text: Slowly the line of magisters, compelled beyond any resistance, moved across the room to the stairs.
  
  "Try, oh please try," Thornmallow cried in his mind. But he could not get the words out. And what good, he wondered, were one hundred and thirteen students if not one of them could make a sound?
  
  Register Oakbend stumbled forward, his empty hands outstretched before him. Magister Beechvale, like a tamed bird, walked on trembling stork legs. Magister Briar Rose, holding onto the tail of Beechvale's robe, came after. Her cheeks were spotty, as if she had been crying. Pale as paper, Magister Hyssop followed.
  
  In the line of unprotesting magisters came Magisters Greybane and Lilybell, Black Thorn and White Ash and the rest. They climbed step by step without protest, eyes staring at the floor.
  
  Thornmallow named each one to himself as they shuffled across the stage, and he cried silently to each of them to try. Only Magister Briar Rose turned around when he named her. She looked terrified, and her eyes were as blind as Register Oakbend's. Thornmallow was certain she could not see.
  
  One at a time the magisters stood before the Master as, giggling, he raised the staff and pointed the cracked globe toward them. One by one, a deadly arithmetic, they unraveled as the students watched.
  
  Register Oakbend was spun out into an off-white thread, Beechvale a beige, Briar Rose a soft lavender, Hyssop a brilliant yellow. Greybane and Lilybell, Black Thorn and White Ash and the rest were as easily stretched out into thin colored strands, a rainbow of death, the imprint of their faces like a ghastly portrait gallery on the Beast's patchworked hide, while beside the Master the pile of discarded gowns grew.
  
  With each new patch, Thornmallow felt smaller himself, diminished by the losses in a way he could not understand.
  
  Why don't they try? he groaned inside. But he knew the answer. They had tried. That was the chance they'd been given. That was the fairness. But what they tried was not nearly enough. The Master was too strong for them—for Magister Hickory, for Register Oakbend, for all of them.
  
  For the first time Thornmallow felt despair.
  
  With a wave of his hand, the Master brought up the fourth-year students. They marched like clockwork dolls in a line. Thornmallow looked away, the only protest he could manage.
  
  If I don't look, he thought, perhaps it won't be real.
  
  But he could still hear the drag of feet across the floor, up the stairs, and over the stage. He could still hear the thinning out as, one by one, the students were threaded and patched onto the Beast.
  
  Fourth-years, then third-years, then seconds went without his watching. But when it was the turn of the firsts, he could not help himself. For these were his friends. Thornmallow knew he could not let them go without being their only witness.
  
  He looked up at the stage just as Gorse was winking out, her yellow hair drawn out in a thin gold line.
  
  Oh, Gorse! Thornmallow thought, staring at the Beast where a bright yellow patch with the shadow portrait of Gorse appeared on the right side of the creature's neck.
  
  The Beast was as big now as a barn mow and puffed out with patches. Hardly moving, it seemed somehow horribly content. But still it smelled, if anything—worse than before.
  
  Thornmallow's entire body felt cold, too cold to allow for shivering. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth, which kept him from uttering a word. His palms were as wet as if he had just washed them. He would have dried them against his robe if they'd obeyed him. But he couldn't move. He couldn't even blink. Not without the Master's command. All he could do was stare—as one after another of his friends disappeared: three boys he'd sat near in Curses, then Wormwood, as brassy a yellow as his hair, then Will.
  
  Will! But Thornmallow could make no sound except in his head. Will's name echoed there long after his sassy red patch had shown up on the Beast's shoulder, his red freckles dotting the hide.
  
  And then there were but a few students before him, and Thornmallow felt himself jerked upright. As if boneless, he found himself marching toward the stairs. Trying so hard to reach out, past the Master's magic, to touch Tansy's hand for comfort—for she was the fourth student ahead of him—Thornmallow stumbled over his own feet.
  
  The jarring released him for just a moment and he thought: What about quilts? Standing up again slowly, he had time for another thought: Tansy never told us anything she'd learned about them. And then he realized that in less than a minute he would know rather intimately more about quilts than he ever wanted to know.