Читать книгу The Gathering Night - Margaret Elphinstone - Страница 7

I think Amets should speak next.

Everyone knows Amets, of course! But perhaps some of you younger ones don’t know how Amets came into our family. Amets came to us from the Seal People under the Sunless Sky. He met my sister Alaia at Gathering Camp. Amets could have found a place in any family among the Auk People where there was a daughter looking for a man! Lots of Auk men wanted my sister too, but it was Amets, the stranger, who finally got her.

Alaia’s hair is thick and curly like mine, only, as you can see, mine is the colour of dead grass while hers gleams like the seaweed forests that shine gold in the Sun at low tide. While I was as skinny as a stick, Alaia was all curves – but for all she seemed a soft armful, I can tell you she was hard to please! If her face is good to look at, why then so must mine be, because women always say how alike we are. Men used to make fools of themselves just looking at Alaia. She’d look back at them out of those clear blue eyes, pitiless as the sky at noon in the middle of a drought. Except when she smiled – only I never saw her smiling at any men. But then, I was too young to go to High Clearing Camp. That’s where she found Amets. She brought him straight back to our hearth at Gathering Camp. She didn’t ask anyone; she just brought him. And he’s been in this family ever since.