I smiled in return; I could not help myself, although like Inclito I suspect her. "If it involves running or wrestling, I beg to be excused. Otherwise I will play any game you wish, for as long as you wish it."

"Oh, I can't run!"

Inclito's mother said, "It's a silly game, really. But we do it because we used to at home. Fava likes it because she always wins."

"I don't! You won yourself last night."

"All of you voted for me out of kindness, " the older woman said.

"They tell stories, " Fava explained to me. "And at the end everybody votes, only you can't vote for your own. The person who wanted to play has to go last."

"Then I invite all of you to play with me, " I said. "I'll need to hear your stories so that I'll know what sort of story I ought to tell."

Fava began to argue, but Inclito's mother silenced her with a trembling finger. "You must go first. I think it's by going last that you win so much."

To me she added, "We mustn't interrupt. That's the chief rule we have in this. If you interrupt, you'll have to pay her a forfeit."

Fava's Adventure: The Washed Child.

This happened two years ago, when a little group of us went to Soldo to visit our relatives there. They had a large farm. It wasn't as large as this one or as rich as this one either, but it was bigger and richer than most of the farms in that part of the whorl. Bigger and richer than most of the farms here, for all of that.

Now the farthest field of that farm was the last plowed land to the east. It was at the foot of a mountain, and beyond it the slope was too steep for plowing. They grazed sheep and goats up there, and the young men went there sometimes to hunt. They wouldn't take me with them, so one fine day I decided I'd go by myself. I didn't have a slug gun or a bow or anything of that sort, because I didn't really want to kill an animal, no matter how fine it was. I have a horror of blood, as most of you know. I can't bear to watch a pig slaughtered or even see ducks killed.