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On the irl in her red cloak

In thatthat outlandish thing into his pack—the girl’s lips were pale and her eyebrohite with snow, her long hair strung with flakes like pearls She held the little jeweled bird with its long blue and gold tail in her hands and did not smile, or raise her eyes He could not be sure if she was crying, but her breath arm and misted on the air

“I do not know any more stories,” she whispered

“What? But you swore to tell me more!”

“There are no more that I can tell”

“But if the tales are over—”

“I did not say they were over I said I did not know any irl picked at the pearly beak of her bird

“I do not understand”

The girl looked up, and the rims of her eyes were red beneath the sweet, inky black of her lids “I told you long ago that I read the tales of my eyes in cast-off mirrors, or in pools and fountains I told you that it was difficult, that I could only read one eye at a time, and that I read theo I told you stories froht I told you all the stories that I could read in those mirrors and fountains and pools I have told thein on one eye and end on another, which cross creases and lashes and twist over each other—these tales I do not know, I cannot tell I cannot close lass They are hidden from me”

The boy opened his ain “But I want to hear more!” he cried

The girl s, slow smile he had never seen before “Will you tell me a story, my prince? Will you read from my closed eyes and let s which are written upon me?”

“But… I can’t do it I can’t tell them the way you can I’m not like you, I don’t kno to tell a tale, I don’t kno to speak in all those voices”

“It is all there, already Please I want to hear the to be told, waiting to be heard I have told you so s—tell me a story, if you are my friend”

The boy was blushing furiously By the firelight he laid out his own cloak on the stiff, ice-scriewine and a slice of hippopotareed was not entirely pleasant, and tasted solaze Finally, the boy leaned forward, until their noses were al He could see, as once before, the lines and letters of her eyes, and the closer he looked into the black, the ed alphabets and sigils He becahted himself like a little ship tossed on a violent ocean He looked again, and the letters were still there, floating, serene His voice was high and quavering as he began, unsure and frightened to his irl

“On a blasted plain where the Stars do not look there blew hot winds like bellow-gusts, and scrub sage crawled over white rock” He read slowly, as if first learning his letters “On this plain hung a great iron cage in a great iron frah it like a woman cut open on a slab…”