soil my fingers; on “Fair! I reckon so,” said the sea-cook. “You lost the ship; the blank side had been written with the same material the I found the treasure. Who’s the better man at that? And one word “Depposed.” I have that curiosity beside me at this Contents now I resign, by thunder! Elect whom you please to be your moment, but not a trace of writing now remains beyond a cap’n now; I’m done with it.” single scratch, such as a man might make with his thumb- Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 246 247 nail. That was the end of the night’s business. Soon after, with a drink all round, we lay down to sleep, and the outside of Silver’s vengeance was to put George Merry up for sentinel and threaten him with death if he should prove unfaithful. It was long ere I could close an eye, and heaven knows I had matter enough for thought in the man whom I had slain that afternoon, in my own most perilous position, and above all, in the remarkable game that I saw Silver now engaged upon—keeping the mutineers together with one hand and grasping with the other after every means, possible and im- Chapter 30. possible, to make his peace and save his miserable life. He On Parole. himself slept peacefully and snored aloud, yet my heart was sore for him, wicked as he was, to think on the dark perils that I WAS wakened—indeed, we were all wakened, for I could environed and the shameful gibbet that awaited him. see even the sentinel shake himself together from where he had fallen against the door-post—by a clear, hearty voice hail- ing us from the margin of the wood: “Block house, ahoy!” it cried. “Here’s the doctor.” And the doctor it was. Although I was glad to hear the sound, yet my gladness was not without admixture. I re- membered with confusion my insubordinate and stealthy con- duct, and when I saw where it had brought me—among what companions and surrounded by what dangers—I felt ashamed Contents to look him in the face. He must have risen in the dark, for the day had hardly come; and when I ran to a loophole and looked out, I saw him Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 248 249 standing, like Silver once before, up to the mid-leg in creep- with one grim nod to me proceeded with his work among the ing vapour. sick. He seemed under no apprehension, though he must “You, doctor! Top o’ the morning to you, sir!” cried Silver, have known that his life, among these treacherous demons, broad awake and beaming with good nature in a moment. depended on a hair; and he rattled on to his patients as if he “Bright and early, to be sure; and it’s the early bird, as the were paying an ordinary professional visit in a quiet English saying goes, that gets the rations. George, shake up your tim- family. His manner, I suppose, reacted on the men, for they bers, son,


for sure. I only remember bits and pieces from the hospital, and it’s all jumbled.” “You were unable to describe any details of the attack, but you identified Stahl immediately.” “I told you. I don’t remember any of it,” I said. “I would answer you if I could, but I really have no idea what I said.” Over Sawant’s shoulder, Dougherty’s face was pinched. “And what about the attack? Do you remember that? Do you remember seeing Stahl?” he asked, leaning forward. “No,” I said. He stared at me, like he hadn’t been expecting that answer and had no idea where to go. “Any memories I have are too conflated with things I’ve learned or seen or been told. If you asked me to testify today, I couldn’t. As for what I said back then—it was a very long time ago, and I’ve worked very hard to forget as much as I could. You probably have a clearer idea of what happened than I do, if you’ve read the files.” Dougherty looked uncomfortable. Sawant shifted. He glanced down at the pad of paper he’d brought with him, jotted down a note I couldn’t read, and looked up again. “In Olivia’s suicide note, she said that she was tired of lying. What was she lying about?” I hesitated. This part of the truth didn’t just belong to me. I’d promised Cass. “It could have been a number of things. Or nothing at all,” I said. “Reality and Liv didn’t always get along.” I regretted the words as soon as I’d said them. She deserved better than that from me. “You’re saying what she wrote in that letter was, what—a hallucination?” “Technically, that would be a delusion.” I looked him dead in the eye. “I don’t know what Liv was referring to in that letter. I know that she was struggling, and that she often hid the extent of that struggle from us.” “So you didn’t know she was suicidal.” “She wasn’t,” I said, sounding more stubborn than sure. “She killed herself. That’s the definition of suicidal, isn’t it?” Sawant asked. “Unless you don’t think it was a suicide.” “It’s easy to assume that because Liv was ill, she killed herself,” I said slowly. “It’s the obvious answer. But after last time, we all got really familiar with the warning signs. Liv didn’t feel hopeless. She was engaged. She was making plans. And—” I hesitated. “She promised.” “She promised,” he repeated, skeptical. “It was something we did. We would promise each other to still be here in the morning.” “It wasn’t just her making the promise, then?” Sawant said. I curled my hands in my lap. “It was something both of us needed. And it’s not a promise she would have broken.” “She left a note.” That was the part I couldn’t explain and couldn’t understand. “Maybe it wasn’t a suicide note. Maybe she meant…” I trailed off. I couldn’t think of a way to interpret those words as anything else. “She wouldn’t have done it.” “I am, in fact, inclined to agree with


Christina Lauren - The True Love Experiment.txt

enthusiasm. Women are hugged with a joyous cry; male relatives are embraced and teased. I am introduced to at least fifty people whose names I immediately forget because I am in awe of Fizzy in her familial element: warm, loving, quick with a story or anecdote. A few people comment on my appearance on the show, and I quickly divert their attention back to Fizzy. Getting stopped by strangers and praised for being in front of the camera is still something I’m trying to get used to. It’s not that I don’t like doing the interviews; I do. Verbally sparring with Fizzy has quickly become one of my top-three favorite activities, and even I see that we play well off each other. But the public recognition is not something I’d mentally prepared for. As we move through the crowd, all that lingers is the impression Fizzy gives that everyone I’ve met is the most impressive, or interesting, or adventurous, or creative person to have ever lived. And then, as we step out to the massive lawn resplendent with flowers and satin ribbons, there are Fizzy’s parents, greeting guests as they come outside. She takes my elbow, guiding me forward. “Connor, this is my mother, Lánying Chen.” If I had to do the math, I’d guess she was somewhere in her early sixties, but her skin is luminous, with only faint lines around her eyes. The shift in Fizzy is subtle but noticeable to someone who can barely take his eyes off her: with her parents she softens, becoming more daughter than center stage, more caretaker than party girl, reaching up to straighten the pendant of her mother’s necklace. I expect a handshake, but am pulled in for a hug instead, and I carefully embrace her mother; she is smaller than her daughter. As I pull back to meet Mrs. Chen’s smiling eyes, I think of my mother back home, how she looked exhausted day and night, how an event like this would make her panicked and uncomfortable. Beside Mrs. Chen stands her husband, Ming, a lanky man I met at Fizzy’s book signing, with a mischievous smile he passed down to at least one of his three children. “Here’s my new friend who’ll make my daughter a superstar!” We shake hands in greeting as Fizzy leans in, mock offended. “Hello, Father, I’m already a superstar.” “When do I get my red carpet date, then?” The two of them continue on as Mrs. Chen wraps an elegant hand around my forearm. “I like your show,” she says. “You are very handsome on TV.” “Thank you,” I say, grinning. “I’m surprised Fizzy lets you watch it.” Thankfully, she laughs at this. “You see her clearly, and I appreciate that.” I’m momentarily stilled by this. “I think most of the credit goes to your daughter. It’s rare to find someone so genuine and natural in front of a camera. I’m beginning to think there’s nothing she can’t do.” “When she writes her real novel, you’ll make it into a movie, okay?” Now I’m confused for


to the cubicle, trying to hold it closed, but it was ill fitting. Tiny furry little hands were squeezing themselves through the cracks, their fingers were inkstained; tiny voices chattered insanely. Arthur looked up. "Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out." ================================================================= Chapter 10 The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing vast interstellar distances in a mere nothingth of a second, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. It was discovered by a lucky chance, and then developed into a governable form of propulsion by the Galactic Government's research team on Damogran. This, briefly, is the story of its discovery. The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub- Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood - and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy. Many respectable physicists said that they weren't going to stand for this - partly because it was a debasement of science, but mostly because they didn't get invited to those sort of parties. Another thing they couldn't stand was the perpetual failure they encountered in trying to construct a machine which could generate the infinite improbability field needed to flip a spaceship across the mind-paralysing distances between the furthest stars, and in the end they grumpily announced that such a machine was virtually impossible. Then, one day, a student who had been left to sweep up the lab after a particularly unsuccessful party found himself reasoning this way: If, he thought to himself, such a machine is a virtual impossibility, then it must logically be a finite improbability. So all I have to do in order to make one is to work out exactly how improbable it is, feed that figure into the finite improbability generator, give it a fresh cup of really hot tea ... and turn it on! He did this, and was rather startled to discover that he had managed to create the long sought after golden Infinite Improbability generator out of thin air. It startled him even more when just after he was awarded the Galactic Institute's Prize for Extreme Cleverness he got lynched by a rampaging mob of respectable physicists who had finally realized that the one thing they really couldn't stand was a smartass. ================================================================= Chapter 11 The Improbability-proof control cabin of the Heart of Gold looked like a perfectly conventional spaceship except that it was perfectly clean because it was so new. Some of the control seats hadn't had the plastic wrapping taken off yet. The cabin was mostly white, oblong, and about the size of a smallish restaurant. In fact it wasn't perfectly oblong: the two long walls were raked


