"Yes, ma'am."

"Oooh, and polite! I didn't expect that from a filthy feral boy. Would you like another sandwich?"

Nathan gave her a vigorous nod.

The three of them stood in the kitchen as Nathan ate two-and-a-half sandwiches and drank three full gla.s.ses of apple juice. If they were going to murder him, Nathan figured that they would have gotten around to it by now, so he relaxed.

"We have to figure out what do with you," said Penny. "But the first thing we have to do is clean you up."

She used very hot water and had a painfully firm grip on the sponge, but it felt like torture with a purpose, as opposed to the mindless beatings of Bernard Steamspell. Penny washed his face and his ears and between his toes and scrubbed until he felt like he might not have any skin left, though he could clearly see that he did, and no veins had come loose. When she'd removed the dirt from every visible part of him, she gave him the sponge and left the bathroom so he could finish the job.

What a wonderful day this had been!

He looked at himself in the mirror and grinned.

Then he frowned. He might be clean from head to toe, but he was still a monster.

Penny and Mary were sitting on the living room couch, and smiled at him as he walked in. He didn't smile back.

"Do you feel better?" Penny asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good. So, Nathan, we've been wondering about something. Would you mind so terribly if we took a closer look at your teeth?"

SEVEN.

Nathan wanted to cry. This was the end of their kindness. Should he run now, before they could shoot him or throw things at him, or should he keep his mouth tightly closed in hopes of receiving another hour or two of generous behavior?

He did neither.

Instead, he opened his mouth.

Not all at once. First he gradually lifted his upper lip, exposing the top row of teeth a fraction of a millimeter at a time. Then he exposed the lower row. Penny and Mary watched him, their faces betraying no emotion.

With his teeth fully revealed to the sisters, Nathan just stood there, his ears ringing and his stomach hurting.

Finally, Penny spoke: "Goodness..."

"What happened?" asked Mary. "Did somebody do that to you?"

Nathan shook his head. "I was born this way."

"Goodness..." Penny repeated.

"We could tell that there was something unusual about them," said Mary, "but we never suspected this."

"Are you frightened?" Nathan asked.

Mary laughed. "Of a little boy like you who came to us starving and covered in mud?"

"That's not what I meant. I don't want you to be scared, I just thought that you might be, is all."

"No, we're not scared," said Penny. "Mystified, but not scared. May we see them closer?"

Nathan walked over to the couch and opened his mouth wide. He had to trust them. They'd treated him so nicely. They couldn't reject him now, could they?

"Incredible," said Mary. "It's not just the front ones. I would think that it would be difficult to chew with that kind of arrangement, although I suppose if you never knew differently it wouldn't be such a challenge."

"May I touch them?" Penny asked.

Nathan nodded.

"And do you promise not to bite me while I satisfy my curiosity?"

Nathan nodded again.

Penny put the tip of her index finger into his mouth and tapped it against one of his front teeth. She winced and withdrew her finger. "Ow. They're as sharp as they look."

"I'm sorry," said Nathan.

"Oh, it's not your fault. We should be the ones to apologize. We're gawking, and that's impolite. You may close your mouth now."

Nathan closed his mouth.

"Well, Nathan, you've certainly made it an interesting day for us. I suppose we'll need to take you to whomever it is that deals with lost little boys, but I'm sure it's been a tiring day for you, and you don't want to sit and watch adults do a lot of paperwork on your behalf. Would you like to stay with us until tomorrow morning?"

"Yes, I would," said Nathan, almost weeping with relief. "I really would."

They all sat together on the couch, and Nathan told them about his adventures and tragedies. They looked sorrowful as he talked about the death of his parents, and angry as he told them about life at the orphanage, and astonished as he spoke of living alone in the forest. (They believed the forest part of his story in general, but a.s.sumed that it actually took place over a much shorter timeframe than what Nathan claimed. After all, young boys were p.r.o.ne to exaggeration.) "What did you say the other boys called you?" Penny asked.

Nathan lowered his head. "Fangboy."

"What a ridiculous nickname. Fangs are the teeth on the upper corners. You'd think that if they were going to make your life miserable, they could at least do it accurately."

"You're not going to send me back there, are you?" Nathan asked.

"Absolutely not. We won't lie and say that we know exactly what's to become of you, but I promise you will never have to go back to that dreadful place ever again."

"Thank you."

Mary had been trying unsuccessfully for the past twenty-five seconds to remove a twig from Nathan's hair, and finally gave up. "I give very poor haircuts," she said, "but they're better than what you've got. Should I give it a try?"

"Yes, please."

When they were finished, Nathan had to admit that Mary was right, it was a bad haircut, uneven and lacking the minimum amount of style to even satisfy a seven-year-old boy. Still, it no longer itched, and he was happy she'd done it, even with her constant jokes about how she expected to find a bird's nest contained therein.

They sat on the couch and talked some more.

"Have your husbands died?" Nathan asked.

Penny laughed. "I was engaged once, over twenty years ago, when I was only eighteen. We were going to get married and have six children, three boys and three girls. But he left me at the altar and broke my heart."

"Didn't any other men want you?" As soon as Nathan blurted that out, he realized how horrible it sounded. Penny laughed again before he could apologize.

"Four other men have asked me to marry them during my life. I turned them all down. One was a drunkard, one was a liar, one was inadequately intelligent, and one was..." She looked a bit sad. "One was a mistake."

"Have five men asked to marry you?" Nathan asked Mary.

