Page 20 (2/2)

Mallow knelt She drew her needle and pricked the thuolden hand Slowly, as slowly as he had pushed his fingers into helpless h, and lassy thread appeared Sheup the clurichaun’s feet to his chest and beginning to cry a little despite herself, so exhausted and revolted and determined and sorry was she

“I told you,” she said as she sewed “I didn’t want to muddle in Politicks—and there is always Politicks, even when folk promise it’s just a party, or a revival, or an exhibition of every kind of ic I didn’t want to meet a Fairy boy or dance at Fairy balls I only wanted to read ic Why couldn’t you have been a better King? Why couldn’t you have left that poor world alone? Why couldn’t you have been better?” She hit him with her fist and he did not protest She had not hit him hard

By now, Goldmouth’s knees covered his face He could not speak A very neat seam ran across his nose His eyes pleaded, but Malloent on sewing up the King, stitch by stitch, into a package no bigger than her hand The last of his astrological tattoos showed on the top of it, and she handed the whole thing over to the Red Wind to close away Mallow’s skin dripped starry streaks of royal blood

The girl ould find herself, against long odds, Queen before dinnerti Leopard, at the glittering needle in her hand Then she looked to the empty, hollowed-out city

“Well,” Mallow said, feeling a wave of powerful practicality break on her heart “We’ve got a lot of work to do”

How to Raise a Minotaur

When I was young, I was a minotaur

I grew out of it, of course You can hardly believe it now, I know, such an upstanding young woman, in a blue suit, with a briefcase No one with a briefcase can have such a secret And yet, rew out of your obsessions with dinosaurs and pris and hooves like copper clanging We are not so different

It is not easy to raise a ht, instinctively, compulsively If there is a crystal dish on the table, a minotaur will seize it up and crush it to pieces in her teeth, weeping all the while, helpless to stop herself It is her nature, and though you ought not to punish her for it, you will, and severely She will look at you with huge, bovine eyes, unco so keenly to please you That dark stare will sink you in misery, and you will buy her a lollipop Thus, she will look for sweets after every act of destruction, nose your pockets for sugar, and you ant to hit her, because your araduated froreet your slaps with those sa, hairy jaw

Your friends and colleagues will, of course, question your sexuality A child like that cannot have come from sweet, quiet Dan and Barbara, Caroline and John, Laurence and Janet What, exactly, have you done to deserve such a changeling in your expensive, honest, Aered his boss by trading on company infore!—punished John with such feats of black ic as men of that order are capable of Caroline fell in love with a e theher Laurence, pitiful man, fashioned a co parts so that Janet and her pre-linguistic paraasm, hermetic revelation, and explosive conception while Laurence turned the crank You will have to answer these suburban accusations with aplomb, a smile, and a proffered cocktail Your minotaur will be of no help to you as she sits in the corner and devours her dolls The clock in the hall will tick; she will make plans to eat it later

In school, the minotaur will be unwelco her to a special needs course However, yourhorns, will not be unintelligent That has never been the issue with such children In fact, your minotaur will love to read, will devour, quite literally, whole libraries in an insatiable passion for books She will need glasses by the ti be Of course this is not a generally accepted , but when your minotaur pipes up at breakfast and lists the attributes of cephalopods in alphabetical order, you will have no doubt of its efficacy Unfortunately, third grade teachers are rarely so enlightened When she is discovered with Tolkien halfway down her throat, weeping Elvish declensions, she will be put aside with the other difficult children, in a classrooes You will be sad, but by that ti to show their talents, their bright blond hair, their eager, attentive faces that never contort in paroxysms of bovine pleasure

It will not be long before she starts de youths and istical problein with dolls This will forestall the inevitable The ss for—it is a desire, a demand which comes froressed and atavistic heart She will be satisfied by plastic and cornsilk and eyes that slide open when the head is tilted She will rip off their heads in disturbing ways and line her bed with their bodies You will try counseling, but the Adareeted armth or empathy by a board of professionals Best to keep up a steady supply of dolls while such placebos suffice

With puberty, all things becoo to tell her to come down to dinner and open the door on the football quarterback entangled in her sheets, an expression of horror and need on his face, which will be buried between her brown, vaguely furry breasts Parts of him will be in her mouth—she does not yet really knohat she wants to do with these youths,who finally catches a cat will often just stare at it in confusion His head did not come off easily, so your minotaur made do with the rest of him Next week it will be the chess club, all seven of the she will chose them to kiss, to taste, to s Of course the quarterback will never tell anyone that he laid a hand on the freak from special ed, and the chess club admits to no acquaintance who cannot master the Lasker-Bauer combination, so for awhile, at least, you will be safe Until she starts bringing home cheerleaders

With these girls, theexamples of soccer prowess, after-school activities, 4-H club, even an academic decathlete or two Girls who love horses, the color pink, boyfriends with red cars, ice creae Your minotaur will ply them home with promises of co with the developawk at them, ask them to pet her, to love her They will not understand, and will bring her a drink of water or ask her to work extra-hard on her multiplication tables, unable to comprehend her lectures on calculus and probability When they hug her goodbye, the minotaur will be quite dizzy Eventually, when one is too beautiful for her to bear, your minotaur will bite her Perhaps on the shoulder, perhaps on the hand, or the knee She will not bite hard, at first The 4-H girl will recoil, but then remember her teacher’s advice not to be shocked at anti-social behavior from such a problehter will know such a thrill when her teeth first touch flesh—so like what you felt the first time you tasted vanilla, ran a ether and all at once A terrible rightness will fill her blood The tips of her fingers will tingle, like the first time she ate a book She will try to cover up her act with a kiss, like the ones she gave the boys Most of the girls will not understand Maybe one, maybe till kiss her back, ashamed but excited, and your irls—but it will not be as good as biting, and she will know she is not like any other girl, even the girls who are not like other girls

If you are a perceptive parent, or very well read, you will come to a decision If you are not, well, you have my pity You and your spouse will sit down to the kitchen table amid bank bills and health insurance policies and half a pork roast and say to each other: what else can we do? You will draw up plans: plu, ven