A War of Gifts: An Ender Story

sadness. It wasn’t homesickness, not really. It was the fact that Dink was no longer the child; now he was the one who helped Sinterklaas do his job. Of course the old saint couldn’t get from Spain to Battle School, not in the ship he used. Somebody had to help him out. Dink was being, not the child, but the dad. He would never be the child again. 5

    SINTERKLAAS DAY

    Zeck saw the shoes. He saw Dink put something into the shoe in the darkness, when most kids were asleep. But it meant nothing to him, except that these two Dutch boys were doing something weird. Zeck wasn’t in Dink’s toon. He wasn’t really in any toon. Because nobody wanted him, and it wouldn’t matter if they had. Zeck didn’t play.
    Which made it all the more remarkable that Rat Army was in second place-they won their battles with one less active soldier than anybody else.
    At first Rosen had threatened him and tried to take away privileges-even meals-but Zeck simply ignored him, like he ignored other kids who shoved him and jostled him in the corridors. What did he care? Their physical brutality, mild as it might be, showed what kind of people they were-the impurity of their souls-because they rejoiced in violence.
    Genesis, chapter six, verse thirteen: “And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.”
    Didn’t they understand that it was the violence of the human race that had caused God to send the Buggers to attack the Earth? This became obvious to Zeck as he was forced to watch the vids of the Scouring of China. What could the Buggers represent, except the destroying angel? A flood the first time, and now fire, just as was prophesied.
    So the proper response was to forswear violence and become peaceful, rejecting war. Instead, they sacrificed their children to the idolatrous god of war, taking them from their families and thrusting them up here into the hot metal arms of Moloch, where they would be trained to give themselves over entirely to violence.
    Jostle me all you want. It will purify me and make you filthier. Now, though, nobody bothered with Zeck. He was ignored. Not pointedly-if he asked a question, people answered. Scornfully, perhaps, but what was that to Zeck? Scorn was merely pity mingled with hate, and hate was pride mixed with fear. They feared him because he was different, and so they hated him, and so their pity-the touch of godliness that remained in them-was turned to scorn. A virtue made filthy by pride.
    By morning he had forgotten all about Flip’s shoes and the paper that Dink had put into one of them the night before.
    But then he saw Dink step out of the food line with a full tray, and walk back to hand the tray to Flip. Flip smiled, then laughed and rolled his eyes.
    Zeck remembered the shoes then. He walked over and looked at the tray. It was pancakes this morning, and on the top pancake, everything had been cut away except a big letter “F.” Apparently, this had some significance to the two Dutch boys that completely escaped Zeck. But then, a lot of things escaped him. His father had kept him sheltered from the world, and so he did not know many of the things most of the other children knew. He was proud of his ignorance. It was a mark of his purity.
    This time, though, there was something about this that seemed wrong to him. As if the letter “F” in the pancake was some kind of conspiracy. What did it stand for? A bad word in Common? That was too easy, and besides, they weren’t laughing like that-it wasn’t wicked laughter. It was… sad laughter. Sad laughter. It was hard to make sense of it, but Zeck knew that he was right. The F was funny, but it also made them sad.
    He asked one of the other boys. “What’s with the F Dink carved into Flip’s pancake?”
    The other kid shrugged. “They’re Dutch,” he said, as if that accounted for any weirdness about them. Zeck took that solitary clue-which he had already known, of course-and took it to his desk immediately after breakfast. He searched first for “Netherlands F.” Nothing that made sense. Then a few more combinations, but it was “Dutch shoes” that brought him to Sinterklaas Day, December sixth, and all the customs associated with it.
    He didn’t go to class. He went to Flip’s tidily made bed and unmade it till he found, under the sheet and next to the mattress, Dink’s poem.
    Zeck memorized it, put it