"Patricia A. McKillip - Naming Day" - читать интересную книгу автора (McKillip Patricia A)

тАЬMy mother should understand. After all, she almost graduated from
Oglesby herself. She knows how hard we have to work.тАЭ

тАЬShe did?тАЭ Nicholaus queried her with an inquisitive flash of rimless
spectacles. тАЬWhy didnтАЩt she graduate? Did she fail her classes?тАЭ

Averil shrugged. тАЬShe told me she left to get married.тАЭ

тАЬQuaint.тАЭ

тАЬWell, she couldnтАЩt stay in school with me coming and all the studentsтАЩ
practice spells flying around. I might have come out as a wombat or
something.тАЭ

Deirdre chuckled and made a minute adjustment to the butterfly pin in
her wild red hair. тАЬBaby brothers are the worst, arenтАЩt they? Mine are such a
torment. They put slugs in my shoes; they color in my books; theyтАЩre
al-ways whining, and they smell like boiled broccoli.тАЭ

Tamara, who was taller than all of them and moved like a dancer,
shook her sleek black hair out of her face, smiling. тАЬI like my baby brother,
but then heтАЩs still a baby. TheyтАЩre so sweet before they grow their teeth and
start having opinions.тАЭ

Averil murmured absently, her eyes on the boy with the white-gold hair
waiting for her at the school gates. She drew a deep, full breath; the air
seemed to kindle and glow through her. тАЬThereтАЩs Griffith,тАЭ she said, and
stepped forward into her enchanted world, full of friends, and challenges
within the craggy, dark walls of the school, and Griffith, with his high
cheekbones and broad shoulders, watching her come.

Someone else watched her, too: a motionless, silent figure on the
grass within the wrought-iron fence. An intensity seemed to pour out of him
like a spell, drawing at her until, surprised, she took her eyes off Griffith to
see who the stranger was.

But it wasnтАЩt a stranger, only Fitch, who blinked at the touch of her
eyes and drew back into himself like a turtle. She waved anyway, laughing a
little, her attention already elsewhere.

In her classes, Averil got a perfect score conjugating Latin verbs,
correctly pronounced a rune that made Dugan Lawler believe he was a
parrot, and, with Griffith, was voted best in class for their history project,
which traced the legendary land on which Oglesby stood back through time
to the powerful forest of oak trees under which early students were taught
their primitive magic. She and Griffith pretended to be teacher and student;
they actually reproduced some of the ancient spells, one of which set fire to
Mr. AddisonтАЩs oak cane and turned on the overhead sprinklers. But Mr.
Addison, after mending his cane and drying the puddles with some