These were all things which confirmed her opinion of the society she had left behind. Sometimes she laughed wildly; sometimes she spoke to the people she saw in the glass ball, as if they could hear her. By the third day of the week before Reaping, she had ceased her trips to the privy, even though she could carry the ball with her when she went, and the sour stench of urine began to rise from her.

By the fourth day, Musty had ceased coming near her.

Rhea dreamed in the ball and lost herself in her dreams, as others had done before her; deep in the petty pleasures of far-seeing, she was unaware that the pink ball was stealing the wrinkled remains of her anima. She likely would have considered it a fair trade if she had known. She saw all the things people did in the shadows, and they were the only things she cared for, and for them she almost certainly would have considered her life’s force a fair trade.

6

“Here,” the boy said, “let me light it, gods damn you.” Jonas would have recognized the speaker; he was the lad who had waved a severed dog’s tail across the street at Jonas and called, We’re Big Coffin Hunters just like you!

The boy to whom this charming child had spoken tried to hold onto the piece of liver they had copped from the knacker’s behind the Low Market. The first boy seized his ear and twisted. The second boy howled and held the chunk of liver out, dark blood running down his grimy knuckles as he did.

“That’s better,” the first boy said, taking it. “You want to remember who the capataz is, round here.”

They were behind a bakery stall in the Low Market. Nearby, drawn by the smell of hot fresh bread, was a mangy mutt with one blind eye. He stared at them with hungry hope.

There was a slit in the chunk of raw meat. Poking out of it was a green big-bang fuse. Below the fuse, the liver bulged like the stomach of a pregnant woman. The first boy took a sulfur match, stuck it between his protruding front teeth, and lit it.

“He won’t never!” said a third boy, in an agony of hope and anticipation.

“Thin as he is?” the first boy said. “Oh yes he will. Bet ye my deck of cards against yer hosstail.”

The third boy thought it over and shook his head.

The first boy grinned. “It’s a wise child ye are,” he said, and lit the big-bang’s fuse. “Hey, cully!” he called to the dog. “Want a bite o’ sumpin good? Here ye go!”