"Tanya Huff - Be It Ever So Humble" - читать интересную книгу автора (Huff Tanya)

serious. "You could do that?"

"Yes." His gaze turned inward, and Magdelene could feel the strength of the memories he sifted.
After a moment, he sighed and shook his head. "Foolish wishes, child. I've earned my age and I'll wear it
with honor." Magdelene hid her disappointment. Personally, she couldn't see the honor in blurred
eyesight, aching bones, and swollen, painful joints, but if that was his choice . . . There were sixteen
buildings in the village, eight goats, eleven pigs, twenty-one chickens, and fourteen boats. No one had
ever managed an accurate count of the cats. "Six families came here three generations ago," Carlos, the
old man, explained as they stood on the beach watching boats made tiny by distance slide up and down
the rolling waves. Through his eyes, Magdelene saw the harbor as it had been, sparkling untouched in
the sun, never sailed, never fished, theirs. "I'm the last of the first. I've outlived two wives and most of
my children as well."

"Do you mind?" Magdelene asked, knowing she was likely to see entire civilizations rise and fall in
her lifetime and not entirely certain how she felt about it.

"Well..." He considered the question for a moment. "I'll live 'til I die. Nothing else I can do."

"You didn't answer my question."

He patted her cheek. "I know."

That night, in the crowded main room of the headman's house, Carlos presented Magdelene to the
adults of the village. "... and she'd like to stay on a bit."

"A wizard," the headman ruminated. "That's something we don't see every day."

Magdelene missed much of the discussion that followed as she was busy trying to make eye contact
with a very attractive young man standing by one of the deep windows. She gave up when she realized
that he was trying to make eye contact with a very attractive young man standing by the door.

"... although frankly, we'd rather you were a trader."

"The traders are late this year?" Magdelene guessed, hoping she hadn't missed anything important.

"Aye. They've always come with the kayle."

Just in time, she remembered that kayle were fish.

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"Surely you saw them on the road?" a young woman asked hopefully.

"No." Magdelene frowned as she thought back over the last few weeks of travel. "I didn't." The
emptiness of the trail hadn't seemed strange to her at the time. It did now.

"I don't suppose you can conjure one?" asked a middle-aged woman dryly, tamping down her pipe.