"Diane Duane - The Wizard's Dilemma" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

they got a chance, how well Kit was doing.

As if they're fooling anyone, she thought. They're nosing around to see if he and I are doing something
else...and they can't understand why we're not. Nita frowned. Life had been simpler when she'd merely
been getting beaten up every week. In its own way, the endless sniping gossip—the whispering behind
hands, and the passed notes about cliques and boys and clothes and dates—was more annoying than any
number of bruises. The pressure to be like everyone else—

to do the same stuff and think the same things—just grew, and if you took a stance, the gossip might be
driven underground... but never very far.

Nita sighed. Nowadays she kept running into problems for which wizardry either wasn't an answer, or
else was the wrong one. And even when it was the right answer, it never seemed to be a simple one
anymore.

As in the case of this project, for example. Nita looked down at the three notebook pages full of writing
in front of her. If I didn't know better, I'd think it was turning into a disaster. Nita knew that wizards
weren't assigned to projects they had no hope of completing. But she also knew that the Powers That Be
weren't going to come swooping in to save her if she messed up an intervention. She was expected to
handle it: That was what wizards were for... since the Powers couldn't be everywhere Themselves.

This left Nita staring again at her original problem: how to explain to Kit why the solution he was
suggesting to their present wizardly project wasn't going to work. He's so wrong about this, she
thought. / can't believe he doesn't see it. I keep explaining it and explaining it, and he keeps not getting
it. She sighed again. 7 guess I just have to keep trying. This isn't the kind of thing you can just give up on.

Her mother plopped down beside her again with a pad of Post-it notes and peeled one off, sticking it to

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruis...ar/Diane%20Duane%20-%20The%20Wizard's%20Dilemma.htm (6 of 267)22-2-2006 1:55:44
 Diane Duane - The Wizard's Dilemma.htm

the table and starting to jot things down on it. "The sticky stuff on those is getting old," Nita said,
turning to a clean page in her notebook. "It doesn't stick real well anymore."

Friday Afternoon

"I noticed," her mother said absently, repositioning the note. "Milk, rye bread—"

"No seeds."

"Your dad likes caraway, honey. Humor him."

"Can't you just get me one of the little loaves without the seeds, Mom?"

Her mother gave her a sidelong look. "Can't you just... you know..." She attempted to twitch her nose in
the manner of a famous TV "witch" of years past, and failed to do anything much except look like a
rabbit.

Nita rolled her eyes. "Probably I could," she said, "but the trouble is, that bread was made with the seeds,
and it thinks they belong there."