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you, Starlight,” I said.
    “I’m really not, dearest,” he said. “It’s just   ... Well, if I’m cross with anyone, it’s that Greenstone man. He had no business   ...”
    “No business to do what?” Starlight demanded. “To wear bright things? To have a nice face? To give someone a present?”
    Again Dixon looked helplessly at me, and I searched for a word that would describe what the smiley man had done. It would have had to have been a word that meant something like “getting something just by handing over sticks for it.”
    “I’m not sure it was a present” was the best I could manage. “I think it was more like a trade.”
    “A trade? So what did he ask in return?”
    Your heart, Starlight, was what I wanted to say, but I knew it would either make her angrier or put ideas into her head that I didn’t want her to have. And anyway, I was aware there were strangers nearby, watching us funny Kneefolk and smiling at our funny way of talking.
    “Where do this lot come from?” I heard a woman ask.
    I lowered my voice. “I think this place confuses all of us,” I said to Starlight. “It takes us away from the Watcher. It makes us think—”
    “I like it here. It’s way more fun than the Grounds.”
    “And I think that man Greenstone could confuse you, too. He seems exciting because he’s new and he’s—”
    “ I thought he was lovely,” Angie said, though it was easy to see she was troubled herself. “I think it was nice of him to give a present to Starlight just because he liked her. I mean, I wouldn’t mind if—”
    “I’m going to look at the Veekle,” Starlight said.
    “I thought we could all see it together later on,” Dixon said.
    “I want to see it now. You coming, Angie?”

Starlight Brooking
     
    How fierce and beautiful Veeklehouse seemed to me, as we turned away from the others and plunged back into it, how big and bright, burning with that feverish flamelight that made even Starry Swirl above us look thin and pale.
    “Kneefolk always go on about how we’re better than the Davidfolk and Johnfolk,” I said, “with all their cruelty and their fighting. But, Tom’s dick, look at them! Look at them and compare them with us!”
    Angie ignored this completely. She knew quite well it wasn’t what I really wanted to talk about.
    “That Greenstone is beautiful,” she said. “And you only have to watch his face to know he likes you a lot.”
    I looked away from her. It was wonderful to hear her say this but, Jeff’s ride, I did not want to speak of it myself.
    There was a gate in the fence around the Veekle, and a big man stood there. He was holding a heavy, glass-tipped spear, and his hair was tied back tightly to show a circle of white dots on his forehead. This meant he was a guard, one of the ones who, if the rules said your fingers should be smashed, would bring the rock down on your hand.
    My mum, Dream, had told me about the white dots my dad, Blackglass, had on his forehead when she first met him: the sign of the Circle of Stones. And she’d often talked to me, I never quite knew why, about how he had to punish people as part of his job. He’d tied people to spiketrees, she told me, as hot to touch as boiling water, and then had to stand there and watch them squirm.
    “Where are you two from?” the guard demanded.
    “Knee Tree Grounds,” I told him.
    He pulled a face. “Where?”
    “It’s off Nob Head. Out in Worldpool.”
    He laughed harshly. “In Worldpool ? What are you? Fatbucks? You talk funny, too. Are your people even Davidfolk?”
    All the time I was thinking about that man Greenstone, and his eyes, and the present he’d given me in front of everyone, and what Angie had said about the way he looked at me.
    “No, we’re   ... I don’t know   ... Jeffsfolk, I suppose,” Angie was saying. “Why do you want to know?”
    “Jeffsfolk? Jeffsfolk ? John’s red spear, are you telling me you lot follow that useless clawfoot? I shouldn’t even let