Ysikc: переводы

→It was all too much to even begin to think about. She leaned away from Daniel and stood up, wiping the leaves and grass from her jeans. Her head was spinning. She had lived before?

→Luce's lower lip was trembling. Her hands went slack in his. The flower's petals sifted through their fingers to the ground.

→But even as he said it, Luce's skin began to feel warm, as if it were responding to the words her brain didn't know what to make of. Part of her wasn't sure of anything anymore.

→"You knew it when you picked white peonies every day for a month that summer in Helston. Remember that?" he stared at her, like he was trying to see inside her. "No," he sighed after a moment. "Of course you don't. I envy you for that."

→She closed her eyes, and when she'd opened them, Daniel was holding the most perfect white peony. It practically glowed. She turned to see where he had plucked it from, how she hadn't noticed it before. There were only weeds and the rotting flesh of fallen fruit. They held the flower together.

→Daniel stopped to catch his breath and looked past her, unseeing. Then he reached over, pressing his hand to her knee and sending that fire through her again.

→"And yet you know in your heart it's true." He clasped her knees and looked her deeply in the eye. "You knew it when I followed you to the top of Corcovado in Rio, when you wanted to see the statue up close. You knew it when I carried you two sweaty miles to the River Jordan after you got sick outside Jerusalem. I told you not to eat all those dates. You knew it when you were my nurse in that Italian hospital during the first World War, and before that when I hid in your cellar during the tsar's purge of St. Petersburg. When I scaled the turret of your castle in Scotland during the Reformation, and danced you around and around at the king's coronation ball at Versailles. You were the only woman dressed in black. There was that artists' colony in Quintana Roo, and the protest march in Cape Town where we both spent the night in the pen. The opening of the Globe Theatre in London. We had the best seats in the house. And when my ship wrecked in Tahiti, you were there, as you were when I was a convict in Melbourne, and a pickpocket in eighteenth-century Nimes, and a monk in Tibet. You turn up everywhere, always, and sooner or later you sense all the things I've just told you. But you won't let yourself accept what you feel might be the truth."

→"You said yourself you felt as if you knew me. I tried to deny it as long as I could because I knew this would happen."

→"Tell a different story," she said bitterly. "Make up a saner excuse."

→"There's no manual for how to explain this ... thing to the girl you love," he pleaded, brushing her hair with his fingers. "I'm doing the best I can. I want you to believe me, Luce. What do I need to do?"

→"You're not making any sense," she said, wanting to leave before it got too dark. But Daniel's story was so much more than nonsensical. The whole time she'd been at Sword & Cross, she'd half believed she was crazy. Her madness paled in comparison to Daniel's.

→"It doesn't matter. I can't laugh like that anymore. As soon as you show up, I'm overtaken."

→"It's not long enough for me to ever have gotten over the last time," he said. "Just long enough that I would let my guard down again."

→Luce smiled, honored as she realized what Daniel was saying: that he'd never been to the lake before with anyone else. Only her.

→"She's right, Luce." Arriane had appeared, glowering at Cam. "Who knows what he drugged these with?"

→Now Miss Sophia stood in her long black crepe dress, elegantly interlocking her thumbs and raising her hands in the air, preparing for her next pose. Outside the window, a cloud crossed over the sun. Luce zoned back in on the lecture when she noticed there was suddenly an actual shadow visible on the wall behind Miss Sophia.

→But then she felt guilty. Of all the faculty here. Miss Sophia was by far the nicest, even gently pulling Luce aside the other day to discuss how far behind Luce was in the writing of her family tree paper. Luce had to feign astonished gratitude when Miss Sophia walked her through an hour's worth of database instructions yet again. She felt a little ashamed, but playing dumb was far superior to admitting she'd been too busy obsessing over a certain male classmate to devote any time to her research.

→She wondered whether the soccer ball to her head had shaken up her vision. Or whether what she thought she was seeing was a mirage. A trick of the late-afternoon sunlight.

→She watched—feeling a confusing mix of deep embarrassment and even deeper temptation—as Daniel hoisted himself back up onto the shore. A shaft of sunlight bit through the trees and framed his silhouette with a glowing radiance, and Luce had to squint at the sight before her eyes.

→In no time he had reached the shore, making the distance between them seem much shorter than it looked to Luce. He'd appeared so leisurely as he swam, but there was no way he could have reached the other side that quickly unless he'd really been tearing though the water.