apparently to some one, but I was afraid to go near enough to hear what he was saying, les t I might frighten him, and he should run off. Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic, when the fit of escaping is upon him! After a few minutes, however, I could see that he did not take note of anything around him, and so ventured to draw nearer to him, the more so as my men had now crossed the wall and were closing him in. I heard him say. . . "I am here to do your bidding, Master. I am your slave, and you will reward me, for I shall be faithful. I have worshipped you long and afar off. Now that you are near, I await your commands, and you will not pass me by, will you, dear Master, in your distribution of good things?" He is a selfish old beggar anyhow. He thinks of the loaves and fishes even when he believes his is in a real Presence. His manias make a startling combination. When we closed in on him he fought like a tiger. He is immensely strong, for he was more like a wild beast than a man. I never saw a lunatic in such a paroxysm of rage before, and I hope I shall not again. It is a mercy that we have found out his strength and his danger in good time. With strength and determination like his, he might have done wild work before he was caged. He is safe now, at any rate. Jack Sheppard himself couldn't get free from the strait waistcoat that keeps him restrained, and he's chained to the wall in the padded room. His cries are at times awful, but the silences that follow are more deadly still, for he means murder in every turn and movement. Just now he spoke coherent words for the first time. "I shall be patient, Master. It is coming, coming, coming!" So I took the hint, and came too. I was too excited to sleep, but this diary has quieted me, and I feel I shall get some sleep tonight. CHAPTER 9 LETTER, MINA HARKER TO LUCY WESTENRA Buda-Pesth, 24 August. "My dearest Lucy, "I know you will be anxious to hear all that has happened since we parted at the railway station at Whitby. "Well, my dear, I got to Hull all right, and caught the boat to Hamburg, and then the train on here. I feel that I can hardly recall anything of the journey, except that I knew I was coming to Jonathan, and that as I should have to do some nursing, I had better get all the sleep I could. I found my dear one, oh, so thin and pale and weak-looking. All the resolution has gone out of his dear eyes, and that quiet dignity which I told you was in his face has vanished. He is only a wreck of himself, and he does not remember anything that has


Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage. “Go to the next room, and tell Nippers to come to me.” “I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared. “Very good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort of serenely severe self-possessed tone, intimating the unalterable purpose of some terrible retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended something of the kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinner-hour, I thought it best to put on my hat and walk home for the day, suffering much from perplexity and distress of mind. Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole business was, that it soon became a fixed fact of my chambers, that a pale young scrivener, by the name of Bartleby, and a desk there; that he copied for me at the usual rate of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but he was permanently exempt from examining the work done by him, that duty being transferred to Turkey and Nippers, one of compliment doubtless to their superior acuteness; moreover, said Bartleby was never on any account to be dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort; and that even if entreated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally understood that he would prefer not to—in other words, that he would refuse pointblank. As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His steadiness, his freedom from all dissipation, his incessant industry (except when he chose to throw himself into a standing revery behind his screen), his great, stillness, his unalterableness of demeanor under all circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was this,—he was always there;—first in the morning, continually through the day, and the last at night. I had a singular confidence in his honesty. I felt my most precious papers perfectly safe in his hands. Sometimes to be sure I could not, for the very soul of me, avoid falling into sudden spasmodic passions with him. For it was exceeding difficult to bear in mind all the time those strange peculiarities, privileges, and unheard of exemptions, forming the tacit stipulations on Bartleby’s part under which he remained in my office. Now and then, in the eagerness of dispatching pressing business, I would inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say, on the incipient tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing some papers. Of course, from behind the screen the usual answer, “I prefer not to,” was sure to come; and then, how could a human creature with the common infirmities of our nature, refrain from bitterly exclaiming upon such perverseness—such unreasonableness. However, every added repulse of this sort which I received only tended to lessen the probability of my repeating the inadvertence. Here it must be said, that according to the custom of most legal gentlemen occupying chambers in densely-populated law buildings, there were several keys


as available to the systematizer as those external ones already enumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales bodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way. And this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only one that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed. book i. ( folio), chapter iv. ( hump back). --this whale is often seen on the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured there, and towed into harbor. He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or you might call him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the popular name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him, since the sperm whale also has a hump, though a smaller one. His oil is not very valuable. He has baleen. He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of all .. <p 137 > the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally than any other of them. BOOK I. ( Folio), CHAPTER V. ( Razor Back). --Of this whale little is known but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a retiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no coward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which rises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor does anybody else. BOOK I. ( Folio), CHAPTER VI. ( Sulphur Bottom). -- Another retiring gentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the Tartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen; at least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas, and then always at too great a distance to study his countenance. He is never chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are told of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can say nothing more that is true of ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer. Thus ends BOOK I. ( Folio), and now begins BOOK II. ( octavo). OCTAVOES. These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which at present may be numbered: --I., the Grampus; II., the Black Fish; III., the Narwhale; IV., the Thrasher; V., the Killer. BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER I. ( Grampus). --Though this fish, whose loud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb to landsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not popularly classed among whales. But possessing all the grand distinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised him for one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to twenty-five feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the waist. He swims in herds; he is never regularly hunted, though his oil is considerable .. <p 138 > in quantity, and pretty good for light. By some fishermen his approach is regarded as premonitory of the advance of the great sperm whale. BOOK II. ( Octavo), CHAPTER II. ( Black Fish).


it comes to Parker.” But Joe was still indignant. “I wasn’t messing around with the stepsister who ruined your life,” he said. “I was feeding her cat.” Confirmation. “You were feeding Parker’s evil cat? The one that keeps peeing in our hallway?” Joe nodded. “Yep. Its name is Elvira.” I took that in. “But you were wearing your pajamas.” “Exactly!” Joe said. “People don’t do walks of shame in their pajamas.” He had a point. “Parker wasn’t even there! She left at three A.M. on a flight to Amsterdam!” he said—and now it was his turn to be mad. “You think that I kissed you last night and then turned around to have some kind of illicit tryst with your worst enemy?” I mean, yes. Worse things happened all the time with Parker. But his outrage was humbling. “It wasn’t a real kiss,” I finally said. “It was real enough.” I shrugged, still half thinking I was right. “How could you think that?” Joe said. “I don’t know. People are terrible.” “People may be terrible,” Joe said. “But I’m not.” He really felt kind of hurt. Maybe it was time to level with him a little. “I’m sorry,” I said then, “I’m having a very weird month.” “Okay,” Joe said, listening. But how much to say, standing here in the doorway of his empty apartment? Maybe just the basics. I took a breath and went for it. “About a month ago,” I said, “I had what they call a nonconvulsive seizure in the crosswalk in front of our building. And apparently a Good Samaritan pushed me to safety just before I got mowed down by a Volkswagen Beetle. At the hospital, they did a brain scan for the cause of the seizure and found a little malformed blood vessel. They said I needed surgery to correct it, so I had surgery.” Joe shook his head, like What? “You had brain surgery?” “Yeah,” I said. “A month ago?” I nodded to confirm. Then, like a kid showing someone a boo-boo, I leaned forward and pulled my hair aside so he could see the scar behind my ear. He peered in at it. “Wow.” I hadn’t shown anybody my scar yet. Not even Sue. “Yeah,” I said. “And it’s been”—here, a tremble found its way into my voice—“a weirdly hard month. Nothing’s quite right. Things that used to be easy are now … not. Especially painting.” Joe nodded. “The day of the seizure, I’d just had my first big career break. And I was all set to win it.” I looked down at my hands. “But I’m having trouble painting now.” “That’s why you’re trying new techniques.” I nodded. I was not, not, not going to tell him about the face blindness. But maybe I could tell him about what it felt like. “My whole life, my brain was always just so … reliable. But now, not as much. I keep getting things wrong. I can’t trust myself. The whole world looks different. And so the version of me that you’re getting right now


of!--no, she says she wo--o--on't!" they wailed, with square mouths. "And we shan't have a nice new horse, and lots o' golden money to buy fairlings! And Tess won't look pretty in her best cloze no mo--o--ore!" Her mother chimed in to the same tune: a certain way she had of making her labours in the house seem heavier than they were by prolonging them indefinitely, also weighed in the argument. Her father alone preserved an attitude of neutrality. "I will go," said Tess at last. Her mother could not repress her consciousness of the nuptial Vision conjured up by the girl's consent. "That's right! For such a pretty maid as 'tis, this is a fine chance!" Tess smiled crossly. "I hope it is a chance for earning money. It is no other kind of chance. You had better say nothing of that silly sort about parish." Mrs Durbeyfield did not promise. She was not quite sure that she did not feel proud enough, after the visitor's remarks, to say a good deal. Thus it was arranged; and the young girl wrote, agreeing to be ready to set out on any day on which she might be required. She was duly informed that Mrs d'Urberville was glad of her decision, and that a spring-cart should be sent to meet her and her luggage at the top of the Vale on the day after the morrow, when she must hold herself prepared to start. Mrs d'Urberville's handwriting seemed rather masculine. "A cart?" murmured Joan Durbeyfield doubtingly. "It might have been a carriage for her own kin!" Having at last taken her course Tess was less restless and abstracted, going about her business with some self-assurance in the thought of acquiring another horse for her father by an occupation which would not be onerous. She had hoped to be a teacher at the school, but the fates seemed to decide otherwise. Being mentally older than her mother she did not regard Mrs Durbeyfield's matrimonial hopes for her in a serious aspect for a moment. The light-minded woman had been discovering good matches for her daughter almost from the year of her birth. VII On the morning appointed for her departure Tess was awake before dawn--at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken. She remained upstairs packing till breakfast-time, and then came down in her ordinary week-day clothes, her Sunday apparel being carefully folded in her box. Her mother expostulated. "You will never set out to see your folks without dressing up more the dand than that?" "But I am going to work!" said Tess. "Well, yes," said Mrs Durbeyfield; and in a private tone, "at first there mid be a little pretence o't.... But I think it will be wiser of 'ee to put your best side outward," she added. "Very well; I suppose you know


