. . .

They watch as Tom and the antichrist duel one another with plastic lightsabers.

“Edmund needs some renegade in his life, anyway,” Bertram says, after a while. “Never met a more standoffish boy.”

“You should have seen Linus,” giggles Amelia. “He was all ‘sulk this’ and ‘antichrist that’ and ‘nobody can understand the endless emptiness that is my soul’ when I got him.”

“Hard to imagine,” says Bertram Gulley, and he shakes his head.

The black dog catches Tom’s lightsaber in its teeth, growls, and wrestles with the boy; and Linus flails at him with his own saber and he laughs.

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