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"Stories?" She leafed through the pages as if expecting the words to fall out "What stories? Have you told theently took the book froe where she had opened it His oords looked back at hio that they sounded like someone else’s work

"What kind of a story is it? Will you tell it to me?"

He stared at his old words, written by a different Fenoglio, a Fenoglio whose heart had been so nora Loredan would add

Great marvels lay north of Ombra Hardly any of its inhabitants had ever set eyes on those wonders, but the songs of the strolling players told tales about them and when the peasants wanted to escape their toil in the fields for afew preciouson the banks of the lake, which, so it was said, the giants used as their ht to live in it rising fro them away to castles made of pearls and mother-of-pearl As the sweat ran down their faces they would sing softly, songs that told of snohite hty tree when the giants had begun stealing their children

Nestsatheir children Good heavens, that was it!

Fenoglio picked up Jasper and put him on Despina’s shoulder "Jasper will take you back to your o to the Prince"

Signora Loredan is right, he thought as he h the crowd of excited children, weepingaround helplessly You’re a foolish old man Your befuddled brain doesn’t even remember your own stories anymore! Orpheus may well know more about your oorld than you do by now

But his vain self, lurking somewhere between his forehead and his breastbone, answered back at once How are you supposed to relio?

There are just too ination is inexhaustible

Yes Yes, he was indeed a vain old ood reasons for his vanity

CHAPTER 51

THE WRONG HELPERS

Mortola was perching in a poison yew, surrounded by needles nearly as black as her plu hurt Orpheus’s servant had alers, and only her beak had saved her She’d pecked his ugly nose until it bled, but she hardly kne she had ed to flutter out of the tent She had been able to fly only short distances since then, but even worse, she couldn’t change back fro time since she had sed any of the seeds

How long since she had taken hupie didn’t count days; the Magpie thought of nothing but beetles and worms (ah, plump, pale worms!), winter and wind and the fleas in her feathers