his face in the cushions, as if he was praying. "This is your doing, Harry," said Hallward, bitterly. [20] "My doing?" "Yes, yours, and you know it." Lord Henry shrugged his shoulders. "It is the real Dorian Gray,-- that is all," he answered. "It is not." "If it is not, what have I to do with it?" "You should have gone away when I asked you." "I stayed when you asked me." "Harry, I can't quarrel with my two best friends at once, but between you both you have made me hate the finest piece of work I have ever done, and I will destroy it. What is it but canvas and color? I will not let it come across our three lives and mar them." Dorian Gray lifted his golden head from the pillow, and looked at him with pallid face and tear-stained eyes, as he walked over to the deal painting-table that was set beneath the large curtained window. What was he doing there? His fingers were straying about among the litter of tin tubes and dry brushes, seeking for something. Yes, it was the long palette-knife, with its thin blade of lithe steel. He had found it at last. He was going to rip up the canvas. With a stifled sob he leaped from the couch, and, rushing over to Hallward, tore the knife out of his hand, and flung it to the end of the studio. "Don't, Basil, don't!" he cried. "It would be murder!" "I am glad you appreciate my work at last, Dorian," said Hallward, coldly, when he had recovered from his surprise. "I never thought you would." "Appreciate it? I am in love with it, Basil. It is part of myself, I feel that." "Well, as soon as you are dry, you shall be varnished, and framed, and sent home. Then you can do what you like with yourself." And he walked across the room and rang the bell for tea. "You will have tea, of course, Dorian? And so will you, Harry? Tea is the only simple pleasure left to us." "I don't like simple pleasures," said Lord Henry. "And I don't like scenes, except on the stage. What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all: though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly boy doesn't really want it, and I do." "If you let any one have it but me, Basil, I will never forgive you!" cried Dorian Gray. "And I don't allow people to call me a silly boy." "You know the picture is yours, Dorian. I gave it to you before it existed." "And you know you have been a little silly, Mr. Gray, and that you don't really mind being called a boy." "I should have minded very much this


wearing a thin black shirt and pants, light fare compared to his usual layers of black and violet. Silver hair fell around his jaw, highlighting the fading bruise on his cheekbone. His ability to intimidate wasn’t softened by his relaxed attire. Vaun fell to a kneeling position, lowering his head. “Forgive me, my liege. I acted without consulting you.” “Yes, that much seems apparent,” Arin said. “Leave. We will discuss this at a more appropriate juncture.” Vaun glanced up. “What should I do with the girl?” “You should do what I ask and only that.” Again, Arin remained perfectly pleasant, but Vaun paled like the Heir had personally called for his beheading. “Go.” I massaged the roots of my hair with a wince. First the Nizahl soldier in the woods, now Vaun. My scalp had taken a beating in the last two weeks. I remained close to the door, carefully avoiding glancing at Arin. I didn’t want to risk exiting into the hall with Vaun still nearby, so I took my time studying the Heir’s room. There wasn’t much to see. A tall wardrobe, a bed only slightly bigger than my own, a tiny square table no wider than a book, and a much larger table covered in inkwells and partially unrolled maps. I wondered what he thought of the tiny table. They were once a staple in every Jasadi household, folded and tucked behind the furniture until a guest arrived. The host would place a saucer and an aromatic, palm-size cup of ahwa on that table, maybe slide a plate of biscuits or kunafa beside it. I’d loved the smell of ahwa, though the one time I’d tasted it I’d spat it right out. But Soraya would still sneak me empty cups from the kitchen so I could sniff the leftover dark sludge like a candle. I couldn’t seem to get Jasad out of my head lately. Surrounded by Nizahlans wasn’t the optimal setting to be dwelling on my former home. A small box at the corner of the small table held the Nizahl royal seal and a bottle of wax. I picked it up. The seal was untainted iron, heavy in my palm. Molded into the bottom were two swords clashing. A raven emerged where the swords met, its wings unfurling on each side. I traced its contours, mesmerized. “Careful,” Arin said. “Wax burns.” The seal fumbled in my grip. I dropped it, trying to claw at the fog over my senses. Navigating a conversation with the Heir drained me on a good day, and today was far from good. “What do you use this for?” I held up the seal, expecting him to wrench it from my grip and toss me from the room. “My maps.” He satisfied a part of my prediction and held his hand out for the seal. I dropped it into his palm, careful to maintain distance from his bare skin. “Can I see them?” Arin regarded me for a long minute. I squared my chin, anticipating some remark on my literacy or intelligence. He


matters is that we broke. What matters is that Wyn’s happy with his new life. We’ll make it through tomorrow, then go our separate ways. When we tell everyone we’ve broken up, we’ll be able to say it was amicable, that it won’t cost them anything. But I can’t let it go. I’ve been trying for months, and I’m no closer to peace. Here’s my opportunity—my last chance. It might be a mistake to get answers, but if I don’t, I’ll spend my life regretting it. This is what I need from this week, the thing that will justify the torture. I leave the bedroom, march down the hall past the hiss of running showers and old pipes creaking in the walls. Everything feels strange, dreamlike: the time-smoothed wooden stairs soft against my soles, the prickle of cool air as I step out back, the rushing sound of the tide sliding over the rocks beneath the bluff. I cross the patio to the side gate, still open from Cleo’s sudden flight of fancy the other night, and follow the path beyond it, into the dense evergreens beyond. The sun hasn’t fully set, but the foliage overhead coats the footbridge in shadow, pinpricks of mounted solar lights illuminating the path to the guesthouse. It’s like I’m moving through jelly, every step slow and heavy. Then the wood-shingled guesthouse appears, and I round the corner toward the cedarwood shower. When I see him, it surprises me. As if I didn’t come here expressly for him. Only the back of his head, neck, and shoulders peek over the top of the cedar walls, the breeze pulling steam out in silver wisps. A feeling of loss, heavy as a sandbag, hits me in the gut. I can’t do this, I think. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to make things worse. I turn. My sleeve catches on a low-hanging branch, and all the moisture accumulated there spatters to the hollow forest floor. Wyn turns, his brow arching with amusement. “Can I help you?” He looks and sounds happy to see me. Somehow it’s another blow. I waver. “I doubt it.” “May I help you,” he amends. “I just wanted to talk!” I step back. “But it can wait. Until you’re less . . .” “Busy?” he guesses. “Naked,” I say. “One and the same,” he says. “For you, I guess,” I say. His brow scrunches. “What’s that mean?” “I honestly don’t know,” I say. He rests his forearms atop the wall, waiting. For me to come closer or to bolt. Now that the opportunity’s in front of me, having an answer I don’t like seems eminently worse than never having an answer at all. “It’s nothing,” I say. “Forget it.” “I won’t.” He wipes water from his eye. “But if you want me to pretend, I can try.” I take another half step back. His gaze stays pinned on me. As always, something about his face coaxes the words out of me before my brain has decided to say them: “It’s killing me not


