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is stored.  That's how the
artisans mark the storage rooms.”
    Artisans?  I’ll ask about that later.   Tommy pointed
at the face of another door.  "No, I mean the symbols above the pictures. 
They look like letters, almost, but I can’t read them."
    "Letters?"
    "Letters in an alphabet."
    "What's an alphabet?"
    They walked quietly for a while, the only sound that of
their footsteps.  "You can’t read can you?" asked Tommy.
    "I can read horses pretty good," Mark replied,
"but that’s not what you mean, is it?"
    "No, it’s not.  It doesn’t matter.  How much
farther?"
    Mark pointed at some markings on the floor.  "We just
passed the three stripes, so two more stripes to go."
    He can count.  I wonder how high?  He would need to count
to work with animals and crops.  No need to read and write, though.
    A half-hour later, they came to a large door covering the
end of the passage. 
    "That’s always locked," Mark said.  "We
passed the stair door."
    A door with picture of a stair below more symbols led them
up to the passage circling the Commons.
    After a brief walk down that passage, Mark opened another
door, this one with a picture of an eye.  "I haven't been here in a while,"
Mark said.  "Sometimes there's something to see, usually not."
     At the end of a long, dimly lit tunnel, they stepped into a
larger room.  A mirror covered the far wall edge to edge and ceiling to floor,
and Tommy saw himself for the first time since his kidnapping. 
    "I'll have to turn out the light for us to see
anything," Mark said, reaching for the light switch.
    "Wait a minute, will you?" Tommy said.
    Who is that person in the mirror?  It has to be me but…  
    The artificial sunlight of the Commons had browned his face
and hands.  He had grown taller, but it was more than that.  He was bigger all
over. 
    He pulled the gray long-sleeved shirt he had been given over
his head. 
    Tommy had never avoided physical activity.  Except for one
period in his life, he usually just had something better to do.  When he was
not at school, he worked on his computer or read.  In his mom’s full-length
mirror, he had been scrawny, with ribs showing like ridges through his skin,
and arms hanging straight down like sticks from his shoulders.  He had never
been bothered by the way he looked, except when one of the jocks at school had
named him "Twig" and taunted him. 
    Actually, he had looked like a smaller, skinnier, version of
his kidnappers.
    If Mark were right, he had been here for almost six months,
working at hard labor every day except this one.  Those months of farm work had
changed him.  The person staring back in the mirror still looked like a boy,
but his arms were muscled and his shoulders were wider.  His chest had filled
out and the ribs didn't poke through his skin.  The waist was small, but not
flabby.
    Mark poked him.  "What are you looking at?" 
    "I'm different."
    "You've always been different."
    "That's not what I meant.  Different from the way I
looked when I was brought here."  He glanced at Mark.  "Could you do
me a favor and take off your shirt?"
    Mark tilted his head and gazed at Tommy for a moment, then
shrugged and complied.
    Mark was muscular--he had to be to work in the barn--but his
narrow shoulders gave him the appearance of a tube with arms and a head
balanced on top.  Just like everyone else Tommy had seen.
    "How old are you, Mark?"
    "Our Priest says I’m fourteen."
    "I was almost fourteen when I was kidnapped.  I must be
fourteen now."  Tommy turned to the mirror.  The top of Mark’s head was
even with Tommy’s eyebrows.  He had definitely grown taller.  "I hope I'm
not hurting your feelings, but why are all of you so small?"
    Mark’s answer was abrupt.  "Because the lords want us
that way."  He put his shirt back on.  "Can I turn off the light
now?"
    At first, the room was completely black, but, as Tommy’s
eyes adjusted, he saw a soft luminance coming from the mirror.  The