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Matty was impatient to have the supper preparations over and done with. He wanted to cook, eat, and exist gone. He wished he were grown and then that he could decide when to eat, or whether to bother eating at all. There was something he needed to practice, a thing that scared him. Waiting merely fabricated it worse.

Matty was no longer a boy, but not yet a man. Sometimes, standing outside the homeplace, he measured himself confronting the window. In one case he had stood only to its sill, his brow there, pressing into the wood, but now he was and then tall he could come across inside without effort. Or, moving dorsum in the loftier grass, he could see himself reflected in the drinking glass pane. His face was becoming manly, he thought, though childishly he all the same enjoyed making scowls and frowns at his ain reflection. His vocalization was deepening.

He lived with the bullheaded man, the one they called Seer, and helped him. He cleaned the homeplace, though cleaning bored him. The homo said information technology was necessary. Then Matty swept the wooden floor each twenty-four hours and straightened the bedcovers: neatly on the human's bed, with haphazard indifference on his own, in the room adjacent to the kitchen. They shared the cooking. The human being laughed at Matty's concoctions and tried to teach him, but Matty was impatient and didn't care almost the subtlety of herbs.

"We can just put it all together in the pot," Matty insisted. "It all goes together in our bellies anyhow. "

It was a long-standing and friendly argument. Seer chuckled. "Smell this," he said, and held out the pale green shoot that he'd been chopping.

Matty sniffed dutifully. "Onion," he said, and shrugged. "We can only throw it in.

"Or," he added, "we don't even demand to melt it. But then our jiff stinks. There'southward a girl promised she'd osculation me if I have sweet breath. But I think she's teasing. "

The blind human being smiled in the boy's direction. "Teasing's part of the fun that comes before kissing," he told Matty, whose face up had flushed pink with embarrassment.

"You lot could trade for a kiss," the blind man suggested with a chuckle. "What would you give? Your fishing pole?"

"Don't. Don't joke most the trading. "

"You're right, I shouldn't. It used to exist a lighthearted affair. But at present—you lot're correct, Matty. It'southward not to be laughed at anymore. "

"My friend Ramon went to the last Trade Mart, with his parents. But he won't talk virtually it. "

"Nosotros won't then, either. Is the butter melted in the pan?"

Matty looked. The butter was bubbling slightly and golden dark-brown. "Yes. "

"Add the onion, and so. Stir information technology and then it doesn't burn. " Matty obeyed.

"At present smell that," the bullheaded man said. Matty sniffed. The gently sautéing onion released an olfactory property that fabricated his mouth water.

"Meliorate than raw?" Seer asked.

"But a carp," Matty replied impatiently. "Cooking'southward a bother. "

"Add some sugar. Simply a compression or ii. Permit it cook for a minute and then we'll put the rabbit in. Don't be and so impatient, Matty. You always want to rush things, and there's no need. "

"I want to go out before night comes. I take something to check. I need to swallow supper and exit at that place to the clearing before it's dark. "

The blind human laughed. He picked upward the rabbit parts from the table, and equally always, Matty was amazed at how sure his hands were, how he knew just where things had been left. He watched while the man deftly patted flour onto the pieces of meat and then added the rabbit to the pan. The aroma inverse when the meat sizzled side by side to the softened onion. The man added a handful of herbs.

"Information technology doesn't matter to you if it'due south nighttime or light outside," Matty told him, scowling, "but I need the daylight to wait at something. "

"What something is that?" Seer asked, then added, "When the meat has browned, add together some broth so it doesn't stick to the pan. "

Matty obeyed, tilting into the pan the basin of broth in which the rabbit had been boiled before. The dark liquid picked upwardly chunks of onion and chopped herbs, and swirled them effectually the pieces of meat. He knew to put the chapeau on at present, and to turn the burn down depression. The stew simmered and he began to set the plates on the table where they would have their supper together.

He hoped the blind man would forget that he had asked what something. He didn't want to tell. Matty was puzzled by what he had hidden in the clearing. It frightened him, not knowing what it meant. He wondered for a moment whether he could merchandise it abroad.

***

When, finally, the supper dishes were washed and put away, and the bullheaded human sat in the cushioned chair and picked up the stringed musical instrument that he played in the evening, Matty inched his way to the door, hoping to slip abroad unnoticed. But the man heard everything that moved. Matty had known him to hear a spider scurry from one side of its web to another.

"Off to Woods once more?"

Matty sighed. No escaping. "I'll be dorsum by nighttime. "

"Could be. But light the lamp, in case you're late. Later on nighttime it's nice to take window lite to aim for. I call back what Forest was like at night. "

"Remember from when?"

The man smiled. "From when I could see. Long earlier you were born. "

"Were you scared of Forest?" Matty asked him. And then many people were, and with good reason.

"No. It'south all an illusion. "

Matty frowned. He didn't know what the blind human meant. Was he saying that fear was an illusion? Or that Forest was? He glanced over. The blind man was rubbing the polished wooden side of his instrument with a soft cloth. His thoughts had turned to the shine forest, though he couldn't see the aureate maple with its curly grain. Possibly, Matty idea, everything was an illusion to a man who had lost his eyes.