uncompleted, unaccomplished; (adj) unrecognised: (adj) globally, ally, everywhere, totally, partial unacknowledged, not recognized Catholicly, cosmically, ubiquitously, unpicturesque: (adj) ugly unredeemed: (adj) cursed, lost, prevalently, regularly, usually. unpremeditated: (adj) spontaneous, damned, fated, goddam, ANTONYMS: (adv) narrowly, unintentional, involuntary, goddamned, everlasting, infernal, locally impromptu, casual, offhand, unlucky, unsaved, goddamn unkind: (adj) cruel, harsh, unfeeling, impulsive, extemporaneous, unrelenting: (adj, n) harsh, hard, inconsiderate, pitiless, heartless, unintended, unguarded, severe; (adj) stern, relentless, inhuman, hard, thoughtless, brutal, unconscious. ANTONYMS: (adj) implacable, austere, cruel, grim, mean. ANTONYMS: (adj) kind, premeditated, intentional, prepared unforgiving, persistent. considerate, pleasant, friendly, unprofitable: (adj) profitless, ANTONYMS: (adj) feeble, thoughtful, tactful, mild, gentle, fruitless, futile, inutile, inexorable, sympathetic, temporary, generous, flattering, compassionate disadvantageous, unfruitful, barren, merciful, compassionate, finite, unkindly: (adv) cruelly, brutally, idle, vain, uneconomic, gentle badly, maliciously, meanly, unproductive. ANTONYMS: (adj) unreserved: (adj) open, unqualified, heartlessly, inconsiderately, fruitful, lucrative candid, unconditional, sincere, pitilessly, nastily, unprosperous: (adj) unfortunate, complete, expansive, absolute, total, unsympathetically; (adj) unkind. improsperous, disadventurous, outgoing, familiar. ANTONYMS: ANTONYMS: (adv) needy, impecunious, failing, poor (adj) qualified, reserved, uncertain, understandingly, pleasantly, unprovoked: (adj) wanton, unenthusiastic, shy, rather, partial, innocently, gently, compassionately, motiveless, unwarranted, inhibited, restrained benevolently, thoughtfully, gratuitous, sluttish, groundless, unreservedly: (adj, adv) freely; (adv) mercifully light, loose, meaningless, needless, candidly, frankly, absolutely, unlocked: (adj) unbarred, unlatched, reckless. ANTONYMS: (adj) sincerely, liberally, ingenuously, unbolted, not closed, loose, provoked, reasonable, necessary, entirely, categorically, fully, plainly. unsecured, ajar, wide open, justifiable ANTONYMS: (adv) hardly, unguaranteed unquestionable: (adj) parsimoniously, unenthusiastically, unmanageable: (adj) unwieldy, incontrovertible, indisputable, sure, unwillingly intractable, uncontrollable, incontestable, indubitable, certain, unripe: (adj) green, raw, premature, awkward, cumbersome, stubborn, unequivocal, irrefutable, undoubted, crude, young, uncooked, juvenile, clumsy, bulky, recalcitrant, definite; (v) unimpeachable. half grown, callow, inexperienced, ungovernable, obstinate. ANTONYMS: (adj) dubious, unfledged. ANTONYMS: (adj) 336 The Scarlet Letter mature, ripe, ready desired. ANTONYM: (adj) welcome unsalted, young, unverified, unsavoury: (adj) unsavory, offensive, unspeakable: (adj) ineffable, untouched; (v) undetermined. unpalatable, nasty, repellent, foul, dreadful, awful, terrible, ANTONYMS: (adj) proven, noisome, disgusting, sour, revolting, inexpressible, nasty, horrible, seasoned, familiar, experienced loathsome. ANTONYM: (adj) savory atrocious, indefinable, shocking; untrue: (adj) erroneous, unfaithful, unscrupulous: (adj) dishonest, (adj, v) unutterable. ANTONYMS: disloyal, incorrect, sham, mistaken, unprincipled, unethical, immoral, (adj) nice, wonderful, pleasant, fallacious, treacherous, wrong, dishonorable, crooked, unfair, good, lovely, bearable faithless, inaccurate. ANTONYMS: unconscionable, sharp, unspotted: (adj) unblemished, (adj) faithful, true, valid, factual, unconscientious, sly. ANTONYMS: unstained, unsoiled, stainless, pure, honest, reliable, correct, truthful, (adj) scrupulous, principled, ethical, blameless, immaculate, undefaced, loyal, real honest, moral undeformed, spotless, untarnished untutored: (adj) unschooled, unsearchable: (adj) unstrung: (adj) nervous, asthenic, uneducated, illiterate, uncultivated, incomprehensible, mysterious, discomposed, overwrought, artless, simple, naive, unaffected, investigable, admitting research, adynamic; (v) weakly rude, rough, pure. ANTONYMS: obscure unsubstantial: (adj) unreal, airy, thin, (adj) trained, educated unseasonable: (adj) inopportune, imaginary, shadowy, light, empty, unutterable: (adj) indescribable, inappropriate, premature, ill timed, immaterial, insignificant, vaporous; unspeakable, inexpressible, improper, immature, inconvenient, (adj, v) flimsy unpronounceable, indefinable, ill-timed, inept, unchancy; (v) unsuitable: (adj) improper, untellable, unnameable, illtimed inapplicable, unfit, incorrect, unapproachable, beyond unseasonably: (adv) inconveniently, unbecoming, inopportune, description, incommunicable, untimeously, inopportunely, undesirable, inapt, wrong, terrible intempestively, not opportunely, inconvenient, incompatible. unutterably: (adv) ineffably, prematurely, timelessly, ANTONYMS: (adj) appropriate, inexpressibly, indescribably, beyond incommodiously.


was that she had somehow fallen into the sea, `and in that case I can go back by railway,' she said to herself. (Alice had been to the seaside once in her life, and had come to the general conclusion, that wherever you go to on the English coast you find a number of bathing machines in the sea, some children digging in the sand with wooden spades, then a row of lodging houses, and behind them a railway station.) However, she soon made out that she was in the pool of tears which she had wept when she was nine feet high. `I wish I hadn't cried so much!' said Alice, as she swam about, trying to find her way out. `I shall be punished for it now, I suppose, by being drowned in my own tears! That WILL be a queer thing, to be sure! However, everything is queer to-day.' Just then she heard something splashing about in the pool a little way off, and she swam nearer to make out what it was: at first she thought it must be a walrus or hippopotamus, but then she remembered how small she was now, and she soon made out that it was only a mouse that had slipped in like herself. `Would it be of any use, now,' thought Alice, `to speak to this mouse? Everything is so out-of-the-way down here, that I should think very likely it can talk: at any rate, there's no harm in trying.' So she began: `O Mouse, do you know the way out of this pool? I am very tired of swimming about here, O Mouse!' (Alice thought this must be the right way of speaking to a mouse: she had never done such a thing before, but she remembered having seen in her brother's Latin Grammar, `A mouse--of a mouse--to a mouse--a mouse--O mouse!' The Mouse looked at her rather inquisitively, and seemed to her to wink with one of its little eyes, but it said nothing. `Perhaps it doesn't understand English,' thought Alice; `I daresay it's a French mouse, come over with William the Conqueror.' (For, with all her knowledge of history, Alice had no very clear notion how long ago anything had happened.) So she began again: `Ou est ma chatte?' which was the first sentence in her French lesson-book. The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water, and seemed to quiver all over with fright. `Oh, I beg your pardon!' cried Alice hastily, afraid that she had hurt the poor animal's feelings. `I quite forgot you didn't like cats.' `Not like cats!' cried the Mouse, in a shrill, passionate voice. `Would YOU like cats if you were me?' `Well, perhaps not,' said Alice in a soothing tone: `don't be angry about it. And yet I wish I could show you our cat Dinah: I think you'd take a fancy to cats if you could only see her. She is such a dear quiet thing,' Alice went on, half to herself, as she swam lazily about in the pool,


interested in adjusting her sunbed. “Not exactly,” she says. “I, um, took on two new clients?” “Noemie.” Her sad smile reminds me of how she looked when she told me she wasn’t going to study journalism anymore. That public relations was a better fit for her, and the journalism job market terrified her. “I know. I’m going to do it. After this project. I swear.” She takes a sip of her margarita. “So. Spill it. I know you didn’t ask me to fly out here just because you miss me.” I wait a moment, worrying the frayed edge of my towel before dropping it in the sand beneath us. The beach has emptied out a bit, families collecting their sunburned children and twentysomethings trading the ocean for Miami nightlife. “It’s complicated.” All day, this secret has felt too heavy, and suddenly I feel like I might collapse with the weight of it. A few deep, cleansing breaths, the kind we learned how to do when Noemie dragged me to aerial yoga last year. “Do you remember the guy I hooked up with in September? Right before I met Finn and took this job?” “The worst sex of your life.” “Right. And remember how I had no idea who Finn was at first . . .” I trail off, hoping she’ll connect the dots so I don’t have to say it out loud. Her eyes grow wide as she twists in her chair. “No. No. That’s not—tell me they weren’t the same person, Chandler.” I drape my towel over my head. “He gave me a fake name. Neither of us knew who the other was until that lunch in Seattle.” “You slept with Oliver Huxley,” she says slowly. “Holy. Shit.” “There was absolutely nothing holy about it,” I say, my voice half muffled by the towel. She reaches forward, snatching the towel away and shaking her head in disbelief. “I’m sorry, my brain is rewriting everything it’s ever assumed about Finn Walsh, cinnamon roll nerd of my dreams. This is absolutely devastating.” “It’s been killing me, not telling anyone.” “And you still wanted to work on this book? It’s been okay? Because as much as I’ve missed you, I’ve been really, really happy that you’re doing this.” I chew on my straw, wondering what that means specifically. “We agreed we weren’t going to talk about it, that it was firmly in the past. But then I wound up telling him what that night was like for me, and it evolved into this joke that maybe wasn’t a joke at all, about me helping him improve his technique in bed. And, well . . .” “You’re giving Finnegan Walsh sex tips?” Noemie nearly falls off her sunbed. “I’ve never been happier or more shocked to be related to you.” “And I’ve never been thirstier in my entire life. It’s like the more we’re together, the more I want to be with him. It’s a terrible, horny paradox. Is this the stupidest thing I’ve ever done?” “Aside from the questionable ethics of the two of


my leg in front of me. I almost faint at the sight of my calf. The flesh is a brilliant red covered with blisters. I force myself to take deep, slow breaths, feeling quite certain the cameras are on my face. I can’t show weakness at this injury. Not if I want help. Pity does not get you aid. Admiration at your refusal to give in does. I cut the remains of the pant leg off at the knee and ex- amine the injury more closely. The burned area is about the size of my hand. None of the skin is blackened. I think it’s not too bad to soak. Gingerly I stretch out my leg into the pool, propping the heel of my boot on a rock so the leather doesn’t get too sodden, and sigh, because this does offer some relief. I know there are herbs, if I could find them, that would speed the healing, but I can’t quite call them to mind. Water and time will probably be all I have to work with. Should I be moving on? The smoke is slowly clearing but still too heavy to be healthy. If I do continue away from the fire, won’t I be walking straight into the weapons of the Ca- reers? Besides, every time I lift my leg from the water, the pain rebounds so intensely I have to slide it back in. My hands are slightly less demanding. They can handle small breaks from the pool. So I slowly put my gear back in order. First I fill my bottle with the pool water, treat it, and when enough time has passed, begin to rehydrate my body. After a time, I force myself to nibble on a cracker, which helps settle my stomach. I roll up my sleeping bag. Except for a few black marks, it’s rela- 178 tively unscathed. My jacket’s another matter. Stinking and scorched, at least a foot of the back beyond repair. I cut off the damaged area leaving me with a garment that comes just to the bottom of my ribs. But the hood’s intact and it’s far better than nothing. Despite the pain, drowsiness begins to take over. I’d take to a tree and try to rest, except I’d be too easy to spot. Besides, abandoning my pool seems impossible. I neatly arrange my supplies, even settle my pack on my shoulders, but I can’t seem to leave. I spot some water plants with edible roots and make a small meal with my last piece of rabbit. Sip water. Watch the sun make its slow arc across the sky. Where would I go anyway that is any safer than here? I lean back on my pack, overcome by drowsiness. If the Careers want me, let them find me, I think before drifting into a stupor. Let them find me. And find me, they do. It’s lucky I’m ready to move on be- cause when I hear the feet, I have less than a minute head start. Evening has begun to fall.


