The Painted Boy

Table of Contents

 

 

Angel of Darkness
(as Samuel M. Key)
The Dreaming Place
The Little Country

From a Whisper to a Scream
(as Samuel M. Key)
Spiritwalk

Dreams Underfoot
(collection)
Into the Green

I’ ll Be Watching You
(as Samuel M. Key)
The Wild Wood

Memory and Dream
The Ivory and the Horn
(collection)

Someplace to be Flying
Moonlight and Vines
(collection)
Forests of the Heart

Triskell Tales: 22 Years of Chapbooks
(collection)
The Road to Lisdoonvarna
The Onion Girl

Seven Wild Sisters
(illustrated by Charles Vess)
A Handful of Coppers
(collection)
Waifs and Strays
(collection)

Tapping the Dream Tree
(collection)
A Circle of Cats
(illustrated by Charles Vess)
Spirits in the Wires

Medicine Road
(illustrated by Charles Vess)
The Blue Girl

Quicksilver and Shadow
(collection)
The Hour Before Dawn
(collection)
Triskell Tales 2
(collection)
Widdershins

Woods and Waters Wild
(collection)
What the Mouse Found
(collection)

Dingo
The Mystery of Grace
Eyes Like Leaves
Muse and Reverie
(collection)
The Painted Boy

VIKING
Published by Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

 

First published in the United States in 2010 by Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

 

Copyright © Charles de Lint, 2010

 

All rights reserved

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-44534-1

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

 

The city, characters, and events to be found in these pages are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

 

 

 

THE BOY HAD
finally fallen asleep. Standing at the side of his bed, Susan Li pulled the cover down and studied the dragon tattoo that was not a tattoo. It took up most of her eleven-year-old son’s back, a complicated pattern of golds and yellows with black outlines, the image bearing a disturbing similarity to the logo of the restaurant downstairs.

He’d always been a brave boy, never flinching over cuts and scrapes, but he’d cried in misery for hours at the pain of the image forming on his skin.

The family crest.

The family curse was what Susan called it.

She had three other children. She’d agonized over each of them until they reached puberty, then given thanks to the spirits of her ancestors that the child had been spared. Three times lucky.

But not this time.

“” a voice said in Mandarin.

She turned to see her own mother standing in the doorway.

“You don’t have some magic to tell you that?” she asked.

Paupau frowned at the double insult—the tone of her daughter’s voice and being addressed in their adopted language rather than Mandarin—but then her features smoothed.

“” she said.