Читать книгу Behind the Moon - Madison Smartt Bell - Страница 31

Her hand absorbed into the stone, her whole forearm sinking in, as if into a pool of warm, black oil. She turned her head to press her cheek against the stone. Under her palm was a hot, scratchy something, like a pelt, and she could feel a rough breath lifting and relaxing it. The warmth and surprise of this other breath jolted all the way back to her shoulder, and she wanted to pull away but she couldn’t, and after all she didn’t really want to—she needed to go forward, to go through. The left side of her face lowered into the wall, like sinking into her pillow while she was slowly absorbed into sleep, and she thought that now her left eye must be just where the eye of the bear had been, before. Now she must be eye to eye with the bear. Except instead she was inside him. Beyond the infinite thickness of the stone her forearm suddenly pushed through, so she could move it freely now, turning it from the elbow, feeling the heaviness of the bone and paw-pad where her hand had been. From her fingertips sprouted the black curving claws of the bear.