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

And the child did dream things. She would dream of a
farmer with a toothache, riding a spotted horse, and the
next day such a fanner would arrive at the oak with the
red door. Other nights the girl dreamed things less simple:
men in black on horseback, battling; fire in the air; a gar-
den under glass, full of birds; two people kissing by a
hedge. One of Abagtha's other books had pictures of
knights, and people kissing, but the girl liked the one with
colored pictures of beetles better.

Abagtha was in no mood to hear about dreams. "Lies!"
she spat. "Even I don't know the workings of those runes,
and you scrawl them with no more care than if they were
a game of crosses and oughts! Now, get a pail and rag and
scrub this wall, and the floor, too, while you're about it!
Mark this wall again, and you'll rue it."

When the old woman had gone the child cried silently
for a bit, out of fright and relief. After a while she fetched
a pail and wrung out a cloth. Kneeling before the wall,
she paused with the rag in her hand, knitting her brow at
the runes. Abagtha had never taught the girl her letters,
so that the runes meant less than nothing to her. But some
urge moved her tongue for her, made her hand trace the
elbows and tails of the letters as she said softly:

"Spellkey ..."

After the incident with the runes the girl kept her
dreams to herself, playing quietly with the dried lizards
she took from Abagtha's jars.

* * *

Years passed, and the girl grew tall and slight, a seedling
seeking light among the upper branches. Her skin was
smooth and white as almond meat, for it never saw the
sun, and her dark hair fell past her waist, heavy as wet
silk and tangled with burrs and cobwebs. In winter she
wove it about her into a cloak to ward off the cold. Abag-
tha, now fearful of her charge's powers, kept her in the
thinnest muslin well into the winter, and fed her on a
nasty porridge of ground acorns, to keep her submissive.
But the girl sought out berries and roots to sustain her,
and suffered not too much from Abagtha's abuse. This is
what Abagtha had dreaded most dearly of all.

Abagtha knew the girl's eyes to be those of a seer, the
eyes of an otherworld daughter. For this reason she hesi-
tated at outright cuffs, resorting instead to sly pinches.