that we had arrived as four people and we would be going home as five. ‘They’re delivering the afterbirth now.’ ‘Mum, please, no details.’ ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said, smacking me lightly on the arm. ‘It’ll be your turn one day.’ Would it? I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a father. I didn’t want to inflict what I had experienced on anyone else. ‘You can come in now.’ Neil popped his head around the door. He was wearing a plastic apron over his clothes, as though he had delivered the baby. He was crying. ‘Happy tears,’ he said and I couldn’t help but put my arms around him. It was endearing to see him so vulnerable. The room was buzzing with the sense that something important had just happened. Then I saw my sister, her dark fringe pushed back off her face with sweat, her nakedness covered with a sheet and a little dark-haired head resting in the crook of her arm. ‘Felicity, it’s time to meet your uncle Henry.’ And then I was crying. Which didn’t seem to matter so much because the baby was crying now too. Then we all laughed and cried until the nurse told us to get out because she had to show Lu how to get Felicity to ‘latch on’. She wasn’t going to get any rest, that was for sure. Ever, probably. We spent the night at the hospital together, none of us wanting to break the little bubble of joy we had created. Well, that Neil and Lu had created, to be precise. A new person had joined our family and, without saying as much, we all seemed to be united in the conviction that her experience would be better than our own. We would become better people for her. The process had already started. Perhaps this was why people referred to new life as a miracle, because it had the power to change everything. I suddenly had an overwhelming longing to see Martha, to tell her everything that had happened. I wanted her here, to be with my family. To be a part of it. I went on a breakfast run and picked up some more things for Lu – basically an excuse so I could call Martha, but there wasn’t even a dial tone. I told myself that her phone was switched off. Simple explanation. While waiting for the coffees, I sent a string of texts with baby emojis, which was so out of character, she might have assumed I had been kidnapped and it was an attempt to communicate my location. Yet as the hours passed and there was still no response, I started to feel like something was wrong. I had explained everything in the note I’d left, but maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe I was coming on too strong. I was still second-guessing myself when I walked back into the delivery room and almost bumped into someone. A man. My father. ‘What’s he doing here?’ ‘Henry, it’s okay,’ Lu said. It wasn’t okay. It was very


the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift. FIRST WATCH: Regiment. BLOOM: (TURNS TO THE GALLERY) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the earth, known the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. The R. D. F., with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the service of our sovereign. A VOICE: Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Joe Chamberlain? BLOOM: (HIS HAND ON THE SHOULDER OF THE FIRST WATCH) My old dad too was a J. P. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours for king and country in the absentminded war under general Gough in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches. I did all a white man could. (WITH QUIET FEELING) Jim Bludso. Hold her nozzle again the bank. FIRST WATCH: Profession or trade. BLOOM: Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British and Irish press. If you ring up ... (MYLES CRAWFORD STRIDES OUT JERKILY, A QUILL BETWEEN HIS TEETH. HIS SCARLET BEAK BLAZES WITHIN THE AUREOLE OF HIS STRAW HAT. HE DANGLES A HANK OF SPANISH ONIONS IN ONE HAND AND HOLDS WITH THE OTHER HAND A TELEPHONE RECEIVER NOZZLE TO HIS EAR.) MYLES CRAWFORD: (HIS COCK'S WATTLES WAGGING) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello. FREEMAN'S URINAL and WEEKLY ARSEWIPE here. Paralyse Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Bloom? (MR PHILIP BEAUFOY, PALEFACED, STANDS IN THE WITNESSBOX, IN ACCURATE MORNING DRESS, OUTBREAST POCKET WITH PEAK OF HANDKERCHIEF SHOWING, CREASED LAVENDER TROUSERS AND PATENT BOOTS. HE CARRIES A LARGE PORTFOLIO LABELLED Matcham's Masterstrokes.) BEAUFOY: (DRAWLS) No, you aren't. Not by a long shot if I know it. I don't see it that's all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom. BLOOM: (MURMURS WITH HANGDOG MEEKNESS GLUM) That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may ... BEAUFOY: (HIS LIP UPCURLED, SMILES SUPERCILIOUSLY ON THE COURT) You funny ass, you! You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't think you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has


story. He went to town on business three days ago, and I got him to take charge of some papers which I was wanting to send to John.--He delivered these papers to John, at his chambers, and was asked by him to join their party the same evening to Astley's. They were going to take the two eldest boys to Astley's. The party was to be our brother and sister, Henry, John--and Miss Smith. My friend Robert could not resist. They called for him in their way; were all extremely amused; and my brother asked him to dine with them the next day--which he did--and in the course of that visit (as I understand) he found an opportunity of speaking to Harriet; and certainly did not speak in vain.--She made him, by her acceptance, as happy even as he is deserving. He came down by yesterday's coach, and was with me this morning immediately after breakfast, to report his proceedings, first on my affairs, and then on his own. This is all that I can relate of the how, where, and when. Your friend Harriet will make a much longer history when you see her.-- She will give you all the minute particulars, which only woman's language can make interesting.--In our communications we deal only in the great.--However, I must say, that Robert Martin's heart seemed for him, and to me, very overflowing; and that he did mention, without its being much to the purpose, that on quitting their box at Astley's, my brother took charge of Mrs. John Knightley and little John, and he followed with Miss Smith and Henry; and that at one time they were in such a crowd, as to make Miss Smith rather uneasy." He stopped.--Emma dared not attempt any immediate reply. To speak, she was sure would be to betray a most unreasonable degree of happiness. She must wait a moment, or he would think her mad. Her silence disturbed him; and after observing her a little while, he added, "Emma, my love, you said that this circumstance would not now make you unhappy; but I am afraid it gives you more pain than you expected. His situation is an evil--but you must consider it as what satisfies your friend; and I will answer for your thinking better and better of him as you know him more. His good sense and good principles would delight you.--As far as the man is concerned, you could not wish your friend in better hands. His rank in society I would alter if I could, which is saying a great deal I assure you, Emma.--You laugh at me about William Larkins; but I could quite as ill spare Robert Martin." He wanted her to look up and smile; and having now brought herself not to smile too broadly--she did--cheerfully answering, "You need not be at any pains to reconcile me to the match. I think Harriet is doing extremely well. Her connexions may be worse than his. In respectability of character, there can be no doubt that they are. I


broken body is splayed out across the glass. It’s an owl. Its large black eyes are wide open and glassy. They stare into nothingness. Its white-and-gray feathers are ruffled, and its talons are curled into tight knots. It’s uncomfortably familiar. Rob must have had a hundred jobs over the years I’ve known him, and I think he brought home a little souvenir from every place he’d either quit or been fired from. My room is storage for his collection of failures. Reams of paper from his time at the paper mill sit stacked in the corners. Scrap metal from the recycling center is piled in bins under my window. But the worst thing he ever brought into the house were the taxidermic birds. There were some peregrines and kestrels, other birds of prey, but his favorite were the owls. They lined the shelves in my closet and sat perched on every free inch of space on my dresser. They all have the same dead eyes as the one I’m looking at now. Staring down into the skylight, I see only my reflection. The glass is meant to see out, not in. I look a mess and quickly move to get the owl off the glass. I prod the owl’s lifeless body off the skylight and nudge it down the slope of the roof, where it finally falls over the edge and into the shrubbery below. Disposing of dead animals isn’t in my job description, but I do it often. There is always something dying in the woods or in the lake. I make my way back down the ladder, and Bezi meets me as I hop off the last rung. “Where is it?” she asks. “I knocked it into a bush.” Bezi’s face twists up. “You just threw it off the side of the roof?” I interlace my fingers on top of my head and sigh. “I’m sorry? I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.” She stomps off into the bushes and returns a few moments later cradling the dead bird, bits of leaves and grass clinging to her clothes and hair. “Gross!” Paige says as she steps out onto the porch. “What are you doing?” Bezi huffs. “You’re so insensitive. We can’t just leave it in the bushes.” “Babe,” I say. “It’s—it’s dead. Just leave it out there.” Bezi looks at me like I’m insulting her personally. “I want to bury it.” “We’re not having a funeral for an owl, Bezi.” Paige shoves her hand down on her hip. “You have lost your entire mind. Throw it in the woods and come back inside.” Bezi rolls her eyes and sets the dead bird in the grass just off the pathway. I put my arms around her, and she leans her head on my shoulder. “I can’t just leave it,” she says quietly. I kiss her cheek and pull her close. “It’s okay. I get it.” Bezi wears her heart right on her sleeve. Her mom’s a veterinarian and her dad was a park ranger. If it flies, swims, or


from our mission successfully and could finally take off our space suits and go at it with our earthly flesh. It was somewhere in this stretch that I remembered the Mad Libs and convinced him to let us finish it, and my favorite line from our collaboration was “Forsooth!” I said, “California is truly the most axiomatic and piquant bellybutton I’ve ever square danced!” It was also during this stretch that I was reading by the pool one afternoon while Noah was inside on the phone with his manager discussing a livestream show that would be filmed in September at a concert hall with no audience. The conversation went on for a long time, and at some point, I became aware of a mild but persistent longing. And then I thought, I miss him. It was on the ninth day of my visit, while we were lying naked in his bed at 11:40 a.m., that he patted the hamster on my right bicep and said, “That’s still the greatest tattoo of all time.” I was flat on my back and he was on his side, facing me. “It really encapsulates my badass lifestyle, doesn’t it?” I touched the inside of his left forearm, the music notes on a staff. I now knew, as I had not when the glimpses of and proximity to his skin had tormented me at TNO, that he’d gotten the “Blackbird” notes after his first album came out, the crow after his bandmate Christopher had died, and the Celtic knot after his first year of sobriety. I said, “Do you think you’re done or not done with body art?” “Probably done. What about you?” “Also probably done, unless I form an unexpected attachment to a guinea pig or a raccoon.” He laughed, and I said, “I have a question for you. You know over email when I asked if you were trying to seduce me during your song rehearsal at TNO? When you said no, I kind of interpreted it as you saying, no, you weren’t interested in me.” He shook his head rapidly. “I knew I was walking the knife’s edge with that one. In the emails, I mean. And I blew it, didn’t I? It was the word seduce that confused me—I think of that as being sleazy, like what a scoundrel does to an innocent young woman in a nineteenth-century novel. I didn’t understand what you were asking. If you had just said, ‘Do you like me?’ I could have said, ‘I sure do.’ ” I laughed. “What if I had said, ‘Do you like me in a wholesome, non-scoundrel-ish way?’ ” “No.” He was shaking his head again. “It was never wholesome. But I didn’t know if it was safe then to convey that.” “Couldn’t you tell that ‘Do you like me?’ was basically what I was asking when I had that email freakout? And you were like, ‘I don’t know what we’re doing, but it’s fun, huh?’ ” I poked a finger against his chest. “I needed more affirmation than that.” “After you


