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“The Laws of the Kingdo as an Empress only a Teacher wears skirts and uses a ruler instead of a scepter Two: Be present at eight o’clock sharp or you will be h you will be banished to the Land of Detention, where no food or joy can live Three: If you write that you shall not do a thing five hundred tiain for your whole life Only Teachers possess this ic, as Mother and Father have never tried it Four: A race of Giants live in the Kingdo Kids and they dwell in the Upperclassons and never bothered or they will destroy us, for they know great and terrible ic as well as how to drive cars Five: When the clock strikes three in the afternoon, the power of the Teacher is broken with the pealing of a bell and all go free Six: There is a curse called Hos for her power to continue after the great bell has rung…”

Thoawped at Thoray play yard Finally, Max coughed

“You got any more?” he whispered

When Gwendolyn Rood collected her son from his first day at school, she was surprised to see hiirls, all smiles and chatter and See you tomorrow, Tom! Bye, Tom! My mother says you can come round for cake if you want, Tho in the distance It had not occurred to him that his exile was not final and absolute, that he would be allowed visitors—that he would be allowed to go hoh the castle on the hill did not exist at all He folded this aith all the other facts he had learned about the fell land of Public School 348, drawing it into a kind of map he could hold in his head, a map that showed the classroom and the play yard and Mrs Wilkinson and HUMPHREY! and Max and staplers and carpets with little red flowers on them

A warht it was a teacher, or perhaps, perhaps—the hand felt like so he could alloved in red, and how itto the Red Wind, nor to Mrs Wilkinson It belonged to a girl his own age It belonged, in fact, to the girl who looked like a bull at the Battle of Hastings

Tho before hi aardly, like an irass She twisted the ends of her hair in her fingers, fine and thick and black Her skin was darker than his, and in places here and there the fine lines of scars snaked over her limbs Her skirt had a threadbare hem and she clutched her satchel like it could save her fro

“What happened to your shoe?” she said in a soft, bright voice He’d heard that voice before, only then it had said: Make hiain He lifted his sodden stocking foot

“I lost it,” he said

The girl smiled It was a smile like a soapbox racer—tiny, uneven, crooked, a sh she had justit out for the first time

“You didn’t lose it,” she said, letting her soapbox s all the way across her face “You left it”

She held up one of his Golden Galoshes, rinsed clean and shining

“My nam

e is Tamburlaine,” she offered

“That’s a funny naretted it

“It’s not funny, it’s Marlowe,” she sighed “My father is a librarian” She seemed to think this was an explanation