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that the children going home would finish the story too soon, before the fattening—before the arrival of Gretel’s capacity to murder.
    8 In 1628, on the island of Santo Domingo, a French Jesuit named Pierre Revoix discovered a bundle of parchment secreted in a wall of his mission. These papers each detailed a series of theoretical structures, but none of them seemed to have been drawn by the same hand. In fact, the words on the hundred or so original documents were written in at least eight languages, among them Russian, Swedish, and Arabic. Revoix sent the documents back to Europe where they were copied and translated by members of his order. Only the copies survive. Revoix’s journal of his life in the New World chronicles his intense interest in the papers he never saw again. He died in 1642 of fever. Recent academic theses have posthumously characterized him as a schizophrenic who almost certainly forged the structures himself. His notebooks show a Revoix who, though clearly trained as a linguist, also considered himself an amateur mathematician. But a deeper personal history—what called him to the Society of Jesus—has proved unrecoverable.
    9 The music sleight evokes borders on the natural. Fast-moving architectures make approximations of birdcalls, or of the wind over wheat. Slower manipulations can mimic the hollow, charged air of the few remaining old-growth forests, or gustless snowfall in higher altitudes. Even sleightists’ webs, crocheted from heavy metallic threads into patterns that hold mirror fragments in bodily eye-hives, contribute to the soundscape. A sudden cessation of movement by all twelve members of a troupe can paint a breaking wave, or the collapse of a doe beneath gunshot.

RECOVERY.
    I n the recovery room, they gave Clef an electric blanket for her abdomen. It was pink. They hadn’t let Lark in during the procedure, but afterwards she walked into the room, droning with awful, soothing Mozart, and a row of girls—most with eyes closed—in vinyl recliners. She moved quietly over to her sister and handed her the orange drink in a plastic cup from the table beside her. She said she wanted to tell Clef the secrets of her birth.
    “I was five, and there was a cardinal on the back gate near the day lilies. Red in the orange. I never fed cardinals, only jays. They were meaner, but I liked that their blue meant they could hide in the sky. I knew I was going to hate you because you came early, before my room was painted. They didn’t bring you home at first—you couldn’t cry right. Jillian had to rinse your eyes with a yellow bulb. I was the one who taught you to cry—how and what about. I only wish I had an old camera so you could see yourself. It’d have to be an old one. The grain lets you think you felt a thing—but hurt isn’t lived. It’s passed hand to hand until it goes … like soap.”
    Clef held the cup with both hands and took small sips while her sister spoke. Her forehead was a little sweaty, and a wisp of red hair curled just at the center, as if she had been horrid.
    When they got back to the apartment, there were white roses from Kitchen.
    “You know he knows that’s death,” Clef said.
    Lark felt a shock of understanding that was sharper than the cramps she was also suffering. She didn’t want to say anything more, but she did say.
    “He’s trying to acknowledge something lost, Clef.”
    “Like love?” Clef came back with this quick, more herself than earlier in the day. This time Lark didn’t say, but went to cut the stems and find a vase. She hoped Clef still had the unsentimental one she’d bought for her in Oslo, the cobalt blue.

IN BRIEF: “POLAND”
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    BY GABE THIESSEN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
    OCTOBER 2000, 12:43 GMT
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    LVOV (AP) — In Lvov this weekend, Kepler performed a new work entitled Poland. Let me first say, Poland is most remarkable in its brevity. Although a full-length sleight—the customary three hours— Poland moves so slowly, sped up