Josie retorted. ‘She’s her own woman, a free spirit.’ ‘Free spirit is completely right,’ Dave chortled. ‘Carrying on with a young man like that at her age. I still can’t get my head around it.’ ‘Young man? What young man?’ Fergal asked suspiciously. ‘Well,’ Dangerous Dave continued. ‘Dickie and Jimmy saw them both in the pub together, drinking. They were talking openly about their love life, planning it – Dickie heard every word. Cecily is – get this – she’s only having a bit of how’s your father with young Jack Lovejoy.’ 26 Florence was feeling just as she always had before she was pregnant – light, happy, carefree. She hurried through the front door with Malia behind her, Adam carrying a bag of takeaway Chinese food and, for a while, she forgot the weight of worry that bothered her constantly. For a fleeting moment, she was just having fun. They rushed into the kitchen and Malia reached for cutlery, Adam opened bottles of cola and sparkling water, while Florence emptied metal cartons, tipping noodles and tofu onto plates. They moved to the living room. Florence flopped on the sofa and Adam dropped down next to her, leaving the armchair for Malia, who flicked on the TV. Malia’s eyes were on the screen. ‘Odile was great about our idea, wasn’t she?’ ‘She was.’ Florence nodded. ‘Malia – I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ ‘It’s no sweat – I’m staying in Middleton Ferris until Christmas anyway so it’s easy to share the work at the café until the baby is born. Then you can come back part-time when you’re ready and I’ll look for a job somewhere, to start after Christmas. It suits us both.’ ‘In London?’ Adam asked, fork in the air. ‘Definitely not here,’ Malia sniffed. ‘I like it here,’ Adam retorted. ‘You’re just Dad’s little mini-me…’ Malia teased. Adam glanced towards Florence. ‘I’m happy where I am.’ Florence turned slowly. ‘I’m so grateful to you both… People are being so kind.’ ‘That’s because everyone likes you,’ Adam murmured and Malia rolled her eyes. Florence sat up. ‘Have you seen the nursery now Dad’s repainted it? The sunshine comes in and the room is so bright.’ ‘Have you bought anything for the baby yet?’ Malia asked. ‘Not yet, not really.’ ‘We’ll have to go shopping together,’ Malia said. ‘I can help too – I’d like to,’ Adam added. ‘I’m organising a lunchtime picnic by the barge – Devlin said it would be okay.’ Florence wiped her mouth on the back of her hand carelessly. ‘For Josie, Lin and Cecily – Minnie too. They’ve been so supportive and sweet, and I want to say thanks. Will you both come?’ ‘Yes, I’ll be there,’ Adam replied without pausing. ‘When is it?’ Malia snuggled into the armchair. ‘Next month – 12 August.’ Florence’s eyes were on the screen, oblivious as Adam stretched an arm across the back of the sofa behind her. She added, ‘Devlin said he and Finn and Fergal would just go down the pub for a couple of hours


grabbed from the nightstand. With as much strength as she can muster, Virginia swings it toward my father, the corkscrew slicing the air before jabbing directly into the side of his stomach. My father yelps in pain as his hands drop from Virginia’s throat. He looks down at his side, where the corkscrew juts from his torso. A dark spot surrounds it as blood seeps into his shirt. Before he can grab it, I’m on my feet, reaching out, snagging the handle. I pull and the corkscrew slides out of his flesh with a squelch of blood. Brandishing it like a switchblade, I say, “Don’t touch her again.” My father presses a hand to the wound. He’s hurt, but not badly. He even lets out a rueful chuckle. “I guess I deserve this.” “Yeah,” I say, shocked by how a single syllable can contain six months of bitterness and disappointment. “If I’d been a better father, you wouldn’t have come here. You wouldn’t have met Ginny. You wouldn’t know about any of this.” “You pushed me away.” I try to keep my sorrow hidden, but it shows itself anyway, cracking my voice with emotion. “I needed you, Dad. When Mom died, I fucking needed you! Because what happened with Mom was awful. But—” I stop myself, unsure if I can speak the words that need to be said. Even now. Even here. “But you were right to doubt me. I left those pills out. Even though Mom swore she’d only take one, I knew there was a possibility she’d take them all.” “Don’t,” my father says. “Don’t say that, Kit-Kat.” “But it’s true.” “No. You shouldn’t blame yourself. It’s my fault that you do. I shouldn’t have put that burden on you. I shouldn’t have let it get that far. I should have come forward and stopped the whole thing as soon as that article about you hit the newspaper.” Suddenly, I’m no longer at Hope’s End. The whole cursed place disappears from my vision as I flash back to home, my father at the kitchen table, newspaper in hand. He looks up at me with watery eyes and says, “What they’re saying’s not true, Kit-Kat.” He didn’t say that because he wanted it to be the truth. My father said it because it was true. He knew I hadn’t given my mother those pills. Because he’s the one who did it. FORTY-THREE Shock and despair. That’s all I feel. Not anger. Not grief. Just those two extremes of shock and despair, feeding off each other, turning into an emotion I can’t describe because I’ve never felt it before and I pray that no one else is forced to experience it. It feels like every part of me—brain, heart, lungs—has been ripped from my body, leaving me hollow. That I remain standing is a miracle. I can’t think. I can’t speak. I can’t move. My father, still blessed with all those qualities, steps toward me, arms outstretched, as if he wants to embrace me but knows I’ll shatter if he does. “I’m


Noise and chaos, shouting and things breaking. I saw Pupkin in the dark and plates hitting a bright tile floor. I saw a woman crying and screaming at the same time. I saw my arm pulling a phone out of a wall. I saw a Pupkin kicking in a door as a woman pinballed away from him and then came back running, pursued by another Pupkin, the woman clutching a little boy screaming with fear, a Pupkin smashing a television into a wall. I saw Pupkin holding someone’s fridge door open, sweeping the contents onto the floor. Eggs dripping from the ceiling, milk and orange juice and nondairy creamer puddled on the fancy tile. I saw the woman sliding down a wall, sobbing, clutching her limp son to her chest, the two of them sitting in the cold air from the open front door, their eyes as empty as dolls’. When I woke up that time, something sticky had dried on my arms. I tasted it: orange juice. I had egg yolk dried in my scalp. My bare feet were dirty and covered in cuts and I knew who the woman was. I’d seen her before. She was Mrs. Marsten. I didn’t want to think about it. It wasn’t me, it was Pupkin. I pulled on my mask again and hid in Tickytoo Woods. But I had to come out eventually. The next time I did, I was in the basement, wearing greasy jeans, surrounded by Pupkin’s faces on the wall, and they were all laughing at me. He was stronger than we were. We’d given him too much. We’d never said no. He didn’t have any limits. Whatever came next would be really, really bad. I had to do something while I was still myself because right at that moment “myself” felt like chasing a slippery bar of soap around the tub and as much as I wanted to run away and hide, in that one moment, in that cold basement, I knew I might never be Mark again. I grabbed the lighter without thinking. I flicked its wheel and touched the flame to the chin of a big Pupkin mask hanging on the wall and held it there until my thumb burned. I was an idiot. Papier-mâché burns fast and the mask was by the wooden stairs and one second I was flicking the lighter, and the next there were flames racing across the wall, from mask to mask, Pupkin to Pupkin, and licking the bottom of the upstairs floor. I dragged on my T-shirt and limped to the back door. It already felt like there was an open oven at my back. I thought I could go around and warn Sadie and Richard and Clark. My feet were swollen and covered in infected cuts and by the time I’d limped to the front yard I knew I had fucked up bad. From the front yard, you couldn’t see the fire yet, just smoke coming out the broken back windows and orange demons dancing behind the windowpanes. I hobbled up