seat. “Jacky, you can ask Elsie all those things you wanted to know. Hey, Elsie.” He attempts to whisper in my ear, though it comes out slurred and very loud. “Jacky has a thing for you. Like, he stares all the time. And he asks so many questions about you.” “Oh, Greg.” This is mortifying. “That’s . . . really not what’s happening.” In the front seat, Jack’s silence is quietly, painfully loud. “Full disclosure, Jacky,” Greg continues with a loopy grin, “I made up all the answers. I dunno if she likes to travel, if she wants kids, if she’s into movies. Like, how’m I s’posed to know?” Jack’s expression through the rearview mirror is sealed. “She has a thing for Twilight, I’ve discovered.” Greg is delighted. “The vampire or the wolf—” “Greg, how was the retreat?” I interrupt him with a smile. “Sooo mandatory. But then my tooth exploded in my mouth, and I got to leave early. Hey, you know how sometimes there are shoes on the power lines? Who puts them there?” “Um, not sure. Listen, do you remember if you got a chance to check your texts on your way to the dentist? Or your email? Or listen to your voicemails?” He stares at me with an intense, solemn expression. I tense with anticipation as his eyes go wide. Then he says, “Oh my God. We should play I Spy!” I sigh. Fifteen minutes later, after Greg claims to spy a bear, P. Diddy, and a can of garbanzo beans, we park outside a pretty Roxbury house carved into two apartments. “Where are your keys, Greg?” I ask. “I’ve got a spare,” Jack says, finishing in twenty seconds a parallel parking job that would have taken me twenty minutes and my whole dignity. “Just make sure he doesn’t wander into traffic.” I’d like to think that Greg’s place is what mine and Cece’s would be like if we managed to lift our credenza, could afford non-bedbugged furniture, and were less prone to frolicking in our own filth. It’s simple and cozy, covered in knickknacks that remind me of Greg’s personality and his quirky sense of humor. Jack dwarfs the entrance, but he doesn’t seem out of place. He obviously spends time here, because he knows exactly where to find the light switch, how to raise the thermostat, which shelf to set the mail on. “Cutlet!” Greg yells, fisting Jack’s shirt. “Cutlet—where is she?” I look around, expecting to see a cat slinking closer, but it’s just us in the apartment—me idling, Jack relentlessly inching Greg toward a bedroom. “On my desk at work. Let’s go take a nap, G. Sounds nice, right?” “Did you water her? Has she changed? Does she still remember me?” “I watered it. Her. She looks the same. Not sure she remembers you, since she’s nonsentient—like most cactuses. How ’bout that nap?” “Can I have a drink first, please?” “Elsie, could you get him some water while I put him to bed?” “Milk! Did you know that milk comes from nipples?” Jack and


forward, I take a step back from the gate. This is wrong. There’s someone else in the game, and it’s not someone I recognize. My heart kicks up. “What’s going on?” the blond guy asks. Suddenly, the floodlights in the parking lot come up. They bathe the entire area in a brilliant white haze. The Halloween theme music begins to play, and the other staff and guests emerge from their holding areas. “I want my damn money back!” yells one of the guests as he stalks up to the gate. “Supposed to be a serial killer out here, right? Whose grandma is this?” He gestures to the other side of the gate, and I realize the person approaching is an older woman in dingy coveralls and a flannel shirt. Her wispy gray hair is loose and falls over her face like a veil. In her right hand is something long and slender and double-barreled—a shotgun. Every muscle in my body tenses. I want to run, but I feel like I can’t move. Kyle suddenly ducks deeper into the woods and emerges behind us a few moments later, his mask now situated on top of his head. With trembling fingers, I touch my earpiece. “Bezi?” “Yeah.” Her voice crackles in my ear. “Who is that at the entrance? Is that a player? Wait. Oh my god, Charity! She has a gun!” “Open the mics and tell everybody to get inside and lock the doors,” I say. “Now!” Bezi’s voice commands anyone not already at the front gate to get to the Western Lodge and lock themselves in. There’s a flurry of panicked footsteps and shouts from behind me, but I don’t take my eyes off the woman. She raises the gun and cradles it in the crook of her arm with the barrel pointing up to the sky. “You think this is a game?” she asks, her voice low and gravelly. She narrows her eyes at me; then she turns and glances over her shoulder as if she’s looking for someone behind her. My mouth is suddenly dry. I try to stifle the fear that is pooling in my chest, but I can barely move. I force myself to take another step back. “Everybody get inside the office!” I shout. The guests, Porter, and Tasha retreat to the office. Kyle stays beside me, gripping his machete as if its rubber blade will do either one of us any good. “This is my place. My land. All of it.” The woman turns her head and spits on the ground. “You damn kids think you can do whatever you want out here? You think there won’t be consequences?” As the woman rambles on, she keeps the shotgun in the crook of her arm. She touches her face with her free hand, then tilts her head back and laughs. “It’s all fun and games, right? Pay to play? You should be ashamed. If you knew what I know . . .” She trails off, and her eyes glaze over. “What are you talking about?” Kyle asks.


Christina Lauren - The True Love Experiment.txt

He takes a sip as I nod. “I don’t have one.” “Come on.” I make a buzzer sound. “Really? I see you as an Isaac fan.” “They all seem like nice blokes. It’s why I cast them.” “Well, so far I like Nick, Dax, and Isaac. Jude is great but I’m not sure we click.” “Not Evan?” “It didn’t work the first time, but who knows?” “Okay. Just keep an open mind.” “Oh, I will,” I say, waving this off. “But if you’re asking me right now who I’m most attracted to, that’s my answer. That’s all.” Connor looks like he’s debating something before he finally opens his mouth. “So, this brings us to my one piece of feedback, which is perhaps to tone down the come-to-bed eyes a little.” I feel my smile slip from my face. “The—What?” “Viewers want to see you forging a real connection.” “And that doesn’t start with flirting? Have I been doing dating wrong this whole time!” “It’s the way you flirt,” he says, unamused by my humor. “The way I flirt,” I repeat flatly, and set my bottle a safe distance away. I may need both hands to throttle him. “Only thirty-three percent of Bachelor viewers tune in for The Bachelorette. Do you know why that is?” Oh, I know this one. “The patriarchy.” “Yes. Viewers are far more accepting of a man dating multiple women than they are of a woman dating multiple men. It’s not right, but that’s the way it is.” “Look who’s suddenly an expert on pop culture TV.” “I told you, I’m taking this seriously.” “So you want me to play harder to get? Romance has fought long and hard to get away from the ideal of virginal ingenue heroines. If you think I’m going to play into that stereotype on this show, you’re going to be disappointed.” “I didn’t say that.” “Then what did you say?” He shifts on his feet, neck red. “I don’t mean you can’t—Listen,” he says, trying again. “Never mind. You’re fine just the way you are.” “Oh, well. Thank you.” A quiet falls then, and it’s like a match blown out, the way the energy evaporates from the room. “Why are you suddenly mad at me?” I ask him. “What did I do?” “I’m not.” He shakes his head, looking briefly miserable. “I’m sorry.” “I said yes to this show because I wanted to take care of the audience in your clumsy hands—” He laughs dryly. “You’ve made me well aware.” “—but it’s fun because I’m doing it with you,” I finish, reaching for his hand. Finally, he looks up. And I think I get what’s happening. God, I am so dumb sometimes. “I have fun with you,” I tell him, tugging him closer. “This first week on set was great because I’m comfortable with you. I insisted you do confessionals because I like being with you. I risked my life talking to River because I believe in your amazing ideas. You are doing your job so well, and I’m sorry if—” My words


