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

"Bread thinks* What about?"

"Uh, well, it— See, when you combine the yeast with the flour, the yeasts—" Nita suddenly realized that
if this went on much longer, she was going to wind up explaining some of the weirder facts of life to her
mother, and she wasn't sure that either she or her mother was ready. "Mom, the wizardry would just be a
real pain to write. Probably simpler just to take the seeds out with my fingers."

Her mother raised her eyebrows, let out a breath, and made a note. "Small loaf of nonseeded rye for
daughter whose delicate aesthetic sensibilities are offended by picking a few seeds out of a slice of
bread."

"Mom, picking them out doesn't help. The taste is still there!"

"Scouring pads... chicken breasts..." Her mom gnawed reflectively on the cap of the pen. "Shampoo,
aspirin, soup—"

"Not the cream-of-chemical kind, Mom!"

"Half a dozen cans of nonchemical soup for the budding gourmet." Her mother looked vague for a
moment, then glanced over at what Nita was writing. She squinted a little. "Either I really do need
reading glasses or you're doing math at a much higher level than I thought."


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Nita sighed. "No, Mom, it's the Speech. It has some expressions in common with calculus, but they're—"

"What about your homework?"

"I finished it at school so I wouldn't keep getting interrupted in the middle of it, like I am here!"

"Oh dear," her mother said, peeling off another note and starting to write on it. "No seedless rye for you."

Nita immediately felt embarrassed. "Mom, I'm sorry—"

"We all have stress, honey, but we don't have to snap at each other."

The back door creaked open, and Nita's father came in and went to the sink.

Nita's mother glanced up. "Harry, I thought you said you were going to oil that thing. It's driving me
nuts."

"We're out of oil," Nita's father said as he washed his hands.

"Oil," her mother said, and jotted it down on the sticky note. "What else?"

Her father picked up a dish towel and stood behind her mother's chair, looking down at the shopping list.