that nobody was looking in his direction. I had no choice, he told himself, surprised how little remorse he felt for what he had just done. Rmy sealed his own fate. The Teacher had feared all along that Rmy might need to be eliminated when the mission was complete, but by brazenly showing himself in the Temple Church, Rmy had accelerated the necessity dramatically. Robert Langdon's unexpected visit to Chteau Villette had brought the Teacher both a fortuitous windfall and an intricate dilemma. Langdon had delivered the keystone directly to the heart of the operation, which was a pleasant surprise, and yet he had brought the police on his tail. Rmy's prints were all over Chteau Villette, as well as in the barn's listening post, where Rmy had carried out the surveillance. The Teacher was grateful he had taken so much care in preventing any ties between Rmy's activities and his own. Nobody could implicate the Teacher unless Rmy talked, and that was no longer a concern. One more loose end to tie up here, the Teacher thought, moving now toward the rear door of the limousine. The police will have no idea what happened... and no living witness left to tell them. Glancing around to ensure nobody was watching, he pulled open the door and climbed into the spacious rear compartment. Minutes later, the Teacher was crossing St. James's Park. Only two people now remain. Langdon and Neveu. They were more complicated. But manageable. At the moment, however, the Teacher had the cryptex to attend to. Gazing triumphantly across the park, he could see his destination. In London lies a knight a Pope interred. As soon as the Teacher had heard the poem, he had known the answer. Even so, that the others had not figured it out was not surprising. I have an unfair advantage. Having listened to Saunire's conversations for months now, the Teacher had heard the Grand Master mention this famous knight on occasion, expressing esteem almost matching that he held for Da Vinci. The poem's reference to the knight was brutally simple once one saw it-a credit to Saunire's wit-and yet how this tomb would reveal the final password was still a mystery. You seek the orb that ought be on his tomb. The Teacher vaguely recalled photos of the famous tomb and, in particular, its most distinguishing feature. A magnificent orb. The huge sphere mounted atop the tomb was almost as large as the tomb itself. The presence of the orb seemed both encouraging and 259 troubling to the Teacher. On one hand, it felt like a signpost, and yet, according to the poem, the missing piece of the puzzle was an orb that ought to be on his tomb... not one that was already there. He was counting on his closer inspection of the tomb to unveil the answer. The rain was getting heavier now, and he tucked the cryptex deep in his right-hand pocket to protect it from the dampness. He kept the tiny Medusa revolver in his left, out of sight. Within minutes,


for rest. They looked from afar at isolated cottages and little inns, and were inclined to approach one of the latter, when their hearts failed them, and they sheered off. At length their gait dragged, and they stood still. "Could we sleep under the trees?" she asked. He thought the season insufficiently advanced. "I have been thinking of that empty mansion we passed," he said. "Let us go back towards it again." They retraced their steps, but it was half an hour before they stood without the entrance-gate as earlier. He then requested her to stay where she was, whilst he went to see who was within. She sat down among the bushes within the gate, and Clare crept towards the house. His absence lasted some considerable time, and when he returned Tess was wildly anxious, not for herself, but for him. He had found out from a boy that there was only an old woman in charge as caretaker, and she only came there on fine days, from the hamlet near, to open and shut the windows. She would come to shut them at sunset. "Now, we can get in through one of the lower windows, and rest there," said he. Under his escort she went tardily forward to the main front, whose shuttered windows, like sightless eyeballs, excluded the possibility of watchers. The door was reached a few steps further, and one of the windows beside it was open. Clare clambered in, and pulled Tess in after him. Except the hall the rooms were all in darkness, and they ascended the staircase. Up here also the shutters were tightly closed, the ventilation being perfunctorily done, for this day at least, by opening the hall-window in front and an upper window behind. Clare unlatched the door of a large chamber, felt his way across it, and parted the shutters to the width of two or three inches. A shaft of dazzling sunlight glanced into the room, revealing heavy, old-fashioned furniture, crimson damask hangings, and an enormous four-post bedstead, along the head of which were carved running figures, apparently Atalanta's race. "Rest at last!" said he, setting down his bag and the parcel of viands. They remained in great quietness till the caretaker should have come to shut the windows: as a precaution, putting themselves in total darkness by barring the shutters as before, lest the woman should open the door of their chamber for any casual reason. Between six and seven o'clock she came, but did not approach the wing they were in. They heard her close the windows, fasten them, lock the door, and go away. Then Clare again stole a chink of light from the window, and they shared another meal, till by-and-by they were enveloped in the shades of night which they had no candle to disperse. LVIII The night was strangely solemn and still. In the small hours she whispered to him the whole story of how he had walked in his sleep with her in his arms across the Froom stream, at the imminent risk of


cut the bull out from the herd. It was no slight task. He would bark and dance about in front of the bull, just out of reach of the great antlers and of the terrible splay hoofs which could have stamped his life out with a single blow. Unable to turn his back on the fanged danger and go on, the bull would be driven into paroxysms of rage. At such moments he charged Buck, who retreated craftily, luring him on by a simulated inability to escape. But when he was thus separated from his fellows, two or three of the younger bulls would charge back upon Buck and enable the wounded bull to rejoin the herd. There is a patience of the wild--dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself--that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food; and it belonged to Buck as he clung to the flank of the herd, retarding its march, irritating the young bulls, worrying the cows with their half-grown calves, and driving the wounded bull mad with helpless rage. For half a day this continued. Buck multiplied himself, attacking from all sides, enveloping the herd in a whirlwind of menace, cutting out his victim as fast as it could rejoin its mates, wearing out the patience of creatures preyed upon, which is a lesser patience than that of creatures preying. As the day wore along and the sun dropped to its bed in the northwest (the darkness had come back and the fall nights were six hours long), the young bulls retraced their steps more and more reluctantly to the aid of their beset leader. The down-coming winter was harrying them on to the lower levels, and it seemed they could never shake off this tireless creature that held them back. Besides, it was not the life of the herd, or of the young bulls, that was threatened. The life of only one member was demanded, which was a remoter interest than their lives, and in the end they were content to pay the toll. As twilight fell the old bull stood with lowered head, watching his mates--the cows he had known, the calves he had fathered, the bulls he had mastered--as they shambled on at a rapid pace through the fading light. He could not follow, for before his nose leaped the merciless fanged terror that would not let him go. Three hundredweight more than half a ton he weighed; he had lived a long, strong life, full of fight and struggle, and at the end he faced death at the teeth of a creature whose head did not reach beyond his great knuckled knees. From then on, night and day, Buck never left his prey, never gave it a moment's rest, never permitted it to browse the leaves of trees or the shoots of young birch and willow. Nor did he give the wounded bull opportunity to slake his burning thirst


and a beggar.---Nelly, take her; and leave me, all of you!---leave me!" I led my young lady out. She was too glad of her es- cape to resist. The other followed, and Mr. Heathcliff had the room to himself till dinner. I had counselled Catherine to dine upstairs, but as soon as he perceived her vacant seat he sent me to call her. He spoke to none of us, ate very little, and went out directly afterwards, intimating that he should not return before evening. The two new friends established themselves in the house during his absence, when I heard Hareton sternly check his cousin on her offering a revelation of her father-in-law's conduct to his father. He said he wouldn't suffer a word to be uttered in his disparage- ment. lf he were the devil, it didn't signify---he would stand by him; and he'd rather she would abuse himself, as she used to, than begin on Mr. Heathcliff. Catherine was waxing cross at this, but he found means to make her hold her tongue by asking how she would like him to speak ill of her father. Then she comprehended that Earnshaw took the master's reputation home to himself, and was attached by ties stronger than reason could break---chains forged by habit, which it would be cruel to attempt to loosen. She showed a good heart, thenceforth, in avoiding both complaints and expres- sions of antipathy concerning Heathcliff, and confessed to me her sorrow that she had endeavoured to raise a bad spirit between him and Hareton. Indeed, I don't believe she has ever breathed a syllable, in the latter's hearing, against her oppressor since. When this slight disagreement was over, they were friends again, and as busy as possible in their several occupations of pupil and teacher. I came in to sit with them after I had done my work, and I felt so soothed and comforted to watch them that I did not notice how time got on. You know they both appeared in a meas- nre my children. I had long been proud of one, and now I was sure the other would be a source of equal satisfac- tion. His honest, warm, and intelligent nature shook off rapidly the clouds of ignorance and degradation in which it had been bred, and Catherine's sincere com- mendations acted as a spur to his industry. His bright- ening mind brightened his features, and added spirit and nobility to their aspect. I could hardly fancy it the same individual I had beheld on the day I discov- ered my little lady at Wuthering Heights, after her ex- pedition to the Crags. While I admired and they laboured, dusk drew on, and with it returned the mas- ter. He came upon us quite unexpectedly, entering by the front way, and had a full view of the whole three ere we could raise our heads to glance at him. Well, I reflected, there was never a pleasanter or more harm- less sight, and it will be a burning shame to scold them. The


creed of determinism was such that it almost amounted to a vice, and quite amounted, on its negative side, to a renunciative philosophy which had cousinship with that of Schopenhauer and Leopardi. He despised the Canons and Rubric, swore by the Articles, and deemed himself consistent through the whole category--which in a way he might have been. One thing he certainly was--sincere. To the aesthetic, sensuous, pagan pleasure in natural life and lush womanhood which his son Angel had lately been experiencing in Var Vale, his temper would have been antipathetic in a high degree, had he either by inquiry or imagination been able to apprehend it. Once upon a time Angel had been so unlucky as to say to his father, in a moment of irritation, that it might have resulted far better for mankind if Greece had been the source of the religion of modern civilization, and not Palestine; and his father's grief was of that blank description which could not realize that there might lurk a thousandth part of a truth, much less a half truth or a whole truth, in such a proposition. He had simply preached austerely at Angel for some time after. But the kindness of his heart was such that he never resented anything for long, and welcomed his son today with a smile which was as candidly sweet as a child's. Angel sat down, and the place felt like home; yet he did not so much as formerly feel himself one of the family gathered there. Every time that he returned hither he was conscious of this divergence, and since he had last shared in the Vicarage life it had grown even more distinctly foreign to his own than usual. Its transcendental aspirations--still unconsciously based on the geocentric view of things, a zenithal paradise, a nadiral hell--were as foreign to his own as if they had been the dreams of people on another planet. Latterly he had seen only Life, felt only the great passionate pulse of existence, unwarped, uncontorted, untrammelled by those creeds which futilely attempt to check what wisdom would be content to regulate. On their part they saw a great difference in him, a growing divergence from the Angel Clare of former times. It was chiefly a difference in his manner that they noticed just now, particularly his brothers. He was getting to behave like a farmer; he flung his legs about; the muscles of his face had grown more expressive; his eyes looked as much information as his tongue spoke, and more. The manner of the scholar had nearly disappeared; still more the manner of the drawing-room young man. A prig would have said that he had lost culture, and a prude that he had become coarse. Such was the contagion of domiciliary fellowship with the Talbothays nymphs and swains. After breakfast he walked with his two brothers, non-evangelical, well-educated, hall-marked young men, correct to their remotest fibre, such unimpeachable models as are turned out yearly by the lathe of a systematic tuition. They were both somewhat short-sighted, and when


