"Cat Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strieber Whitley)

counting and staring as the car sweeps into the thread. She
experiences nothing more than a trickle and a sneeze, but off
in the cat's realm things are quite different. The cat is
dragged, howling with pain and anger, all the way to the
dreary, windswept ridges of old Stone.

For a moment nothing more happens, but that is only
because the cat's eyes are shut tight.

As the shock wears off, it blinks, then begins to gaze.

Huge, golden cat eyes appear, hanging above an otherwise
empty expanse of rock.

The cat glares down into the weave of Maywell's life, to
see what fool has dared this conjuring.

BOOK ONE:

Godfather Death

The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,
And a crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.

-W. H. Auden, "As I Walked Out One Evening"

Chapter 1

The frog wanted desperately to hop. But it couldn't hop. It
jerked, then jerked again. It stayed where it was, clamped
down tight. It flexed, tightened, jerked. The hot, dry hurt-
ing kept on. The frog worked its tongue. Pain. It tried to
move its head. Pain. Things were piercing it. Again and
again it tried to hop. But it stayed right where it was,
in this hard white place with no leaves and no whirring
wings and no sharp delicious bugs to wrestle from the
air.

It tried to hop.

Still, it did not move.

It tried. Tried. Tried.

It hurt, it had to move, it had to hop\