"Yes, I know who you mean. They're a nice family," the blind man said. "So she traded for a Gaming Machine. Did you see her when she was leaving?"
"I think so. She was with some other women and they were laughing as they walked away."
"I thought you said she was with her husband."
"She was, but he walked behind."
"How did she seem?"
"Happy, because she got a Gaming Machine. She was telling her friends that they could come play with it."
"But anything else? Was there anything else about her that you remember, from after the trade, not before?"
Matty shrugged. He was beginning to be bored by the questioning. He was thinking about Jean, and that he might go to see her in the morning. Maybe his puppy would be ready. At least the puppy would be an excuse for a visit. It was healthy now, and growing fast, with big feet and ears; recently he had watched, laughing, when the mother dog had growled at it because it was nipping at her own ears in play.
Thinking of the puppy's behavior reminded Matty of something.
"Something was different," he said. "She's a nice woman, the one who got the Gaming Machine."
"Yes, she is. Gentle. Cheerful. Very loving to her husband."
"Well," said Matty slowly, "when she was leaving, walking and talking with the other women, and her husband behind trying to keep up, she whirled around suddenly and scolded him for being slow."
"Slow? But he's all twisted. He can't walk any other way," the blind man said in surprise.
"I know. But she made a sneering face at him and she imitated his way of walking. She made fun of him. It was only for a second, though."
Seer was silent, rocking. Matty picked up the empty mugs, took them to the sink, and rinsed them.
"It's late," the blind man said. "Time to go to bed." He rose from his chair and put his stringed instrument on the shelf where he kept it. He began to walk slowly to his sleeping room. "Good night, Matty," he said.
Then he said something else, almost to himself.
"So now she has a Gaming Machine," the blind man murmured. His voice sounded scornful.
Matty, at the sink, remembered something. "Mentor's birthmark is completely gone," he called to Seer.
8
The puppy was ready. So was Matty. The other little dog, the one who had been his childhood companion for years, had lived a happy, active life, died in his sleep, and had been buried with ceremony and sadness beyond the garden. For a long time Matty, missing Branch, had not wanted a new dog. But now it was time, and when Jean summoned him—her message was that Matty had to come right away to pick up the puppy, because her father was furious at its mischief—he hurried to her house.
He had not been to Mentor's homeplace since Trade Mart the previous week. The flower garden, as always, was thriving and well tended, with late roses in bloom and fall asters fat with bud. He found Jean there, kneeling by her flower bed, digging with a trowel. She smiled up at him, but it was not her usual saucy smile, fraught with flirtatiousness, the smile that drove Matty nearly mad. This morning she seemed troubled.
"He's shut in the shed," she told Matty, meaning the puppy. "Did you bring a rope to lead him home?"
"Don't need one. He'll follow me. I have a way with dogs."
Jean sighed, set her trowel aside, and wiped her forehead, leaving a smear of earth that Matty found very appealing. "I wish I did," she said. "I can't control him at all. He's grown so fast, and he's very strong and determined. My father is beside himself, wanting such a wild little thing gone."
Matty grinned. "Mentor deals with lots of wild little things in the schoolhouse. I myself was a wild little thing once, and it was he who tamed me."
Jean smiled at him. "I remember. What a ragged, naughty thing you were, Matty, when you came to Village."
"I called myself the Fiercest of the Fierce."
"You were that," Jean agreed with a laugh. "And now your puppy is."
"Is your father home?"
"No, he's off visiting Stocktender's widow, as usual," Jean said with a sigh.
"She's a nice woman."
Jean nodded. "She is. I like her. But, Matty..."
Matty, who had been standing, sat down on the grass at the edge of the garden. "What?"
"May I tell you something troubling?"
He felt himself awash with affection for Jean. He had for a long time been attracted to her girlish affectations, her silly charms and wiles. But now, for the first time, he felt something new. He perceived the young woman behind all those superficial things. With her curly hair tumbling over her dirt-streaked forehead, she was the most beautiful person Matty had ever seen. And now she was talking to him in a way that was not foolish and childlike, designed to entrance, but instead was human and pained and adult. He felt suddenly that he loved her, and it was a feeling he had never known before.
"It's about my father," she said in a low voice.
"He's changing, isn't he?" Matty replied, startling himself, because he had not spelled it out in his mind before, had not said it aloud yet, yet here it was, and he was saying it to Jean. He felt an odd sense of relief.
Jean began to cry softly. "Yes," she said. "He has traded his deepest self."
"Traded?" That part took Matty by surprise because he had not thought it through to there. "Traded for what?" Matty asked in horror, and realized he was repeating the phrase from Trade Mart.
"For Stocktender's widow," she said, weeping. "He wanted her to love him, so he traded. He's becoming taller and straighten The bald spot at the back of his head has grown over with hair, Matty. His birthmark has disappeared."
Of course. That was it. "I saw it," Matty told her, "but I didn't understand." He put his arm around the sobbing girl.
She caught her breath finally. "I didn't know how lonely he was, Matty. If I had known..."
"So that's why..." Matty was trying to sort through it in his head.
"The puppy. Once he would have loved a naughty puppy, Matty, the way he loved you when you were a raggedy boy. I knew it all for certain yesterday when he kicked the puppy. Till then I only suspected." Jean wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and left another endearing streak of dirt.