"Duncan,.Lois.-.A.Gift.Of.Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Lois)

The music stopped. Kirby stopped.
The dance was finished.
She had danced hard. Her legs ached. Her chest throbbed with the force of her breathing. She looked into the mirror and saw herself standing there, panting for breath. Her hips were broad and her bust rounded and her face plump and flushed, and she was not a dawn breaking or a bird soaring. She was merely Kirby Garrett.
She turned and looked at Madame Vilar.
Slowly the black swan rose from its chair.
"You did not learn that in seminars," she said.
"No," Kirby admitted. "The positions and steps, though. I learned those."
"There have been dancers in your family perhaps?" Madame asked.
"I don't know," Kirby said. "I don't think so. I think I am the firstЧthe onlyЧdancer."
"So you think of yourself as a dancer?" The swan-eyes narrowed. "It takes many years to become a dancer, my young friend. YearsЧworkЧpracticeЧheartbreak. And you do not look like a dancer. You are too tall already. Your bones are large."
"But I can dance," Kirby said. She paused. "IЧI didn't mean it to sound that way," she said in embarrassment. "I didn't mean to sound braggy. I know there's a lot for me still to learn. It's just thatЧI know I can learn it. I can dance."
Madame Vilar shook her head in bewilderment.
"It is strange," she said. "Looking at you, who would guess? And with no consistent trainingЧ" She shook her head again. "It is all wrong. You are not the type. You should be thinking about school parties and boyfriends. You should be planning, perhaps, to become a secretary."
"I will be a dancer." Kirby spoke quietly, but the softness was gone from her voice. It was a voice that was older than she was, clear and strong and determined. She raised her head and met the swan's sharp black gaze with her own steady blue one. "May I go to class now?" she asked.
"No," Madame Vilar told her. "You will not go back to Miss Nedra. From now on you will study only with me."


6

They had started the boat because of the door. Greg had taken it off a vacant house. Greg had a whole collection of things he had taken off houses-doors and mailboxes and gas lamps and window screens. He kept them in his workshop which was in the back of the garage.
"Don't your folks wonder where they came from?" Brendon asked a trifle doubtfully. "After all, eight window screens-that's an awful lot just to have found someplace."
"My folks never go in there," Greg told him. "My dad says that every child needs privacy in his life. If they went poking around in my workshop it might give me a phobia."
It was when Greg talked like this that Brendon admired him most. He had never even heard about phobias until he met Greg Russo. Now when he looked about him he saw phobias everywhere. Every time a person laughed or yelled or batted his eyes, a phobia was causing it.
Greg even knew the special names of the phobias and could use them correctly. Sometimes he spoke them right out in class.
"I understand why you become upset so easily," he told Miss Arnold. "It's simply an example of your gamophobia." And he said to Amy Steider, "A girl with haptephobia like yours is never going to get anywhere in life." Whenever he made these statements they were followed by silence because no one ever seemed to know what to answer.
The fact that Greg had privacy was something else that Brendon found strange and marvelous. Not only was his workroom private, but so was his bedroom. No one was allowed to go into it without checking with Greg for permission first. When Brendon thought about his own room and the way his sisters wandered in and out of it and how his mother was always looking under the bed for dirty socks and things, he envied Greg. At the same time, the thought of Greg's privacy made him a little uncomfortable. There was something about knowing that you wouldn't be checked on that made you feel that you had to be doing things.
Building the boat was one of them.
The first time Brendon saw the big front door leaning against the wall of Greg's workshop, he said, "What a whopper! That would sure make a swell boat deck!"
"Boat deck?" Greg regarded him with surprise. "What do we want a boat deck for? We don't even have a boat."
"We could build one," Brendon said. "You've got the tools and stuff, and there's a lot of wood here. We'll need a boat to get out to the sandbar if we want to go digging for buried treasure."
"Why don't we take Mr. Duncan's boat?" Greg suggested. "He keeps it tied up at the dock in front of his house. He just lives right down the beach from you. I bet we could hook it one day and zip out to the bar and back in it and he'd never know the difference."
"We can't do that," Brendon said. "He's a friend of my mom's. You don't hook things from people you know."
Actually, Brendon had never had any experience hooking anything from anyone.
"Besides," he added, "it would be great to have our own boat. Think of the exploring we could do! Maybe we could even find a way to get across and into the Everglades with it."
"The screen doors would come in handy then," Greg said, beginning to catch some of his friend's enthusiasm. "They could keep the mosquitoes off."
So the boat had had its beginning. At the moment, they were installing a rudder. They were attaching it with hinges from a shutter, and it was really swinging smoothly before Brendon finally tore himself away from the workshop and started for home.
He felt good as he walked along through the gathering twilight, swinging his arms and whistling a melody he had made up himself. It was the beginning of November, but the air was still soft, and there were a few mosquitoes humming around in it just as though it were summer. He thought about the Everglades and wondered if they ought to supplement the screens on the boat with some extra mosquito netting.
Brendon liked Florida and he was glad they had come here. He liked Greg and Miss Arnold and Amy Steider and everybody else he had met so far. He even liked Mr. Duncan, although he might have been less enthusiastic about him if Nancy had not detested him. It was always more fun to be nice to people if Nancy didn't like them.
The one thing he shared with Nancy was the fact that they both missed their father. In Brendon's case, however, the missing was less emotional. He and his father were not quite ready for each other yet, and both of them knew it. There would come a day when they would be, at which time, of course, he would leave his mother and sisters and the world of women behind him.
In the meantime, he liked where he was and the things he was doing.
Now, as he walked along the edge of the beach road, he saw the house come suddenly into view from behind its fortress of pine trees. Lights twinkled at the windows, and he realized with surprise that the twilight was fading into dark. He slowed his footsteps, holding for a moment to that first instant when the lights had come into viewЧto the smell of the sea and the first faint stars showing over the dunes and the welcoming house and he, Brendon, not yet there.
I don't have to go in at all, he told himself experimentally. I can turn if I want to and walk the other way. I can take off somewhereЧsleep on the beachЧstow away on a shipЧhop on a trainЧanything! I can do anything! Nobody can stop me!
It was a good kind of thought and he put it into the tune he was making. Whistling louder, he swung on up the road and turned into the driveway.
There were two cars in the drive, his mother's and Mr. Duncan's. They were in the living room when Brendon entered, and another man was with them. They all turned to face Brendon as the door slammed shut behind him, and he saw to his surprise that the second man was Greg's father.
"Oh. Brendon!" his mother said, looking relieved. "I'm glad you're home. You know I worry when you're out after dark."
"Sorry, Mom," Brendon said. "Hi, Mr. Duncan. Hi, Dr. Russo. What are you doing here?"
"Hello there, Brendon." Greg's father was a short man with hair the same shade of red as Greg's except that it was beginning to gray a little along the sides. "I bet you've just come from my house. You and that son of mine really seem to have hit it off together."
"Yes, sir," Brendon said. He glanced past the grown-ups and saw Nancy. She was sitting in the corner of the sofa with her skinny legs curled up under her and a worried expression on her face.
"What's the matter?" Brendon asked. "Is Nancy in trouble?" To Brendon, "trouble" meant being found out about something.
"Of course not, Bren," Mr. Duncan answered. "Your sister is an interesting person, and I've been telling Dr. Russo about her. He would like to run some tests if she and your mother are willing."