"Downer, Ann - Spellkey 01-03 - The Spellkey Trilogy 1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Downer Ann)

spreading the cakes out in her apron. "We'll eat the rest."

"Why did we roll the cakes, 'Batha?" the child asked,
her mouth full of sweet millet cake.

"You can tell a fortune by the way the cake rolls."

"And what was my fortune?"

But Abagtha ate another cake, and would not say.

After the day they rolled the cakes down the hill, Abag-
tha began to change. She had taught the girl all she dared,
lacking a license to do more, and her pupil's aptness in the
ways of magic began to sit ill with her. Abagtha became
quarrelsome, forgetful. Without warning she would speak
to the girl in foreign tongues, scold her without cause,
howl at her in tempests of hilarity and tears. She stopped
working her spells: the farmers came less and less often,
so that there was less and less to eat. The old cat, Mambo,
became melancholy.

Still, the child soon forgot these episodes, until the
unlucky day the old woman discovered her scrawling runes
of great power on the scullery wall.

"Have you been looking at my book of incantations, you
meddlesome little toad?" Abagtha hissed. "Didn't I forbid
you ever to put your dirty paws on it?"

The book of incantations never left its wooden stand by
the hearth. Three ribbons marked its pagesЧone silver,
one blue, and one greenЧand its pigskin binding was

stamped with the shapes of herbs and animals: mandrake
and hyssop, crocodiles and hedgehogs. Wary of its iron
clasps, the child had never looked inside, except to catch
a glimpse while Abagtha was reading from it. All she had
seen was a dog curled up asleep in a capital P, monkeys
swinging in the margins, and thick, scowling letters that
meant nothing to her.

The girl shrank into the corner. "I didn't touch it! I
couldn't! It's locked ... you wear the key."

"How else could you learn to make runes like that, you
nasty little liar?"

"I dreamed them, 'Batha, truly!"