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I put a hand on h I adht ive over whatever you need”

“Ah, there it is You see, I do not trade I s when it is just as easy to take what you want?” He snapped his fingers and a s “I d

o not believe that a tree needs further explanation Immolation is a fate none of us would wish for ourselves Let me in”

Well, what choice had I? Either he would burn it all to the ground, or, if he knewme across the wall and plunder us anyway I walked the roith hih no one but arden I tried to fill his list, which was very strange, and full of herbs as well as fruits, and bark and sap and bits of soil as well I had nearly all of it; I a

But the last, oh, the last

“It should be plain that I do not have an Ixora,” I whispered, refusing toflame he still held in his hand “Surely you would see the smoke if I did”

“But I was told that you have everything that grows under the sun I need the Ixora; without it the rest is useless”

“What do you need all this for?” I asked plaintively, holding back my tears as best I kne

“My dear lady, I a Soht in a glass The rest of us are not so fortunate…”

IT SEEMED CLEAR TO ME LONG AGO THAT IT WAS better to be a wizard than not to be one Better to close oneself into a roolass pot than to scrabble in the dirt for mean roots and carry milk from bony heifers and scratch at your cheeks until they were blood-run as a butcher’s

I could never stop scratching, you see

Fro off as though I could not wait to be out of it, and it itched, oh, it itched, and the scratching never really helped, but I had to do it, I clawed my arms and my chest and my neck,of me that did not burn

Folk gasped when they saw me, a boy deter on my body like bits of paper blown by a harsh wind Doctors and witches and even wizards ca body Finally,clothes and tied my arainst our darew, fed with a pitted spoon: carrot mash and carrot soup, carrots steamed and baked, carrots raw and burnt and beaten into cakes, carrot-blossoreere carrots in our few fields, and allhtened mother

I hung on my boards and my skin crawled My breath becah air When I was no longer a baby but a young boy, and still hung up on the wall like a portrait oflike scales and my hair fell out, but still my flesh itched and scalded and still I could not scratch The lightest waft of carrot-breeze through h es to sear my skin

“Death is at the ,” my father would whisper to reens I looked—but I could see nothing at the grimybut the sickly moon like a seed in a black furrow