“Liver?” The blind man laughed as well.
“I know, I know. It was a stupid idea. Liver with onions.” Matty made a face.
He set the puppy on the floor again and it dashed off, tail wagging, to growl at the logs piled beside the stove and to chew at their edges where raw wood curled.
“You could ask Leader,” the blind man suggested. “He’s the one who gives true names to people. Maybe he’d do it for a puppy.”
“That’s a good idea. I have to go see Leader anyway. It’s time to take messages around for the meeting. I’ll take the puppy with me.”
Clumsy with his stubby legs and oversized feet, the puppy couldn’t manage the stairs at Leader’s homeplace. Matty picked him up and carried him, then set him on the floor in the upper room where Leader was waiting at his desk. The stacks of messages were ready. Matty could have taken them and left on his errand without pausing. But he lingered. He enjoyed Leader’s company. There were things he wanted to tell him. He began to put them in order in his mind.
“Do you want to put a paper down for him?” Leader asked, watching with amusement as the little thing scampered about the room.
“No, he’s fine. He never has an accident. It was the first thing he learned.”
Leader leaned back in his chair and stretched. “He’ll be good company for you, Matty, the way Branch was.
“Do you know,” he went on, “in the place where I was a child, there were no dogs? No animals at all.”
“No chickens? Or goats?”
“No, nothing.”
“What did you eat, then?” Matty asked.
“We had fish. Lots of fish, from a hatchery. And plenty of vegetables. But no animal meat. And no pets at all. I never knew what it meant to have a pet. Or even to love something and be loved back.”
His words made Matty think of Jean. He felt his face flush a little. “Did you never love a girl?” he asked.
He thought Leader would laugh. But instead the young man’s face became reflective.
“I had a sister,” Leader said, after a moment. “I think of her still, and hope she’s happy.”
He picked up a pencil from the desk, twirled it in his fingers, and gazed through the window. His clear blue eyes seemed to be able to see great distances, even into the past, or perhaps the future.
Matty hesitated. Then he explained, “I meant a girl. Not like a sister. But a—well, a girl.”
Leader put the pencil down and smiled. “I understand what you mean. There was a girl once, long ago. I was younger than you, Matty, but I was at the age when such things begin.”
“What happened to her?”
“She changed. And I did too.”
“Sometimes I think I want nothing to change, ever,” Matty said with a sigh. Then he remembered what he had wanted to tell Leader.
“Leader, I went to Trade Mart,” he said. “I hadn’t been before.”
Leader shrugged. “I wish they’d vote to end it,” he said. “I never go anymore, but I did in the past. It seemed folly and time-wasting. Now it seems worse.”
“It’s the only way to get something like a Gaming Machine.”
Leader made a face. “A Gaming Machine,” he commented with disdain.
“Well, I’d like one,” Matty grumbled. “But Seer says no.”
The puppy wandered to a corner of the room, sniffed, made a circle of himself, collapsed, and fell asleep. Matty and Leader, together, watched it and smiled.
“It isn’t just Gaming Machines and such.” Matty had wondered how to say it, how to describe it. Now, into the silence, as they watched the sleeping puppy, he found himself simply blurting it out. “Something else is happening at Trade Mart. People are changing, Leader. Mentor is.”
“I’ve seen the changes in him,” Leader acknowledged. “What are you telling me, Matty?”
“Mentor has traded away his deepest self,” Matty said, “and I think that others are, too.”
Leader leaned forward and listened intently as Matty described what he had seen, what he suspected, and what he knew.
“Leader gave me a name for him, but I don’t know if I like it.”
Matty was back home by lunchtime, after delivering the last of the messages. The blind man was at the sink, washing some clothes.
“And what is it?” he asked, turning toward Matty’s voice.
“Frolic.”
“Hmmmm. It has a nice sound to it. How does the puppy feel about it?”
Matty lifted the puppy from where it had been riding, curled up inside his jacket. For most of the morning it had followed him, scampering at his heels, but eventually its short legs had tired, and Matty had carried it the rest of the way.
The puppy blinked—he had been asleep in the jacket—and Matty set him on the floor.
“Frolic?” Matty said, and the puppy looked up. His tail churned.
“Sit, Frolic!” Matty said. The puppy sat instantly. He looked intently at Matty.
“He did!” Matty told the blind man in delight.
“Lie down, Frolic!”
After a flicker of a pause, the puppy reluctantly sank to the floor and touched the rug with his small nose.
“He knows his true name already!” Matty knelt beside the puppy and stroked the little head. “Good puppy,” he said. The big brown eyes gazed up at him and the spotted body, still sprawled obediently on the floor, quivered with affection.
“Good Frolic,” Matty said.
Nine
There was much talk in Village about the coming meeting. Matty heard it everywhere, people arguing about the petition.
By now, some of the latest group of new ones were out and about, their sores clearing up, their clothes clean and hair combed, frightened faces eased, and their haunted, desperate attitudes changing to something more serene. Their children played, now, with other children of Village, racing down the lanes and paths in games of tag and hide-and-seek. Watching them, Matty remembered his own child self, his bravado and the terrible anguish it had concealed. He had not believed anyone would want him, ever, until he came to Village, and even then he had not trusted in its kindness for a long time.
With Frolic scampering at his heels, Matty made his way toward the marketplace to buy some bread.
“Good morning!” he called cheerfully to a woman he encountered on the path. She was one of the new ones, and he remembered her from the recent welcome. Her eyes had been wide in her gaunt face that day. She was scarred, as if by untended wounds, and one arm was held crookedly, so that it was awkward for her to do things.
But today she looked relaxed, and was making her unhurried way along the path. She smiled at Matty’s greeting.
“Stop it, Frolic! Down!” Matty scolded his puppy, who had jumped to grab and tug at the frayed edge of the woman’s skirt. Grudgingly Frolic obeyed him.
The woman leaned down to pat Frolic’s head. “It’s all right,” she said softly. “I had a dog once. I had to leave him behind.” She had a slight accent. Like so many of the people in Village, she had brought her way of speaking from her old place.
“Are you settling in?”