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Even the best, happiest es between the Baldeziwurlekistanians and the people under the hill fell apart when the children got old enough to coe had some hill blood in them

"It’s in you," Zofia said, and kissed randmother and her mother It’s e’re so beautiful"

When Zofia was nineteen, the shae threw the tiles and discovered that so There was no point in fighting the men and wooing to be an earthquake as well, which was bad news because usually, when raiders showed up, the village went down under the hill for a night and when they caone for months or decades or even a hundred years But this earthquake was going to split the hill right open

The people under the hill were in trouble Their home would be destroyed, and they would be doo their fate until the sun blew out and the sky cracked and the seas boiled and the people dried up and turned to dust and bleay So the shaman-priestess went and divined some more, and the people under the hill told her to kill a black dog and skin it and use the skin to , and a cooking pot So she did, and then the people under the hill h to hold all of the village and all of the people under the hill and mountains and forests and seas and rivers and lakes and orchards and a sky and stars and spirits and fabulous ons and dryads and ods that the Baldeziwurlekistanians and the people under the hill worshipped

"Your purse is !"

"Little dear pet," Zofia said, looking wistful "Dog is delicious To Baldeziwurlekistanians, dog is a delicacy"

Before the raiding party arrived, the village packed up all of their belongings andThe clasp was made out of bone If you opened it one way, then it was just a purse big enough to hold a chicken and an egg and a clay cooking pot, or else a pair of reading glasses and a library book and a pillbox If you opened the clasp another way, then you found yourself in a little boat floating at the mouth of a river On either side of you was forest, where the Baldeziwurlekistanian villagers and the people under the hillthe wrong way, though, you found yourself in a dark land that suardian of the purse (the dog whose skin had been been sewn into a purse) lived The guardian had no skin Its howl made blood come out of your ears and nose It tore apart anyone who turned the clasp in the opposite direction and opened the purse in the wrong way

"Here is the wrong way to open the handbag," Zofia said She twisted the clasp, showing me how she did it She opened the mouth of the purse, but not very wide and held it up to , and listen for a second"

I put , but not too near I didn’t hear anything "I don’t hear anything," I said

"The poor dog is probably asleep," Zofia said "Even nightot expelled, everybody at school called Jake Houdini instead of Jake Everybody except for me I’ll explain why, but you have to be patient It’s hard work telling everything in the right order

Jake is smarter and also taller than most of our teachers Not quite as tall as rade Jake has always been in love with rade, even before we ever met It took rade, Jake knew everything already, except how toIt made me so mad that I kicked him in the knee When that didn’t work, I threw his backpack out of theof the school bus That didn’t work either, but the next year Jake took some tests and the school decided that he could skip fourth and fifth grade Even I felt sorry for Jake then Sixth grade didn’t work out When the sixth graders wouldn’t stop flushing his head down the toilet, he went out and caught a skunk and set it loose in the boy’s locker roo to suspend him for the rest of the year, but instead Jake took two years off while his mother home-schooled him He learned Latin and Hebrew and Greek, horite sestinas, how to e, and even how to knit He learned fencing and ballrooht movie about Civil War reenactors who play extre off cannons He started learning how to play guitar He even wrote a novel I’ve never read it--he says it ful

When he came back two years later, because his mother had cancer for the first tirade He was still way too sure out how to fit in Plus he was good at soccer and he was really cute Did I irl in school had a crush on Jake, but he used to come home after school with me and play Scrabble with Zofia and ask her about Baldeziwurlekistan

Jake’s s and knock-knock jokes When ere in ninth grade, she had cancer again When she died, Jake ss That was the first funeral I ever went to A fewteacher out on a date They got ht after the school expelled Jake for his AP project on Houdini That was the first wedding I ever went to Jake and I stole a bottle of wine and drank it, and I threw up in the swi pool at the country club Jake threw up all over e and the people under the hill lived happily every after for a feeeks in the handbag, which they had tied around a rock in a dry hich the people under the hill had determined would survive the earthquake But soain and see as going on in the world Zofia was one of the, but when they ca and their village was ruins and cru the handbag, until they cae, one that they’d never seen before Everyone in that village was packing up their belongings and leaving, which gave Zofia and her friends a bad feeling It see

They followed the refugees, who see, and finally everyone came to a city Zofia had never seen such a place There were trains and electric lights andeach other Boers decided to cli, but Zofia volunteered to stay in the world and look after the handbag She had fallen in love withman, a Russian deserter

Zofia and the Russian deserter married and had many adventures and finally came to America, where my mother was born Now and then Zofia would consult the tiles and talk to the people who lived in the handbag and they would tell her how best to avoid trouble and how she and her husband could make some money Every now and then one of the Baldeziwurlekistanians, or one of the people frorocery shopping, or to a movie or an amusement park to ride on roller coasters, or to the library

The ave her husband, the more money they , because he could see that there was so odd about it, but Zofia told hian to spy on Zofia, and saw that strangein and out of the house He became convinced that either Zofia was a spy for the Coht and he drank more and more, and finally he threay her divination tiles "Russians ht while Zofia was sleeping, her husband opened the bone clasp and cliht he’d left ht he’d left me and your mother and taken off for California Not that Idinners and cleaning house for someone else It’s better to cook what I want to eat, and clean up when I decide to clean up It was harder on youra father That was the part that I minded most

"Then it turned out that he hadn’t run away after all He’d spent one night in the handbag and then coain twenty years later, exactly as handsoiven him all the quarrels We made up and it was all very ro, he went and kissed your h his visit, on the cheek, and then he cliain for another twenty years The last time he showed up, ent to see ‘Star Wars’ and he liked it soto tell everyone else about it In a couple of years they’ll all show up and want to see it on video and all of the sequels too"