A Gift Of Magic by Lois Duncan

Author:Lois Duncan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Children/Young Adult Trade
Published: 1999-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

10

It was on a Saturday morning that Brendon was caught playing the piano. Kirby was at her dancing and their mother, who did not work on Saturdays, was out grocery shopping, and Nancy had been practicing.

Over and over she had been playing a piece called "The Lazy Pony," until Brendon, who was working on a model on the coffee table, said, "Oh, rats, Nancy, can't you put a little life into it? It sounds like the darned pony's dying."

"I'm playing it just the way it's written," Nancy told him.

"Then it's written wrong. It's creepy." Brendon got up from the table and came over to the piano, "Shove over. Let me show you."

"You can't play it," Nancy said. "You can't even read music. You can hardly even read English, judging by the grades you make."

"So what? I can hear. That's more than you can do." Brendon wedged himself in at one end of the bench and pushed until Nancy came off the other end.

Then he began to play. He played the piece all the way through, making it swingy. Then he played it again. This time he put in some different chords.

"See?" he said. "Doesn't that sound better?"

"Yes," Nancy admitted. She regarded her brother with grudging respect. "How can you do that, just pick it out like that? How do you know what notes to play?"

"How do you not know?" Brendon asked her. "That's the thing I can't understand. How can you sit there and keep hitting clinkers? Can't you hear how wrong they are?"

"I'm reading the notes out of the book," Nancy said. "Now get up and let me sit down. I've still got fifteen minutes of practice time to go."

Brendon grinned at her and began to play "Three Blind Mice." Every third note he hit was wrong. Even Nancy could tell that. Then he began putting chords in that went with the wrong notes, and suddenly it was a whole different song.

"That's 'Three Blind Rats,'" Brendon said.

"Stop showing off," Nancy told him, "and let me get on with my practice. I want to get through so I can go to the library."

But Brendon did not budge. He kept playing his new song louder and louder.

He began to sing with it, making his voice very high:

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