to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous Ramadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in; hence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must necessarily be half-starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic religionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In one word, Queequeg, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated through the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans. .. <p 86 > I then asked Queequeg whether he himself was ever troubled with dyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it in. He said no; only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great feast given by his father the king, on the gaining of a great battle wherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o'clock in the afternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening. No more, Queequeg, said I, shuddering; that will do; for I knew the inferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor who had visited that very island, and he told me that it was the custom, when a great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in the yard or garden of the victor; and then, one by one, they were placed in great wooden trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau, with breadfruit and cocoanuts; and with some parsley in their mouths, were sent round with the victor's compliments to all his friends, just as though these presents were so many Christmas turkeys. After all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much impression upon Queequeg. Because, in the first place, he somehow seemed dull of hearing on that important subject, unless considered from his own point of view; and, in the second place, he did not more than one third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would; and, finally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true religion than I did. He looked at me with a sort of condescending concern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such a sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan piety. At last we rose and dressed; and Queequeg, taking a prodigiously hearty breakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not make much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the Pequod, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones. .. <p 87 > .. < chapter xviii 2 HIS MARK > As we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Queequeg carrying his harpoon, Captain Peleg in his gruff voice loudly hailed us from his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal, and furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that craft, unless they previously produced their papers. What do you mean by that, Captain Peleg? said I, now


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

and magic, and with it removed I was able to use my own magic again. Fortunately, the edge of the Hidden Ones’ realm was rolling over us again as the wind picked up— I suppose it’s intriguing, this travelling faerie realm, as little as it is to my taste—and like all monarchs, I can bend the rules when I am in Faerie, if only a little. Through the agony, I managed to pull at the pocket of time I was in and unravel a few threads. I’m not explaining it well enough for you to understand, I’m sure, but essentially I turned back time, returning to the moment the arrow flew towards me, where I caught it. It’s a talent of limited compass, I’m afraid; I can affect time only within a small area—anyone standing much more than an arm’s length away is unaffected—and I’ve only ever managed to undo a handful of seconds. Quite helpful, though, in this instance. The faerie who had shot the arrow soon made his presence known, striding arrogantly out of the wind to smirk at me. I could tell right away that he hadn’t seen my little trick; he’d only seen me catch the arrow. He had eyes like the dawn, and he was wearing some sort of dreadful grey thing that hung from him like a sheet—very much your style—and a cloak made of dead animals of some sort—hideous but perfectly practical attire, I suppose, for an icicle like him. “You’re a long way from home, child,” he said to me in Faie, with a condescending tone that I did not appreciate. Unfortunately, he was very old, older even than some of my court’s most tedious councillors, so I suppose he had reason to condescend to me. No reason at all to put an arrow in my chest, though. You were at my elbow then, rapidly recounting the whole story of the cloak and the Hidden Ones’ interest in me—unnecessary, really, for I had already gathered that the man had been drawn to the great hole I’d put in his realm, and that he meant to make a meal out of me, hollowing me out like an orange, as he’d done to Auður. My, what an ignominious fate that would have been! I can imagine my stepmother’s reaction; I think she would have injured herself laughing. It would not have surprised her. Anyway, I did not much want to fight him—he looked a mean sort, and I was resentful that after all the effort I’d expended, here was yet another trial to keep me from my supper—so I simply explained to him who I was and gave him a little demonstration of my power to put him off, summoning a very pretty rose garden in the middle of his desolate winter, complete with a handful of bees. “You were cast out?” he said with distaste, and looked me up and down. “Yes, we have children like you at our court. Indolent peacocks, strutting about with their jewels and their perfumes, teasing one another with vacuous


Hurston published seven books—four novels, two books of folklore, and an autobiography—and more than fifty shorter works between the middle of the Harlem Renaissance and the end of the Korean War, when she was the dominant black woman writer in the United States. The dark obscurity into which her career then lapsed reflects her staunchly independent political stances rather than any deficiency of craft or vision. Virtually ignored after the early fifties, even by the Black Arts movement in the sixties, an otherwise noisy and intense spell of black image- and myth-making that rescued so many black writers from remaindered oblivion, Hurston embodied a more or less harmonious but nevertheless problematic unity of opposites. It is this complexity that refuses to lend itself to the glib categories of “radical” or “conservative,” “black” or “Negro,” “revolutionary” or “Uncle Tom”—categories of little use in literary criticism. It is this same complexity, embodied in her fiction, that, until Alice Walker published her important essay (“In Search of Zora Neale Hurston”) in Ms. magazine in 1975, had made Hurston’s place in black literary history an ambiguous one at best. The rediscovery of Afro-American writers has usually turned on larger political criteria, of which the writer’s work is supposedly a mere reflection. The deeply satisfying aspect of the rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston is that black women generated it primarily to establish a maternal literary ancestry. Alice Walker’s moving essay recounts her attempts to find Hurston’s unmarked grave in the Garden of the Heavenly Rest, a segregated cemetery in Fort Pierce, Florida. Hurston became a metaphor for the black woman writer’s search for tradition. The craft of Alice Walker, Gayl Jones, Gloria Naylor, and Toni Cade Bambara bears, in markedly different ways, strong affinities with Hurston’s. Their attention to Hurston signifies a novel sophistication in black literature: they read Hurston not only for the spiritual kinship inherent in such relations but because she used black vernacular speech and rituals, in ways Subtle and various, to chart the coming to consciousness of black women, so glaringly absent in other black fiction. This use of the vernacular became the fundamental framework for all but one of her novels and is particularly effective in her classic work Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937, which is more closely related to Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady and Jean Toomer’s Cane than to Langston Hughes’s and Richard Wright’s proletarian literature, so popular in the Depression. The charting of Janie Crawford’s fulfillment as an autonomous imagination, Their Eyes is a lyrical novel that correlates the need of her first two husbands for ownership of progressively larger physical space (and the gaudy accoutrements of upward mobility) with the suppression of self- awareness in their wife. Only with her third and last lover, a roustabout called Tea Cake whose unstructured frolics center around and about the Florida swamps, does Janie at last bloom, as does the large pear tree that stands beside her grandmother’s tiny log cabin. She saw a dust bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand


the fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not without, but within, that I had fancied I heard. There had been a moment when I believed I recognized, faint and far, the cry of a child; there had been another when I found myself just consciously starting as at the passage, before my door, of a light footstep. But these fancies were not marked enough not to be thrown off, and it is only in the light, or the gloom, I should rather say, of other and subsequent matters that they now come back to me. To watch, teach, "form" little Flora would too evidently be the making of a happy and useful life. It had been agreed between us downstairs that after this first occasion I should have her as a matter of course at night, her small white bed being already arranged, to that end, in my room. What I had undertaken was the whole care of her, and she had remained, just this last time, with Mrs. Grose only as an effect of our consideration for my inevitable strangeness and her natural timidity. In spite of this timidity-- which the child herself, in the oddest way in the world, had been perfectly frank and brave about, allowing it, without a sign of uncomfortable consciousness, with the deep, sweet serenity indeed of one of Raphael's holy infants, to be discussed, to be imputed to her, and to determine us-- I feel quite sure she would presently like me. It was part of what I already liked Mrs. Grose herself for, the pleasure I could see her feel in my admiration and wonder as I sat at supper with four tall candles and with my pupil, in a high chair and a bib, brightly facing me, between them, over bread and milk. There were naturally things that in Flora's presence could pass between us only as prodigious and gratified looks, obscure and roundabout allusions. "And the little boy--does he look like her? Is he too so very remarkable?" One wouldn't flatter a child. "Oh, miss, MOST remarkable. If you think well of this one!"--and she stood there with a plate in her hand, beaming at our companion, who looked from one of us to the other with placid heavenly eyes that contained nothing to check us. "Yes; if I do--?" "You WILL be carried away by the little gentleman!" "Well, that, I think, is what I came for--to be carried away. I'm afraid, however," I remember feeling the impulse to add, "I'm rather easily carried away. I was carried away in London!" I can still see Mrs. Grose's broad face as she took this in. "In Harley Street?" "In Harley Street." "Well, miss, you're not the first--and you won't be the last." "Oh, I've no pretension," I could laugh, "to being the only one. My other pupil, at any rate, as I understand, comes back tomorrow?" "Not tomorrow--Friday, miss. He arrives, as you did, by the coach, under


