Free Little Round Head by Michael Marano Page A

I had kissed and they told me I had to be brave and protect it. They made a little body for the head bone out of straw and skin scraps so it was a doll now, and they gave it to me as a present. I was happy and I held the doll close so it wouldn’t be afraid and Mother and Father kissed and hugged me before they left.
    I sang to my doll. I can’t sing like Mother and Father. Sometimes the words come out right, but most times they don’t.
    When Mother and Father came back, they had cloth things that I wear with them. They tell me I’m getting big, and the cloth things that keep me warm are getting too small.
    I say I want to have fur like them, and Mother and Father laugh and stroke the top of my head where I have the most fur and they say, “Little Round Head! You will be big enough soon!”
    The cloth things are covered with the red wet food. Mother and Father put them in their mouths and suck out the red food, “
shluck! shluck! shluck!
” like how they sometimes suck food from the insides of bones. I take my old cloth things off and use parts to keep my doll warm. My doll is all bundled up to its little head bone.
    When they are dry the new cloth things smell like Mother and Father’s mouths, and when I wear them, it smells like I am being kissed and loved. That is the warmest feeling of all.
    Father said I could go with him for food, that I was big enough and brave enough to come. He made me hang on tight to his back, where there is lots of hair and skin, and he carried me through the tunnels. Sometimes there was water and Father splashed through it and I got wet.
    Father caught two rats and “
rutch! rutch!
” he bit off their heads so we could eat them. But first he poured out the red food from where the rats’ heads were onto his tongue, because he knows I don’t like the red food yet. I tried once to bite off the head of a rat, but it bit me first and I cried and Mother grabbed the rat fast and smashed it against a wall and said words I didn’t know at it and it burned. So until I am bigger Mother and Father will bite off the heads.
    Father carried me to a place with a wall and he shoved against it, “
thud! thud!
” and it was a door that opened and there was air like outside. Then I saw an outside place that was dark and the ground was wet and had big stones in rows like teeth coming out of it. I stayed close to Father, because I was scared of the new place.
    Father crawled behind the stone teeth things and I crawled behind him. Then he stopped and smelled, “
sniff! sniff!
” and we crawled to one of the stone teeth that looked bright and new and in front of the stone tooth was a long mound of dirt that smelled fresh and different from the rest of the ground.
    Father shoved his arm into the dirt and made a hole. He put his nose in the hole and wriggled into the dirt and dirt got shoved up as Father dug in and I heard noises like wood breaking and then Father came up with food and he jumped and stepped on the mound to make it like it was before.
    He gave me food to carry. We went a little way, then I looked back because I wanted to see how Father had made the mound like it was before and I saw that the ground with the stone teeth ended with a big metal gate with spikes on top and past that was lights and buildings and houses. I remembered being able to see a place like that through a square hole in the wall of the dream place where the Bad Mother and Bad Father live.
    I didn’t know places like that were real. And since the place was real, maybe so were the Bad Mother and Bad Father.
    Father made a sound at me like a rat. He had gone far ahead of me. I hurried to catch up. We came to the door, and I saw that it was to a long white stone thing like a house that went into a hill. Father and I went inside and he pulled the door shut, and there were shelves near the door I didn’t see before, and on the shelves were long wood boxes that were broken and inside were bits of cloth and skin and