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there were all those miracles."
      "Someone touches the shrine and a headache goes away and they cry 'Milagre!-- os santos me abençoaram!'" Miracle!-- the saints have blessed me!
      "You know that Holy Rome requires more substantial miracles than that. But it doesn't matter. The Pope graciously allowed us to call our little town Milagre, and now I imagine that every time someone says that name, Novinha burns a little hotter with her secret rage."
      "Or colder. One never knows what temperature that sort of thing will take."
      "Anyway, Pipo, you aren't the only one who ever asked about her. But you're the only one who ever asked about her for her own sake, and not because of her most Holy and Blessed parents."
      It was a sad thought, that except for the Filhos, who ran the schools of Lusitania, there had been no concern for the girl except the slender shards of attention Pipo had spared for her over the years.
      "She has one friend," said Libo.
      Pipo had forgotten that his son was there-- Libo was so quiet that he was easy to overlook. Dona Cristã  also seemed startled. "Libo," she said, "I think we were indiscreet, talking about one of your schoolmates like this."
      "I'm apprentice Zenador now," Libo reminded her. It meant he wasn't in school.
      "Who is her friend?" asked Pipo.
      "Marcão."
      "Marcos Ribeira," Dona Cristã  explained. "The tall boy--"
      "Ah, yes, the one who's built like a cabra."
      "He is strong," said Dona Cristã . "But I've never noticed any friendship between them."
      "Once when Marcão was accused of something, and she happened to see it, she spoke for him."
      "You put a generous interpretation on it, Libo," said Dona Cristã . "I think it is more accurate to say she spoke against the boys who actually did it and were trying to put the blame on him."
      "Marcão doesn't see it that way," said Libo. "I noticed a couple of times, the way he watches her. It isn't much, but there is somebody who likes her."
      "Do you like her?" asked Pipo.
      Libo paused for a moment in silence. Pipo knew what it meant. He was examining himself to find an answer. Not the answer that he thought would be most likely to bring him adult favor, and not the answer that would provoke their ire-- the two kinds of deception that most children his age delighted in. He was examining himself to discover the truth.
      "I think," Libo said, "that I understood that she didn't want to be liked. As if she were a visitor who expected to go back home any day."
      Dona Cristã  nodded gravely. "Yes, that's exactly right, that's exactly the way she seems. But now, Libo, we must end our indiscretion by asking you to leave us while we--"
      He was gone before she finished her sentence, with a quick nod of his head, a half-smile that said, Yes, I understand, and a deftness of movement that made his exit more eloquent proof of his discretion than if he had argued to stay. By this Pipo knew that Libo was annoyed at being asked to leave; he had a knack for making adults feel vaguely immature by comparison to him.
      "Pipo," said the principal, "she has petitioned for an early examination as xenobiologist. To take her parents' place."
      Pipo raised an eyebrow.
      "She claims that she has been studying the field intensely since she was a little child. That she's ready to begin the work right now, without apprenticeship."
      "She's thirteen, isn't she?"
      "There are precedents. Many have taken such tests early. One even passed it younger than her. It was two thousand years ago, but it was allowed. Bishop Peregrino is against it, Of course, but Mayor Bosquinha, bless her practical heart, has pointed out that Lusitania needs a xenobiologist quite badly-- we need to be about the business of developing new strains of plant life so we can get some decent variety in our diet and much better harvests from Lusitanian soil. In her words, 'I don't care if it's an infant, we need a xenobiologist.'"
      "And you want