Hart & Boot & Other Stories by Tim Pratt

drawing the circle.
    She glanced at him, frowning. “Do you know the story of the little mermaid?”
    “I saw the movie,” Billy said.
    “I don’t know about any movie. I’m talking about the one where the mermaid is given legs so that she can walk around on land, but every step is agony, as if knives are being driven into her feet. That story.”
    “I don’t know that story,” Billy said. He looked at her feet again, fascinated. “You were a mermaid?”
    She laughed. “No, kid. But my dad liked the idea, and thought making my feet hurt like that every time I left the house would be a good way to keep me from running off.” She shook her head, her dark red hair swinging and obscuring part of her face. “Didn’t work, though. I could ignore the pain for a while, and eventually I always found somebody to carry me.”
    “Your dad did that?” Billy couldn’t imagine such a thing.
    “Yeah. When that didn’t work, he tried the box. He said it would keep me young and beautiful, and I guess it did, but he didn’t tell me he never planned to let me out. But I’m my father’s daughter, and I know tricks, too. It took a long time, but I finally managed to get away, glass box and all—”
    “Caroline!” someone shouted.
    Billy jumped, and the girl put a finger to her lips. “Shh,” she whispered. “The circle keeps him from seeing us, but he can still hear us.”
    They sat very still. The voice called again. “Caroline! I know you’re here.”
    Mr. Mancuso appeared, walking into the pool of blue-tinted brightness cast by the sodium-vapor lights. He headed straight for Billy’s bike, propped against the pallets, outside the protective circle. “Oh, little boy,” he called. “I know you’re here. You found her, didn’t you? My pretty little girl in the glass box.”
    Mr. Mancuso was Caroline’s dad. Billy thought of her scarred feet and tried to breathe quietly.
    “I knew if I followed you I’d find her,” Mr. Mancuso said. “Little boys get everywhere, they see everything. Where’ve you gone? Come out and give her up, my boy. I’m used to young men doing foolish things for my Caroline, but you’re a little younger than most.” He laughed. “She’s a bad girl, Billy, always running off, abandoning her old man. You can understand how much that hurts, can’t you? Your father left you . Nothing hurts worse than being left behind. I’m offering a straight trade, boy. You give me Caroline, and I’ll give you back your father. I know you’re afraid he’d just run off again if he came back... but I can make it so he won’t. I can make him want to stay.”
    Billy believed him, and part of him wanted to shout, to scuff away the chalk circle with his foot and let Mr. Mancuso in. Because he loved his dad, and he wanted him back. Mr. Mancuso was right. Nothing hurt like being abandoned.
    Billy turned his head. Caroline stared at him, her eyes wide. She crouched perfectly still, watching to see what he would do. Billy thought about opening his mouth. He could scream before she stopped him, and then he’d get his dad back. His mother would be happy, and she wouldn’t yell at him so much, and she would let him go and play with his friends.
    But Billy remembered Caroline’s tears, when she was inside the box. No matter how tough she seemed now, she’d been crying before. And her feet... if something like that, some spell, was the only way to make Billy’s dad stay home, it was better to let him stay away.
    Maybe some things did hurt worse than being abandoned.
    Mr. Mancuso touched the bike’s handlebars, then sniffed his fingers. He walked toward the coffin, frowning, squinting.
    He stopped on the edge of the circle. “Now what’s this?” he said. He waved his hands in front of him, frowning. “Something’s amiss.”
    Caroline grabbed Billy’s arm, her fingernails digging into his skin. She looked at her father, who was muttering, and moving his hands in strange patterns, and chuckling to