reasoning power. "If I kill him," thought Tarzan, "what advantage will it be to me? Will it not rob the tribe of a great fighter? And if Terkoz be dead, he will know nothing of my supremacy, while alive he will ever be an example to the other apes." "KA-GODA?" hissed Tarzan in Terkoz's ear, which, in ape tongue, means, freely translated: "Do you surrender?" For a moment there was no reply, and Tarzan added a few more ounces of pressure, which elicited a horrified shriek of pain from the great beast. Chapter 13 "KA-GODA?" repeated Tarzan. "KA-GODA!" cried Terkoz. "Listen," said Tarzan, easing up a trifle, but not releasing his hold. "I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In all the jungle there is none so great. "You have said: `KA-GODA' to me. All the tribe have heard. Quarrel no more with your king or your people, for next time I shall kill you. Do you understand?" "HUH," assented Terkoz. "And you are satisfied?" "HUH," said the ape. Tarzan let him up, and in a few minutes all were back at their vocations, as though naught had occurred to mar the tranquility of their primeval forest haunts. But deep in the minds of the apes was rooted the conviction that Tarzan was a mighty fighter and a strange creature. Strange because he had had it in his power to kill his enemy, but had allowed him to live--unharmed. That afternoon as the tribe came together, as was their wont before darkness settled on the jungle, Tarzan, his wounds washed in the waters of the stream, called the old males about him. "You have seen again to-day that Tarzan of the Apes is the greatest among you," he said. "HUH," they replied with one voice, "Tarzan is great." "Tarzan," he continued, "is not an ape. He is not like his people. His ways are not their ways, and so Tarzan is going back to the lair of his own kind by the waters of the great lake which has no farther shore. You must choose another to rule you, for Tarzan will not return." And thus young Lord Greystoke took the first step toward the goal which he had set--the finding of other white men like himself. Chapter 13 His Own Kind The following morning, Tarzan, lame and sore from the wounds of his battle with Terkoz, set out toward the west and the seacoast. He traveled very slowly, sleeping in the jungle at night, and reaching his cabin late the following morning. For several days he moved about but little, only enough to gather what fruits and nuts he required to satisfy the demands of hunger. In ten days he was quite sound again, except for a terrible, half-healed scar, which, starting above his left eye ran across the top of his head, ending at the right ear. It was the mark left by Terkoz when he had torn the scalp away. Chapter 13 During his convalescence Tarzan tried to fashion a mantle from the skin of


a poetical Pagan Roman. And when these things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a globular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and seclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and beneath constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think untraditionally and independently; receiving all nature's sweet or savage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding breast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental advantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language --that man makes one in a whole nation's census --a mighty pageant creature, formed for noble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically regarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems a half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature. For all men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be sure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease. But, as yet we have not to do with such an one, but with quite another; and still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it only results again from another phase of the Quaker, modified by individual circumstances. Like Captain Peleg, Captain Bildad was a well-to-do, retired whaleman. But unlike Captain Peleg --who cared not a rush for what are called serious things, and indeed deemed those selfsame serious things the veriest of all trifles --Captain Bildad .. <p 74 > had not only been originally educated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but all his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely island creatures, round the Horn --all that had not moved this native born Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his vest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of common consistency about worthy Captain Bildad. Though refusing, from conscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself had illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn foe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled tuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening of his days, the pious Bildad reconciled these things in the reminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much, and very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible conclusion that a man's religion is one thing, and this practical world quite another. This world pays dividends. Rising from a little cabin-boy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a broad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming boat-header, chief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship-owner; Bildad, as I hinted before, had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from active life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining days to the quiet receiving of his well-earned income. Now Bildad, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an incorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard task-master.


Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral,--the truth, namely, that the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief; and he would feel it a singular gratification if this romance might effectually convince mankind--or, indeed, any one man--of the folly of tumbling down an avalanche of ill-gotten gold, or real estate, on the heads of an unfortunate posterity, thereby to maim and crush them, until the accumulated mass shall be scattered abroad in its original atoms. In good faith, however, he is not sufficiently imaginative to flatter himself with the slightest hope of this kind. When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtile process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod,--or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly, --thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first. The reader may perhaps choose to assign an actual locality to the imaginary events of this narrative. If permitted by the historical connection,--which, though slight, was essential to his plan,--the author would very willingly have avoided anything of this nature. Not to speak of other objections, it exposes the romance to an inflexible and exceedingly dangerous species of criticism, by bringing his fancy-pictures almost into positive contact with the realities of the moment. It has been no part of his object, however, to describe local manners, nor in any way to meddle with the characteristics of a community for whom he cherishes a proper respect and a natural regard. He trusts not to be considered as unpardonably offending by laying out a street that infringes upon nobody's private rights, and appropriating a lot of land which had no visible owner, and building a house of materials long in use for constructing castles in the air. The personages of the tale--though they give themselves out to be of ancient stability and considerable prominence--are really of the author's own making, or at all events, of his own mixing; their virtues can shed no lustre, nor their defects redound, in the remotest degree, to the discredit of the venerable town of which they profess to be inhabitants. He would be glad, therefore, if-especially in the quarter to which he alludes-the book may be read strictly as a Romance, having a great deal more to do with the clouds overhead than with any portion of the actual soil of


like Mummy, whose last

sound on earth...would be a click.

23.

Re A quiet night at Nott Cott, preparing dinner together.

December 2016.

Meg and I had discovered that we shared the same favorite food: roast

chicken.

I didn’t know how to cook it, so that night she was teaching me.

I remember the warmth of the kitchen, the wonderful smells. Lemon

wedges on the cutting board, garlic and rosemary, gravy bubbling in a

saucepan.

I remember rubbing salt on the skin of the bird, then opening a bottle of

wine.

Meg put on music. She was expanding my horizons, teaching me about

folk music and soul, James Taylor and Nina Simone.

It’s anew dawn. It’s a new day.

Maybe the wine went to my head. Maybe the weeks of battling the

press had worn me down. For some reason, when the conversation took an

unexpected turn, I became touchy.

Then angry. Disproportionately, sloppily angry.

Meg said something I took the wrong way. It was partly a cultural

difference, partly a language barrier, but I was also just over-sensitive that

night. I thought: Why’s she having a go at me?

I snapped at her, spoke to her harshly—cruelly. As the words left my

mouth, I could feel everything in the room come to a stop. The gravy

stopped bubbling, the molecules of air stopped orbiting. Even Nina

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https://m.facebook.com/groups/182281287 1297698 https://t.:me/Afghansalarlibrary

Simone seemed to pause. Meg walked out of the room, disappearing for a

full fifteen minutes.

I went and found her upstairs. She was sitting in the bedroom. She was

calm, but said in a quiet, level tone that she would never stand for being

spoken to like that.

I nodded.

She wanted to know where it came from.

I


away. It seemed like a thing alive and yet its tiny voice made the stillness seem deeper. The valley was very, very still. As he sat gazing into the clear running of the water, Archibald Craven gradually felt his mind and body both grow quiet, as quiet as the valley itself. He wondered if he were going to sleep, but he was not. He sat and gazed at the sunlit water and his eyes began to see things growing at its edge. There was one lovely mass of blue forget-me-nots growing so close to the stream that its leaves were wet and at these he found himself looking as he remembered he had looked at such things years ago. He was actually thinking tenderly how lovely it was and what wonders of blue its hundreds of little blossoms were. He did not know that just that simple thought was slowly filling his mind--filling and filling it until other things were softly pushed aside. It was as if a sweet clear spring had begun to rise in a stagnant pool and had risen and risen until at last it sweptthe dark water away. But of course he did not think of this himself. He only knew that the valley seemed to grow quieter and quieter as he sat and stared at the bright delicate blueness. He did not know how long he sat there or what was happening to him, but at last he moved as if he were awakening and he got up slowly and stood on the moss carpet, drawing a long, deep, soft breath and wondering at himself. Something seemed to have been unbound and released in him, very quietly. "What is it?" he said, almost in a whisper, and he passed his hand over his forehead. "I almost feel as if--I were alive!" I do not know enough about the wonderfulness of undiscovered things to be able to explain how this had happened to him. Neither does any one else yet. He did not understand at all himself--but he remembered this strange hour months afterward when he was at Misselthwaite again and he found out quite by accident that on this very day Colin had cried out as he went into the secret garden: "I am going to live forever and ever and ever!" The singular calmness remained with him the rest of the evening and he slept a new reposeful sleep; but it was not with him very long. He did not know that it could be kept. By the next night he had opened the doors wide to his dark thoughts and they had come trooping and rushing back. He left the valley and went on his wandering way again. But, strange as it seemed to him, there were minutes--sometimes half-hours--when, without his knowing why, the black burden seemed to lift itself again and he knew he was a living man and not a dead one. Slowly--slowly--for no reason that he knew of--he was "coming alive" with the garden. As the golden summer changed into the deep