sophisticated, idle: (adj) lazy, indolent, inactive, (adj) hidden, unilluminating, responsible, sensible, ready free, unfounded, fruitless, baseless, secretive immaturity: (n) immatureness, groundless, frivolous, empty, illumination: (n) brightness, childhood, babyhood, adolescence, disengaged. ANTONYMS: (adj) illuminance, lighting, light, puerility, crudity, youth, juvenility, active, employed, industrious, explanation, elucidation, edification, callowness, state, viridity. energetic, meaningful, productive, luminousness, luminosity, ANTONYMS: (n) maturity, worthwhile, diligent; (v) change, illustration; (adj, n) irradiation. adulthood, experience run, work ANTONYMS: (n) education, immeasurable: (adj) endless, idleness: (n) lethargy, laziness, knowledge, confusion immense, infinite, huge, enormous, torpor, inactivity, idling, illusive: (adj) deceptive, false, illimitable, unmeasurable, unemployment, sloth, inaction, delusive, imaginary, fallacious, incalculable, inestimable, inertia, faineance, idlesse. unreal, seeming, ostensible, innumerable, interminable. ANTONYMS: (n) energy, activity, apparent, fanciful, fantastic ANTONYMS: (adj) limited, minute, bustle, liveliness, responsibility illustrious: (adj, n) glorious, finite, shallow, slight, negligible, idler: (n) lazybones, laggard, bum, celebrated, excellent, grand; (adj) tiny, few, minor, small loafer, loiterer, loon, shirker, famous, bright, eminent, famed, immemorial: (adj) ancient, layabout, lounger, vagabond; (v) distinguished, brilliant, well-known. prescriptive, pristine, primaeval, dawdle ANTONYMS: (adj) unknown, primeval, traditional, old, eternal, idly: (adj, adv) foolishly; (adv) vainly, obscure, ordinary, undistinguished, customary vaguely, listlessly, forgetfully, lowly immensity: (n) greatness, distractedly; (adj) thoughtlessly. ill-will: (n) enmity enormousness, immenseness, ANTONYM: (adv) energetically imaginary: (adj) fictitious, unreal, infinity, bulk, largeness, infiniteness, idolise: (v) venerate, worship, revere, false, mythical, illusory, ideal, infinitude, vastness, grandeur, glorify, fear, adore hypothetical, visionary, fictional, grandness. ANTONYM: (n) idolized: (adj) adored, beloved, notional, chimerical. ANTONYMS: lightness loved, precious, worshipped (adj) real, palpable, actual, concrete, imminent: (adj) forthcoming, coming, ignominious: (adj) dishonorable, prosaic, normal, true close, future, near, pending, shameful, disreputable, infamous, imagining: (n) conception, approaching, at hand, menacing, base, discreditable, dishonourable, daydream, fantasy, opinion; (v) threatening, prospective. inglorious, black, despicable, imagine; (adj) imaginant ANTONYMS: (adj) remote, past degrading. ANTONYMS: (adj) imbecility: (n) folly, foolishness, immortal: (adj) eternal, enduring, honorable, glorious idiocy, fatuity, weakness, stupidity, undying, endless, monumental; (adj, ignominiously: (adv) disgracefully, feeblemindedness, lunacy; (adj, n) v) deathless, imperishable, shamefully, discreditably, debility, feebleness; (adj) infirmity celebrated; (n) deity, God, divinity. dishonorably, scandalously, imbibing: (n) drinking, absorption, ANTONYMS: (adj) obscure, earthly, dishonourably, opprobriously, intake, swillings, drink, potation, forgettable, perishable, temporary infamously, basely, vilely, foully drunkenness, gulping, boozing, immortality: (n) sempiternity, ignominy: (n) disgrace, dishonor, crapulence; (adj) absorbent perpetuity, athanasia, glory, aye, shame, reproach, contempt, imbue: (v) infuse, saturate, permeate, fame, everness, immortal, disrepute, degradation, discredit, tinge, steep, dye, fill, impregnate, permanency, deathlessness, scandal; (adj, n) odium; (adj) pervade, instill, inoculate undying. ANTONYM: (n) mortality opprobrium. ANTONYMS: (n) imbued: (adj) addicted, alive, immortally: (adv) undyingly, success, glorification, pride instinct, full everlastingly, deathlessly, ill-defined: (adj) unclear, ambiguous, imitated: (adj) mimical perpetually, eternally, perennially, vague, indistinct, obscure, fuzzy, imitative: (adj) mock, counterfeit, lastingly, abidingly, timelessly, loose, general, faint, hazy derivative, fake, false, fictitious, enduringly, permanently ill-fated: (adj) hapless, unfortunate, bogus, bastard, onomatopoeic, base, immunity: (n) freedom, franchise, unhappy, poor, accursed, cursed, sham. ANTONYMS: (adj) genuine, dispensation, privilege, exception, fatal, infelicitous, unchancy, real, nonimitative relief, invulnerability, exoneration, disastrous, inauspicious immaterial: (adj) insignificant, excuse, safety, liberty. ANTONYMS: ill-fitted: (adj) ill-suited, inapt inconsequential, irrelevant, (n) susceptibility, liability, inclusion ill-omened: (adj) ill-fated, ominous, disembodied, incorporeal, trivial, impalpable: (adj) imperceptible,


stop,” I told him. “Do this for as long as we live.” When we were finished, we roused ourselves for the 40 Under 40 Gala. He threaded his tie into a half Windsor while I watched him in the bathroom mirror, pretending to be busy un-messing my hair when really all I wanted was to see him compose himself, transition from a person who’d just had hours of sex to a person who could sit scrubbed clean and civil looking at a dinner table. He arranged himself in stages: the tie, the hair, the jacket. It was intoxicating. “What is it, little dude?” he asked. I shook my head and went into the bedroom to retrieve my own jacket, which I’d had tailored in secret imitation of his, from the shoulders of which I rubbed dust that hung in the air like a sleepy djinn. I slid my jacket on and held my shoulders back. I looked good, or at least good enough. The gala was held in the hotel’s ballroom, billed as a “celebration of America’s best and brightest young people.” It was supposedly a chance to network but it was really an opportunity to dick-measure intelligence and wealth, to drop the names of the schools we’d attended and the people we’d met. We’d gotten our invite after a short Forbes profile of NuLife called “Bliss for Beginners,” which identified Orson as the maverick inventor of an “unlikely product” and me as his “front-end developer.” The piece was more a profile of Orson than of NuLife, describing his angular jaw and his all-juice diet and his sleeping and running habits. He’d mentioned in-person Synthesis a few times to the reporter, who’d quoted him as saying that it was the “Bliss-Mini on a cosmic level.” Orson had insisted on accepting the invites to the gala because there would be real money there, people who, even if we couldn’t get them involved in NuLife, would at the very least provide object lessons in how to act rich and successful. It was more his kind of thing than mine, but who was I to object? It would be good for NuLife, and more important, it would be good for him. At the ballroom’s entrance he told me we should split up so each of us could cover more territory. “You just find people to socialize with, okay? And then back in the room we confab.” “Back in the room we confab,” I said, dropping my voice in imitation of his. He poked me in the ribs. I laughed. “This is important,” he said. “Aye-aye.” He looked at me with mock severity. “I mean, colonel—I’ll do the best I can, sir,” I said. He went left and I went right, in the direction of a small circle of what turned out to be tall and toned women engaged in a very technical conversation about thermodynamics. When they saw me coming, they awkwardly opened the circle to welcome me in. “You’re the NuLife guy,” one of them said, her upturned nose like an electrical socket in


day, for days unending, Buck toiled in the traces. Always, they broke camp in the dark, and the first gray of dawn found them hitting the trail with fresh miles reeled off behind them. And always they pitched camp after dark, eating their bit of fish, and crawling to sleep into the snow. Buck was ravenous. The pound and a half of sun-dried salmon, which was his ration for each day, seemed to go nowhere. He never had enough, and suffered from perpetual hunger pangs. Yet the other dogs, because they weighed less and were born to the life, received a pound only of the fish and managed to keep in good condition. He swiftly lost the fastidiousness which had characterized his old life. A dainty eater, he found that his mates, finishing first, robbed him of his unfinished ration. There was no defending it. While he was fighting off two or three, it was disappearing down the throats of the others. To remedy this, he ate as fast as they; and, so greatly did hunger compel him, he was not above taking what did not belong to him. He watched and learned. When he saw Pike, one of the new dogs, a clever malingerer and thief, slyly steal a slice of bacon when Perrault's back was turned, he duplicated the performance the following day, getting away with the whole chunk. A great uproar was raised, but he was unsuspected; while Dub, an awkward blunderer who was always getting caught, was punished for Buck's misdeed. This first theft marked Buck as fit to survive in the hostile Northland environment. It marked his adaptability, his capacity to adjust himself to changing conditions, the lack of which would have meant swift and terrible death. It marked, further, the decay or going to pieces of his moral nature, a vain thing and a handicap in the ruthless struggle for existence. It was all well enough in the Southland, under the law of love and fellowship, to respect private property and personal feelings; but in the Northland, under the law of club and fang, whoso took such things into account was a fool, and in so far as he observed them he would fail to prosper. Not that Buck reasoned it out. He was fit, that was all, and unconsciously he accommodated himself to the new mode of life. All his days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. But the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he could have died for a moral consideration, say the defence of Judge Miller's riding-whip; but the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his hide. He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were


hand,” she’s said. “It helps me think better, to identify themes and linkages. I think it’s because the act of physical writing forces my mind to slow down, to examine the potential of every word I’m scribbling out. Then, when I’ve filled up six or seven notebooks this way, I pull out the typewriter and start drafting properly.” I don’t know why I never thought of taking the notebooks as well. They were right there on the desk—at least three of them, two lying open next to the manuscript. I was so panicked that night. I suppose I thought they’d go into storage with the rest of her belongings. But a public archive? I mean, fuck. The first person who goes in to write a paper about her—and there will be many, I’m sure—will see the notes for The Last Front right away. I’m sure they’re extensive, detailed. That’ll be a dead giveaway. Then this whole artifice unravels. I don’t have time to calm myself, to think things through. I need to nip this in the bud. Heart racing, I reach for my phone and call Athena’s mother. MRS. LIU IS GORGEOUS. IT’S TRUE WHAT THEY SAY—ASIAN WOMEN don’t age. She must be in her midfifties by now, but she doesn’t look a day over thirty. You can see, in that elegant, petite frame and sharp cheekbones, the wispy beauty Athena would have grown into. Mrs. Liu’s face had been so puffy from crying at the funeral, I hadn’t noticed how striking she was; now, up close, she looks so much like her daughter that it’s disorienting. “Junie. So good to see you.” She embraces me on her doorstep. She smells like dried flowers. “Come in.” I sit down at her kitchen table, and she pours and places a steaming cup of a very fragrant tea before me before sitting down. Her slender fingers curl around her own cup. “I understand you wanted to talk about Athena’s things.” She’s so direct, I wonder for a moment if she’s onto me. She’s nothing like the warm, welcoming woman I’d met at the funeral. But then I notice the tired sag of her mouth, the shadows beneath her eyes, and I realize she’s only trying to get through the day. I had a whole arsenal of small talk planned: stories about Athena, stories about Yale, observations on grief and how hard it is to make it through every minute of every day when one of your pillars has vanished overnight. I know loss. I know how to talk to people about loss. Instead I cut straight to the chase. “I read that you’re going to donate Athena’s notebooks to the Marlin Archive?” “I am.” She cocks her head. “You don’t think that’s a good idea?” “No, no, Mrs. Liu, I don’t mean that, I’m just . . . I’m wondering if you mind telling me how you made that decision?” My cheeks are burning. I can’t hold her gaze. I drop my eyes. “I mean, only if you want to talk about it. I


