"(ebook) Anthony Piers - Xanth 08 - Crewel Lye" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

Chapter 1. Ghost Quest

Ivy was restricted, for no reason at all, to Castle
Roogna, and of course it was overwhelmingly boring. Her
mother Irene had recently gotten quite fat in the tummy,
but kept right on eating and pretending it was wonderful
and didn't seem to have much time for Ivy any more. To
make things worse, her father King Dor had ordered a
baby brother for her. Ivy did not need or want a baby
brother. How could they have been so thoughtless as to
order something like that without consulting the one most
concerned? What good was a baby, anywayЧespecially
a boy?

But now the infernal thing had arrived, and Irene had
evidently celebrated by using a thinning spell, because
she was suddenly back to normal weight, but she still had
next to no time for Ivy. To heck and damation with all
cabbage leaves! Even drear Mundania, she decided, could
not be worse than this.

For a time, she played with the items sent by her pun-
pal, Rapunzel, who had very long hair and was similarly
confined to her castle. Ivy was still too young to read and
write, so they exchanged small objects, and that usually
worked well enough. But there was only so much a person
could do with puncils and hot-cross puns, and Ivy soon
tired of them.

She found herself watching the magic tapestry in her
room for hours on end and more hours sidewise; the idiot
cloth had become her amusement of last resort. Its moving
pictures showed everything that had ever happened in the
Land of Xanth. But the pictures were fuzzy, and she
wasn't much interested in history, anyway. It was so much

2 Crewel Lye

more fun in the jungle, playing with clouds and tanglers

and gourds!

As the tapestry played over a sequence several hundred

years in the past. Ivy became aware of company. One of
the castle ghosts was in the room. In fact, it was watching

the tapestry.

Ghosts did not bother Ivy, of course; in fact, it tended