The Pomegranate Gate by Ariel Kaplan EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Ariel Kaplan
- Language: English
- Genre:Historical Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
NAFTALY WAS DREAMING again, in that strange dreamlandscape where the stars whirled overhead like snow on the wind and the
people he met all had square-pupiled eyes.
They were all strangers to him, the square-eyed people he dreamed of—
all save one: his father. In Naftaly’s dreams, his father’s eyes were odd, too,
though waking they were wholly ordinary. Naftaly did not know if his own
dreaming face had the square-pupiled eyes as well, having never come upon
a mirror in his dreams, but he assumed so. He wondered how that looked, if
it made him seem strange, or handsome, or hideous. No one ever remarked
on it. His eyes, awake, were the same dark brown as his father’s, roundpupiled and not particularly interesting.
In this dream, he’d come across his father eating oranges while sitting on
a bridge Naftaly did not recognize, spanning what he supposed was meant
to be the Guadalraman.
They sat on the wall together, watching a swath of
people traveling from one side of the river to the other, across the bridge
which was lit at intervals with lights that seemed to burn without flame. It
was a busy night, Naftaly thought. Probably he was dreaming of the end of
a market day, though the people had no goods. He thought his subconscious
could have come up with more interesting details: bolts of cloth or jugs of
oil, or perhaps some sweets.
Naftaly was a tailor, son of a tailor, son of the same, though the elder
Cresqueses had been at least passably good at their trade. The latest son was
somewhat lacking in his ability to perform basic tasks, such as sewing in a
straight line. His father insisted he would improve. It did not seem to matter
much to the trajectory of his life that he had not done so.
Everything was very settled on that score. Naftaly would take over his
father’s business, and with a great deal of luck he would not run it into the
ground. He would greet his neighbors every morning, all of whom knew
him from early childhood as a man of limited utility, but who would bring
him work, anyway, because that was what one did with one’s neighbor’s
mostly useless son. It was already too late for him to find another trade and,
truthfully, he wasn’t sure he’d be any better at something else.
He had few
friends, because he was too acutely aware of how much he was tolerated for
his father’s sake, and because he did not know what to talk about with other
men his age, nearly all of whom were married. He was not especially
devout, nor was he keen on drinking and brothels. What he wanted, more
than anything, was to be a help to his parents rather than a hindrance, but
he’d failed rather spectacularly in that regard.
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