Every letter, she thought, every single letter matters! Let the words echo, ring out, whisper and rustle and roll like thunder. Then she began to read.
At the third sentence the tin soldier sat bolt upright. Meggie saw him out of the corner of her eye. For a moment she almost lost the thread of the story, stumbled over a word,
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"He's gone,
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He was right. The bed was empty.
Fenoglio squeezed her arm so hard it hurt. "You truly are a little enchantress!" he whispered. "And I didn't do so badly myself, did I? No, definitely not." He looked with some awe at his ink-stained fingers. Then he clapped his hands and danced around the cramped room like an old bear. When he finally stopped beside Meggie's bed again he was rather breathless. "You and I are about to prepare a most unpleasant surprise for Capricorn!" he whispered, a smile lurking in every one of his wrinkles. "I'll set to work at once! Oh yes,
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newport cigarettes online! Poor Capricorn! He'll be no better off than the magician who conjured up a flower maiden for his nephew. Do you know that story?"
Meggie was staring at the place where the tin soldier had been. She missed him. "No," she muttered. "What flower maiden?"
"It's a very old story. I'll tell you the short version. The long one is better, but it will soon be light. Well - there was once a magician called Gwydyon who had a nephew. He loved his nephew better than anything in the world, but his mother had put a curse on the young man."
"Why?"
"It would take too long to tell that part now. Anyway, she cursed him. If he ever touched a woman he would die. This broke the magician's heart - must his favorite nephew be condemned to being sad and lonely forever? No. Was he not a magician? So he shut himself up in the chamber where he worked magic for three days and three nights and made a woman out of flowers - the flowers of oak and broom and meadowsweet, to be precise. There was never a more beautiful woman in the world, and Gwydyon's nephew fell in love with her at first sight. But Blodeuedd, for that was her name,
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