The Unnameables by Ellen Booraem

Boyce acted as if he hadn't heard but his jaw got angular.
    Medford wished he could turn his ears off as they made their way outside. Whispers and chuckles mingled with the creak of floorboards. He knew they were directed at him.
    Outside, when her turn came, Prudy stomped Pinky and her other shells into dust. Her braids were arranged in a grown-up knot at her neck. Her back was straight and stiff. She did not cry, just tightened her lips.
    Medford didn't cry, either. He had collected Sap Tree cones the day before and now crushed them underfoot, trying to look sad. He saw Boyce give his head a little shake, as if his brains had shifted. He'd never seen Med-ford with a Sap Tree cone in his hand.
    Prudy had never seen Medford pick up any kind of cone. She looked at him as if she'd never met him before. "Why art thou so red?" she asked.
    Everyone was watching, so Boyce stuck out his hand for Medford to shake. Clarity hugged him. Twig punched him on one shoulder, Earnest on the other.
    "Well," Boyce said. "Best be getting to work on that cabin."
    Two months later, when his cabin was almost finished and Boyce was off at the Trade, Medford took his real collection out from under his bed, packed it in two boxes, nailed them shut, and added them to the small pile of possessions headed for his new house.
    Again he promised himself he'd destroy the things and make no more. He'd just wait for quieter times.
    Really.

CHAPTER SIX
Pinky
My Grandfather talks of the Belt buckles these old Mainlanders would wear, decorated with Fancy Shapes that must have increased the work of a foundry Tenfold. If I wasted my time on such Useless decoration, my Family would starve.
    â€”Journal of Service Smith, 1756
    M EDFORD'S LAST Goatman-free morning was four months after Transition.
    It was a warm, breezy day in early autumn, Honeybugs droning in the Poultice Weed outside his window. Five months before, it would have been a day for running with Prudy. Now it was a workday, another chance to pay down his debt to Twig and the others.
    Medford sat on a high stool at his workbench, feet on a rung halfway up the stool. His skinny legs, crooked at the knee, poked way out sideways like wings. He looked exactly like a Nameless brown seabird.
    All morning he'd been blamelessly hacking away at a blameless squared-off bowl—
chock-chock,
chisel on Syrup Tree. But now he noticed, a discolored swirl at one end. The sight made him put down his mallet and lean in close.
    The swirl was three inches in length, oval, but with a funnel-shaped tail. It had alternating rings of tawny and rose-red wood. Medford poked at it with his forefinger. He smiled for the first time that day.
    "Pinky," he whispered. He reached for a smaller chisel.
    There was that feeling again, blowing through his brain like a spring morning.
    The feeling scared him. It wasn't real, wasn't right, had no Name. He stifled it, tamped it down to a murmur, something he could control.
    And then he acted on it. He ignored all messages sent by the better part of his brain. Disgust, for example, because he'd promised himself he'd never do this again. Resignation, because he'd known he would. Terror, because someone might find out.
    Joy, because he could do it at all.
    He sculpted a Baitsnail shell, with rosy stripes and a funnel-shaped tail, at the bottom of Twig Carpenter's trencher. He made it too big at first, whittled it down until it was perfect. Three hours later a beach of perfect shells covered the bottom of the bowl.
    His hands obeyed his thoughts. He used every skill Boyce had taught him and some he'd made up himself: measuring before he cut, correcting mistakes early, exerting the right pressure on the blade. He colored Pinky with berry juice. "Prudy," he said.
    He should have stopped to eat his midday dinner. He should have stopped, period. But he didn't.
    In early afternoon he carved a clump of Cropfodder at one end of the trencher. Peeking out from under it was the rough shape of a horn