"Diane Duane - Wizards 2 - Deep Wizardry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

Summer Night's Song

Summer Night's Song




Nita slipped out the back door of the beach house, careful not to let the rickety screen
door slam, and for a second stood silently on the back porch in the darkness. It was no
use. "Nita"тАФher mother's voice came floating out from the living roomтАФ"where're you
going?"
"Out," Nita said, hoping to get away with it just this once.
She might as well have tried to rob a bank. "Out where?"
"Down to the beach, Mom."
There was a sigh's worth of pause from the living room, broken by the sound of a crowd
on TV shouting about a base that had just been stolen somewhere in the country. "I don't
like you walking down there alone at night, Neets. ..."
"Nhhnnnnn," Nita said, a loud noncommittal noise she had learned to make while her
mother was deciding whether to let her do something. "I'll take Ponch with me," she said
in a burst of inspiration.
"Mmmmmm . . ." her mother said, considering it. Ponch was a large black and white dog,
part Border collie, part German shepherd, part muttтАФ an intrepid hunter of water rats and
gulls, and ferociously loyal to his master and to Nita because she was his master's best
friend. "Where's Kit?"
"I dunno." It was at least partly the truth. "He went for a walk a while ago."
'Well . . . okay. You take Ponch and look for Kit, and bring him back w'th you. Don't want
his folks thinking we're not taking care of him."
"Right, Ma," Nita said, and went pounding down the creaky steps from 'he house to the
yard before her mother could change her mind, or her rather, immersed in the ball game,
could come back to consciousness. Ponch! Hey Pancho!" Nita shouted, pounding through
the sandy front , through the gate in the ancient picket fence, and out across the narrow

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 Summer Night's Song

paved road to the dune on the other side of the road. Joyous barking began on the far
side of the dune as Nita ran up it. He's hunting again, Nita thought, and would have
laughed for delight if running had left her any breath. This is the best vacation we ever
had. . . .
At the top of the dune she paused, looking down toward the long dark expanse of the
beach. "It's been a good year," her father had said a couple of months before, over
dinner. "We can't go far for vacationтАФbut let's go somewhere nice. One of the beaches
in the Hamptons, maybe. We'll rent a house and live beyond our means. For a couple