Penny didn't let Mary answer. "My sister is a beautiful woman who only wishes to marry another beautiful woman."

Nathan raised an eyebrow. "That's an odd sort of thing."

"I suppose it can be to some people. Not that it matters. Mary is so unspeakably picky that she will never find a mate that meets her standards, and so she is unfortunate enough to live with me." Penny gave Mary a playful swat on the shoulder.

Mary smiled. "She speaks the truth. But sisters get along better than any husband and wife, so why not?"

After talking some more, they had a delicious dinner of pork roast, carrots, and rye bread. Nathan had formerly liked neither carrots nor rye bread, but he thoroughly enjoyed these. They ate, talked and laughed. Then Penny and Mary let Nathan read a book about a loving rabbit while they did the dishes.

Then they played card games. The sisters taught Nathan how to play Hearts, and he taught them how to play Exploding Nines, which he made up on the spot and which lacked a logical endgame but was a lot of fun for everybody.

They offered Nathan a bar of chocolate for dessert, but he declined.

He slept on the couch under a clean, thick blanket, feeling warm and happy.

Nathan woke up to the sound of a sizzling pan and the smell of eggs cooking in the kitchen. He immediately knew that it was going to be a wonderful morning, until he remembered that the sisters were going to send him away.

He didn't want to leave. He liked it here.

He tried to think of ways to make them keep him around. Were there any handcuffs in the general vicinity? If so, he could handcuff himself to something, swallow the key, and they'd be forced to let him live with them at least through his next digestive cycle.

Or he could make an absolute pig out of himself at breakfast, eating so much that the sisters would be physically unable to lift him from the couch. Nathan wasn't sure how many eggs were required for such a thing, but he was prepared to eat as many as it took.

Was he overthinking this? Maybe a good old fashioned temper tantrum was the answer. He could kick and scream and wail "No! No! I'm not leaving!" until they finally gave up and let him live with them forever.

Or he could just ask.

When should he do it? After breakfast? When would they be most receptive to having a child stay in their home? Should he do it right now, before he accidentally did something bad that might make them want to get rid of him?

"Good morning, sleepyhead," said Mary, walking into the living room. "Admit it, that couch was more comfortable than the cold forest dirt, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yes."

"Do you like eggs?"

"Yes! Even when they're cooked strangely."

"Well, then, let's have some eggs."

Nathan ate enough eggs to exhaust two hens, along with some b.u.t.tered toast and orange juice. And then without thinking about it much, he blurted out: "May I stay with you? Just for a while longer?"

Penny gave him a sorrowful look. "Is n.o.body worried about you?"

Nathan shook his head.

"If it were up to us, you could stay as long as you liked. But there are legal procedures that must be followed. We can't just let a strange little boy live with us without first contacting the authorities. We could be arrested for kidnapping. And for all we know you have an aunt who has cried herself to sleep every night for the past year. You understand, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

He understood. The sisters could not be expected to risk spending the rest of their lives in prison for him.

They a.s.sured him that everything was going to be all right, and then drove him into town. Nathan had only been in an automobile a couple of times, and never gone far, so the fourteen mile trip into town was filled with awe and wonder, and when they got out of the vehicle Nathan found himself making silly car noises as they walked into the police station.

They waited for nearly an hour before a uniformed police officer welcomed them back into his office. There were only two chairs, excluding the one that Officer Danbury sat on behind his desk, so Nathan stood.

Penny cleared her throat. "We'd like to report the finding of a Mr. Nathan Pepper."

"Nathan Pepper, hmmm?" Officer Danbury looked up at the ceiling, as if the answer to his fleeting thought might be dancing around up there. "Name doesn't sound familiar. How long was he missing?"

"About a year."

"That long? I need to warn you, in missing child cases that take so long to resolve, the parents have often procreated a replacement. You're not the jealous type, are you, Nathan?"

"No, sir."

Officer Danbury opened a thick, dusty book and began to flip through the pages. "Let's see...ah, look at this, I turned to it on the fourth try. Nathan Pepper. Apparently you're dead."

"But I'm not," Nathan insisted.

"Well, you know that, and I knew that the moment you walked into my office, but according to my official Missing Children Cases logbook, you were reported as deceased by a Bernard Steamspell of Bernard Steamspell's Home For Unfortunate Orphans. It lists your cause of death as 'Eaten.' I a.s.sume that was meant to indicate that you were eaten by some sort of animal, and not that anybody is confessing to cannibalism."

"But I wasn't eaten."

"Obviously. I may not be the most perceptive cop in the department, and in fact I've been told time and again that my skills in that area are inadequate, and it tends to be a sticking point each year when it's time for my performance review, which is frustrating because it has a negative impact on my pay raise, and even with a generous raise I'd still be just barely sc.r.a.ping by, what with my wife and three children, and though I try to raise my awareness of the world around me much of it remains a blur, something that actually got worse with medication, but despite this lack of perceptive abilities I can clearly see that you were not eaten."

"Good."

"Is it? When I was your age I would've loved to have everybody think I'd been eaten. I would have milked that for weeks. Then I would have twisted my arm behind my back and said 'It's okay, they only got one limb!' Have you ever seen that trick where you can pretend to shove your thumb into the soft spot in the back of somebody's head? Sorry, I'm getting off the subject. Look at that, you were from the original Bernard Steamspell orphanage. You're a long way from home. That was the village of Hammer's Lost. This is the town of Giraffe Pond, a town which those into trivia have often noted contains no pond and few giraffes. There's a goodly distance between the two."