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"Matt!" she called in a scolding voice

He saw her, waved, and grinned "I'rabbed the spear shaft just above his hand "You won't be two syllables for a long time, Matt," she said "Thorasp and handed it carefully to the Carver

"Yes, I be!" Matt said, laughing and proud "Looky here! I've got me a manly pelt!"

The little boy raised both arms above his head to show her his joke Kira looked His underarrowth "What is that?" she asked him Then she wrinkled her nose "It san to laugh "Matt, that's swa yourself with it?" She could see that he'd smeared it on his chest as well

Thoerly He looked down at Matt, iggling under Kira's hands on his shoulders "You look like a beast-boy! What do you say, Kira? I think it's time we showed Matt the bathroom! Shall we clean him up and wash his second syllable away?"

At the ash Matt wiggled harder, trying to get free But Thomas and Kira both held him and finally he allowed Tho over the crowd

Now that the dangerous fascination of the spear was gone, Matt's group of young ad fro men, "Looky here at the beast-boy!" No one looked, or cared She found Branch underfoot and picked hi the dog tucked under her free ared their way around the crowd and back into the quiet of the building's corridors

Kira listened, laughing, to the wails and whimpers as Thomas mercilessly scrubbed both Matt and Branch in his bathroom tub "Not me hairs too!" Matt howled in protest as Tholedme!"

Finally, with Matt pink-faced and subdued, his washed hair toweled into a halo and his clean body wrapped in a blanket, they shared their meal Branch shook himself briskly as if he had just played in the stream, then settled himself on the floor and nibbled at scraps they handed to hirimaced "That soapie's horrid awful," he said "But I like the food," he added and filled his plate again

After dinner Kira brushed his hair while he complained loudly Then she held a mirror for him Mirrors had been new to her too when she cae different from the stream reflection that had been all she had known of herself Matt exa his nose and raising his eyebrows He showed his teeth, growled at theunder the table "I be so fierce," Matt announced sht so fierce"

Finally they redressed hi He looked down at hi around Kira's neck

"Gimme," he said

She pulled back, annoyed "Don't, Matt," she told hirab If you want so, you should ask"

"Gimme is an ask," he pointed out, puzzled

"No, it isn't You should learn some manners Anyway," Kira added, "you can't have it I told you it was special"

"A gift," Matt said

"Yes A gift from my father to my mother"

"So she'd like hihed "Maybe so But she already liked hi one"

Laughing, Thoave him the smooth bar of soap, which he tucked solemnly into his pocket Then they turned hione They watched fro crossed the deserted plaza and disappeared into the night

Alone with Tho that had co in my hand," she explained hesitantly "Look" She took it froht But it was still now She could feel a kind of co like the tension that had stirred it earlier But she felt disappointed that it now seemed no more than a scrap of cloth; she wanted Thohed "I'm sorry," she said "It seems lifeless, I know But there are ti is for you alone," he said "Here, I'll show you my bit of wood" He went to a shelf above the table where he kept his tools and took down a piece of light-colored pine sh to fit into the palm of his hand Kira could see that it was intricately decorated with carved designs that interwove around it in complicated curves

"You carved this when you were just a tyke?" she asked hi so extraordinary The boxes and ornaments that were on his worktable, beautiful in their oere much simpler than this san to," he explained "I was learning to use the tools I began to try them on this small chunk of wood that had been discarded And it --"

He hesitated He stared at the piece of wood as if it mystified him still