Forests of the Heart

Начало книги

If any of you are on the Internet, come visit my homepage. The URL (address) is http://www.cyberus.ca/~cdl

—Charles de Lint, Ottawa, Spring 1999

Like her sister, Bettina San Miguel was a small, slender woman in her mid-twenties, dark-haired and darker-eyed; part Indio, part Mexican, part something older still. Growing up, they’d often been mistaken for twins, but Bettina was a year younger and, unlike Adelita, she had never learned to forget. The little miracles of the long ago lived on in her, passed down to her from their abuela, and her grandmother before her. It was a gift that skipped a generation, tradition said.

“¡Tradición, pah!” their mother was quick to complain when the opportunity arose. “You call it a gift, but I call it craziness.”

Their abuela would nod and smile, but she still took the girls out into the desert, sometimes in the early morning or evening, sometimes in the middle of the night. They would leave empty-handed, be gone for hours and return with full bellies, without thirst. Return with something in their eyes that made their mother cross herself, though she tried to hide the gesture.

Читать дальше →