Slowly he pieced together what Dallen was trying to tell him. That he had been picked out by Dallen to do this thing, because there was something in him that made him right for a task that was going to last a lifetime. That the something was partly what made him give Burd that bread—and many other kindnesses he had done for the other kiddies. That was the complex matter on which all the rest of it rested. It seemed that what he was trying to do—if he understood correctly—was to make things fair.

Which made no sense.

“But life ain’t fair—” he protested, having heard that over and over again, with varying degrees of smugness on the part of the Pieters’ boys.

:Why not?: Dallen asked, stopping him in his tracks.

“Because—because it ain’t!” was all he could come up with. It was true. Everyone knew it. Why try and go against what was true?

:And the more people that say that, the more people there are who use that as their excuse to be cruel, mean, and ugly,:

Dallen said implacably. :‘Life isn’t fair’ is nothing but an excuse people make to justify bad things they do. But why shouldn’t life be fair? What’s keeping it from being fair? Those same cruel, mean, and evil people. I think you understand that, Mags—maybe not in your head, but in your heart, which is more important. And the more people there are who try to make life fair, the more likely it is that it will become fair. Don’t you want that?:

He had to admit that he did. And he had to admit that the idea of making life fair had a kind of thrill to it. Even if all he did was share a piece of bread . . .

But all that was really too much to think about for very long. Even in his dreams, his attention came back to the basics, the simple things. And Dallen was perfectly willing, in his dream, to talk about those, too.

Dallen chuckled with sympathy—but promised that he was never, ever going to be hungry again, or cold, or ill-clothed, or dirty. Mags could not quite understand how Dallen could be so very sure of this, but the memories that the Companion shared with him seemed to have no room in them for anything but belief. The idea that he could eat whenever he wanted, as much as he wanted . . . it was like one of those paradises that priest kept mouthing about, but which, of course, he did not believe in. But this, this was real. The soup, the bread had been real. The other food on the table had been real. The clothing they had given him, the bed he was sleeping in now, were real.