The Lost Gate by Orson Scott Card Page B

mom’s coming and she’s got a little money, and we thought she could buy me my Christmas clothes at Wal-Mart because you sell things cheap, but no, I’m too poor, you accuse me of stealing and make me strip and then you throw me out into the cold! My mom’s going to buy me a coat, but you’re going to make me wait outside with no coat at all!”
    It was quite a speech, Danny knew, but the detective was completely helpless and they both knew it. Even the old woman knew it—she was giving him a twisted half-smile and she even winked at him. And the people entering the store had stopped near the carts and were looking at him and listening to him and then looking at the detective, and they looked a little hostile now.
    For a moment Danny thought of talking directly to the onlookers and talking about how lucky they were that they weren’t getting thrown out of Wal-Mart into the cold, but he decided that would be pushing too hard. Instead he started for the doors, awkwardly stepping into his pants as he went. “I’m getting out, I’m getting out.” Then he deliberately tripped over his own pants and fell to the floor.
    That did it. Immediately there were people helping him up, holding the shirt he had dropped, and standing between him and the detective.
    â€œWhat are you doing to this boy?” a woman demanded.
    â€œHe’s a shoplifter,” said the detective.
    â€œHe didn’t steal anything,” said the greeter, with a shrug. “You proved that. ”
    â€œI was just trying to get a cart,” said Danny.
    â€œYou can shop with us,” said a man. “We’ll vouch for you.”
    â€œIf you throw him out,” said the demanding woman, “you’re throwing us all out.”
    The detective made a dismissive gesture and walked away. But Danny knew he hadn’t given up. It was a tactical retreat—Danny had done the same thing himself, when he was little and the cousins played war. You pretend to run away, but then you lay an ambush for the guys chasing you.
    â€œThanks,” Danny said to the people who had helped him—but he kept his eyes down, as if he was ashamed to have needed help. Hadn’t he used the same technique to deflect attention a thousand times before? And it worked even better with these strangers than it did with the Aunts and Uncles. “Just want a cart.”
    â€œStick with us,” said the man. He had three children with him.
    Danny took note of his face, in case he needed to run to him for help later. But for now, he didn’t need someone watching him closely. “Thanks,” he said, “but my mom’s going to get here soon and I’m supposed to pick out the clothes I like the best. She got her Christmas check from Dad today and she just went to cash it.”
    That was a good story, Danny knew. Single mom, raising a kid alone—and not doing too well, from the fact that he was barefoot in winter and had no coat. And Dad was such a cheapskate he didn’t even send the Christmas check until the day before Christmas. But it also meant that this man really didn’t want to be near Danny when the purported mom arrived—needy single women were not part of this man’s plans for friend-making, not even at Christmastime.
    I’m pretty good at this, thought Danny. Fooling people by telling them stories that make sense in their view of the world—they had no reason to doubt you, and so they didn’t. And it helped that Danny never looked like he was lying. He had perfected that during years of playing pranks on the cousins and getting away with it most of the time.
    And now that he thought of it, of course he was good at tricks and pranks and lies—he was a gatemage, wasn’t he? The first loki since the Loki who wrecked everything by pulling off the biggest prank in history and closing all the gates. Deception was part of the talent with