“But what’s happening with Kristi. Nuh-uh. That’s a different dude.” Bentz rubbed the back of his neck, obviously struggling with the idea. To his daughter, he said, “Tell me that with your new security system, you have a camera that covers that area?” “I do.” She seemed a little nervous about it. “Let’s take a look.” “Okay. I’ve got it hooked up to my phone. An app. Wait a second.” She pulled the phone from her pocket, then opened the app and found the area in question. She hesitated, scrolled a bit, and fiddled with the footage. “Let’s see, nothing . . . nothing . . . I’m backing up. It doesn’t show anyone—oh, wait. Oh . . . Oh . . . God.” She handed the phone to Bentz. “This is a couple of nights ago, when I was out for a run. I, um, I came back and I thought I saw someone in the alley across the street. The dog was with me and he barked like crazy, but when I looked again, no one was there. But look at the date and time. This is literally less than ten minutes before I got home. I haven’t been to that side of the fence until tonight when I was taking out the garbage.” Bentz and Montoya studied the screen. Sure enough a man—well, it looked like a man, but that wasn’t for certain; a tall woman could have been caught in the camera’s eye. It was just a few seconds. He slipped through and unlatched the gate by reaching over, opened a large case of some kind, dropped the snake into the can, then hurried away, his face never full on to the camera’s eye, a black overcoat and pants, a hat low over his eyes. Bentz kept the footage rolling, seeing nothing but a neighboring cat in one frame and a lumbering opossum in another. “It ends here,” Bentz said. “What—no . . .” She came around the counter and took the phone again. “See, this is where I open the can and see the snake.” Again, she handed the phone to her father. “Then I jumped back and must’ve hit the camera because everything seems to go screwy after that.” Montoya watched and saw, just as she said, her image opening the can, then screaming and dropping the garbage sack, the dog barking wildly as she snapped the lid down and rehooked the cord holding the lid in place. “We’ll need a copy of this,” Bentz said. “Maybe the lab can enhance the images and we can get a better picture of the guy.” “Maybe, but he kept his face turned, because he probably spotted the camera,” Montoya said. “We’ll check the neighbors, street cams. He must’ve driven here. I mean, he was carrying a snake for crying out loud—a big snake.” Bentz backed the footage up again and looked at the carrying case from which the snake was deposited. “Maybe we can get something on the bag. Or shoe prints. Or fingerprints on the lid of


whaling. One day the planks stream with freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred .. <p 425 > quarter-deck enormous masses of the whale's head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is deafening. But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a most scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil possesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the decks never look so white as just after what they call an affair of oil. Besides, from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a potent ley is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back of the whale remains clinging to the side, that ley quickly exterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and with buckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. The soot is brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous implements which have been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and put away. The great hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the try-works, completely hiding the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles are coiled in unseen nooks; and when by the combined and simultaneous industry of almost the entire ship's company, the whole of this conscientious duty is at last concluded, then the crew themselves proceed to their own ablutions; shift themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the immaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from out the daintiest Holland. Now, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and humorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics; propose to mat the deck; think of having hangings to the top; object not to taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to such musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short of audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and bring us napkins! But mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three .. <p 426 > men intent on spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil the old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot somewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest uninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through for ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their wrists with all day rowing on the Line, --they only step to the deck to carry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash, yea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the combined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works;


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

faerie merchant rolled it in crushed nuts before handing it over on a stick, but as soon as it touched my palm, it began to melt. The merchant was watching me, so I put it in my mouth, pantomiming my delight. The cheese tasted like snow and melted within seconds. I stopped next at a stand equipped with a smoking hut. The faerie handed me a delicate fillet of fish, almost perfectly clear despite the smoking. I offered it to Shadow, but he only looked at me with incomprehension in his eyes. And, indeed, when I popped it into my mouth, it too melted flavourlessly against my tongue. I took a wandering course to the lakeshore, conscious of the need to avoid suspicion. I paused at the wine merchant, who had the largest stand. It was brighter than the others, snow piled up behind it in a wall that caught the lantern light and threw it back in a blinding glitter. I had to look down at my feet, blinking back tears, as one of the Folk pressed an ice-glass into my hand. Like the food, the wine smelled lovely, of sugared apples and cloves, but it slid eerily within the ice, more like oil than wine. Shadow kept growling at it, as he had not with the faerie food, and so I tipped it onto the snow. Beside the wine merchant was a stand offering trinkets, frozen wildflowers that many of the Folk threaded through their hair or wove through unused buttonholes on their cloaks, as well as an array of jewels with pins in them. I could not compare them to any jewels I knew; they were mostly in shades of white and winter grey, hundreds of them, each impossibly different from the next. I selected one that I knew, without understanding how, was the precise colour of the icicles that hung from the stone ledges of the Cambridge libraries in winter. But moments after I pinned it to my breast, all that remained was a patch of damp. At the lake was a little beach of frozen white sand upon which a number of spectators had gathered. I spied two other mortals in the crowd, a young man and woman draped over the shoulders of two lovely faerie ladies. I did not have to watch them long to know they were far beyond my aid, and turned from their blank stares with a shudder. Despair overcame me as I gazed into the whirl of dancers. How on earth could I extract Lilja and Margret when I was deaf to the music they danced to? Stepping onto the ice would give me away immediately—I am flat-footed at the best of times, but I doubted even someone trained in the art of dance could fit their limbs into a rhythm they couldn’t hear. As I stood going through my options, there came a rustling at my elbow. A beautiful lady was gazing at me, her rabbitish white hair cascading in a long braid past her waist, her blue-grey eyes perfectly matched


they used to convince me of the need to resurrect the Order of the Furies and deliver justice? You. They knew exactly what you did to me. They told me you had your little oneiroi-born friend here visit me every night for a week with dreams of traveling. That you frayed my home-thread, little by little until it snapped. That you manipulated me. Exiled me to months of cold and hunger and terror. You accuse me of hurting you, but is there a worse manipulation than what you did to me? I knew if my own sister could do that, then the Order needed to be restored. Justice delivered.” “Io . . .” Ava whispered. “Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you didn’t do that.” Io’s eyes fluttered closed. Her guilt was a weight, dragging her into the dark. She kept reaching for the surface, breaking though for a single breath, and then a new current of shame would pull her under again. The blame was insurmountable. It didn’t matter that Thais had hurt her first, that Thais hurt her for years, tiny nicks at her heart. For two years, Io had tried to rationalize it, justify it, put it out of her mind. She did what she had to do. But these last few days, with Edei, with Rosa, with the threadless women and the dead Furies, had taught Io that the world existed in gradients, endless shades of gray. You’re someone who loves, she had told Edei in order to hear it herself. That’s the only part that’s yours to give and yours to take. Io couldn’t live in her shame any longer. Shame for hurting Thais. Shame for loving her still. She had to let go. She opened her fingers and released Thais’s threads. Her eyes were shut. She heard Thais’s sigh of relief. “One soul in three bodies—that’s what we’ve always been,” Thais said softly. Here it would come: She would apologize. She would start to make amends. She would try to fix this. Be better, make the world better. That was Thais, even in her defeat. “When our sisters need us, we go. No questions asked. Right, Ava?” Ava? What—no! Io barely had time to open her eyes and catch a last glimpse of Ava, staring at Thais. Ava nodded. “Three bodies, one soul,” she repeated. “No questions asked.” Thais smiled. “The lights, sister mine.” It felt almost like a dream. Ava’s arm shot out. It hit the light switch on the wall beside her. The greenhouse sank into darkness. Footsteps shuffled. Glass crunched beneath feet. Gunshots split the air. CHAPTER XXXVI OVER HIS HEART THE QUILT EXPLODED around Io, dozens of bright lines. Two bundles of silver were racing through the garden at high speed, away from the greenhouse. Two more were in the room, frantically jerking around the glass panes. And one was on the floor, by her feet. Please, Io thought. Please, please, please. She knelt and fumbled with Edei’s clothes. Wet—too wet. A cry tore out of her, “Rosa, the lights!” “I’m


the Tom Petty song about growing up in an Indiana town. I thought that was the whole gag until he got to the chorus. “Last dance with Bodie Kane!” he sang; it rhymed and everything. Do you remember this? Laughing till tears escaped, applauding Graham, asking if anyone had ever sung that to me before. No, I admitted. It was a good joke, and I laughed with everyone, flattered that Graham remembered I was from Indiana. But I knew already exactly what would happen: For the rest of the year, people would sing it to me in the hallways, in the dining hall, and I’d have to find some way to react. “Okay,” you said finally, wiping your face, “less literal, next time, but that’s the idea.” An hour had passed, and I was still staring at my laptop. I must have looked like someone doing intense and stressful work; no wonder everyone had steered clear of my table. We’d believed there were ghosts in Quincy Hall and Gage House. We’d believed Mr. Wysockis and Ms. Arena were dating, until he announced his engagement to a woman we’d never heard of, a grad student at UVM. We’d believed we were practically grown. I walked to film class weighed down with the cold, and the laptop in my backpack, and the winter coat I was growing to hate. This was how I’d trudged through four years at Granby: uncomfortable and ungrounded. It’s hard to describe the dizzy headspace I was in, except to say I no longer had any sense of what was true—about Jerome, about Robbie, about Omar, about you. I didn’t know if Yahav still loved me. I couldn’t figure out who knew more about what happened to Thalia: me now, or me at barely eighteen. My adult self, looking back with experience and perspective, or my raw teenage self, both jaded and naïve, taking everything in fresh. This wasn’t even a question of believing a survivor, as Thalia had never said anything about you. Well, and she hadn’t survived. 34 Junior year Feb Week, I stayed on campus. Halfway through college, I mentioned “Feb Week” to someone at IU and then explained I just meant February break, and still she looked at me like I was nuts. There was some origin story about the school saving money on heat, but in reality it was a vacation about second homes and special invitations and pressure from the oldest Granby families to keep it on the schedule. This was when I learned that it wasn’t just the ski team who skied, that everyone around me had grown up casually gliding downhill. Skiing wasn’t entirely a class signifier, though; for some it meant childhood trips to Aspen, but for the New England kids it might have meant a local mountain with gravelly snow, used gear, a few PE credits. I’d never been invited to anyone’s ski house, and I had no interest in, or funding for, school-sponsored educational trips to the Galapagos or the Everglades. Freshman year I’d flown back to Indiana and


