Carla Jablonski - The Books of Magic 03 by The Children's Crusade

Author:The Children's Crusade
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-10T21:34:26+00:00

Tim thought back to something he had learned from his real father, Tamlin: that he shouldn’t let fear get in the way of trying. That was the way with magic—and the only hope of getting better at it.

“Okay,” Tim said finally. “Uh—I’m not sure I can actually help, so don’t get all bent out of shape if I fail. But I’m game if you are.”

The girl smiled a beautiful, sunny smile. She pulled chalk out of her bag and drew a hopscotch grid on the pavement. Tim stared at her. Now what is she doing? She is certainly full of surprises.

“You go first,” she instructed. “It’s easy. You just hop the hopscotch squares three times and then you’re there. Nothing to it.”

Tim pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. He raised an eyebrow at the girl. How could playing hopscotch land him in another world? He’d seen the little kids doing it in the schoolyard regularly and none of them had vanished. She must be using special chalk or something.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Marya assured him. “And it’s not hard.” Tim shrugged. There was no use trying to figure it out now. He stepped up to the hopscotch grid.

“Um. I just jump?”

“Well, there’s a rhyming, too.” She cocked her head and looked at him a moment. “People who say ‘uhm’ a lot have trouble with rhymings sometimes. I’ll chant for you. Ready?” Tim glanced around to be sure no one was watching. Only girls played hopscotch in this neighborhood. Satisfied that they weren’t being observed, Tim nodded. “Ready,” he declared.

Tim heard Marya chanting an old nursery rhyme:

“Half a pound of tuppenny rice,

Half a pound of treacle.

Mix it up and make it nice,

Pop goes the weasel.”

Tim concentrated on hopping the pattern correctly. Two feet, one foot. Two feet, one foot. Marya continued chanting more nursery rhymes, some Tim knew, like “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe,” and others he’d never heard before, all about kings and queens and emperors.

For one moment Tim wondered how he would get back home. Marya had traveled back and forth, he assured himself. It must not be too hard getting between our worlds.

Two feet, one foot. Two feet, one foot, two feet, one foot. Gone!

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