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It was a ruby as deep and darkly shaded as a true apple, and at its ebony steh to flutter in the wind

“How shall I eat it, Father?” Urim said

“Put your teeth into it, girl, like a wolf biting into a reindeer’s cheek”

And so the girl did It tasted, she said, of brandy and cider and the reddest berries she had ever known Because she was a good child, she shared the fruit with her sisters, and all of thereed it was lovely, and their father the best of all possible fathers They ate only half, and kept the rest for the dreary winter But foreign produce does not often sit ith the provincial daughters of cattle irls sickened, the jewels in their sto to dissolve

And all the while they sickened, their father grew gray and silver and pock on his cheeks, craters on his arrehite, white as the salt sea of their hoestion, were not weak of will, and between theh to know their father was not their own, and that Shadukiaives, takes and takes and takes Ushmila was overfond of books, and she saw the marks of the Yi on her father Ubalda was overfond of sharp things, scissors and knives and diaht her collection to her sisters It was decided that Urim of the red hair like apple skins and the blue eyes like ht would discover the truth of the ht her father the uneaten half of the Shaduki apple, jeweled and wet

“Father, I am sick, and close to death,” said Uri

The Man Dressed in the Moon srily “Hoonderful,” he said

“Surely you do not mean that, Papa!” cried Urim

“Of course not, ive an old man—his mind runs aithout him sometimes”

Urim cast her eyes down, and mourned her father

“Will you not share this apple with h it hurtsso sweet”

The Man Dressed in the Moon’s face softened as irls, and he folded her into his arhter”

Urim cut a slice of apple for the pocked Yi, and he chewed it with the relish of an alligator sucking the bones of a finch But soon enough he began to cough, and choke, for Urihters of the cattle merchant, Ubalda and Ushray-skinned creature, cutting into hih to kill They had no Griffin’s talon, and could not hope for death Uririnning wildly into the face that had once been her father’s

“Let it never be said,” she cried, “that the daughters of a cattle merchant do not kno to put an animal down!”

THE TALE