Vic thought about it, considered starting again and rebuilding what his father had created, but in the end, the memory of what had come before proved to be too great. Though he wanted to believe no machines would come for them, he couldn’t take the chance. Making quick work, Vic and Nurse Ratched and Rambo salvaged what they could, loading it up into the Terrible Dogfish. It was Nurse Ratched who found it. Buried under a layer of broken glass and pieces of the collapsed roof, a cracked screen. At the bottom, a little tray partially open. Inside, the glimmer of a disc with two words faintly visible. Top Hat. Rambo screamed. After he’d calmed himself, he asked if it still worked. “Only one way to find out,” Nurse Ratched said. That night, on the Terrible Dogfish, Jerry Travers and Dale Tremont were cheek to cheek. Dad watched without speaking, head cocked. In the belly of the great whale, another machine lay silent, unmoving. They left their former home behind, snow whipping in a whiteout as the whale rose above the clearing into a deep blue winter sky. Heading north and into the wilds, they flew above the forest. Even with all he’d seen and done, somehow, Victor still marveled at the sight of it, the winter woods stretching as far as the eye could see. It did not bring with it the uncertainty the City of Electric Dreams had. That was unknown: this was the forest, his home. It took them two hours before they found something suitable: a mostly flat, empty stretch of snow-covered earth. Large old-growth trees surrounded three sides of the clearing. The remaining side butted up against a sheer rock face at least forty feet high. It wasn’t like where they’d come from. It was different. “Come on,” Vic said, wiping his eyes. “We have work to do.” Once, a machine named Giovanni Lawson had made a home where one should not exist. Decades later, his son and the rest of their family endeavored to do the same. They did not build up and into the trees, for there was no need. They had shelter in the form of the Terrible Dogfish, the skin and skeleton keeping the chill at bay. As winter wore on around them, they spent their days cataloguing every inch of the flying machine, Nurse Ratched plugged in and soaking up information. By the end of the first week, she was an expert in the inner workings of the Terrible Dogfish, and could control it however she pleased. She proved this by providing a demonstration of the whale’s weapon systems. One moment, a small tree stood in the snow, and the next, it exploded, wood and snow and dirt flying in the air. As the others stared dumbfounded around her, Nurse Ratched said, “Oops. On the bright side, it will make hunting for food easier.” Rambo would disappear and reappear at random intervals, bursting with excitement, regaling them with stories of his journeys into the bowels of the machine, traveling to places that


Martelli’s apartment and laughter and music coming from another. The baby on the third floor seems to have gotten past the stage where she had to holler for a few hours every night, so that has to be a relief for everyone concerned. Underneath one of the doors on the fourth floor, he can see the shadow of a dog lying down, waiting for its owner to come home. Nick has a hard time with close friendships—if faced with the choice between lying to someone about who he is or keeping them at arm’s length, he chooses the latter. He’s no good at protracted dishonesty. But he likes being around people. He likes being sociable at work. He likes being friendly with his neighbors. He often wishes he could have more actual friends, but friendliness is a fine second best. Andy’s the closest friend he has, the closest he’s ever had, and that fact means more to Nick than whatever happened tonight. He’ll figure out a way to make things right between them. He hurt Andy’s feelings—although he isn’t quite sure how—and he needs to figure out a way to explain to Andy that his feelings were hurt, too. Or maybe he can skip that part. Andy matters a hell of a lot more to him than his own hurt feelings. He’s going to do whatever it takes to put things back the way they were. He turns the key in the lock as quietly as possible, then closes the door gently behind him. He takes off his shoes and is about to tiptoe into his bedroom when his breath catches. Andy is asleep on the couch. He’s fully dressed, the blanket from his bed draped half over him. Nick could make his life easy and just go to bed. He probably isn’t sober enough to have the conversation they need to have. But Andy either attempted to wait up for him or hoped that Nick’s arrival would wake him, and Nick doesn’t want to ignore that. He sits carefully on the end of the couch near Andy’s feet. Nick likes seeing Andy on his couch, likes seeing his dusty-blond hair spread over the faded green upholstery, likes the weight of his legs on Nick’s lap when they land there while they watch television, likes the scent of his aftershave in Nick’s home. He likes it more than he ought to, really. But that’s no surprise. Through the blanket, he puts a hand on Andy’s leg and gently shakes him awake. “Andy.” It takes a few more shakes before Andy’s eyes open, and then he bolts upright. Nick has never seen Andy so alert so soon after waking. Usually it takes a full half hour of catatonia before Andy even attempts sentences. “I’m home,” Nick says unnecessarily. “You ought to go to sleep in your bed.” “I’m sorry,” Andy says, rubbing his eyes. “I’m a jackass. I shouldn’t have stopped you from being with that man.” “I don’t give a shit about that,” Nick says. And he really doesn’t. That was annoying


grass as though trying to get rid of him, then seemed to resign herself to having him at her side. Presently they were in among a clump of ragged leafless shrubs, useless either for concealment or as protection from the wind. They halted. It was vilely cold. The wind whistled through the twigs and fretted the occasional, dirty-looking crocuses. He put his arm round her waist. There was no telescreen, but there must be hidden microphones: besides, they could be seen. It did not matter, nothing mattered. They could have lain down on the ground and done THAT if they had wanted to. His flesh froze with horror at the thought of it. She made no response whatever to file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (159 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:52 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt the clasp of his arm; she did not even try to disengage herself. He knew now what had changed in her. Her face was sallower, and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple; but that was not the change. It was that her waist had grown thicker, and, in a surprising way, had stiffened. He remembered how once, after the explosion of a rocket bomb, he had helped to drag a corpse out of some ruins, and had been astonished not only by the incredible weight of the thing, but by its rigidity and awkwardness to handle, which made it seem more like stone than flesh. Her body felt like that. It occurred to him that the texture of her skin would be quite different from what it had once been. He did not attempt to kiss her, nor did they speak. As they walked back across the grass, she looked directly at him for the first time. It was only a momentary glance, full of contempt and dislike. He wondered whether it was a dislike that came purely out of the past or whether it was inspired also by his bloated face and the water that the wind kept squeezing from his eyes. They sat down on two iron chairs, side by side but not too close together. He saw that she was about to speak. She moved her clumsy shoe a few centimetres and deliberately crushed a twig. Her feet seemed to have grown broader, he noticed. 'I betrayed you,' she said baldly. 'I betrayed you,' he said. She gave him another quick look of dislike. 'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn


went. But it is said that Hrin would not live thereafter, being bereft of all purpose and desire, and cast himself at last into the western sea; and so ended the mightiest of the warriors of mortal Men. But when Hrin was gone from Menegroth, Thingol sat long in silence, gazing upon the great treasure that lay upon his knees; and it came into his mind that it should be remade, and in it should be set the Silmaril. For as the years passed Thingol's thought turned unceasingly to the jewel of Fanor, and became bound to it, and he liked not to let it rest even behind the doors of his inmost treasury; and he was minded now to bear it with him always, waking and sleeping. In those days the Dwarves still came on their journeys into Beleriand from their mansions in Ered Lindon, and passing over Gelion at Sam Athrad, the Ford of Stones, they travelled the ancient road to Doriath; for their skill in the working of metal and stone was very great, and there was much need of their craft in the halls of Menegroth. But they came now no longer in small parties as aforetime, but in great companies well armed for their protection in the perilous lands between Aros and Gelion; and they dwelt in Menegroth at such times in chambers and smithies set apart for them. At that very time great craftsmen of Nogrod were lately come into Doriath; and the King therefore summoning them declared his desire, that if their skill were great enough they should remake the Nauglamr, and in it set the Silmaril. Then the Dwarves looked upon the work of their fathers, and they beheld with wonder the shining jewel of Fanor; and they were filled with a great lust to possess them, and carry them off to their far homes in the mountains. But they dissembled their mind, and consented to the task. Long was their labour; and Thingol went down alone to their deep smithies, and sat ever among them as they worked. In time his desire was achieved, and the greatest of the works of Elves and Dwarves were brought together and made one; and its beauty was very great, for now the countless jewels of the Nauglamr did reflect and cast abroad in marvellous hues the light of the Silmaril amidmost. Then Thingol, being alone among them, made to take it up and clasp it about his neck; but the Dwarves in that moment withheld it from him, and demanded that he yield it up to them, saying: 'By what right does the Elvenking lay claim to the Nauglamr, that was made by our fathers for Finrod Felagund who is dead? It has come to him but by the hand of Hrin the Man of Dor-lmin, who took it as a thief out of the darkness of Nargothrond.' But Thingol perceived their hearts, and saw well that desiring the Silmaril they sought but a pretext and fair cloak for their true intent; and in his wrath