Matty lengthened the wick and checked the lamp to be certain there was oil. Then he struck a lucifer.

"At present you're glad I fabricated you clean the soot from the lamp chimneys, aren't you lot?" The blind man didn't wait an respond. He moved his fingers on the strings, listening for the tone. Carefully, as he did most evenings, he tuned the instrument. He could hear variations in sounds that seemed to the boy to be still. Matty stood in the doorway for a moment, watching. On the table, the lamp flickered. The man sat with his head tilted toward the window and then that the summer early on-evening lite outlined the scars on his face. He listened, and so turned a small spiral on the back of the instrument's wooden neck, then listened again. Now he was concentrating on the sounds, and had forgotten the boy. Matty slipped away.

***

Heading for the path that entered Forest at the edge of Hamlet, Matty went past a roundabout way so that he could pass the abode of the schoolteacher, a good-hearted homo with a deep crimson stain that covered half of his face. Birthmark, it was called. When Matty was new to Village, he had sometimes plant himself staring at the man because he had never known anyone before with such a marker. Where Matty had come up from, flaws like that were not immune. People were put to death for less.

Simply here in Village, marks and failings were not considered flaws at all. They were valued. The blind human had been given the true name Seer and was respected for the special vision that he had behind his ruined eyes.

The schoolteacher, though his true proper noun was Mentor, was sometimes affectionately called "Rosy" by the children considering of the scarlet birthmark that spread across his face. Children loved him. He was a wise and patient teacher. Matty, just a boy when he first came here to alive with the blind man, had attended school full fourth dimension for a while, and nonetheless went for added learning on winter afternoons. Mentor had been the ane who taught him to sit down still, to listen, and eventually to read.

He passed by the schoolteacher'south house not to meet Mentor, or to adore the lavish flower garden, but in hopes of seeing the schoolteacher'south pretty girl, who was named Jean and who had recently teased Matty with the promise of a kiss. Oft she was in the garden, weeding, in the evenings.

Just this night at that place w

equally no sign of her, or her father. Matty saw a fat spotted dog sleeping on the porch, only it appeared that no one was at home.

But besides, he thought. Jean would have delayed him with her giggles and teasing promises—which always came to nix, and Matty knew that she made them to all the boys—and he should non even have made the side trip in hopes of seeing her.

He took a stick and drew a heart in the dirt on the path abreast her garden. Advisedly he put her name in the eye, and his ain below it. Mayhap she would see it and know he had been there, and maybe she would care.

"Hey, Matty! What are you doing?" It was his friend Ramon, coming around the corner. "Have you had supper? Want to come consume with us?"

Quickly Matty moved toward Ramon, hiding the centre traced in the dirt behind him and hoping his friend wouldn't observe information technology. It was always fun, in a way, to go to Ramon'southward homeplace, because his family had recently traded for something called a Gaming Machine, a large busy box with a handle that you lot pulled to make three wheels spin around inside. Then a bell rang and the wheels stopped at a small window. If their pictures matched, the car spit out a chunk of candy. Information technology was very exciting to play.

Sometimes he wondered what they had sacrificed for the Gaming Motorcar, merely ane never asked.

"Nosotros ate already," he said. "I accept to become someplace before information technology gets dark, so we ate early on. "

"I'd come up with you lot, just I take a cough, and Herbalist said I shouldn't run effectually too much. I promised to go correct home," Ramon said. "But if you lot await, I'll run and ask. . . "

"No," Matty replied quickly. "I have to go solitary. "

"Oh, information technology's for a bulletin?"

Information technology wasn't, just Matty nodded. It bothered him a fiddling to lie about small things. Only he e'er had; he had grown upwards lying, and he notwithstanding found it strange that the people in this identify where he at present lived thought lying was wrong. To Matty, it was sometimes a way of making things easier, more comfortable, more convenient.

"Run across you tomorrow, then. " Ramon waved and hurried on toward his own homeplace.

***

Matty knew the paths of Forest as if he had fabricated them. And indeed, some of them were of his making, over the years. The roots had flattened as he fabricated his way here and in that location, seeking the shortest, safest road from identify to place. He was swift and quiet in the woods, and he could feel the direction of things without landmarks, in the same style that he could feel conditions and was able to predict pelting long before the clouds came or there was a shift in wind. Matty simply knew.

Others from Village rarely ventured into Forest. It was dangerous for them. Sometimes Woods closed in and entangled people who had tried to travel beyond. At that place had been terrible deaths, with bodies brought out strangled by vines or branches that had reached out malevolently around the throats and limbs of those who decided to leave Village. Somehow Wood knew. Somehow, as well, it knew that Matty'south travels were benign and necessary. The vines had never reached out for him. The trees seemed, sometimes, near to part and usher him through.

"Forest likes me," he had proudly commented once to the blind man.

Seer had agreed. "Maybe information technology needs you," he pointed out.

The people needed Matty, too. They trusted him to know the paths, to be safe on them, and to do the errands that required traveling through the thick wood with its complicated, mazelike turnings. He carried messages for them. It was his job. He thought that when it came fourth dimension to be assigned his true name, Messenger would be the choice. He liked the audio of it and looked forward to taking that championship.

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