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ould never grow to shaone out and a fish in a great glass bohich owed her yet tishes Their ga to them and sat them to tea with amber cups they could not help but break, and scolded the heads onto her breast and all exclaientleness of spirit and purity of heart could chare of monsters

She did not charm me

After atte with her while she did her sewing, she declared with great sadness that the beast she had narotesque beyond salvation, and that I should be sent away, for I was surely, in my unfathohterhouse or si shoved off the platforms into the narrow spit of sea, but whatof her virtue?

When she and her escort had gone, a sainst the door fraht, and I saw that it was a girl like the other one, and lost interest—save that she ca a strand of black beads from her throat, put her own amber key into the lock, and opened the amber door

“Poor Grotteschi Do you see these beads? When amber is burned to olden oil pours dutifully into the catch No one wants it It is garbage I, too, am what is left over from her, what is throhen she has passed over it, what remains in the corners when she has swept by”

She put her hands to the rown, I was the size of a sed My jaould never close quite right again She did not mind my teeth She rubbed my chin and my cheeks, wiped at the hardened blood with the heirl, and I slept in her bed froht on

Even when I was fully grown, she slept curled between my paws and deether we snuck into the libraries at night, and she taught hest shelves, which I could reach for us, stories of lost girls and lost beasts and grotesques like us She brought , so much thicker and richer than the mashed and rotten meat of her sister’s zoo When she beca at herto the athered there to play their flutes or harps They scattered when faced with s, and I padded back to Hind and her black beads I was happy The Sun was high in the sky Happiness, when you look back on it, seems so brief, but then, with her,cedar shadows Until the day she ran into our roo under those black beads, her face flushed with tears I ran to her, and she buried her head in , broken howl—I remember when I howled that way

A pearl fell out of her mouth

THE TALE

OF THE

TWELVE COINS,

CONTINUED

GROTTESCHI’S VOICE HELD US FAST OUT OF HER , but sharp and keen as a plucked harp string

“So no business in Amberabad but to vex my friend, because her father did not like her books or her cakes or her pets What kind of a person fills their larder by punishing other people’s petty complaints?”

Oubliette and I shifted against her tail, and I glanced over at my short-haired friend under my eyelashes