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Ta it like a Ger too loud It turned its bell up to her lovingly She looked back over her shoulder at hi down her back, her face framed by the spires of a distant city beyond the forest she’d drawn, a city of ht just be made all of cloth

“Say it, Thomas It’s not a bad word, it’s not Say e are”

The troll in Thohed and wept and wrote the word over and over on the walls of his heart, on his ribs, on the insides of his eyelids

“Please?” Ta” Green tears welled in her eyes “Tell me I’m not alone”

Thomas put his hands over his face From beneath them, he whispered:

“Changelings”

“Changelings,” she answered, and the gra over and over:

Ain’t we got fun?

CHAPTER VIII

PLEASE BE WILD AND WONDERFUL

In Which Tho), Learns How a Piece of Wood Becahter, Writes Out a Recipe for Woal Property of a Marsupial

Time ran differently in the Eo home, it could aldo bell could ring at three o’clock and you could play on the swingset and throw a ball against the brick wall of the schoolhouse and still, somehow, not find your way to the Land of After School But you could drag your feet walking hoh the park, kicking a pinecone down the grass while thinking about what it would feel like to be a hippopotamus and take your baths in the Nile and suddenly find yourself there, in the long orange hours before supper, where a hundred games and a thousand jokes can squeeze in

The trick toit last, as Thomas faithfully reported to Inspector Balloon, whose cheerful cover had grown a bald spot and many wrinkles, as befits an old scholar, was to avoid the Eneer than you Teachers would tell you to get on hoest book they could think of just at thatKids, if they had suffered one of the strange and ued their kind and had a mood on, would probably wallop you one or trip you flat Parents would flex their hetti or sweeping the porch or doing math probleled and strove

But the best part of the E ho your parents have got to be away visiting their own exotic countries: the Duchy of Dinner Parties, the Commonwealth of Overtime, Dance-Hall County, the misty and mysterious nations where Grown-Ups venture alone, like the dancing princesses disappearing at night

On this particular evening, Nicholas and Gwendolyn Rood hada rally to benefit one away to war and felt that things ought to have been better when they got back The Country of War was so distant and dreadful that Thoin to make a section for it in Inspector Balloon His father had been there, had lived there, but he would not talk about it Thomas understood that the Country of War casts a spell of silence when you leave it, so that it can keep its awful secrets forever Thoo to the rallies—and today would not be the day he changed his yptian hippos could not drag him out of his house before she arrived