The answer was messy hair. If Andrev ducked away from the shearer’s knife for long enough and let his hair grow, let it tumble into his eyes, no one could see the horns. They could pretend they didn’t know what he hid, pretend they had forgotten what he really was.
The other boys picked on him when the adults weren’t watching; tripped him up as he walked, flung stones, tried to dunk him in the river. He learned not to fight back, but he learned to get away.
He learned, over time, that it wasn’t so bad, sleeping outside camp.
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