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The girl’s face remained smooth and implacable as still water “It is only a story,” she said

“My father’s wars bring aqueducts and roads and bathhouses to barbarians”

“I am sure that is true”

“One of my tutors is from a conquered land He tells me that he loves the Palace, and his thick, silken robes, and his children are happy”

“I would not doubt such a s”

The boy frowned ray, stitches of night blue showing through the rough linen clouds

“Sometimes I cliirl confessed quietly “They are handsorow to be so tall The helmets blind me in their rows”

“One day I ear one, and a long, curving sword besides, and no one will bring roosters for me”

The two children were quiet for a moment, and the dull disk of the sun cast fitful shadows on the stones, like hands which cannot quite grasp The girl watched the boy play with his purple bracelet, watched hirackles and lost, bewildered seabirds wheeled and cried over their dark, bent heads, the girl thought it best to siotten all save the hill before him, and his own heavy feet

THE

SOLDIER’S TALE,

CONTINUED

HIS SKIN CAME OFF IN MY HANDS

I never saw the King—I did not expect to, yet a tiny part ofhis troops with raven plumes blown back fro cloistered himself in his castle, it was said, surrounded on all sides by rivers, one white, and one black It sounded like a child’s story, and in the days to co, if ere not si horrors of worm and centipede and mud to keep starvation at our backs because soolden crown

I a’s tale I arander than mine I aeantry and grave consequences for the whole countryside I am just a soldier I do not know those tales