"Gregort Maguire - Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maguire Gregory)

Besides, what kind of magic is that, if it can't be seen?

Maybe all gap-toothed crones recognize themselves in children at play. Still, in our time we girls rarely
cavorted in the streets! Not hoydens, we!—more like grave novices at an abbey. I can conjure up a very
apt proof. I can peer at it as if at a painting, through the rheumy apparatus of the mind . . .

... In a chamber, three girls, sisters of a sort, are bending over a crate. The lid has been set aside, and we
are digging in the packing. The top layer is a scatter of pine boughs. Though they've traveled so far, the
needles still give off a spice of China, where the shipment originated. We hiss and recoil—ugbb!
Dung-colored bugs, from somewhere along the Silk Route, have nested and multiplied while the ship
trundled northward across the high road of the sea.

But the bugs don't stop us. We're hoping to find bulbs for planting, for even we girls have caught the
fever. We're eager for those oniony hearts that promise the tulip blossoms. Is this is the wrong crate?
Under the needles, only a stack of heavy porcelain plates. Each one is wrapped in a

coarse cloth, with more branches laid between. The top plate—the first one—hasn't survived the trip
intact. It has shattered in three.

We each take a part. How children love the broken thing! And a puzzle is for the piecing together,
especially for the young, who still believe it can be done.

Adult hands begin to remove the rest of the valuable Ming dinner-ware, as if in our impatience for the
bulbs we girls have shattered the top plate. We wander aside, into the daylight—paint the daylight of
childhood a creamy flaxen color—three girls at a window. The edges of the disk scrape chalkily as we
join them. We think the picture on this plate tells a story, but its figures are obscure. Here the blue line is
blurred, here it is sharp as a pig's bristle. Is this a story of two people, or three, or four? We study the full
effect.

Were I a painter, able to preserve a day of my life in oils and light, this is the picture I would paint: three
thoughtful girls with a broken plate. Each piece telling part of a story. In truth, we were ordinary children,
no calmer than most. A moment later, we were probably squabbling, sulking over the missing flower
bulbs. Noisy as the little ones I observed today. But let me remember what I choose. Put two of the girls
in shadow, where they belong, and let light spill over the third. Our tulip, our Clara.

Clara was the prettiest child, but was her life the prettiest tale?

Caspar listens to my recital, but my quavery voice has learned to speak bravely too late to change the
story. Let him make of it what he will. Caspar knows how to coax the alpha-

PROLOGUE

bet out of an inky quill. He can commit my tale to paper if he wants. Words haven't been my particular
strength. What did I see all my life but pictures?^and who ever taught the likes

of me to write?

Now in these shriveled days, when light is not as full as it used to be, the luxury of imported china is long
gone. We sip out of clay bowls, and when they crack we throw them on the back heap, to be buried by
oak leaves. All green things brown. I hear the youthful story of our family played by children in the