help, but I made up the fire, which was still burning, and got some coffee ready for them. In good time they too started up strong and well, and we admitted the sharp morning air at the windows, and looked at the tide that was still flowing towards us. "When it turns at nine o'clock," said Herbert, cheerfully, "look out for us, and stand ready, you over there at Mill Pond Bank!" Chapter 54 It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. We had out pea-coats with us, and I took a bag. Of all my worldly possessions I took no more than the few necessaries that filled the bag. Where I might go, what I might do, or when I might return, were questions utterly unknown to me; nor did I vex my mind with them, for it was wholly set on Provis's safety. I only wondered for the passing moment, as I stopped at the door and looked back, under what altered circumstances I should next see those rooms, if ever. We loitered down to the Temple stairs, and stood loitering there, as if we were not quite decided to go upon the water at all. Of course I had taken care that the boat should be ready and everything in order. After a little show of indecision, which there were none to see but the two or three amphibious creatures belonging to our Temple stairs, we went on board and cast off; Herbert in the bow, I steering. It was then about high-water - half-past eight. Our plan was this. The tide, beginning to run down at nine, and being with us until three, we intended still to creep on after it had turned, and row against it until dark. We should then be well in those long reaches below Gravesend, between Kent and Essex, where the river is broad and solitary, where the waterside inhabitants are very few, and where lone public-houses are scattered here and there, of which we could choose one for a resting-place. There, we meant to lie by, all night. The steamer for Hamburg, and the steamer for Rotterdam, would start from London at about nine on Thursday morning. We should know at what time to expect them, according to where we were, and would hail the first; so that if by any accident we were not taken abroad, we should have another chance. We knew the distinguishing marks of each vessel. The relief of being at last engaged in the execution of the purpose, was so great to me that I felt it difficult to realize the condition in which I had been a few hours before. The crisp air, the sunlight, the movement on the river, and the moving river itself - the road that ran with us, seeming to sympathize with us, animate us, and encourage us on - freshened me with new hope. I felt mortified to be of


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

of this bloom or that. The senior florist, a small woman with eyes like black ink and a dress made entirely of ice-glazed petals, frowned down at the trees. “It is winter, Your Highness,” she said. “Yes,” I said through my teeth. “But it seems there is rather more winter than there was before.” She exchanged a nervous look with another florist, a narrow man holding an armful of black and grey roses. “The king has returned,” he said slowly, as if he didn’t understand my question at all and was merely taking a shot in the dark. A little bead of fear slid down my back at that. When I next saw the king —I believe it was at supper, though it’s entirely possible I saw him before then—I raised the question with him. “Yes, it will be a winter the likes of which has never been seen in Ljosland,” he said cheerily, helping himself to more fish. The Folk pulled their fish from a frozen mountain lake and served them raw on a bed of ice or swimming in a sweet, creamy sauce that tasted faintly of apples. Several varieties were spread before us, the smallest ones—vibrantly striped grey and green—retaining their head and bones, which were meant to be eaten together. We were seated in a cavernous banquet hall with walls of black stone and another floor of ice cobbles, this time with leaves and fir boughs prisoned inside, so that you felt as if you were walking atop a forest canopy. The table was crowded with Folk—what seemed like a mixture of courtly and common, though their faces often blended together in the bone-coloured light. I caught a sneer here, a beseeching look there; the minstrels were playing their flutes, and although the king had ordered them not to enchant me, their songs often made my head swim. “But what will become of the mortal villages?” I said. “You can’t bury them in snow!” He touched my hand reassuringly, his beautiful face full of adoration. “The mortals here are used to winter, my dear.” “They are not used to fifty feet of it being deposited on their doorsteps,” I said, fists clenched on my skirts. “It will last only as long as my coronation festivities,” he promised, and that really worried me, for it suggested that he planned to extend the winter until he had finished revelling in his triumph—and anyone who knows a thing about the Folk will easily guess that this would be a substantial period of time. “You must pull back the snows from the mortal world,” I said. “Their animals will die. Their children will starve.” He was only half listening—he motioned to one of the minstrels, and they switched to a song he liked better. “Children!” he said, smiling. “I’m glad you mentioned them. Children adore winter—do you know they used to leave offerings for us at the centre of frozen lakes at the solstice, to ask us for heaps of snow on Christmas. As if we know anything about Christmas, the silly


I'm sure your cousins must think you are a queer girl never to want your mother to go with you." George said nothing. She hardly ever did say a word when she was scolded. The other children said nothing too. They knew perfectly well that it wasn't that George didn't want her mother to go- it was just that she wanted Timothy with her! "Anyway, I couldn't come," went on Aunt Fanny. "I've some gardening to do. You'll be quite safe with George. She can handle a boat like a man." The three children looked eagerly at the weather the next day when they got up. The sun was shining, and everything seemed splendid. "Isn't it a marvellous day?"said Anne to George,as they dressed. "I'm so looking forward to going to the island." "Well, honestly, I think really we oughtn't to go," said George, unexpectedly. "Oh, but why?" cried Anne, in dismay. "I think there's going to be a storm or something," said George, looking out to the south-west. "But, George, why do you say that?" said Anne, impatiently. "Look at the sun- and there's hardly a cloud in the sky!" "The wind is wrong," said George. "And can't you see the little white tops to the waves out there by my island? That's always a bad sign." "Oh George- it will be the biggest disappointment of our lives if we don't go today," said Anne, who couldn't bear any disappointment, big or small. "And besides," she added, artfully, "if we hang about the house, afraid of a storm, we shan't be able to have dear old Tim with us." "Yes, that's true," said George. "All right- we'll go. But mind, if a storm does come, you're not to be a baby. You're to try and enjoy it and not be frightened." "Well, I don't much like storms," began Anne, but stopped when she saw George's scornful look. They went down to breakfast, and George asked her mother if they could take their dinner as they had planned. "Yes," said her mother. "You and Anne can help to make the sandwiches. You boys can go into the garden and pick some ripe plums.to take with you. Julian, you can go down to the village when you've done that and buy some bottles of lemonade or ginger-beer, whichever you like." "Ginger-pop for me, thanks!" said Julian, and everyone else said the same. They all felt very happy. It would be marvellous to visit the queer little island. George felt happy because she would be with Tim all day. They set off at last, the food in two kit-bags. The first thing they did was to fetch Tim. He was tied up in the fisher-boy's back yard. The boy himself was there, and grinned at George. "Morning, Master George," he said. It seemed so queer to the other children to hear Georgina called 'Master George'! 'Tim's been barking his head off for you. I guess he knew you were coming for him today." "Of course he did," said George, untying him. He at once


it is safe to assume that none existed Tradition,--which sometimes brings down truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the wild babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside and now congeals in newspapers,--tradition is responsible for all contrary averments. In Colonel Pyncheon's funeral sermon, which was printed, and is still extant, the Rev. Mr. Higginson enumerates, among the many felicities of his distinguished parishioner's earthly career, the happy seasonableness of his death. His duties all performed, --the highest prosperity attained,--his race and future generations fixed on a stable basis, and with a stately roof to shelter them for centuries to come,--what other upward step remained for this good man to take, save the final step from earth to the golden gate of heaven! The pious clergyman surely would not have uttered words like these had he in the least suspected that the Colonel had been thrust into the other world with the clutch of violence upon his throat. The family of Colonel Pyncheon, at the epoch of his death, seemed destined to as fortunate a permanence as can anywise consist with the inherent instability of human affairs. It might fairly be anticipated that the progress of time would rather increase and ripen their prosperity, than wear away and destroy it. For, not only had his son and heir come into immediate enjoyment of a rich estate, but there was a claim through an Indian deed, confirmed by a subsequent grant of the General Court, to a vast and as yet unexplored and unmeasured tract of Eastern lands. These possessions--for as such they might almost certainly be reckoned--comprised the greater part of what is now known as Waldo County, in the state of Maine, and were more extensive than many a dukedom, or even a reigning prince's territory, on European soil. When the pathless forest that still covered this wild principality should give place--as it inevitably must, though perhaps not till ages hence--to the golden fertility of human culture, it would be the source of incalculable wealth to the Pyncheon blood. Had the Colonel survived only a few weeks longer, it is probable that his great political influence, and powerful connections at home and abroad, would have consummated all that was necessary to render the claim available. But, in spite of good Mr. Higginson's congratulatory eloquence, this appeared to be the one thing which Colonel Pyncheon, provident and sagacious as he was, had allowed to go at loose ends. So far as the prospective territory was concerned, he unquestionably died too soon. His son lacked not merely the father's eminent position, but the talent and force of character to achieve it: he could, therefore, effect nothing by dint of political interest; and the bare justice or legality of the claim was not so apparent, after the Colonel's decease, as it had been pronounced in his lifetime. Some connecting link had slipped out of the evidence, and could not anywhere be found. Efforts, it is true, were made by the Pyncheons, not only then, but at various


