"Brooks,.Terry.-.Word03.-.Angel.Fire.East" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brooks Terry)

endurance she had acquired and maintained through years of
rigorous training.

She studied herself in the mirror with the same frank, open stare
she gave everyone. Her green eyes were wide-set beneath arched
brows in her round , smooth Charlie Brown face. Her cinnamon hair
was cut short and curled tightly about her head, framing her small,
even features. People told her all the time she was pretty, but she
never quite believed them. Her friends had known her all her life
and were inclined to be generous in their assessments. Strangers
were just being polite.

Still, she told herself with more than a trace of irony, fluffing her hair
into place, you never know when Prince Charming will come
calling. Best to be ready so you don't lose out.

She left the mirror and the bathroom and walked through her
bedroom to the hall beyond. She had been up since five-thirty,
running on the mostly empty roads that stretched from Si nn issippi
Park east to Moonlight Bay. Winter had set in several weeks before
with the first serious snowfall, but the snow had melted during a
warm spot a week ago, and there had been no further
accumulation. Patches of sooty white still lay in the darker,
shadowy parts of the woods and in the culverts and ditches where
the snowplows had pushed them, but the blacktop of the country
roads was dry and clear. She did five miles, then showered, fixed
herself breakfast, ate, and dressed. She was due in church to help
in the nursery at nine-thirty, and whoever it was who had come
calling would have to be quick.

She passed the aged black-and-white tintypes and photographs of
the women of her family, their faces severe and spare in the plain
wooden picture frames, backd r opped by the dark webbing of
trunks and limbs of the park trees. Gwendolyn Wills, Carolyn Glynn,
and Opal Anders. Her grandmother's picture was there, too. Nest
had added it after Gran's death. She had chosen an early picture,
one in which Evelyn Freemark appeared youthful and raw and wild ,
hair all tousled , eyes filled with excitement and promise. That was
the way Nest liked to remember Gran. It spoke to the strengths and
weaknesses that had defined Gran's life.

Nest scanned the group as she went down the hallway, admiring
the resolve in their eyes. The Freemark women, she liked to call
them. All had entered into the service of the Word , partnering
themselves with Pick to help the sylvan keep in balance the strong,
core magic that existed in the park. All had been born with magic of
their own, though not all had managed it well. She thought briefly of
the dark secrets her grandmother had kept, of the deceptions she
herself had employed in the workings of her own magic, and of the
price she had paid for doing so.