"Charles de Lint - Moonheart" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Lint Charles)

and their origins are often too obscure or inconsequential on
their own to be recognized for what they are. The Romao
statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero said it best: "The beginnings
of all things are small."

Though he lived and died some two thousand years before
Sara was born, and though the tale was so entangled by the
time she came into it that it would have been an exercise in
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Charke de l~lat

futility to attempt to unravel its many threads, Sara herself
came to agree with Cicero. Years later she could pinpoint the
exact moment that brought her into the tale. It was when she
found the leather pouch with its curious contents in one of the
back storerooms of her uncle's secondhand shop.

The Merry Dancers Old Book and Antique Emporium was
situated on Bank Street, between ThW Avenue and Fourth in
the area of Ottawa called the Glebe. It was owned by Jamie
Tams who took his inspiration for the name from the aurora
borealis, the northern lights that the French call les chevres
dansantes. The dancing goats.

"It's quite appropriate," he told Sara one day. He was leaning
on the long display case that supported the relic of a cash

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register which worked by turning a crank on its side. "Think
about it. The Arctic's what? Ice and snow. Tundra and miles
of nothing at best. Who'd expect a treasure like the Dancere
in a place like that?"

Sara smiled. "Are you implying that somewhere in all thii
junk there're similar treasures to be found?"

"Implying? Nope. It's a straight fact. When was the last
time you went through the jumble of boxes in the back rooms?
There could be anything in them-not valuable, mind, but
treasures all the same."

He stared pointedly at Sara's typewriter, an IBM selfcorrecting
Selectric, and the pile of paper that was stacked
beside it.