A boy and a girl were playing together when they spotted a woodchuck and started chasing it. The woodchuck’s burrow was at the edge of the forest and it safely disappeared into it, but the children did not see this and kept running into the forest. In no time at all they realized that they were lost and they sat down and began to cry. After a while, a man appeared and this frightened them all the more. They had been warned a thousand times never to talk to strangers. He assured them that he would not hurt them and that, in fact, he would lead them back to their home. They agreed to walk with him, but when he tried to make conversation they would not reply. “You act like you’re prisoners of war,” he said. “Not much fun for me, but I guess that’s good. When I was a kid my mother also told me never to talk to strangers. But I did anyway, because that’s how you learn stuff. I always thought the stuff my ma and pa tried to teach me was boring. But from strangers you could learn the secret stuff, like how to break into a locked door or how to tame a wild stallion, stuff you could use in life.” It made sense what he was saying, but the kids were sworn to silence, a brainwashed silence in a shrunken world from which they could already faintly hear their mother scolding them.