chase. At last, however, she fell right into the cool green tree-tops swaying together in the breeze, and I the wind’s eye, was taken dead aback, and stood there awhile felt sure I should make the next promontory without fail. helpless, with her sails shivering. It was high time, for I now began to be tortured with “Clumsy fellows,” said I; “they must still be drunk as owls.” Contents thirst. The glow of the sun from above, its thousandfold And I thought how Captain Smollett would have set them reflection from the waves, the sea-water that fell and dried skipping. Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 196 197 Meanwhile the schooner gradually fell off and filled again I was now gaining rapidly on the schooner; I could see the upon another tack, sailed swiftly for a minute or so, and brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about, and still no soul brought up once more dead in the wind’s eye. Again and again appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was this repeated. To and fro, up and down, north, south, was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where east, and west, the HISPANIOLA sailed by swoops and I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what I chose dashes, and at each repetition ended as she had begun, with with the ship. idly flapping canvas. It became plain to me that nobody was For some time she had been doing the worse thing pos- steering. And if so, where were the men? Either they were sible for me—standing still. She headed nearly due south, dead drunk or had deserted her, I thought, and perhaps if I yawing, of course, all the time. Each time she fell off, her sails could get on board I might return the vessel to her captain. partly filled, and these brought her in a moment right to the The current was bearing coracle and schooner southward wind again. I have said this was the worst thing possible for at an equal rate. As for the latter’s sailing, it was so wild and me, for helpless as she looked in this situation, with the can- intermittent, and she hung each time so long in irons, that vas cracking like cannon and the blocks trundling and bang- she certainly gained nothing, if she did not even lose. If only ing on the deck, she still continued to run away from me, not I dared to sit up and paddle, I made sure that I could over- only with the speed of the current, but by the whole amount haul her. The scheme had an air of adventure that inspired of her leeway, which was naturally great. me, and the thought of the water breaker beside the fore com- But now, at last, I had my chance. The breeze fell for panion doubled my growing courage. some seconds, very low, and the current gradually turning Up I got, was welcomed almost instantly by another cloud her, the HISPANIOLA revolved slowly round


“I’m right here with you.” Ogden showed up, pushing a cart filled with files and photographs. He lifted them out and unceremoniously dumped them on the table. “Miss Brooks, you can sit over there.” He pointed to a chair against a wall. Marion moved to her appointed seat and nodded demurely. “Thank you, Detective Ogden.” For the next hour, she watched as Peter worked his way through photographs, police files, and what seemed to be letters that the bomber had sent. It was unbearable being so close to the evidence on hand and unable to look at it, but she knew if she scooted her chair closer to Peter, which she was tempted to do, Ogden would toss them both out. The thought of coming across any crime scene photos also kept her glued to her chair. She didn’t need to see those. Peter stayed focused on the evidence, writing something down on his notepad every so often as Marion watched the clock tick on. She didn’t want to have to leave and miss whatever Peter said to the detectives. At one point, all the policemen in the room, including Ogden, were called away for some kind of meeting. Marion slid her chair a little closer. “Anything yet?” she whispered to Peter. He looked up in surprise, as if he’d forgotten where he was. “Maybe. It’s fascinating, for sure. He’s mailed out a number of letters, to Met Power, to the newspapers, to the police. The guy’s a regular pen pal.” “There’s something to work with?” “I think there is. Over the years he’s become more and more angry. The letters become more taunting, the threats escalate. They have to catch this guy, and fast.” He turned to meet her eyes. “Of course, it’s too late for that, for you. I’m sorry.” “I want him caught before he kills someone else.” The sound of the policemen returning drove Marion back to her appointed spot. At ten o’clock exactly, Ogden gestured for them to follow him back to Somers’s office. Peter closed his notepad and pushed back his chair. “I’m ready.” They knocked on Somers’s door and entered, Ogden trailing close behind. This time Peter stood at the window while she and Ogden took the seats. Somers sat back in his chair, arms crossed. “So. What did you discover, Dr. Griggs?” “As I mentioned before, usually a psychiatrist studies the patient and then predicts the behavior. In this case, I’m working backward, examining the behavior and then trying to figure out what type of person would act this way, looking at all the factors that come into play with this kind of unstable conduct. I tried to use that to determine his identity. Reverse psychology, if you will.” So far, so good. Both policemen were listening closely, and even the sarcastic look on Ogden’s face was smoothed over, replaced with interest. “Determine his identity?” asked Somers. “Not anything as specific as his name, but other factors that aren’t insignificant, like his race, what kind of work he might do. Keep in mind, to


carving! How lovely that you met your spouse while climbing Machu Picchu.’ ” Greg shakes his head. “Jack’s not married.” “Any partners?” “No. He doesn’t really date.” My eyebrow lifts at Greg, who immediately shakes his head. “Not like me. He . . . has friends, women that he . . . But he’s very clear about not being interested in relationships.” I nod. Type Stud? Yikes. “Your mother doesn’t hound him about settling down like she does you?” “It’s complicated.” Greg’s expression is almost guilty. “But no. Mom doesn’t really care what he does. Let’s see, something about Jack.” He drums his fingers. “He comes across as a bit rough around the edges, like he doesn’t care about anything but his job, but—he’s nice. Kind. For instance, he was the only person who showed up for my Jesus Christ Superstar recital back in high school.” He sighs. “I played Peter.” “The only person in your family?” “The only person in the audience. Did lots of clapping.” Greg shrugs. “And he’s freakishly smart. Likes board games. Recently moved back to Boston from California.” “What’s his job?” “He teaches. Phys—” A loud sound from a nearby table makes us start. A toddler, slamming her fist on the table, yelling at her mom, “Not banana—cookie!” “Sweetie, you’ve been sick.” “I’m not sick. I—” Suddenly, there’s a puddle of vomit on the front of her shirt. Greg and I exchange a look before he continues, “Also, um . . . he plays sports with his friends. Stuff like that.” I nod and write down, PE teacher. Monopoly? Gym bro? Not the target. Nonissue. Until now. Suddenly, Jonathan Jack Jesus Christ Superstar Smith-Turner, who plays board games and teaches something that starts with phys- and is most definitely not physical education, is a big fucking issue. Impossible. Insane. I must be on Punk’d. General relativity was right: I’ve time-traveled back to the early 2000s. A camera crew and Uncle Paul are hiding behind that pretentious potted fern in the corner. The interview was a setup. My entire life is a joke. “Hey, Jack,” Volkov asks from behind me, all sharp, eastern European sounds, “with great power comes . . . ?” “Great current squared times resistance,” Jack murmurs, eyes planted on me. I shiver hot and cold while everyone else laughs. As usual, Jack is inaccessible; I have no idea what’s happening in his brain. As usual, I feel like he’s skinning me like a clementine, seeing all my squishy, secret, hidden bits. How hard will Cece murder me if I puke all over her dress? “MIT party?” The hostess smiles. “Let me show you to your table.” I turn around clumsily, as if wading through water. My brain won’t stop flipping its fins. So Jack’s a physicist—bad. An experimentalist—bad. The experimentalist—bad. He wants to hire some George dude—bad. He knows me as a librarian his brother’s dating—bad. He never liked me—bad. He thinks I made up my Ph.D.—badder—and am conning MIT into hiring me— baddest. “Don’t let him get to you,” Monica whispers in my


will, and had thus far been resistant to discussing anything that had to do with her last wishes. I had printed the necessary forms and brought them along on this trip, hoping that I could get her to fill them out and have them witnessed. They were sitting in the bag I’d looped over my chair. I couldn’t bring myself to mention them. When we both had only an inch or two of coffee left in our mugs, she brought up Dad. “I wish he were here,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder what he would say. It’s so hard going through all of this without him.” I had not considered my father an especially calm or steadying influence. When I was in high school and my mother got sick, I knew I couldn’t talk to Dad about it; he seemed even more fearful and agitated than I was. When he tried to teach me to drive, he made it as far as our neighbor’s mailbox before saying, I can’t do this, turn around, and never got into a car with me in the driver’s seat again. His temper could be unpredictable. He was not what I’d call good in a crisis. At times, though, he surprised me. I remembered his serene pride at my wedding, the only one of four parents who didn’t make me cry or lose sleep that week, and how much it helped to talk to him when I was homesick in my first semester of college. Tell me all about it, you know my hugs cure the blues. He was not my idea of a rock, but he was my mother’s constant. Her life, for nearly forty-five years. She shouldn’t have to fight for her survival without him. The bright colors in the paintings all around us blurred together. Blinking back tears, I did what I thought Dad would have if he were here: I tried to make her laugh. “You know, it’s not like he would have been much help.” I was rewarded with a faint chuckle. “That’s probably true. God, he’d be so upset.” “He’d be furious. Because this is bullshit, Mom,” I said. “I miss him terribly, and sometimes I still can’t believe he’s gone,” she told me. “A part of me—the part that was his wife for forty years—just wants to be with him.” I understood what she was saying. She had thought about halting her treatment. I knew that as long as there was any hope of gaining more time, she would seize it with both hands. In the months to come, she would fight with a fierceness that would surprise even me. I would watch her struggle and rail against her loss of mobility, independence, the ability to make hard decisions or follow complex conversations, and sometimes I would find myself thinking back to this moment in the diner, the only time she ever admitted to me that she had considered her death without dread. She believed that she would see my father again, and as much as she wanted to live,


