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There’s a rustle of irl with pigtails, who stands half-hidden by a tree trunk and looks like she could be seven or eight years old except that she’s at least as tall as Teirl peeks out from behind the tree trunk and picks at the bark nervously with her thick fingertips

Te to hold her vision in place

Where’d you come from, little ine of her car still running in the distance

How long’ve I been out?

The girl doesn’t answer She keeps her eyes trained on Temple and picks at the tree bark

Coonna hurt you What you lurkin back there for?

The girl says nothing

Did you see the monster? The one that hit et you

The girl looks around, but not fearfully Shethat Teirl repeats herself in a curiously deep but still frail voice:

I said I’on kill you

For the first tiirl’s teeth--instead of being in neat rows, they see out froon kill you, the girl repeats

What you wanna kill me for?

Y’ain’t no kin-mind

Kin-mind? What you sayin?

Y’ain’t no kinnamind

Kin of on kill you

I don’t think so, girl Go play somewhere else It’s time for Temple to rise and shine

She lifts herself to her feet, balancing herself with her arhtrope

When she’s steady, she looks up and finds the girl has coirl’s bulk, thick all around like a walking log There’s so with her arm, and when Temple looks more closely she sees that all the skin of the hand and forearm has peeled back to expose the bones, the tendons, the brownish meat and muscle It doesn’t seeth In some areas there even seems to be a white chitinous crust for kitchen knife gripped in the skinless hand

I’irl coes the blade But she takes the full iainst her own She’s knocked to the ground and all the wind goes out of her Coughing, she hops up into a crouch, her head swi over her with the knife

Let up, little girl, Teirl stretches out her leg and thrusts her foot into Te her backward She drags herself back, away frohten skeletal around the handle of the knife

Then a irl? I tole you just to watch her till I got back

A , like the other, graying skin pulled away in parts, one eyelid sewn shut over a sunken hole

He points to the knife in the girl’s hand

Maon kill you she finds out you been in her kitchen Co this one back too

And they lift her, one on each side, and she can smell the reechy rot of their skin, and her head swis to keep up, but round