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I learned the word attrition from this man

The recruiter offered his chickens in exchange for another son to fill the ranks

“What use is a boy in a land without eggs?” he reasoned

But my father shook his head and said: “You have taken both iven hter left, who , but of boys there are no more to take”

The recruiter frowned “My King does not approve of wo”

My father shrugged, a half-dead smile on his chilblained face “Then you have no business here”

“No,” I said very quietly “I want to go I will cut my hair and bind up o where ht where they would have fought, and it will not be as though ere together, but it will be near enough to it that I can sing to their shades under the branches of I cannot say what trees”

My father and rief-ridden, the other appraising “Kin aze, my own cast toward the earth

They cut ainst a stu at it with a rusty ax I bound my breasts by myself, for modesty’s sake The recruiter put his own heluilt on me I vanished down the walk I asked the recruiter if he thought I looked like a boy

“You look fit tocheerfully, and thus I took my soldier’s n

ah in the sky

It was not a full year before I took , before my chest swelled up and burst like a drum struck with a knife

In the Garden

THE BOY’S FOREHEAD WAS CREASED LIKE A WELL-READ PRAYER BOOK He studied the ernails

“My father has sent many such men out into the world, and they have co after them like baby quail They all look very fine in their uniforms, and I have been prorown”