along behind her, calling to her, but in a strangled whisper, to stop. To talk to him. And she knew that certainly Jamal could have overtaken her on the ledges if he’d wanted to, that he’d decided to try persuasion instead, even when persuasion wasn’t working.

On the eastern side of the cliffs it was quite dark now, the last stains of sunset blocked by the mountain, the wispy moon too frail to throw much light. Behind her she heard Jamal, catching his foot in the bag of old cans, stopping to free himself and throttling a curse. The reddish desert across which they’d biked in the afternoon was now diffused in a pale, internal glow. Against it Jamal’s little tent sat dully, or no, it had the faintest surface sheen, gathered from the light of the silver stars beginning to appear. The larger tent had a light within it, concentrated and surprisingly bright; like a will-of-the-wisp caught between the fabric walls, it kept moving along the inner surfaces, casting dark, large, eerie shadows, but Julie couldn’t make out what they signified. It seemed to her she could hear the whole tent purring like a large contented animal, but maybe that was the effect of Jamal’s pipe.

She dropped to the level sand and walked toward the big tent softly. Jamal was hissing from the edge of the cliff, beckoning her to come back to him, but he seemed to want not to make too much noise, maybe because of whatever was going on in the tent, and so Julie herself was careful to be quiet, setting each of her red high-tops down like a cat’s paw on the sand. Something tingling, a soft expansion in her throat (if it was fear or excitement she didn’t really know) was making it slightly hard for her to breathe. The same sensation prickled below her navel. How were you supposed to knock on a tent, anyway? She could hear Jamal now, padding up behind her over the cooling sand, not wanting to call to her because—

So she wouldn’t call to the people inside. She caught hold of a big black zipper at the top of the curving tent door.