One time I entered a house through an unlocked back door. I heard voices and laughter. I moved through the kitchen and suddenly found myself standing in a doorway, staring at a family of people having dinner around a long table. Food and silver and glass sparkled everywhere. In the middle was a great, golden roasted bird, perhaps a goose or turkey. I must have surprised them, for all movement stopped as they stared at me while I stared at the table - but not for long. As always, I was the first to move. I believe this was the first rule of life that I learned, though it was a twich in my muscles rather than a thought in my head: Always be the first to move. As long as that happened, they would have to catch up, and I could not be caught.

I snatched the bird by the leg and bolted from the back door before they were out of their seats.

Many green tomatoes dangled from the vine, and two plump red ones. I was still hungry. I pulled off a red tomato, sat myself down cross-legged on the ground, and ate it. The juice spilled down my chin as pickle juice often did on Uri. I picked off the other tomato. As I was eating it, I turned my eyes toward the back of the house. Someone was sitting on the step. A little girl. Watching me.

I never ate with someone watching me, unless it was Uri or the boys. Eating came after running. And yet I didn’t move. I sat there and ate the last red tomato in the city and I watched her watching me. Her elbows were on her knees and her face leaned into her cupped hands. Her hair was curly and the color of bread crust. Her eyes were brown as chestnuts. They were very big.

When I finished eating the tomato I stood and walked off. I didn’t run. When I looked back, she was still watching me. Her round, unblinking eyes made me feel as if I had just become visible, as if I had never been seen before. When I was far from the backyard, I kept looking back.

The abbot shook his head. There really was nothing to say: he led the seekers to the door. And the he would wait, for an hour, or two in the corridor outside. Then he would go back in, and remove the remains of the seeker from the shrine, and inter it in the vaults. And sometimes, which was worse, they would not be dead, although you could not call what was left of them alive, and those unfortunates the Black Friars cared for as best as they could.

“Right,” said Richard. And he smiled, unconvincingly, and added, “Well, lead on, Macduff.”

Brother Fuliginous pulled back the bolts on the door. They opened with a crash, like twin gunshots. He pulled the door open. Richard stepped through it. Brother Fuliginous pushed the door closed behind him, and swung the bolts back into place. He led the abbot back to his chair and placed the cup of tea back in the old man’s hand. The abbot sipped his tea, in silence. And then he said, with honest regret in his voice, “It’s ‘lay on, Macduff,’ actually. But I hadn’t the heart to correct him. He sounded like such a nice young man.”

“Oh fine, fine,” he whispered. “T’ang dynasty indeed. Twelve hundred years old, the finest pottery figurines ever made on this earth. This was created by Kai Lung, finest of potters: there is not a twin to it in existence. Examine the color of the glaze; the sense of proportion; the life…” He was smiling now, like a baby; the innocent smile looked lost and confused on the shady terrain of Mr. Croup’s face. “It adds a little wonder and beauty to the world.”

And then he grinned, too widely, and lowered his face to the figurine, and crushed its head in his teeth, chomping and chewing wildly, swallowing in lumps. His teeth ground the china to a fine powder, which dusted the lower part of his face.

He gloried in its destruction, throwing himself into it with the strange madness and uncontrolled blood lust of a fox in a henhouse. And then, when the statue was nothing but dust, he turned to Mr. Vandemar.