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Out of thisboard, and onto it slowly spat coin after coin, dull and yellohite, clunking dully onto the black wood

Perhaps once, in the long past of Marrohen they knew all possible things, the machine, the Mint, had moved of its own accord, but now small hands pressed and pulled and shoved at its every corner, turned its every gear, drew up its every dowel and thrust it down again Furtive dark eyes glea their limbs to the apparatus so that it could , halting pace Thin hands sat on our shoulders like owls’ feet, and thin fingers curled around our chins, holding our faces fast toward the creaking thing

“The living work,” came a whisper which see—but who could be sure a throats?

Satisfied thatthethose dark eyes and pale hands, ere led, all in a line, the newest children of the Mint, to a long narrow rooh page-turned rafters All along the walls lay little beds, turned down neatly, their coverlets thin as a cough and fluttering lightly as the gales rushed by outside The Pra-Ita urged us all toward theirls we each filed in, found a bed, and curled away fro-necked creatures On each pilloas a sliver of glassy stuff—I licked it under erly intolike black tea, soared bread crusts I savored it, its juice running down my throat Then I remembered Vhummim, and her city before it was ray half-light It gleamed and shimmered, scarlet, pink, rose

They had given us rubies Shaved and slivered down enough to feed a dozen children I looked overus suckle the geryus eat I was too hungry to refuse to give them what they wanted: I pushed the cherry-colored stone back onto ht I shuddered and turned away again until I heard the door shut like hands clasping each other in prayer

We were alone In the in When the darkness ca, I crawled out ofthe dark little heads one which was bristled and shorn: my friend, my Oubliette She opened the corner of her pitiful blanket to me, and I climbed in beside her We clutched desperately at each other, each trying to steal the other’s warh to steal, and finally we si very hard not to be terrified

“Did you see ent into the machine?” I asked

She shook her head

“Did you see what came out?”

She nodded

The roo of other children, eons I didn’t knohat else to say She didn’t cry, like the others, she just stared, and everywhere she stared seeaze

“What happened to your hair?” I said finally, quiet as a thief with his hand on a coffer

As if in answer, she took ers, and drew it around her waist to rest against her shoulder blades What I touched was not flesh, not flesh, but bark, and wood, and hard, twining vines with berries like knuckles She was a child in my arms, yes, the front of her skinny and hard-used but still pretty and certainly a girl—but her back fronarled and hollow tree, half dead, petrified into gray and sallow stone The only war around her was a thick, long tail, a heifer’s dun tail, ending in a soft tuft of fur She would not look at me

“Now you see what I ahosts took me…”

THE