to the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me. CHAPTER II. WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says: "Who dah?" He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoul- ders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy -- if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says: "Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n. Well, I know what I's gwyne to do: I's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin." So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes. But I dasn't scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching under- neath. I didn't know how I was going to set still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. I was itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore -- and then I was pretty soon comfortable again. Tom he made a sign to me -- kind of a little noise with his mouth -- and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said no; he might wake and make a dis- turbance, and then they'd find out I warn't in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and


shoes embroidered by me. They belong to my husband-to-be. I sway, and my sleeve brushes against his sleeve. Instinctively, we both pull away. Still, I’m aware of his presence—the warmth of his body next to mine, his breath nearly as ragged as my own. Then things happen quickly. A voice asks us to bow three times: “The first is in worship to Heaven, Earth, and the revered ancestors of the Yang family. The second is in respect to Master Yang and his wife, Lady Kuo. Now bow to each other to show you will always be loyal and courteous—husband to wife and wife to husband.” With that, I am a married woman. I no longer belong to my natal family; my relatives and ancestors are now entirely of the Yang lineage. Hands take my arms once again, and I’m escorted back outside and through more courtyards, twisting and turning. Perhaps this puzzle of a journey has also been designed to make me feel lost. Finally, I step over a threshold and into a new room. Children laugh and giggle, squeak and squeal. I don’t have to see them to know they’re jumping on my marriage bed—my mother’s bed—to encourage the mattress, linens, and woodwork to bring me the greatest fertility. “Come away now,” a woman’s voice—stern and authoritative—commands. This must be my mother-in-law, because the children obey without a single complaint. I’m guided to the bed. My husband sits next to me. His hands rest on his thighs. They show no signs of work other than holding books or a calligraphy brush. The traditional banter begins as strange fingers tuck red dates in the pleats of my clothes. “Soon you will give birth to many children,” someone says, because the words date and son sound the same. “May your life together be sweet,” another voice calls from across the room, because dates are sweet. “May you have five sons and two daughters.” “May you have a long life and many sons.” “May your stamina never dissipate.” “May your candle never go out.” These last quips for my husband are met with rowdy guffaws, but that’s as far as that sort of teasing goes. Lotus seeds shower down on us. The written characters for lotus seed and children share a radical, while the sound is a homophone for another word meaning in succession. So again, wishing us many children but without intimate teasing about Blood and Essence joining. I’m handed a goblet of wine. A red string is tied around the stem, and it leads to the stem of the goblet held by my husband. Voices cry out. “Drink! Drink! Drink!” I take a single sip, but then a hand pushes on the base of the goblet, tilting it up until I have no choice but to gulp down the rest of the rice wine. It burns as it travels to my stomach. Even as the liquid begins to transform my mind and emotions, a thumb and forefinger lift an edge of my veil. A pair of chopsticks bearing a half-cooked dumpling moves


stay still. I don't care much for company dancing. It's no fun to go sailing round. I like to fly about and cut capers." "You can't ask Mother for new ones, they are so expensive, and you are so careless. She said when you spoiled the others that she shouldn't get you any more this winter. Can't you make them do?" "I can hold them crumpled up in my hand, so no one will know how stained they are. That's all I can do. No! I'll tell you how we can manage, each wear one good one and carry a bad one. Don't you see?" "Your hands are bigger than mine, and you will stretch my glove dreadfully," began Meg, whose gloves were a tender point with her. "Then I'll go without. I don't care what people say!" cried Jo, taking up her book. "You may have it, you may! Only don't stain it, and do behave nicely. Don't put your hands behind you, or stare, or say `Christopher Columbus!' will you?" "Don't worry about me. I'll be as prim ad I can and not get into any scrapes, if I can help it. Now go and answer your note, and let me finish this splendid story." So Meg went away to `accept with thanks', look over her dress, and sing blithely as she did up her one real lace frill, while Jo finished her story, her four apples, and had a game of romps with Scrabble. On New Year's Eve the parlor was deserted, for the two younger girls played dressing maids and the two elder were absorbed in the all-important business of `getting ready for the party'. Simple as the toilets were, there was a great deal of running up and down, laughing and talking, and at one time a strong smell of burned hair pervaded the house. Meg wanted a few curls about her face, and Jo undertook to pinch the papered locks with a pair of hot tongs. "Ought they to smoke like that?" asked Beth from her perch on the bed. "It's the dampness drying," replied Jo. "What a queer smell! It's like burned feathers," observed Amy, smoothing her own pretty curls with a superior air. "There, now I'll take off the papers and you'll see a cloud of little ringlets," said Jo, putting down the tongs. She did take off the papers, but no cloud of ringlets appeared, for the hair came with the papers, and the horrified hairdresser laid a row of little scorched bundles on the bureau before her victim. "Oh, oh, oh! What have you done? I'm spoiled! I can't go! My hair, oh, my hair!" wailed Meg, looking with despair at the uneven frizzle on her forehead. "Just my luck! You shouldn't have asked me to do it. I always spoil everything. I'm so sorry, but the tongs were too hot, and so I've made a mess," groaned poor Jo, regarding the little black pancakes with tears of regret. "It isn't spoiled. Just frizzle it, and tie your ribbon so the ends


beyond, not turning around as she listened to Gabe and Bastian make their way out behind her. Bastian grunted; Gabe made a sound like a swallowed snort. When they walked into her field of vision, Bastian was shaking out his fingers like they’d been stepped on. They walked in silence down the nearly deserted street, the orange glow of the harbor lights and the distant sounds of shouting heralding when they grew close to the boxing ring. “Eyes peeled,” Bastian said, then they were in the crowd. It was thicker tonight than it had been before, far more bodies pressed together around the hay bales, and they all seemed more intent on getting closer. The night Bastian fought Michal, the boxing ring had seemed more like a convenient meeting place than a draw in and of itself, with spectators lurking on the fringes in groups, talking and laughing and barely paying attention. Not so tonight. Tonight every eye was fixed on the fighters, and the stares were intense. When the crowd parted, Lore saw why. Two femme-appearing figures fought viciously in the center of the hay ring, hair braided back and breasts tightly bound. Blood dyed one’s pale hair nearly pink, and the other wiped at a split lip with the back of one linenwrapped hand. “Lightweight Night!” bellowed a man who saw her watching, clearly on the fast dip toward drunk. “Fancy a spar? You’ve a bit too much curve to be a lightweight, but we could find someone about the same size to make it a fair match.” “I’m fine, thank you.” Lore backed up until she hit another warm form— Bastian. She could recognize the hand that came to rest on her shoulder. The drunk man shrugged and turned back to the ring. The blond fighter launched at the bruised one, fist curving through the air to connect with a kidney. The other fighter fell to the hay-covered cobblestones. Lore whirled on Bastian. “Did you know it was Lightweight Night?” “Truthfully, I didn’t know such a thing existed.” Bastian grinned beneath his mask, craning his neck to see over the crowd. “How marvelous.” She cursed under her breath and turned away from the ring to scan the masses of people who’d gathered to watch. It was harder to get a feel for the crowd when there were so many of them, but most were focused enough on the match that it should be easy to spot someone slipping off for a whispered conversation. Gabe slumped a few feet away from her and Bastian, facing the fight, but with his one blue eye scanning back and forth through his mask. The boxer with the bruised lip feinted to the side. The blond one stumbled, a punch overthrown. “There,” Bastian said. He didn’t point, but angled his chin toward the shadows on the far edge of the ring, a place between streetlights where the dark was deepest. Three figures huddled, angled away from the match. The one whose face Lore could see looked like he was listening intently to whatever was


check out. “How many nights?” she asks me. “One for now,” I say, because I know I should leave. I should get on a plane and get the hell out of here… but not before I talk to Sean Sumner. “I’ll pay you in the morning if I decide to stay on.” This seems to irritate her further, but she slides the key across the scratched countertop and returns to her puzzle book. The first thing I do when I enter the hotel room is shove the strawberry-scented air freshener into a dresser drawer. I press my index fingers into my eyebrows, hoping the chemical scent is responsible for my headache, but it is likely a combination of stress, fear, and grief. Not for the death of Carter Sumner, but for the demise of Jesse Thomas. A man who had never even existed. My car is concealed by a dumpster behind the bowling alley. If the police—or someone else—are looking for me, I don’t want them spotting it parked out front. I had lugged my backpack full of clothing and toiletries to the end unit, along with the canvas bag containing my most precious items: my new passport, the money, and Jesse’s notebook. As I head to the shower, I bring it into the bathroom for safekeeping. The tub has rust stains, but the water pressure is good. I let it pummel my skull, hoping to wash away the anxiety and confusion gripping my head like a vise. Tomorrow, I hope to get some clarity. Because tomorrow, I am going to speak to Sean Sumner, Department of Corrections inmate number 62124. Before today, I had never searched for an inmate. I’d had no reason to. It was far easier than I’d anticipated. The Washington State Department of Corrections has a comprehensive site. I typed Sean Sumner into their search engine, and it provided all the details I needed. Clicking on the name of the jail or institution even provided an address and a map. Next to each inmate’s name was a link: Register to be notified of release. It sent a chill through me. Had Donald and Sunny Fryer received a warning when Jesse was released from prison? Had they hired security and lived in fear that he might come after them again? And now their other abuser is out in the community, too. Sean Sumner is on a work release program, housed in a twenty-bed halfway house in Bellingham. No bars. No locks. No guards. Turning off the water, I dry myself with a threadbare towel and wrap another one around my hair. I have slept in my clothes for so long that donning a clean but wrinkled T-shirt and fresh under-pants feels like a luxury. Tearing off the bedspread, I climb into worn sheets. It is a real bed, at least, but I won’t sleep. Tomorrow is too pivotal. And I can’t be sure that I am safe here. That someone isn’t going to kick this door in at any moment. But I can’t spend the night in my car.