as much in love with you as ever.'' ____ They did not see the gentlemen again till Tuesday; and Mrs. Bennet, in the meanwhile, was giving way to all the happy schemes, which the good humour and common politeness of Bingley, in half an hour's visit, had revived. On Tuesday there was a large party assembled at Longbourn; and the two who were most anxiously expected, to the credit of their punctuality as sportsmen, were in very good time. When they repaired to the dining-room, Elizabeth eagerly watched to see whether Bingley would take the place, which, in all their former parties, had belonged to him, by her sister. Her prudent mother, occupied by the same ideas, forbore to invite him to sit by herself. On entering the room, he seemed to hesitate; but Jane happened to look round, and happened to smile: it was decided. He placed himself by her. Elizabeth, with a triumphant sensation, looked towards his friend. He bore it with noble indifference, and she would have imagined that Bingley had received his sanction to be happy, had she not seen his eyes likewise turned towards Mr. Darcy, with an expression of half-laughing alarm. His behaviour to her sister was such, during dinner time, as shewed an admiration of her, which, though more guarded than formerly, persuaded Elizabeth, that if left wholly to himself, Jane's happiness, and his own, would be speedily secured. Though she dared not depend upon the consequence, she yet received pleasure from observing his behaviour. It gave her all the animation that her spirits could boast; for she was in no cheerful humour. Mr. Darcy was almost as far from her as the table could divide them. He was on one side of her mother. She knew how little such a situation would give pleasure to either, or make either appear to advantage. She was not near enough to hear any of their discourse, but she could see how seldom they spoke to each other, and how formal and cold was their manner whenever they did. Her mother's ungraciousness, made the sense of what they owed him more painful to Elizabeth's mind; and she would, at times, have given any thing to be privileged to tell him that his kindness was neither unknown nor unfelt by the whole of the family. She was in hopes that the evening would afford some opportunity of bringing them together; that the whole of the visit would not pass away without enabling them to enter into something more of conversation than the mere ceremonious salutation attending his entrance. Anxious and uneasy, the period which passed in the drawing-room, before the gentlemen came, was wearisome and dull to a degree that almost made her uncivil. She looked forward to their entrance as the point on which all her chance of pleasure for the evening must depend. ``If he does not come to me, _then_,'' said she, ``I shall give him up for ever.'' The gentlemen came; and she thought he looked as if he would have answered her hopes; but,


wonderful. It had more expression than I had ever heard from it before." "It is because I am going to be good," he answered, smiling. "I am a little changed already." "Don't change, Dorian; at any rate, don't change to me. We must always be friends." "Yet you poisoned me with a book once. I should not forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm." "My dear boy, you are really beginning to moralize. You will soon be going about warning people against all the sins of which you have grown tired. You are much too delightful to do that. Besides, it is no use. You and I are what we are, and will be what we will be. Come round tomorrow. I am going to ride at eleven, and we might go together. The Park is quite lovely now. I don't think there have been such lilacs since the year I met you." "Very well. I will be here at eleven," said Dorian. "Good-night, Harry." As he reached the door he hesitated for a moment, as if he had something more to say. Then he sighed and went out. It was a lovely night, so warm that he threw his coat over his arm, and did not even put his silk scarf round his throat. As he strolled [98] home, smoking his cigarette, two young men in evening dress passed him. He heard one of them whisper to the other, "That is Dorian Gray." He remembered how pleased he used to be when he was pointed out, or stared at, or talked about. He was tired of hearing his own name now. Half the charm of the little village where he had been so often lately was that no one knew who he was. He had told the girl whom he had made love him that he was poor, and she had believed him. He had told her once that he was wicked, and she had laughed at him, and told him that wicked people were always very old and very ugly. What a laugh she had!--just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and her large hats! She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost. When he reached home, he found his servant waiting up for him. He sent him to bed, and threw himself down on the sofa in the library, and began to think over some of the things that Lord Henry had said to him. Was it really true that one could never change? He felt a wild longing for the unstained purity of his boyhood,--his rose-white boyhood, as Lord Henry had once called it. He knew that he had tarnished himself, filled his mind with corruption, and given horror to his fancy; that he had been an evil influence to others, and had experienced a terrible joy in being so; and that of the lives that had crossed his own it had been the fairest and


fireside – as though its fragrance was still imbued with the environment in which it was created. 1846 I have devoted an entire lifetime to escaping the confines of this wretched place, only to find myself further entangled in its gnarled roots and oppressed by its looming towers. I am now satisfied that no one born on this land can wipe the dust of it from one’s heels. I held my flushed cheeks with the palm of my hands. Was this it? What I had been searching for all of these years? Wrenville Hall is a spectre that haunts us all from one generation to the next … I was almost too afraid to touch the paper – I had some irrational fear that, having survived all these years, it might somehow crumble in my hands. I searched the drawer for a magnifying glass, as the script was so small and squashed on the page, it was difficult to make out. I brought my desk lamp closer and leaned over the little booklet. The black ink was messy and words were crossed out with new ones pushed out into what remained of the margins. Having viewed some of the sisters’ original diary entries at Haworth, I felt sure that this was the penmanship of Emily, but I would need to have it authenticated. Unless … That was when I spotted it – a minuscule signature. EJB. It felt like fireworks exploding in my veins. The baby kicked, the air crackled and a whooshing sound went through my ears. Was this the second novel, or at least the drafting of it? My head felt light and my feet tapped a jig on the floorboards. I closed my eyes and traced the joy on my face with my fingertips and tried to commit it to memory. My heart was beating against my ribcage like a bird at the window. I read on. With the death of my father and the forced liquidation of my debts to my creditors in London, I was now returning to the estate in Ireland. … an impervious gloom haunted every corner of its cursed country and a week of driving rain had soaked the ground and reduced it to mud. Famine ravaged the land … The text became unreadable at this point and the next paragraph seemed to jump ahead of sequence. This would be my penance, my banishment to this hellish place. I passed through two great pillars and entered the avenue that swept up to Wrenville Hall. Lined with towering yews, it held a singular tranquillity that was tinged with terror. On my one and only sojourn in this place as a child, I recalled the old house servant speaking of spectres and ghouls that lived in the woods beyond. The house stood strongly defined against the dark sky. The gargoyles that came into view at the front-facing aspect of the grey fortress of a house stared down through the afternoon mist in delightful horror … ‘It was night and the candles were lit as I dined


joy would count as failure. There was a gleam of pink satin, a scent of almonds and rose water. Lady Montagu was hurrying past. “Terrible headache, must dash, forgive, forgive... Splendid evening, goodnight to you all!” Miss de Vries felt a hand on her elbow. Lockwood, bruised and angry eyed. “Thank his lordship for the dance,” he said. “It will be expected.” Lord Ashley was throwing back his head and bellowing with laughter, rubbing his thighs, making an obscene joke. She didn’t wish to thank him. He should have been thanking her, for saving him. “No,” she replied. Ashley was taking her triumph, polluting it, making it his own. “I’m going to bed.” Lockwood’s eyes narrowed. “There are still a good many people to speak to...” “I’ve concluded all my business. And I’m tired.” She looked at Lord Ashley, then looked away. She tried to summon up the sweet tang of success. It tasted bitter. She made for the stairs, the scarlet peonies raging overhead, and she didn’t glance back. 36 2:00 a.m. Without Mrs. King, Winnie was going to have to manage the next step herself. She was at the other side of the house, in the guest suites on the second floor. She put the box of matches back in her pocket and peered at the smoke machine, wiping the sweat from her brow. The Janes started stuffing sheets around the bedroom door frame, bunging up the cracks, to contain the smoke. Not that there seemed to be much smoke at all. “How long will it take?” Winnie asked. The machines were working, pistons pumping, air bubbling in the water towers. But the cigarettes were releasing only little wisps of smoke. “We come back every couple of minutes to replace the cigarettes,” said Jane-two. “And we’ve checked the gauges. They’re set to double.” “None of that means anything to me.” “It means you should get ready,” said Jane-one firmly. * * * Alice had slipped into Miss de Vries’s bedroom. She envisioned the other women looking for her, growing angry when they couldn’t find her. She pictured Mrs. King’s face, her disappointment, confusion. Alice’s nerves were skimming through her skin, fingers trembling. She moved like a mouse, zigzagging, touching Miss de Vries’s bureau—because it was something cool, something solid. Her crucifix felt hot, sweaty, the chain scratching her throat. She was tempted to throw it out of the window. What use was it now? She heard a soft tread from the passage. It made her start, swing around. The big bedroom doors rolled slowly back. Miss de Vries stood silhouetted in the lamplight. It made Alice squint, put a hand to her eyes. The movement must have alerted Miss de Vries to her presence. She heard her say, on an outward breath, “Ah.” Miss de Vries stayed standing on the other side of the bed. The sight of her, so familiar, made Alice’s heart start pelting. She knew every inch of Madam, every line: every nick and hollow. She’d watched her long enough. Good, she thought, mind racing. Keep her


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

terrible reckoning I pray fervently to God that not a single soul of those who are in this chapel today may be found among those miserable beings whom the Great Judge shall command to depart for ever from His sight, that not one of us may ever hear ringing in his ears the awful sentence of rejection: DEPART FROM ME, YE CURSED, INTO EVERLASTING FIRE WHICH WAS PREPARED FOR THE DEVIL AND HIS ANGELS! He came down the aisle of the chapel, his legs shaking and the scalp of his head trembling as though it had been touched by ghostly fingers. He passed up the staircase and into the corridor along the walls of which the overcoats and waterproofs hung like gibbeted malefactors, headless and dripping and shapeless. And at every step he feared that he had already died, that his soul had been wrenched forth of the sheath of his body, that he was plunging headlong through space. He could not grip the floor with his feet and sat heavily at his desk, opening one of his books at random and poring over it. Every word for him. It was true. God was almighty. God could call him now, call him as he sat at his desk, before he had time to be conscious of the summons. God had called him. Yes? What? Yes? His flesh shrank together as it felt the approach of the ravenous tongues of flames, dried up as it felt about it the swirl of stifling air. He had died. Yes. He was judged. A wave of fire swept through his body: the first. Again a wave. His brain began to glow. Another. His brain was simmering and bubbling within the cracking tenement of the skull. Flames burst forth from his skull like a corolla, shrieking like voices: --Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Hell! Voices spoke near him: --On hell. --I suppose he rubbed it into you well. --You bet he did. He put us all into a blue funk. --That's what you fellows want: and plenty of it to make you work. He leaned back weakly in his desk. He had not died. God had spared him still. He was still in the familiar world of the school. Mr Tate and Vincent Heron stood at the window, talking, jesting, gazing out at the bleak rain, moving their heads. --I wish it would clear up. I had arranged to go for a spin on the bike with some fellows out by Malahide. But the roads must be knee-deep. --It might clear up, sir. The voices that he knew so well, the common words, the quiet of the classroom when the voices paused and the silence was filled by the sound of softly browsing cattle as the other boys munched their lunches tranquilly, lulled his aching soul. There was still time. O Mary, refuge of sinners, intercede for him! O Virgin Undefiled, save him from the gulf of death! The English lesson began with the hearing of the history. Royal persons, favourites, intriguers, bishops, passed like mute phantoms behind