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

had been his uncle's face. Uncle Vernon had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Harry didn't do exactly what he'd been trying to do. He shouted at Harry for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea. Harry shuffled miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Vernon's lap. Harry could see three letters addressed in green ink. "I want -- " he began, but Uncle Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes. Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot. "See," he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver them they'll just give up." "I'm not sure that'll work, Vernon." "Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him. *** On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Harry. As they couldn't go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom. Uncle Vernon stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" as he worked, and jumped at small noises. *** On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to Harry found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor. "Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Dudley asked Harry in amazement. *** On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy. "No post on Sundays," he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn letters today -- " Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one. "Out! OUT!" Uncle Vernon seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall. When Aunt Petunia and Dudley had run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor. "That does it," said Uncle Vernon, trying


no guarantee. The lake was coming. They had to reach the six-mile bridge. It was high and safe perhaps. Everybody was walking the fill. Hurrying, dragging, falling, crying, calling out names hopefully and hopelessly. Wind and rain beating on old folks and beating on babies. Tea Cake stumbled once or twice in his weariness and Janie held him up. So they reached the bridge at Six Mile Bend and thought to rest. But it was crowded. White people had preempted that point of elevation and there was no more room. They could climb up one of its high sides and down the other, that was all. Miles further on, still no rest. They passed a dead man in a sitting position on a hum- mock, entirely surrounded by wild animals and snakes. Common danger made common friends. Nothing sought a conquest over the other. Another man clung to a cypress tree on a tiny island. A tin roof of a building hung from the branches by electric wires and the wind swung it back and forth like a mighty ax. The man dared not move a step to his right lest this crush- ing blade split him open. He dared not step left for a large rattlesnake was stretched full length with his head in the Their Eyes Were Watching God 193 wind. There was a strip of water between the island and the fill, and the man clung to the tree and cried for help. “De snake won’t bite yuh,” Tea Cake yelled to him. “He skeered tuh go intuh uh coil. Skeered he’ll be blowed away. Step round dat side and swim off!” Soon after that Tea Cake felt he couldn’t walk anymore. Not right away. So he stretched long side of the road to rest. Janie spread herself between him and the wind and he closed his eyes and let the tiredness seep out of his limbs. On each side of the fill was a great expanse of water like lakes—water full of things living and dead. Things that didn’t belong in water. As far as the eye could reach, water and wind playing upon it in fury. A large piece of tar-paper roofing sailed through the air and scudded along the fill until it hung against a tree. Janie saw it with joy. That was the very thing to cover Tea Cake with. She could lean against it and hold it down. The wind wasn’t quite so bad as it was anyway. The very thing. Poor Tea Cake! She crept on hands and knees to the piece of roofing and caught hold of it by either side. Immediately the wind lifted both of them and she saw herself sailing off the fill to the right, out and out over the lashing water. She screamed terribly and released the roofing which sailed away as she plunged down- ward into the water. “Tea Cake!” He heard her and sprang up. Janie was try- ing to swim but fighting water too hard. He saw a cow swimming slowly towards the fill


But there was much that proved beyond his power to control. The medication he’d been prescribed was expensive without insurance and also upset his stomach, so he stopped taking it, saying that he couldn’t work and serve food all day while feeling nauseated. As restaurant manager, he was usually the last one who got to take a break or eat lunch, and when he did get a meal, the food most readily available were the pizzas he helped make. He had little free time for regular exercise, no extra money to give to a gym or a nutritionist, and unless he felt very ill, he did not go to the doctor. During the long years when he could trace no significant or debilitating issues to his condition, I doubt he had either the luxury or the inclination to worry much about his health—or his lack of health care. Even when both my parents found themselves unemployed in their late fifties, their initial worry was not for Dad’s missed checkups but whether they would be able to pay their bills, cover their rent, buy groceries and gas. That is, until my father grew very sick, the sickest he had ever been, and we had no way of figuring out what was wrong with him. * * * We had been living in North Carolina for five years and Dan was close to finishing his dissertation when I gave birth to our second child. With her dark brown eyes, full-moon cheeks, and impressive rolls, she looked so much like her older sister that everyone in the family would mix up their baby pictures for years. We found the transition from one to two kids challenging, though in infancy our younger child seemed easier and less particular than our first had been, content to be curled up sleeping on one of us or carted around the house as we played with our busy three-year-old, who gabbed to her little sister as if hoping for a response. I bargained with God over the kids’ opposing sleep schedules; Dan went from one cup of coffee per day to two. But we knew how to take care of a baby this time, and we also knew that newborn days were fleeting, and we’d miss them when they were over. My parents were supposed to arrive for a visit not long after the birth. A couple of days before their trip, Mom called to tell me that Dad wasn’t feeling well enough to travel. I hadn’t realized he was feeling that poorly, but when I questioned my parents, neither wanted to discuss his health at length. Mom would make the trip alone, she said, though she was anxious about leaving my father. She decided to shorten her visit from two weeks to one. My father’s last steady job had been at a cell carrier call center, where, extrovert that he was, well trained in customer service thanks to his years working in restaurants, he’d enjoyed the work and found it easier than many of his previous jobs. After the


Oliver was placed. But he was sick and weary; and he soon fell sound asleep. CHAPTER XVII OLIVER'S DESTINY CONTINUING UNPROPITIOUS, BRINGS A GREAT MAN TO LONDON TO INJURE HIS REPUTATION It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon. The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song. We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard, and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle; where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places, from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually. Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight. The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning-weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on, which makes a vast difference. The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and preposterous. As sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and place, are not only sanctioned in books by long usage, but are by many considered as the great art of authorship: an author's skill in his craft being, by such critics, chiefly estimated with relation to the dilemmas in which he leaves his characters at the end of every chapter: this brief introduction to the present one may perhaps be deemed unnecessary. If so, let it be considered a delicate intimation on the part of the historian that he is going back to the town in which Oliver Twist was born; the reader taking it for granted that there are good and substantial reasons for making the journey, or he would not be invited to proceed upon such an expedition. Mr. Bumble emerged at early morning from the workhouse-gate, and walked with portly carriage and commanding steps, up the High Street. He was in the full bloom and pride of beadlehood; his cocked hat and coat were dazzling in the morning sun; he clutched his cane with the vigorous tenacity of health and power. Mr. Bumble always carried his head high; but this morning it was higher than usual. There was an abstraction in his eye, an elevation in his air, which might have warned an observant stranger that thoughts were passing


no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses. Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also. He began to wonder whether we should ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name we gave to our mistakes. Men had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain moral efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy. It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion. What there was in it of the purely sensuous instinct of boyhood had been transformed by the workings of the imagination, changed into something that seemed to the boy himself to be remote from sense, and was for that very reason all the more dangerous. It was the passions about whose origin we deceived ourselves that tyrannized most strongly over us. Our weakest motives were those of whose nature we were conscious. It often happened that when we thought we were experimenting on others we were really experimenting on ourselves. While Lord Henry sat dreaming on these things, a knock came to the door, and his valet entered, and reminded him it was time to dress


was delighted. He knew that when a Dentrassi looked that pleased with itself there was something going on somewhere on the ship that he could get very angry indeed about. Ford and Arthur stared about them. "Well, what do you think?" said Ford. "It's a bit squalid, isn't it?" Ford frowned at the grubby mattress, unwashed cups and unidentifiable bits of smelly alien underwear that lay around the cramped cabin. "Well, this is a working ship, you see," said Ford. "These are the Dentrassi sleeping quarters." "I thought you said they were called Vogons or something." "Yes," said Ford, "the Vogons run the ship, the Dentrassis are the cooks, they let us on board." "I'm confused," said Arthur. "Here, have a look at this," said Ford. He sat down on one of the mattresses and rummaged about in his satchel. Arthur prodded the mattress nervously and then sat on it himself: in fact he had very little to be nervous about, because all mattresses grown in the swamps of Squornshellous Zeta are very thoroughly killed and dried before being put to service. Very few have ever come to life again. Ford handed the book to Arthur. "What is it?" asked Arthur. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a sort of electronic book. It tells you everything you need to know about anything. That's its job." Arthur turned it over nervously in his hands. "I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day." "I'll show you how it works," said Ford. He snatched it from Arthur who was still holding it as if it was a two-week-dead lark and pulled it out of its cover. "You press this button here you see and the screen lights up giving you the index." A screen, about three inches by four, lit up and characters began to flicker across the surface. "You want to know about Vogons, so I enter that name so." His fingers tapped some more keys. "And there we are." The words Vogon Constructor Fleets flared in green across the screen. Ford pressed a large red button at the bottom of the screen and words began to undulate across it. At the same time, the book began to speak the entry as well in a still quiet measured voice. This is what the book said. "Vogon Constructor Fleets. Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy -- not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat and recycled as firelighters. "The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is


her mother and Forest. As her eyes traced over the familiarity—the threadbare rug, the wallpaper that was hanging in strips, the sideboard with Nan’s radio—they caught on one person she never thought she’d see again. “Little Flower,” her mother said, perched on the sofa. A cigarette was smoking in her fingertips. “Where have you been, sweetheart?” “Mum?” Iris’s voice felt rusted. “Mum, what are you doing here?” “I’m here because you’re here, Iris.” “Where are we?” “Home for now. Did you think I’d ever leave you?” Iris’s breath caught. She felt confused, trying to remember something that was slipping from her memory. “I’m writing again, Mum,” she said, her throat narrow. “On Nan’s typewriter.” “I know, my love,” Aster said with a smile. The smile that had thrived before the wine and the addiction. The smile that Iris loved most. “You’ll be a famous writer someday. Mark my words. You’ll make me so proud.” Iris tilted her head. “You’ve said that to me before, haven’t you, Mum? Why can’t I remember?” “Because this is a dream and I wanted to see you again,” Aster said, smile fading. Her wide-set eyes—hazel eyes that Forest and Iris had both stolen from her—were bright with piercing sadness. “It’s been so long since I looked at you and truly saw you, Iris. And I realize how much I missed. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I see you now.” The words cleaved Iris’s chest in two. She was doubling over from the pain, the rawness, and she realized she was weeping, as if her tears could wash away what had happened. Because her mother was dead. “Iris.” A familiar voice began to melt the edges of the room. The bunker. The tendril of darkness. “Iris, wake up.” It was the voice of a boy who had arrived at her flat on the worst day of her life. Who had brought her abandoned coat to her, as if he were worried she would catch cold. The voice of a boy who had followed her to war and thrown paper wads at her face and set a newspaper in her hands with her article on the front page and challenged her to run up a hill to see the view beyond it. The dream broke. Iris was curled into herself, quietly weeping. Roman sat beside her. The moonlight was bright, and his hand was on her shoulder. She could feel the heat of his palm through her jumpsuit. “It’s all right,” he whispered. She covered her face, to hide her emotion. But terrible sounds slipped through her fingers, and she shuddered, trying to swallow everything down to where she had once kept it hidden in her bones. She could deal with this later. She was mortified that she was sobbing in a trench, and the Sycamores were no doubt listening to it, and they must think she was so weak and pathetic and— Roman gently removed her helmet. He caressed her hair; it was matted and gross and she longed for a proper shower and yet his touch was comforting.