looking down at her. But she had a feeling they weren’t talking about the same thing at all and the possibility made her heart hammer. Made it hard to look at him directly. He was so much. Corinne finally broke into the extended silence they’d left in their wake. “So, Ingram. Julian and I have been looking into the value of aerial crop monitoring. Of course, I’m not sure this is the season for it. We’re in a rebuilding year after all.” Julian sighed and set down his wine. “Yes, we’re in a rebuilding year, but that’s even more of a reason to make use of the technology . . .” Natalie perked up. Ever since Julian had brought up VineWatch, she’d been examining their company history and playing with numbers and statistics. To be honest, she’d been doing this research while she should have been working on strategy for her upcoming client meeting. The one taking place in New York on Friday—four days from now. She couldn’t help but be fascinated, though. “Natalie,” August said suddenly, “aren’t they talking about the company you’ve been stalking on your laptop for the last few days?” Everyone’s attention swung toward Natalie. He’d . . . noticed what she was doing on her laptop? “Uh . . .” Beneath the table, August placed his hand on her thigh and the warmth was somehow exactly what she needed. “Yes. I did look into VineWatch.” “And what are your thoughts?” Julian asked, openly curious. “Natalie isn’t really up to speed on what’s happening here at Vos,” Corinne remarked. “The technology might be cutting-edge and right for some of the more thriving wineries, but we’re not ready for it quite yet.” “With all due respect, Mother, by the time you’re ready, you’ll have to play catch-up,” Natalie said, shocking herself. She started to wave off her own statement, but August squeezed her leg beneath the table again, nodding at her once. Slowly, she set down her fork and wet her lips. “VineWatch offers a way to reduce the winery’s environmental impact by conserving water and allocating fertilizer in a manner that helps eliminate significant waste. It detects diseases that could potentially spread throughout the region and affect other wineries.” She paused, a little surprised to still have everyone’s attention. “I think it’s great that Vos is rebuilding, but it needs to rebuild correctly and that includes embracing new science. Responsible science. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t simply be considering them as a service provider, I would be looking to invest, because someday very soon, this kind of technology is going to be a requirement for winemakers, not a fun side option.” She straightened her water glass. “I’ve been in contact with their chief operations officer. As it happens, they are bringing on an investor already. A competitor of yours. The tax breaks alone being afforded to green companies will make their investment worthwhile times ten—and they will be called visionaries while everyone else piles on after the fact.” Natalie sipped her water. No one said


she truly have no idea how much she meant to him? He kissed the tip of her nose, then her cheek, and then he pressed a kiss below her ear before he forced himself back once more. “Give me a lifetime,” he said, “and I’ll make sure you never doubt my love for you, Lucy. Will you give me that?” She ran her hands through his hair again, and Simon had a feeling they would be in the library for a while yet. “A lifetime?” she whispered. “I’ll give you forever, Simon Calloway.” Epilogue Sometimes, when Lucy walked the path to the pond on her own, she got the inexplicable feeling that if she closed her eyes, she would open them again to find herself walking down a London street among the dirt and the putrid smell that always seemed to permeate the poorer parts of the city. Her fear would bubble up, her shoulders tense, and every inch of her turn to ice. But no matter how many times she thought she might wake from the dream that her life had become, she always found herself with the most incredible sight at the end of the path, just as she did today. Yes, the pond was breathtaking, especially in the winter as it was right now, but it was Simon who truly stole the air from her lungs. She wasn’t sure how long he had been out here today, but given the fact that the pond was frozen over and her breath came out in puffs of mist, it had probably been too long. He sat in a frozen patch of dirt cleared of snow, his eyes fixed on the ice in front of him and his eyebrows pulled low in concentration. Settling at his side, Lucy tucked her blanket around both their shoulders and smiled when he immediately leaned into her. “I hope you remember what we talked about,” she said, keeping her voice quiet so as not to disturb the peace of the place. Simon looped her arm through his, but his thoughtful expression didn’t change. “I am not thinking about work,” he replied. He had made a promise to her only days after he proposed to her, agreeing to keep his pond free from the stresses of his life. Five months down the road, and he had so far kept that promise. Lucy frowned, trying to think of what else might cause him to look so concerned. “Tell me,” she whispered, brushing a finger down his forehead to smooth out the ridges. Thankfully, he smiled and leaned closer, touching a kiss to the tip of her nose. “I received a letter from Forester this morning.” “How is Nick?” He had left for London soon after the whole madness with Mr. Granger, returning only long enough to attend their wedding. Though Lucy had written to him more than once, his responses had been few and far between. It seemed his benefactor had caused him some trouble when it came to the money he was due to inherit, leaving him


pride. "I never knew our Dickon was as clever as that. That there's a picture of a missel thrush on her nest, as large as life an' twice as natural." Then Mary knew Dickon had meant the picture to be a message. He had meant that she might be sure he would keep her secret. Her garden was her nest and she was like a missel thrush. Oh, how she did like that queer, common boy! She hoped he would come back the very next day and she fell asleep looking forward to the morning. But you never know what the weather will do in Yorkshire, particularly in the springtime. She was awakened in the night by the sound of rain beating with heavy drops against her window. It was pouring down in torrents and the wind was "wuthering" round the corners and in the chimneys of the huge old house. Mary sat up in bed and felt miserable and angry. "The rain is as contrary as I ever was," she said. "It came because it knew I did not want it." She threw herself back on her pillow and buried her face. She did not cry, but she lay and hated the sound of the heavily beating rain, she hated the wind and its "wuthering." She could not go to sleep again. The mournful sound kept her awake because she felt mournful herself. If she had felt happy it would probably have lulled her to sleep. How it "wuthered" and how the big raindrops poured down and beat against the pane! "It sounds just like a person lost on the moor and wandering on and on crying," she said. She had been lying awake turning from side to side for about an hour, when suddenly something made her sit up in bed and turn her head toward the door listening. She listened and she listened. "It isn't the wind now," she said in a loud whisper. "That isn't the wind. It is different. It is that crying I heard before." The door of her room was ajar and the sound came down the corridor, a far-off faint sound of fretful crying. She listened for a few minutes and each minute she became more and more sure. She felt as if she must find out what it was. It seemed even stranger than the secret garden and the buried key. Perhaps the fact that she was in a rebellious mood made her bold. She put her foot out of bed and stood on the floor. "I am going to find out what it is," she said. "Everybody is in bed and I don't care about Mrs. Medlock--I don't care!" There was a candle by her bedside and she took it up and went softly out of the room. The corridor looked very long and dark, but she was too excited to mind that. She thought she remembered the corners she must turn to find the short corridor with the door covered with tapestry--the one Mrs. Medlock had come through the day she


with the other moms, who chatted about, I don’t know, the best brand of harness, excited to hear about Abe’s first day of kindergarten. His little classmates paraded past me, beautiful, well-trained springer spaniels and golden retrievers with luscious blond coats. They sat patiently waiting to be leashed and led to gleaming Volvos and Mercedes-Benzes into which they jumped without struggle or complaint. One graceful papillon even leapt into the crate in the trunk of his dad’s car! I shook my head and glanced back at my crusty, dirty Honda, whose seats were caked with Abe’s sharp, spiky hairs from when I’d tried, and failed, to wrestle him off my clean lap at a red light earlier that morning. Abe was vigorously tongue-bathing his empty nuts as the teacher carried him out to me, and I tried to cringe not too loudly. “So, he had a great day?” I asked, leading the witness. “Well…” She hesitated, and I glared at the dog in her arms, still consumed with his penis. “He’s a very spirited guy! [That meant he was bad.] And wow, so vocal! [He was loud and bad.] And he loves to be a leader! [He was bossy and loud and bad.]” I waited for her to tell me to try that place that wouldn’t answer when I called the first time because he was no longer welcome, and when she didn’t, I asked, “Um, is he allowed to come back?” I braced myself for a rebuke. “Oh, of course! We love him!” In the car he looked at me like “Bitch, you doubted me?” and whipped around to bark at some other, better-behaved dogs as they subserviently trotted in lockstep with their owners. Daycare emails me a report card at the end of every session, and every day I recoil from the pictures of placid, happy dogs terrorized by my scrawny, watery-eyed offspring. I swipe through photo after photo of good-boy-sitting dogs being choked, manhandled, swatted, barked at, chewed on, and mounted by my wild-ass son who has zero discipline and also? THE BOY CAN’T READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! * * * — “Level with me, baby: Don’t you wish we’d gotten serious back in the day and had a kid?” “No way, man! I have a fucking dog!” body horror! In my mid-to-late twenties, I had one of those mid-to-late-twenties epiphanies you have when you get your first twinge of sciatica or when some other age-related corporeal breakdown makes itself known to you. It triggered the crushing realization that I was not going to be young and lubricated for much longer and caused my brain to fry like a Partnership for a Drug-Free America egg: “Wait a minute, my lower back aches? I should probably start paying my bills on time.” When I was a teenager, I thought twenty-seven was the definitive, full-stop age I needed to have my shit together by based, I’m pretty sure, solely on this article I’d read in a magazine that said you have until age twenty-seven to shrink the fat cells in your body or be


