Читать онлайн "A Gift Upon the Shore" - Wren M. K. - RuLit

“Well, I have to when my teacher gives me so much to read.”

I laugh at that. “I hope you’re not expecting sympathy from your teacher. But I’m glad you’re here. Would you like to take a walk on the beach with me?”

He nods. “I was about to ask you that.”

Jeremiah rises, and he and Stephen lift me to my feet. Jeremiah has my cane ready. I say, “Thank you, gentlemen.” They laugh at that word, no doubt taking it literally, and that’s apt enough.

Stephen and I walk to the house, where I make a short detour to my room, then we start down the beach path. Jonathan, Little Mary, Deborah, and Rachel join us, and when we reach the beach, they spill laughing and shouting onto the sand, with Shadow running joyfully around them. The sea is the quiet, glossy sea of summer, the sand pale and drifted like snow. Stephen shortens his stride to match my slow pace as we walk along in the firm, damp sand at the water’s edge.

Finally, I stop, turn to face him, and take a small, black portfolio out of my pocket. I offer it to him.

“I have some more reading for you. I finished it last night, Stephen. The Chronicle of Rachel.”

For a moment he only stares at the portfolio, then he takes it from me. “It’s… finished?”

“Yes.”

He opens it carefully, reads aloud from the first sheet, “‘And it came to pass in the days before the End of the last civilization, that Mary Hope left the city to come to the sea, and there she found at a place called Amarna a woman of wisdom and courage, and her name was Rachel Morrow….’” He smiles, looks up at me. “I think now when I read this, I’ll… understand.”

“I know you will. You proved that.” I look into his face, seeking the vanishing contours of childhood. “Stephen, there’ll be so much for you to understand, and so many things will happen to you in your lifetime that will call for wisdom and courage. And I won’t be here to help you, just as the day came when Rachel wasn’t here to help me. In a way I grieve for you. It took me a long time to realize that Rachel grieved for me when she knew she was dying.”

He frowns, and I know he doesn’t like to talk about my dying. But he’s learned a lot about death this thirteenth year of his life. And about wisdom and courage. Finally he says, “I wish I’d known Rachel.”

I look out at the sea, chatoyant aquamarine, the surf casting up white laces of foam. “You know her, Stephen. And so will your children, generation unto generation. Even when her name is forgotten, they’ll know her.”

And I close my eyes to listen. I am here… I am always here….

About the Author

M. K. WREN (Martha Kay Renfroe), a widely acclaimed writer and painter, was born in Texas, the daughter of a geologist and a special education teacher. Twenty-five years ago she moved to the Pacific Northwest, where she wrote Curiosity Didn’t Kill the Cat; A Multitude of Sins; Oh, Bury Me Not; Nothing’s Certain But Death; Seasons of Death; Wake Up, Darlin’ Corey; and the science-fiction trilogy, The Phoenix Legacy. As an artist, Ms. Wren has worked primarily in oil and transparent watercolor and has exhibited in numerous galleries and juried shows in Texas, Oklahoma, and the Northwest.