Laurie Astern is now five years old, and her world is woven from the long, starry evenings she usually spends in her father's library, looking at pictures in books and reading everything she can understand in her five or in noisy games with her brothers in the garden (though not all the games take her; They think she's too young to participate in everything, and Laurie is madly angry), out of the smell of fresh bread and buckwheat porridge in the morning, out of constant arguments with her sister, out of the unpleasant daily procedure of combing hard and curly blond hair and fatherly signs of approval almost every time Laurie manages to understand something new in his books or to show courage or dexterity in playing with her brothers.
Laurie Astern is now five years old. She has a lot of brothers and sisters (mostly older, though younger ones are also full), she has a mother, two aunts, four uncles, eight stepmother and, of course, a father. Laurie's father loves her more than anyone else combined. Even more than Mira or Juan. Dad has a bright scarlet cloak and black armor. Father often picks up Laurie in her arms, easily, as if she weighs nothing, her father often kisses her on the gentle cheeks and very gently clicks on her nose, her father puts her in his lap, sitting comfortably in a chair or on the couch, picks up a book or a prophecy ball, or a telescope, or some of his daggers, or some interesting trinket that Laurie can collect and disassemble until she gets tired...
At the Astara levels, it's almost always warm. And Laurie could play with her brothers in the garden all year round, but almost all of them - and funny Juan, and responsible Charles, and always rude George, and shy and quiet Henry - spend most of the year in their schools. So Laurie has no choice but to sit in her father's library most of the evenings and read everything she can get her hands on without being too hard.
Long, warm, starry evenings can be found at any level¹ - that's what Laurie believes. Laurie often wanders through the five Astara levels - her father likes to take her with him. And on each of them, there are beautiful starry evenings. And on each of them, there are amazing dad's libraries. No one else sees such Laurie - neither the charming, intelligent and mockingly self-confident Princess Barbara, nor the strict and impossible beautiful lady Mary, nor the stubborn, closed and eternally dissatisfied Countess Katrina, nor the flighty Ravenna, nor the smooth and dreamy Naidiah Zervas, nor her mother. Only his father has them. And each time Laurie struggles to get into a bulky high chair at the window - and the spell showed by his father calls into his hands a new book.
Some of Laurie's books don't understand even if she sits over them all evening. Everything in them is written in a complicated way and it is not interesting to know that the eyes are trying to stick together. And sometimes these books contain letters that Laurie doesn't know what they mean. She doesn't know yet, she says to herself. Some books are too heavy, and Laurie just can't hold them. Then she lets them fall to the floor, gets off her chair and reads right on the floor. She even falls asleep over some of them.
Laurie likes books that have a lot of pictures in their dad's closet. These books depict pirates, knights, swords, helmets, dragons - to think only, and these beautiful creatures - and an icy woman in snow-white robes. Some of them depict Iberian levels. And the way the world looks from the side of the Mezhdure - Lori sometimes hears from her elder brother, Mira, that Ibero looks just amazing from there, and each time he is jealous and dreams of only one thing: to grow up and see everything on his own.
Tonight Laurie, however, spends in the garden - swinging on the swings and looking at the folded from colored paper dragonfly. Laurie wants to make it soar into the sky - not just to fly a couple of meters, as it usually happens with the figures folded out of paper. Laurie wants to learn how to use magic in such a way that her paper dragon takes off - to tell the truth, Laurie has prepared two dozen in advance to practice it properly.
Actually, it's not even quite an evening - she and Roxanne were sent to bed by the nanny long ago, but Laurie slipped out of there sneaking out, dressed up a little warmer, so that certainly not to freeze, and having grabbed the dragons prepared for her experiment, quietly sneaked into the garden, making sure that the nanny snores in her chair for a long time, putting aside knitting.
Three dragons die almost immediately - instead of making them fly, Laurie accidentally sets them on fire in the sky. She stubbornly presses her lips and tries again - the fourth is crumpled by the energy wave coming from her. The fifth sinking in a big puddle instead of taking off for a minute.
The continuation should be...