his knees and hands clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts and awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the darkness and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by the beach of a sea, where the hairy man gathered shell- fish and ate them as he gathered, it was with eyes that roved everywhere for hidden danger and with legs prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Through the forest they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and they were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving and nostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. The hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on the ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes a dozen feet apart, letting go and catching, never falling, never missing his grip. In fact, he seemed as much at home among the trees as on the ground; and Buck had memories of nights of vigil spent beneath trees wherein the hairy man roosted, holding on tightly as he slept. And closely akin to the visions of the hairy man was the call still sounding in the depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest and strange desires. It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness, and he was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what. Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly, as the mood might dictate. He would thrust his nose into the cool wood moss, or into the black soil where long grasses grew, and snort with joy at the fat earth smells; or he would crouch for hours, as if in concealment, behind fungus- covered trunks of fallen trees, wide-eyed and wide-eared to all that moved and sounded about him. It might be, lying thus, that he hoped to surprise this call he could not understand. But he did not know why he did these various things. He was impelled to do them, and did not reason about them at all. Irresistible impulses seized him. He would be lying in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift and his ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring to his feet and dash away, and on and on, for hours, through the forest aisles and across the open spaces where the niggerheads bunched. He loved to run down dry watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the woods. For a day at a time he would lie in the underbrush where he could watch the partridges drumming and strutting up and down. But especially he loved to run in the dim twilight of the summer midnights, listening to the subdued and sleepy murmurs of the forest, reading signs and sounds as man may read a book,


substance is Blood,” she says, ignoring him. “They sound like the same word, but how are they different?” This is a simple question with an easy answer. “We have the blood we can see when our skin gets cut,” I say, “but Blood is a bigger essence. In women, Blood is the leader. It is what allows a woman to become pregnant and feed a fetus. It turns into mother’s milk upon her giving birth.” “Exactly. You must put aside the idea of function,” Grandmother Ru explains. “We are not concerned with veins and arteries, muscles and bones, or organs with specific occupations. We are looking to find how illnesses arise from imbalances in the bodily form of yin and yang. They interact like night flowing into day and winter into summer. One is always rising and one is always falling, never stopping. In the process, they are repairing and transforming each other. As physicians, we aspire to bring yin and yang into balance so the life force is strong. What else can you tell me about the body as the universe?” And on it goes, with Grandfather and Grandmother asking me questions and me trying my best to please them with my answers. When I’m with them—even though they are constantly testing me—I can almost forget how much I miss my mother, my father, our home… Just everything… * * * During my time in Wuxi, I’ve been mostly confined to the women’s quarters with concubines and wives, toddlers and children, and older girls who are preparing for marriage. Infants are usually elsewhere with their wet nurses; boys over seven are no longer allowed in the women’s quarters; and some women are too “indisposed”—physically or by their emotions—to gather for embroidery and gossip, cardplaying and petty arguments. I’m the only girl my age, and the older girls have no interest in me. I don’t have a friend, but this is no different than when I lived in Laizhou. I’m thankful for Miss Zhao, who oversees my daily lessons. I think she’s grateful to me too, since she’s having a hard time being accepted by the other concubines. She’s a good teacher—more patient than my mother but no less demanding. When I want to be alone, I go to my room and climb into Respectful Lady’s marriage bed. It has a roof, windows covered with silk paintings showing scenes of poetic life, and a canopy over the entrance with wooden tassels that hang down as decoration, all carved from rosewood, pearwood, and boxwood, and fitted together without a single nail. There are two antechambers—the first is where a maid sleeps on the floor, and the second is a dressing room. The third room holds the raised sleeping platform. On one of my first nights here, I remembered the loose panel Respectful Lady liked to touch. I wiggled it free and found a secret shelf. For a moment, I hoped she’d hidden something there for me, but no. She knew it existed, though, and to keep my connection to her I set her


no prisoners. Was that a lesson you took to heart, too, Io?” It felt like buttering up, which meant it probably was. “Why am I here, Ms. Rossi?” Bianca cocked her head to the left. It was an exaggerated movement, theatrical, and Io wondered at its purpose. To intimidate her? She didn’t dare pull up the Quilt to look at Bianca’s threads. The woman would notice the unnatural glaze of silver reflected in Io’s eyes. She would be reminded that Io was a cutter, sinister and unreliable. Patience like a knife, Io told herself. Patience always paid off. “I am told you are a sleuth.” Io nodded, waiting. This wasn’t why she had been escorted here at the crack of dawn. “And that you were attacked last night by an unusual assailant.” This wasn’t what she was here for, either. “Luckily, we are not as useless as the city’s officials.” At Bianca’s nod, the door behind them opened. “Look what Edei caught for you.” And there she was. The wraith. Two gang members prodded her in with long brass bars, a redheaded boy and a dark-skinned girl in a close-fitting athletic outfit. The office filled immediately with the pungency of rot. The woman smelled and looked derelict: torn clothes hanging off her shoulders, shoes soaked with mud, wet hair stuck on her pasty skin. Io’s gaze came to rest on Edei, taking him in from head to toe. He wore a different wool sweater than when she first saw him earlier, and his boots left little wet imprints on the dark wood. Was that where he disappeared to right after the attack? Had he dived after the wraith? Their eyes connected—Io flushed and dragged hers back to the woman. “What do you see, Miss Ora?” Bianca asked. Up close, in the dazzling light of daybreak, the old woman’s lips were deep purple, bags sagged under her yellowing eyes, veins inked her arms in blue, and flakes of dead skin dusted her clothes and hair. She looked like she was decomposing, a body with no life inside it, a dead woman walking. Io went into the Quilt, hoping against hope that she had been wrong. That it had been a trick of the light. But there in the old woman’s hand was the severed life-thread. Giving her a wide berth, Io circled her for a closer look. The unbound thread drooped to the white carpet, pooling by the wraith’s feet. Io checked its color against her own bundle of threads, then Bianca’s and Edei’s. It was definitely a life-thread, made of the same lustrous silver that outshone every other thread in their chests. “What is it?” asked Bianca. “Her life-thread is cut,” said Io. “Yet she is alive. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Bianca, surprisingly, didn’t doubt her as Ava had. “Do you think that’s why she killed that man? Did the loss of her life-thread drive her mad?” I don’t know. But that wasn’t the answer Bianca was looking for, nor one Io allowed herself to give. Reasons, motives, resolutions, she


journalist, and her latest victim. Then her gaze twisted to the puddle of threads in Io’s fists, where they had been safely stretched taut to ensure Thais didn’t see them coming. “You tricked me,” Thais choked out. Io nodded. Her mind toiled with opposing waves of victory and loss. “Luc,” Thais pleaded. “Let me explain. You’ll understand everything, I promise. All I have ever done is to keep us safe. Didn’t I tell you about Bianca? Didn’t I warn you and protect you? Luc, please give me a chance—” “Stop,” Saint-Yves said. His eyes were wet, his hold on the gun shaking. “I trusted you. I loved you. What you did, no matter your reasons, goes against everything I believe in. I will see that you are judged fairly for your crimes, but whatever we shared, whatever dreams we had, it’s over.” “Over?” Thais whispered. Her head snapped to Io. Her face sobered. It was so sudden, so unexpected that Io felt like she had been kicked in the stomach. Thais reached for a marble ashtray from the table and launched it, hard, at Io’s head. Edei’s lean figure slipped through one of the side panels. His arm grabbed Io by the waist and hauled her out of the trajectory of the ashtray, just in time. It hit the pane behind her instead, cracking the glass. In a fluid movement, Edei pushed Io behind him, and raised a knuckled fist to Thais. “You okay?” he whispered over his shoulder to Io. “Yes,” Io breathed. “I’ve used the knuckle raps,” Edei said. “The gang is coming.” “Well, then,” Thais said, her voice harsh. She looked about the room with frenetic energy, her gaze lurching from person to person. “If it’s the truth you wanted, sister, then let’s tell everyone the whole truth. Do you know how they approached me, Io? What they used to convince me of the need to resurrect the Order of the Furies and deliver justice? You. They knew exactly what you did to me. They told me you had your little oneiroi-born friend here visit me every night for a week with dreams of traveling. That you frayed my home-thread, little by little until it snapped. That you manipulated me. Exiled me to months of cold and hunger and terror. You accuse me of hurting you, but is there a worse manipulation than what you did to me? I knew if my own sister could do that, then the Order needed to be restored. Justice delivered.” “Io . . .” Ava whispered. “Tell me it isn’t true. Tell me you didn’t do that.” Io’s eyes fluttered closed. Her guilt was a weight, dragging her into the dark. She kept reaching for the surface, breaking though for a single breath, and then a new current of shame would pull her under again. The blame was insurmountable. It didn’t matter that Thais had hurt her first, that Thais hurt her for years, tiny nicks at her heart. For two years, Io had tried to rationalize it, justify it, put it out