not to be talked over. That's Mr. Craven's orders. His troubles are none servants' business, he says. But for th' garden he wouldn't be like he is. It was Mrs. Craven's garden that she had made when first they were married an' she just loved it, an' they used to 'tend the flowers themselves. An' none o' th' gardeners was ever let to go in. Him an' her used to go in an' shut th' door an' stay there hours an' hours, readin' and talkin'. An, she was just a bit of a girl an' there was an old tree with a branch bent like a seat on it. An' she made roses grow over it an' she used to sit there. But one day when she was sittin' there th' branch broke an' she fell on th' ground an' was hurt so bad that next day she died. Th' doctors thought he'd go out o' his mind an' die, too. That's why he hates it. No one's never gone in since, an' he won't let any one talk about it." Mary did not ask any more questions. She looked at the red fire and listened to the wind "wutherin'." It seemed to be "wutherin'" louder than ever. At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for some one. But as she was listening to the wind she began to listen to something else. She did not know what it was, because at first she could scarcely distinguish it from the wind itself. It was a curious sound--it seemed almost as if a child were crying somewhere. Sometimes the wind sounded rather like a child crying, but presently Mistress Mary felt quite sure this sound was inside the house, not outside it. It was far away, but it was inside. She turned round and looked at Martha. "Do you hear any one crying?" she said. Martha suddenly looked confused. "No," she answered. "It's th' wind. Sometimes it sounds like as if some one was lost on th' moor an' wailin'. It's got all sorts o' sounds." "But listen," said Mary. "It's in the house--down one of those long corridors." And at that very moment a door must have been opened somewhere downstairs; for a great rushing draft blew along the passage and the door of the room they sat in was blown open with a crash, and as they both jumped to their feet the light was blown out and the crying sound was swept down the far corridor so that it was to be heard more plainly than ever. "There!" said Mary. "I told you so! It is some one crying--and it


action or justification, without proofs, just as I am. That’s what she meant when she told me, as a child, that I could never disappoint her. That’s why she and my father always said it didn’t matter where I went, what I did with my life, what I accomplished—they would always be proud of me. That’s why she believes that there is nothing for her to forgive now. I can choose to accept her at her word or not, keep chastising myself or not, but the truth is that this is what she has long believed: I am her daughter, so I am enough. When she is gone, I wonder, can I possibly learn to be enough for myself? What would it mean—how would it feel—if I were? She has asked me what she’s done with her life, how she can stand before God without fear. I think again of my father, whom she’ll soon be with, and how he might know what to say, how to reassure her, if he were here. But I am the person who is here now. My arms are the ones holding her, and I am the one who must try to give her an answer. “You’re a loving, good, and generous person,” I tell her. “You’ve tried to live the life you thought God wanted for you. You’ve been the best mother to me. I’m so lucky to be your daughter.” It might not be enough for everyone, I know, at the end of their lives. But to me it has been everything. It is our life as parent and child, and I hope she believes in its value. I hope she knows that she was enough for me. This is all that is left to us—to hold and to love each other, to forgive, to grieve while we can. She hugs me again, and says that we shouldn’t be a mess when my daughter returns. We are sitting side by side on the sofa, holding hands, drying our eyes, when my daughter walks in with the dog. Mom announces that she’s going to take a little nap before dinner and gets up carefully, gripping my hand for support. We walk down the hall together, Buster trailing behind us. “You know,” she says, before I leave her, “I can’t seem to remember any of the bad times now that Dad is gone. I always think of him smiling or laughing or making some joke. I think of all the times when I was in a bad mood and he cheered me up. I only seem to remember the good times now.” “Because you loved him,” I say. I return to the living room and sit on the couch beside my daughter. In her expression I read compassion, sadness, weariness. A deep well of concern. Her face was the first I ever glimpsed that looked anything like mine—from the moment of her birth, I knew that I was not alone. Now nearly twelve, she never resembles me more than when her steady brown eyes, my eyes,


to the snow. The overloaded and unwieldy sled forged ahead, Buck and his mates struggling frantically under the rain of blows. A hundred yards ahead the path turned and sloped steeply into the main street. It would have required an experienced man to keep the top-heavy sled upright, and Hal was not such a man. As they swung on the turn the sled went over, spilling half its load through the loose lashings. The dogs never stopped. The lightened sled bounded on its side behind them. They were angry because of the ill treatment they had received and the unjust load. Buck was raging. He broke into a run, the team following his lead. Hal cried "Whoa! whoa!" but they gave no heed. He tripped and was pulled off his feet. The capsized sled ground over him, and the dogs dashed on up the street, adding to the gayety of Skaguay as they scattered the remainder of the outfit along its chief thoroughfare. Kind-hearted citizens caught the dogs and gathered up the scattered belongings. Also, they gave advice. Half the load and twice the dogs, if they ever expected to reach Dawson, was what was said. Hal and his sister and brother-in-law listened unwillingly, pitched tent, and overhauled the outfit. Canned goods were turned out that made men laugh, for canned goods on the Long Trail is a thing to dream about. "Blankets for a hotel" quoth one of the men who laughed and helped. "Half as many is too much; get rid of them. Throw away that tent, and all those dishes,--who's going to wash them, anyway? Good Lord, do you think you're travelling on a Pullman?" And so it went, the inexorable elimination of the superfluous. Mercedes cried when her clothes-bags were dumped on the ground and article after article was thrown out. She cried in general, and she cried in particular over each discarded thing. She clasped hands about knees, rocking back and forth broken-heartedly. She averred she would not go an inch, not for a dozen Charleses. She appealed to everybody and to everything, finally wiping her eyes and proceeding to cast out even articles of apparel that were imperative necessaries. And in her zeal, when she had finished with her own, she attacked the belongings of her men and went through them like a tornado. This accomplished, the outfit, though cut in half, was still a formidable bulk. Charles and Hal went out in the evening and bought six Outside dogs. These, added to the six of the original team, and Teek and Koona, the huskies obtained at the Rink Rapids on the record trip, brought the team up to fourteen. But the Outside dogs, though practically broken in since their landing, did not amount to much. Three were short-haired pointers, one was a Newfoundland, and the other two were mongrels of indeterminate breed. They did not seem to know anything, these newcomers. Buck and his comrades looked upon them with disgust, and though he speedily taught them their places and what not to do, he could


Abel said as he walked back to where they were sitting. “I’m glad you’re feeling more relaxed,” Montserrat said, which was a diplomatic answer considering she had been ready to strangle the old man only twenty-four hours before. “By the way, I have your duplicate here.” She reached into her purse and held out a small can of film. “I have the original at Antares’s vault. You need to find a safe place for it, maybe at the Cineteca.” “Not my freezer, then,” Abel said with a smile. “I’m not letting you have it back unless you promise it’s never going to sit next to your ice cube tray again.” “I promise. And I have something for you, my dear, to thank you for the sound editing you did.” Abel handed Montserrat a book. “It belonged to Ewers. It’s one of the souvenirs I keep.” “The House of Infinite Wisdom by Wilhelm Ewers,” Montserrat said, opening the book and reading out the words printed with a simple typeface on the first page, for the book was hardbound and lacked a dust jacket. “It looks like a manual.” “It’s part of the literature he distributed to his followers. I thought you could use it for your TV segment.” She looked up at Abel in surprise. “You’ll do the interview?” “Why not? Maybe after my retrospective is solidified, but it’s as you said: free publicity. Now, do we need to get more olives onto this table?” Abel asked, picking up the bowl that Tristán and Montserrat had ransacked. * * * — It was late by the time they stumbled down to his apartment. Well, Tristán stumbled. Montserrat drank little and tended to keep her head straight even when intoxicated. He, on the other hand, did not struggle with inebriation. He let it wash over him. Urueta’s music was still ringing in his ears, and he hummed that tune sung by Billie Holiday that played as they had said their good nights. “For Heaven’s Sake.” He couldn’t remember the third line, so he kept repeating the first two as Montserrat guided him to the bedroom. “Is it that late?” he asked, the digits of the digital clock jumping at him in the semi-darkness of the room. He bumped a leg against the bed. “Yeah.” “Wow. We kept at it for a while, didn’t we?” “Sure did.” He peeled off the sweater he’d been wearing as he sat at the edge of the bed and yawned. “Does that mean you’re not angry at me anymore?” “The problem seems to have resolved itself. Lucky you.” “Luck,” he said, grinning as he took off one shoe, then another. He rubbed one foot against his ankle and yawned. “I’m horny.” “You’re drunk.” “Well, I get horny when I’m drunk,” he replied, flopping back on the bed and staring at the ceiling. “You should slip under the covers and whatever happens, happens.” “That would be a lousy idea.” “That’s the whole point of being drunk,” he said, closing his eyes. “It’s doing every stupid thing that comes into your


