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was obvious to everyone else there.
    “So what you’re saying—” began Dixon slowly.
    I cut him off. “So instead of trading the boats for blackglass or skins, we just trade them for these sticks,” I said, “and then   ... what? Other traders will take the sticks in exchange for the things we want?”
    I was taller than the trader, and I looked straight down into his eyes. I was not going to let him get the better of me.
    “You’ve got it, Einstein,” he said, trying hard to hold my gaze. “It means you can still trade with someone even if they haven’t got anything you want.”
    I thought about this, trying to shake off the stupidness that came from living on a little patch of sand where no one came and nothing ever happened.
    “But why couldn’t someone just cut more sticks like these and use them for trading?”
    “Three reasons. One: You can’t ‘just cut’ these sticks. The wood comes from far side of Snowy Dark, and the dye from right up rockway. Two: We traders are pretty sharp at spotting the sticks that haven’t been properly made. Three: If anyone is caught trying to copy them, guards smash their fingers flat with a big rock, and then they don’t copy anything ever again.”
    We knew they had cruel punishments on Mainground, but it was still a shock to hear about them like this. If someone did something bad on the Grounds we all told them so, and that was about as far as it went. But I could see that wouldn’t work in a place like Veeklehouse, where people came and went who didn’t know or care about one another. They’d had to find another way. And it was the same with the system of sticks, the same with the play-acting of the traders who coaxed in strangers with words that only pretended to be friendly. Veeklehouse was hard and cold compared to Knee Tree Grounds. But that was how it came to be so bright and big and full of wonderful things.
    “I reckon what we need to do,” Julie suggested, “is ask some of the other traders here how many sticks they’d give us for our boats. That’s how we work out if we’re getting a good deal. It’s not so different, really, from how we trade at Nob Head. It’s just that there’s a sort of gap between the giving and the taking.”
    The trader shrugged and we’d started to walk off when another voice spoke from behind us, a young man’s voice, speaking in yet another strange new way, which none of us had ever heard.
    “Hey there, trader, what will you give me for this?” it said.
    He wore an amazing colored wrap that reached down to his feet. He was a bit older than me, but still young. And he was absolutely beautiful.

Julie Deepwater
     
    Starlight caught his eye straight away, that was obvious, and it was even more obvious that she was instantly fascinated.
    He was about ten wombtimes older than her. He had bright, cheerful eyes, and his red hair and beard were cut and greased so they stuck out from his head in little spikes, each one tied with a little string of dyed buckskin. He wore green footwraps, too, and a full-length wrap like nothing any of us had ever seen, made from three different colors of that stuff made with plants that the Maingrounders call fakeskin. Two older men were with him. They were carrying spears and wearing wraps of the same sort, but their wraps were shorter and made in a single shade of brown.
    “Well   ... um   ... let’s see   ...” began the trader. He couldn’t quite hide his amazement at the fist-sized object the man had unwrapped in front of him.
    “You can use it for knives or spears,” said the cheerful man, and, for some reason, he turned back toward us Kneefolk and winked, as if we were in on his secret.
    “I know what you can use metal for,” said the trader shortly. “I’ll give you eighty sticks.”
    We stared at the lump in the young man’s hands—it was reddish, but flecked with pale green—and slowly took in what the trader had said. That thing was worth three times more to him