Читать книгу Behind the Moon - Madison Smartt Bell - Страница 33

—no, they were handprints, negative images, a black gum surrounding the pallor of the stone, so that the hands seemed to glow a little, like the shining of the stars. A certain print seemed to attract her hand magnetically, the left one, and when she laid it there it fit so perfectly there was no edge around it. Her left hand disappeared entirely into darkness, complete as the velvet black of a starless sky; it sank a little way into soft stone.

She lay . . . no, she was standing, but gravity had changed direction, so she felt as if she were lying at her ease and comfortably supported by the wall, and against her cheek she felt a soft rise and fall, as if she’d laid her head upon a living, breathing breast . . .

On the other side of the stone’s vast thickness Julie felt her forearm come free, turning and groping in emptiness, the mystery beyond the stone.

She couldn’t understand how she had said it or how she’d understood what she had said. But she felt a small hand, no larger then her own (but stronger), taking hold of hers. The palm was leathery and warm, with more hair on the back of it than on hers. The other hand began to pull her through the stone.