might an injured comrade, she’d helped him back to Hope Town. He’d refused to go to the hospital since his hypothermia was self-inflicted; questions would be asked about his state of mind and Echo had never been able to lie. Taking him back to his residence, a cabin on a former cruise ship now permanently moored against the bay, he’d collapsed into his sleeping bag, exhausted and delirious, telling her that it was okay if she didn’t love him; she probably needed a partner who could walk barefoot across glaciers and swim under icebergs. Perched on the side of his narrow bunkbed, she assessed his home life: a cramped cabin, home to a family of four, crisscrossed with washing, a bedsheet partitioning the space. His foster parents were kind people, concerned with his welfare, busy with a family of their own to look after. No wonder Tetu worked so hard to escape this place, she thought, spending so much time either studying or exploring the surroundings – he was a man in search of a home of his own. She waited for him to fall asleep before once more stabilizing his temperature, feeling her warmth flow through her fingers into his body. Inside Wordie House her scales turned black, her body radiating an excess of heat. She couldn’t remain in this warmth for long even if her meals were always served cold. Out of necessity she slept outside, the thick walls of this well-made historic house creating an uncomfortable heat, too intense for her despite the fact her parents kept the temperature as low as they could tolerate so that she could spend as much time as possible with them. Often in the morning Liza would find her daughter curled up in the snow as if it were her bed. Without saying a word about being late or why she was only partially dressed, Echo sat on the chair that Atto had reinforced to support her weight, popping out the wedges of compacted ice from between her toes. Liza couldn’t help but smile. ‘You can’t walk in this late, half naked, without an explanation.’ Echo had never been prudish. Modesty was a trait of the ordinary-born; she had no problem being naked in front of her parents and on a practical level preferred being naked in terms of regulating her temperature. Most parents would panic if their sixteen-year-old daughter returned with her clothes in tatters, but even Liza accepted no ordinary-born man on the Peninsula could lay a finger on Echo. Atto asked: ‘Where have you been?’ ‘The Compass Glaciers.’ ‘What were you doing there?’ ‘Searching for fragments of alien technology.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Tetu collects them. He thinks it will improve his chances of being selected by McMurdo.’ Liza moved close to her daughter, picking an ice crystal from the grooves between her scales. ‘Have you been in the ocean again?’ ‘Yes. The fragment was underwater. I swam down and retrieved it for him.’ ‘The oceans are dangerous even for you. The ice can move – your escape holes can close. You’re not


was a tramp of heavy boots outside. The door clanged open. The waxed-faced officer marched in, followed by two guards. 'Room 101,' said the officer. The man in the white coat did not turn round. He did not look at Winston either; he was looking only at the dials. He was rolling down a mighty corridor, a kilometre wide, full of glorious, golden light, roaring with laughter and shouting out confessions at the top of his voice. He was confessing everything, even the things he had succeeded in holding back under the torture. He was relating the entire history of his life to an audience who knew it already. With him were the guards, the other questioners, the men in white coats, O'Brien, Julia, Mr Charrington, all rolling down the corridor together and shouting with laughter. Some dreadful thing which had lain embedded in the future had somehow been skipped over and had not happened. Everything was all right, there was no more pain, the last detail of his life was laid bare, understood, forgiven. He was starting up from the plank bed in the half-certainty that he had heard O'Brien's voice. All through his interrogation, although he had never seen him, he had had the feeling that O'Brien was at his elbow, just out of sight. It was O'Brien who was directing everything. It was he who set the guards on to Winston and who prevented them from killing him. It was he who decided when Winston should scream with pain, when he should have a respite, when he should be fed, when he should sleep, when the drugs should be pumped into his arm. It was he who asked the questions and suggested the answers. He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend. And once--Winston could not remember whether it was in drugged sleep, or in normal sleep, or even in a moment of wakefulness--a voice murmured in his ear: 'Don't worry, Winston; you file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (132 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:52 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt are in my keeping. For seven years I have watched over you. Now the turning-point has come. I shall save you, I shall make you perfect.' He was not sure whether it was O'Brien's voice; but it was the same voice that had said to him, 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,' in that other dream, seven years ago. He did not remember any ending to his interrogation. There was a period of blackness and then the cell, or room, in which he now was had gradually materialized round him. He was almost flat on his back, and unable to move. His body was held down at every essential point. Even the back of his head was gripped in some manner. O'Brien was looking down at him gravely and rather sadly. His face, seen from below, looked coarse and worn, with pouches under the eyes and tired lines from nose to chin. He was older than Winston had thought him; he was perhaps forty-eight or


companions. I remem- the Spy-glass, and soon after I saw something broad and sil- bered that the most easterly of the rivers which drain into very moving low down behind the trees, and knew the moon Captain Kidd’s anchorage ran from the two-peaked hill upon had risen. my left, and I bent my course in that direction that I might With this to help me, I passed rapidly over what remained pass the stream while it was small. The wood was pretty open, to me of my journey, and sometimes walking, sometimes run- and keeping along the lower spurs, I had soon turned the ning, impatiently drew near to the stockade. Yet, as I began corner of that hill, and not long after waded to the mid-calf to thread the grove that lies before it, I was not so thoughtless across the watercourse. but that I slacked my pace and went a trifle warily. It would This brought me near to where I had encountered Ben have been a poor end of my adventures to get shot down by Gunn, the maroon; and I walked more circumspectly, keep- my own party in mistake. ing an eye on every side. The dusk had come nigh hand The moon was climbing higher and higher, its light began completely, and as I opened out the cleft between the two to fall here and there in masses through the more open dis- peaks, I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky, tricts of the wood, and right in front of me a glow of a differ- Contents where, as I judged, the man of the island was cooking his ent colour appeared among the trees. It was red and hot, and supper before a roaring fire. And yet I wondered, in my heart, now and again it was a little darkened—as it were, the embers Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 224 225 of a bonfire smouldering. In the meantime, there was no doubt of one thing; they For the life of me I could not think what it might be. kept an infamous bad watch. If it had been Silver and his At last I came right down upon the borders of the clear- lads that were now creeping in on them, not a soul would ing. The western end was already steeped in moon- shine; have seen daybreak. That was what it was, thought I, to have the rest, and the block house itself, still lay in a black shadow the captain wounded; and again I blamed myself sharply for chequered with long silvery streaks of light. On the other leaving them in that danger with so few to mount guard. side of the house an immense fire had burned itself into clear By this time I had got to the door and stood up. All was embers and shed a steady, red reverberation, contrasted strongly dark within, so that I could distinguish nothing by the eye. with the mellow paleness of the moon. There was not a soul As for sounds, there


back and subsequently gives each the coup de grâce of a second bullet in the head, he won’t be able to tell Alana about the rifleman’s love for Nina, not any of it. The anecdotes with which he charms her concern the strange and sometimes amusing twists and turns of his daily enforcements. They occasionally involve a killing, but he has never wasted anyone who was a great romantic figure. Considering the disrespect and trouble that some ninth-grade boys have given Alana, she might warm to an account of his killing John, but she will freeze at the realization that he also popped the devoted and adoring rifleman and his true love, Nina. If Orlando avenges his homeys yet wants to share Alana’s life as she ascends through the education establishment to positions in which she controls the dispensation of many millions of dollars, he dare not share with her the events of this night. She will inevitably wonder if he truly believes in her love for him and his for her, if whether the time might come, some currently unimaginable circumstance, when a sense of duty to his homeboys will require him to kill his own true love. Such a tragedy will never occur. As she has changed him, Orlando is now—as he’ll always be—incapable of committing such a horror, but she will not be able to put out of mind the Orlando as he was before he knew her. Suspicion. Suspicion poisons relationships. The thing is, he can’t bear not sharing with Alana the stirring tale of the romantic rifleman who, in the grip of passion, killed so many that his true love might live. It will be the best story that he’s ever told her, and she has a love of stories, being an English teacher and all. Abruptly, yet another revelation thrills him—that if he does not kill these three for whom he is lying in wait, the story he’ll then tell Alana will be even better, even more stirring, and she will see that Orlando and the rifleman are of like kind, two shining knights for whom love for a woman trumps all else, even duty to their homeys. Oh, but how completely this violates the code, the utilitarian ethics that have shaped his life in the gang. He can continue being an enforcer, and he will no doubt still enjoy the work, but if he doesn’t kill these three, he will know that he hasn’t always been faithful to the gangbanger creed. As he waits for them to pass by, as he hears them approaching, he lies in a misery of conflicting emotions, in a torment of conscience, not least of all in fear of being unable to explain to the new masters of the gang why he alone survived events in the orchard. He presses the gun flat against his heart. His hand grips the gun. His finger slides from trigger guard to trigger. He eases the weapon out of his raincoat. To kill or not to kill. Man, boy, woman—they pass him unawares, presenting


which I distinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then was in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling me or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question again recurred, to be answered only with groans. "I will soon explain to what these feelings tended, but allow me now to return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in an innocent, half-painful self-deceit, to call them)." Chapter 14 "Some time elapsed before I learned the history of my friends. It was one which could not fail to impress itself deeply on my mind, unfolding as it did a number of circumstances, each interesting and wonderful to one so utterly inexperienced as I was. "The name of the old man was De Lacey. He was descended from a good family in France, where he had lived for many years in affluence, respected by his superiors and beloved by his equals. His son was bred in the service of his country, and Agatha had ranked with ladies of the highest distinction. A few months before my arrival they had lived in a large and luxurious city called Paris, surrounded by friends and possessed of every enjoyment which virtue, refinement of intellect, or taste, accompanied by a moderate fortune, could afford. "The father of Safie had been the cause of their ruin. He was a Turkish merchant and had inhabited Paris for many years, when, for some reason which I could not learn, he became obnoxious to the government. He was seized and cast into prison the very day that Safie arrived from Constantinople to join him. He was tried and condemned to death. The injustice of his sentence was very flagrant; all Paris was indignant; and it was judged that his religion and wealth rather than the crime alleged against him had been the cause of his condemnation. "Felix had accidentally been present at the trial; his horror and indignation were uncontrollable when he heard the decision of the court. He made, at that moment, a solemn vow to deliver him and then looked around for the means. After many fruitless attempts to gain admittance to the prison, he found a strongly grated window in an unguarded part of the building, which lighted the dungeon of the unfortunate Muhammadan, who, loaded with chains, waited in despair the execution of the barbarous sentence. Felix visited the grate at night and made known to the prisoner his intentions in his favour. The Turk, amazed and delighted, endeavoured to kindle the zeal of his deliverer by promises of reward and wealth. Felix rejected his offers with contempt, yet when he saw the lovely Safie, who was allowed to visit her father and who by her gestures expressed her lively gratitude, the youth could not help owning to his own mind that the captive possessed a treasure which would fully reward


