Lancelot_Knight: переводы

→MILES

→2

→More emotion than I have let myself feel for a long time threatens to overwhelm me. For once, I allow it to come. My tears fall onto Miles’s cheeks. Crying is a foreign thing to me, but I let it happen. Until finally, something shifts inside me and the tears stop. I feel empty but strong.

→I have never known love—at least, nothing other than a child’s love for her parents or the fierce love of friendship. So I don’t know how to label what I feel for Miles. There is something there. An unopened bud. And I hope with all my heart that it won’t die before it’s able to start blooming. Before I can even tell what kind of flower it will be.

→I smooth back his hair, feeling his cold forehead under my fingertips. I brush his eyelids closed as I sing of what he will see on the Path, and touch his chin to shut his mouth. And then I do something I never did to my other Rite-travelers. I kiss him. I touch my warm mouth to his cold one and, closing my eyes, wish that I could transfer my life to him. That my spirit could slip out from between my lips and reignite his extinguished flame.

→When I’m done, I continue caring for Miles, peeling back the bandage I made by wrapping my shirt around his chest. Blood no longer flows from the bullet hole. I wonder if he will start bleeding again if I move him, and if he does, if it will make any difference.

→I untie the cloths binding the gold nuggets to the soles of his feet as the words drop from my lips. I replace the stones to their leather bag and stow them carefully in my backpack. And still I sing.

→My breath slows as the last candle goes dark and I begin singing the words, willing Miles to move toward death’s gate. To approach it, to brush it with his fingertips, and then to turn and come back to land of the living. To me.

→The candles forming a halo around his head flicker their last, casting an eerie light on his marble face. I blow them out one by one as I walk in a circular path around his body. One candle for each turn.

→I walk across the room to him and begin humming the Song of the Path. And as I do, I am pulled back into the trancelike state that cocoons me when I perform the Rite. I leave my fear behind and immerse myself in what I am supposed to do. What I was taught to do.

→I push myself to my feet. I can’t lose hope. I must treat Miles as if he were any other Rite-traveler. He did take the vow. He agreed to become one with the Yara. To dedicate his life to the earth and the force that binds every living thing together. And to trade his short human life for one that could last hundreds of years, if not more.