own podcast research. In the library, the light sliding yellow through those tall, warped windows to illuminate the circulating dust, I sat doing homework once again. This was the place where I’d looked up vocab words at ten p.m., the place I’d smuggled magazines out from, under my shirt. There were fewer books now and more tables, more kids with laptops and headphones. But a boy near me held a covert bag of chips in his lap; that hadn’t changed. During World War II, Rita Hayworth was the most popular pinup for GIs. (There’s a reason that’s her poster on the wall in The Shawshank Redemption.) She’d been forced into show business (by her vaudevillian mother, her dancer father), and she was introverted, reluctant, dogged by her public persona. She was born Margarita Carmen Cansino, with dark hair. They turned her into a redhead. They did electrolysis to raise a hairline they considered too ethnic. They posed her in her underwear. She gave good face. Lance wanted to center each episode on a man in her life—her father, then each of her five husbands. In one sense, it was fitting, since her life was defined by men. Almost always terrible men, ones who took her money or asked her to leave Hollywood or used her children as pawns. Her fourth husband hit her in the face at the Cocoanut Grove. But it seemed unfair to organize her life around the people who controlled it. I said I’d consider it. Research has always been my happy place. It might be related to my sometime collecting of facts about my peers, an attempt to feel safer by mapping the world. If I can chart everything around me as far as I can see, then I must be in the middle of it all, real and in one piece. You are here. Rita was a pinball, bounced from one spot to the next. I related; what had my childhood been but a constant ricochet from one place and one disaster to the next? But to be fair, that’s many childhoods. I have to resist the urge to self-mythologize, to paint my own journey as harder than everyone else’s just so I can give myself credit for getting out. I’m allowed to take that credit regardless. So declareth my shrink. There were kids who came to Granby from housing projects, kids who came as a custody compromise. I wasn’t the only one with a less-than-romantic origin story. Jerome texted, asking if I’d gotten the email from Leo’s class mom about tomorrow being the hundredth day of second grade. It seemed impossible, but the year had flown by. The kids were to bring one hundred of something, and to dress like old people. Lest any twenty-first-century mother find a moment not devoted to proving maternal devotion through crafts. Jerome wrote: Leo on his own or you want me going over the top? I was torn. Teach Leo independence and thereby give the middle finger to a school that demanded this, in addition to Heritage Week and Crazy


voices and were more skilled in music, save only Maglor son of Fanor, and they loved the woods and the riversides; and some of the Grey-elves still wandered far and wide without settled abode, and they sang as they went. Chapter 14 Of Beleriand and Its Realms This is the fashion of the lands into which the Noldor came, in the north of the western regions of Middle-earth, in the ancient days; and here also is told of the manner in which the chieftains of the Eldar held their lands and the leaguer upon Morgoth after the Dagor Aglareb, the third battle in the Wars of Beleriand. In the north of the world Melkor had in the ages past reared Ered Engrin, the Iron Mountains, as a fence to his citadel of Utumno; and they stood upon the borders of the regions of everlasting cold, in a great curve from east to west. Behind the walls of Ered Engrin in the west, where they bent back northwards, Melkor built another fortress, as a defence against assault that might come from Valinor; and when he came back to Middle-earth, as has been told, he took up his abode in the endless dungeons of Angband, the Hells of Iron, for in the War of the Powers the Valar, in their haste to overthrow him in his great stronghold of Utumno, did not wholly destroy Angband nor search out all its deep places. Beneath Ered Engrin he made a great tunnel, which issued south of the mountains; and there he made a mighty gate. But above this gate, and behind it even to the mountains, he piled the thunderous towers of Thangorodrim, that were made of the ash and slag of his subterranean furnaces, and the vast refuse of his tunnellings. They were black and desolate and exceedingly lofty; and smoke issued from their tops, dark and foul upon the northern sky. Before the gates of Angband filth and desolation spread southward for many miles over the wide plain of Ard-galen; but after the coming of the Sun rich grass arose there, and while Angband was besieged and its gates shut there were green things even among the pits and broken rocks before the doors of hell. To the west of Thangorodrim lay Hsilme, the Land of Mist, for so it was named by the Noldor in their own tongue because of the clouds that Morgoth sent thither during their first encampment; Hithlum it became in the tongue of the Sindar that dwelt in those regions. It was a fair land while the Siege of Angband lasted, although its air was cool and winter there was cold. In the west it was bounded by Ered Lmin, the Echoing Mountains that marched near the sea; and in the east and south by the great curve of Ered Wethrin, the Shadowy Mountains, that looked across Ard-galen and the Vale of Sirion. Fingolfin and Fingon his son held Hithlum, and the most part of Fingolfin's folk dwelt in Mithrim about the shores of the great lake; to Fingon


Francis. "Francis, come out of there! Jean Louise, if I hear another word out of you I'll tell your father. Did I hear you say hell a while ago?" "Nome." "I thought I did. I'd better not hear it again." Aunt Alexandra was a back-porch listener. The moment she was out of sight Francis came out head up and grinning. "Don't you fool with me," he said. He jumped into the yard and kept his distance, kicking tufts of grass, turning around occasionally to smile at me. Jem appeared on the porch, looked at us, and went away. Francis climbed the mimosa tree, came down, put his hands in his pockets and strolled around the yard. "Hah!" he said. I asked him who he thought he was, Uncle Jack? Francis said he reckoned I got told, for me to just sit there and leave him alone. "I ain't botherin' you," I said. Francis looked at me carefully, concluded that I had been sufficiently subdued, and crooned softly, "Nigger-lover..." This time, I split my knuckle to the bone on his front teeth. My left impaired, I sailed in with my right, but not for long. Uncle Jack pinned my arms to my sides and said, "Stand still!" Aunt Alexandra ministered to Francis, wiping his tears away with her handkerchief, rubbing his hair, patting his cheek. Atticus, Jem, and Uncle Jimmy had come to the back porch when Francis started yelling. "Who started this?" said Uncle Jack. Francis and I pointed at each other. "Grandma," he bawled, "she called me a whore-lady and jumped on me!" "Is that true, Scout?" said Uncle Jack. "I reckon so." When Uncle Jack looked down at me, his features were like Aunt Alexandra's. "You know I told you you'd get in trouble if you used words like that? I told you, didn't I?" "Yes sir, but-" "Well, you're in trouble now. Stay there." I was debating whether to stand there or run, and tarried in indecision a moment too long: I turned to flee but Uncle Jack was quicker. I found myself suddenly looking at a tiny ant struggling with a bread crumb in the grass. "I'll never speak to you again as long as I live! I hate you an' despise you an' hope you die tomorrow!" A statement that seemed to encourage Uncle Jack, more than anything. I ran to Atticus for comfort, but he said I had it coming and it was high time we went home. I climbed into the back seat of the car without saying good-bye to anyone, and at home I ran to my room and slammed the door. Jem tried to say something nice, but I wouldn't let him. When I surveyed the damage there were only seven or eight red marks, and I was reflecting upon relativity when someone knocked on the door. I asked who it was; Uncle Jack answered. "Go away!" Uncle Jack said if I talked like that he'd lick me again, so I was quiet. When he entered the room I retreated to a corner


if I had the choice, I would still choose you. We are a good team, you and I, and we could be so much more.” She closed her eyes and let her sorrow ascend, a balloon loosed from a child’s hand. “But if this is not your choice, I will cut the thread,” Io continued. “I mean it, Edei. I will cut the thread, and I will be your friend instead. Maybe not straightaway, but eventually. I don’t know. But I do know that I will be fine.” And she would be, wouldn’t she? She had been surviving loss all her life: her parents, her childhood, Thais. It would hurt and she would mourn, but she had thought this was her penance, and instead it felt like . . . freedom. This is your penance. Her thoughts paused. Her heartbeat spiked, her mind numbed by the echo of the past speaking back to her. Slaughter? the rogue gang leader had said on the bridge. Oh, no, girl. This is your penance. These past few days tumbled into Io’s head, line after line after line. I will rise from the ashes a daughter of flame. Drina Savva’s words. Revenge is for the wicked. My purpose is justice. I am its servant, and it is mine. I’m neither crazy, nor dying. I am ascended. Drina Savva. I was made to know your crimes. I don’t deal in mercy. I deliver justice. I can see the taint of crime on you, too, sister. Raina. There are crimes that cannot go unpunished. Emmeline Segal, Drina Savva, Raina. I cannot punish you. Your crimes are not truly yours. Drina again. And from the Nine: They are daughters of the night, chosen for their honor, made to whip vengeance into the backs of wicked men. Shit. Oh shit. She had to find Nina—now. She pulled up the Quilt around her and approached Nina’s apartment. The boy—her son—was standing behind the door, probably nervously watching them through the peephole. A dozen threads sprouted from his chest, and one of them was brighter, vibrating toward the direction of the exit. His mother, most likely, nearing the apartment building. Io shot off in an instant, Edei dashing after her. “Io,” he called, “what’s wrong?” She had a theory, and if she was right about it, everything was wrong. They were barely down the first flight of stairs when Nina rounded the corner, carrying bags with groceries on both shoulders. Her white-blond hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and her cheeks looked gaunt, as though she hadn’t eaten in days. A gun was stuffed down her waistband, and her hand shot to it when she saw them. “Wait, wait.” Io raised both palms. “We mean no harm.” “I remember you. That night when Jarl . . .” Nina looked around herself, at the narrow walls of the staircase, calculating her exit strategy. She had survived the Riots, Io reminded herself, and probably just had to fight other looters for that food she was carrying. Her defensiveness was justified. “Why the