"Jones, Diana Wynne - Chrestomanci 1 - 1977 - Charmed Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

Chrestomanci - Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones


There are thousands of worlds, all different from ours. Chrestomanci's world is
the one next door to us, and the difference here is that magic is as common as
music is with us. It is full of people working magic—warlocks, witches,
thaumaturges, sorcerers, fakirs, conjurors, hexers, magicians, mages, shamans,
diviners and many more—from the lowest Certified witch right up to the most
powerful of enchanters. Enchanters are strange as well as powerful. Their magic
is different and stronger and many of them have more than one life. Now, if
someone did not control all these busy magic-users, ordinary people would have a
horrible time and probably end up as slaves. So the government appoints the very
strongest enchanter there is to make sure no one misuses magic. This enchanter
has nine lives and is known as "the Chrestomanci. " You pronounce it
KREST-OH-MAN-SEE. He has to have a strong personality as well as strong magic.
Diana Wynne Jones



Charmed Life



1
Cat Chant admired his elder sister Gwendolen. She was a witch. He admired her
and he clung to her. Great changes came about in their lives and left him no one
else to cling to.
The first great change came about when their parents took them out for a day
trip down the river in a paddle steamer. They set out in great style, Gwendolen
and her mother in white dresses with ribbons, Cat and his father in prickly
blue-serge Sunday suits. It was a hot day. The steamer was crammed with other
people in holiday clothes, talking, laughing, eating whelks with thin slices of
white bread and butter, while the paddleboat steam organ wheezed out popular
tunes so that no one could hear themselves talk.
In fact the steamer was too crowded and too old. Something went wrong with the
steering. The whole laughing, whelk-eating, Sunday-dressed crowd was swept away
in the current from the dam. They hit one of the posts which were supposed to
stop people being swept away, and the paddle steamer, being old, simply broke
into pieces. Cat remembered the organ playing and the paddles beating the blue
sky. Clouds of steam screamed from broken pipes and drowned the screams from the
crowd, as every single person aboard was swept away through the dam. It was a
terrible accident. The papers called it the Saucy Nancy Disaster. The ladies in
their clinging skirts were quite unable to swim. The men in tight blue serge
were very little better off. But Gwendolen was a witch, so she could not drown.
And Cat, who flung his arms around Gwendolen when the boat hit the post,
survived too. There were very few other survivors.
The whole country was shocked by it. The paddleboat company and the town of
Wolvercote between them paid for the funerals. Gwendolen and Cat were given
heavy black clothes at public expense, and rode behind the procession of hearses
in a carriage pulled by black horses with black plumes on their heads. The other