Christina Lauren - The True Love Experiment.txt

romance, love is often about getting past our core assumptions. So if someone told me I had a Titanium Match, wouldn’t I subconsciously work harder to make it successful than I would with a Base Match? That’s always the question with this technology.” He hums, nodding. “That makes sense.” “I think doing this show is the perfect way for me to get back into the dating scene. I won’t know what kind of matches I have. I won’t overthink it. I’ll just have to go on how we vibe and let the audience worry about the rest. I mean, I’m not having any luck on my own, why not let a bunch of strangers give it a shot?” “And you never went back to the app? You haven’t used it at all in the past couple years?” “Oh, I haven’t had much interest in dating for a while. My desire to find a partner crashed and burned entirely around the same time I was doing my DNADuo dating spree—unrelated to the app, I should add.” He seems to chew on his next words before finally asking, “What’s the unrelated bit?” Connor smiles. “If you don’t mind me asking.” “Ah. Well…” There are very few things I hate discussing, but high on the list are the word moist spoken aloud, people who use FML or LOL in actual conversation, and my tumultuous yet brief relationship with a man named Rob. “Around the time the DNADuo was launching, I went to a party with a friend and met this guy. We were together for a little while and I thought things were really going well until I found out he had a wife.” His expression crashes. “Oh.” “It was awful. I was devastated, all of the expected things from a situation like that. But then a little over a year ago, she confronted me.” Connor winces. “What happened?” “It wasn’t on purpose—or, well, she didn’t intentionally seek me out. I was on a date and we happened to be in the same place. She recognized me from some photos that had been on Rob’s phone, I guess, walked over to my table, and said she’d divorced him and that I was free to have him if I still wanted him.” “Fuck,” he mutters. “In any other situation I would have clarified that no, I absolutely did not want him—that I hadn’t even known Rob was married when we started dating—but I was totally frozen. It’s one thing to have made a mistake and live with it in an abstract way. It was totally different to see the fallout right there in front of me.” “That must have been awful. I’m sorry that happened, Fizzy.” “I had spent so much time wondering what happened to them. Did she forgive him? Did they split up? So it answered those questions, at least. Anyway…” I pick up my drink and the ice rattles against the Styrofoam as I raise it in a toast. “My therapist was able to remodel her kitchen with the money I paid to


morning, I complete all the usual rituals for my mother-in-law and then return to my room. I take the package Poppy brought to me from my drawer. Grandmother has written a short note: You are correct in your diagnosis and plan for treatment. Proceed. I mix the ingredients and set the pot on the brazier to brew. The medicinal smell that fills the room instantly carries me to my grandparents’ pharmacy. The aroma both lightens and deepens my homesickness. I return my attention to the other items I requested from Grandmother. By the time Yining enters, I have everything ready. “I want to share a secret with you,” I say. “I’m a young doctor.” She giggles. “That’s not a secret. Everyone knows.” This must mean Lady Kuo has forbidden others to talk to me about this or seek my help. That makes me nervous, but I won’t be deterred. Yining will benefit from my medicine. “I plan to attack your illness from different directions,” I tell her. “First I’d like to do moxibustion. Do you know what this is?” When she shakes her head, I hold up a small cone made from pressed ground mugwort. “I’m going to place these on your body and burn them.” Her eyes widen. “I promise moxibustion doesn’t hurt,” I say, but she remains unconvinced. To soothe her, I add, “I only want what’s best for you.” I take her to the kang I use during the day for lounging and reading. She sheds her tunic and lies on her stomach. I place five cones on spots on her back known to help with digestive disorders and light them as I would incense. A new, and to me familiarly wonderful, aroma now blends with that of the remedy percolating on the brazier. “Are you all right, Yining?” “It feels warm…” “That warmth is opening meridians that will stimulate your qi.” She rests quietly as the cones burn down. Before they reach her skin, I pluck them off and place the remains on a saucer. She sits up and puts on her tunic. I give her Pills to Preserve Harmony, which are made from seven ingredients. Of these, three are the most beneficial in this situation. Poria, an herb thought to be in union with the pine tree, will tranquilize Yining’s heart and pacify her restless spirit. The fruit of the forsythia will dispel Heat, remove toxins, and disperse the accumulations that have so plagued her. The essence of radish seeds will promote Yining’s digestion and strengthen her stomach. “You’re going to feel better soon,” I assure her, “and your constant visits to the honeypot will end.” Just as the girl swallows the pills, the door flings open. Lady Kuo enters. Her arms are folded across her body with her hands hidden up her sleeves—the model of calm and decorum—but her expression is as wily as that of a fox that’s cornered a rabbit. Poppy comes in behind her and drops to the floor in a position of absolute and total obeisance. “What is that stink?” Lady Kuo


Sloane’s back. Ethan keeps his eyes trained on Carr, his shoulders heaving with each dramatic sob, as he pushes back his chair. “I loved her so much,” Carr manages to say between sobs. The attorney makes a show of impatience with a deep sigh as he gestures toward the open doorway. Ethan looks back at Carr before following Jonah out of the room. If he learned one thing from their interview, it was this: the app founder is almost as good an actor as Sloane. Chapter 23 Sloane moves her salad around with a plastic fork in the ER breakroom, tuning out the upbeat chatter from the two nurses and medical resident at the other end of the table. She hadn’t slept a minute the night before. Instead, she spent the night tossing and turning, trying to force the images of Brody—and his dead wife—from her mind. She doesn’t feel like eating even though she skipped breakfast that morning, not wanting to risk bumping into Ethan in the kitchen. Laughter breaks out from a pretty blonde nurse fresh out of nursing school, whose name escapes Sloane. Sloane glances in the nurse’s direction and sees the resident showing her something on his phone. She strains to read the nurse’s name badge that’s clipped to her scrubs. Rachel. Her heart sinks. Of course, it is. Sloane looks away, willing herself to eat a bite of tasteless iceberg lettuce. The breakroom door swings open. She turns to see Logan striding toward her. “Hey.” He leans his hand on the chair beside her. Sloane has yet to apologize for yelling at him yesterday about the Narcan, but he seems to have forgiven her. “Sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to clarify an order you wrote for the patient in trauma room five, Daniel Salazar. “He was in the motorcycle accident,” Logan adds, seeing the look of confusion on Sloane’s face. “Oh, right.” Sloane sets down her fork. “Sure.” “You wrote the Epi 1:1,000 to be given IV. But from the dosage, I’m guessing you wanted it to be IM.” “I did?” “Yeah.” She leans back against her chair as a twist forms in her gut. She’s never made a medication error before. “Good catch. Sorry, yes. I meant IM.” Although, they both knew it was more than a good catch. If he hadn’t caught her mistake, it could have put the patient into V-tach. Or worse, V-fib. He nods. “Go ahead and give it IM. I’ll change the order.” “Okay, thank you.” Sloane rubs the sides of her temples after Logan turns for the door. You’ve got to get it together. “Chelsea Carr’s death is all over my feed.” Sloane shoots a glance at the young blonde nurse holding up her phone. With her other hand she digs inside a bag of Cheetos, even though she can’t be more than a size two. “I didn’t realize she was so involved with the Children’s Cancer Society because her sister died of leukemia at the age of sixteen.” Rachel looks at Sophie, the nurse sitting across from her.


must do Harriet good: and by supplying her with a new object of interest, Harriet may be said to do Emma good. I have been seeing their intimacy with the greatest pleasure. How very differently we feel!--Not think they will do each other any good! This will certainly be the beginning of one of our quarrels about Emma, Mr. Knightley." "Perhaps you think I am come on purpose to quarrel with you, knowing Weston to be out, and that you must still fight your own battle." "Mr. Weston would undoubtedly support me, if he were here, for he thinks exactly as I do on the subject. We were speaking of it only yesterday, and agreeing how fortunate it was for Emma, that there should be such a girl in Highbury for her to associate with. Mr. Knightley, I shall not allow you to be a fair judge in this case. You are so much used to live alone, that you do not know the value of a companion; and, perhaps no man can be a good judge of the comfort a woman feels in the society of one of her own sex, after being used to it all her life. I can imagine your objection to Harriet Smith. She is not the superior young woman which Emma's friend ought to be. But on the other hand, as Emma wants to see her better informed, it will be an inducement to her to read more herself. They will read together. She means it, I know." "Emma has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through--and very good lists they were--very well chosen, and very neatly arranged--sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen--I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely affirm that Harriet Smith will do nothing.-- You never could persuade her to read half so much as you wished.--You know you could not." "I dare say," replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, "that I thought so then;--but since we have parted, I can never remember Emma's omitting to do any thing I wished." "There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory as that,"--said Mr. Knightley, feelingly; and for a moment or two he had done. "But I," he soon added, "who have had no such charm thrown over my senses, must still see, hear, and remember. Emma is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years old, she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister