"Diane Duane - Wizards 1 - So You Want To Be A Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

Prologue




Prologue
Part of the problem, Nita thought to herself as she tore desperately down Rose Avenue, is that
I can't keep my mouth shut.
She had been running for five minutes now, hopping fences, sliding side-ways through
hedges, but she was losing her wind. Some ways behind her she could hear Joanne and
Glenda and the rest of them pounding along in pursuit, threatening to replace her latest, now-
fading black eye. Well, Joanne would come up to her with that new bike, all chrome and
silver and gearshift levers and speedometer/odometer and toeclips and waterbottle, and ask
what she thought of it. So Nita had told her. Actually, she had told Joanne what she thought of
her. The bike was all right. In fact, it had been almost exactly the one that Nita had wanted so
much for her last birthday—the birthday when she got nothing but clothes.
Life can be really rotten sometimes, Nita thought. She wasn't really so irritated about that at
the moment, however. Running away from a beating was taking up most of her attention.
"Callahan, " came a yell from behind her, "I'm gonna pound you up and mail you home in
bottles!"
I wonder how many bottles it'll take, Nita thought, without much humor. She couldn't afford
to laugh. With their bikes, they'd catch up to her pretty quickly. And then...
She tried not to think of the scene there would be later at home—her
father raising hands and eyes to the ceiling, wondering loudly enough for the
whole house to hear, "Why didn't you hit them back?"; her sister making
belligerent noises over her new battlescars; her mother shaking her head,
looking away silently, because she understood. It was her sad look that would
Nita more than the bruises and scrapes and swollen face would. Her
mom would shake her head, and clean the hurts up, and sigh....
12
SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL WIZARD
Crud! Nita thought. The breath was coming hard to her now. She was going to have to try to hide,
to wait them out. But where? Most of the people around here didn't want kids running through
their yards. There was Old Crazy Swale's house with its big landscaped yard, but the rumors
among the neighborhood kids said that weird things happened in there. Nita herself had noticed
that the guy didn't go to work like normal people. Better to get beat up again than go in there. But
where can I hide?
She kept on running down Rose Avenue, and the answer presented itself to her: a little brown-
brick building with windows warmly alight—refuge, safety, sanctuary. The library. It's open, it's
open, I forgot it was open late on Saturday! Oh, thank Heaven! The sight of it gave Nita a new
burst of energy. She cut across its tidy lawn, loped up the walk, took the five stairs to the porch in
two jumps, bumped open the front door and closed it behind her, a little too loudly.
The library had been a private home once, and it hadn't lost the look of one despite the crowding of

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 Prologue


all its rooms with bookshelves. The walls were paneled in mahogany and oak, and the place
smelled warm and brown and booky. At the thump of the door Mrs. Lesser, the weekend librarian,