for the latest John Grisham paperbacks, and Rory takes out the occasional Jodi Picoult title from their local library over the holidays, but otherwise they haven’t a clue about the vicissitudes of my world, nor are they dying to learn. I don’t think Rory even has a Twitter account. Tonight, that’s a blessing. Rory and Tom live far enough out in the suburbs that they can afford a spacious backyard with a deck, where they host family grills the last Saturday of every month. The weather tonight is perfect: humid and hot, but breezy enough that it’s not a bother. Rory is making corn bread, and it smells so good, I think this might be the first meal I stomach this week that doesn’t come roiling back up from anxiety. They’re bickering on the patio when I arrive. The argument, I gather, is whether it was fair of HR to reprimand Rory’s desk mate for telling a colleague that her hair looked gorgeous that day. “I just don’t think you should touch people without their permission,” says Tom. “Like, that’s an etiquette thing, not a race thing.” “Oh, come on, it wasn’t like she was, like, assaulting her,” says Rory. “It was a compliment. And it’s so crazy to call Chelsea a racist—I mean, she’s a Democrat. She voted for Obama—oh, hey, honey.” Rory squeezes me from the side as I walk up. Usually I cringe from Rory’s big-sisterly affectations—it’s always struck me as a bit fake, overcompensating for her distance when we were younger—but tonight I lean into her touch. “Have a beer. I’m going to go check on the oven.” “How’s tricks?” Tom gestures to the picnic table, and I sit down across from him. He’s been growing his beard out. It’s nearly two inches long now, and it emphasizes his solid, unbothered lumberjack’s aesthetic. Every time I see Tom, I wonder what it would be like to go through life with the easy contentment of a rock. “Just the usual,” I say, accepting a Corona Light. “Could be better.” “Rory told me you published another book, right? Congrats!” I wince. I hope they haven’t Googled me recently. “Well, thanks.” “What’s it about?” “Oh, uh, World War One. Just, like, narratives of laborers on the front.” I always feel awkward explaining the Chinese Labour Corps to people who don’t already know about my book, because the inevitable follow-up is always a nose scrunch and a flat, awkward I didn’t know the Chinese were in World War One or Huh, why the Chinese? “It’s told like a mosaic, kind of like that movie Dunkirk. A broader story told through the amalgamation of a lot of little stories.” “Very cool.” Tom nods. “Great subject for a novel. It seems like all the books and movies are obsessed with World War Two. You know? Like Captain America, and all those Holocaust movies. We don’t get enough stuff about World War One.” “Wonder Woman is about World War One,” Rory calls from inside the kitchen. “The movie.” “Well, sure. But that’s just Wonder Woman;


and sat down and waited in the expectation that he would return. But no dog appeared, and at length he resumed his journey. CHAPTER XLIX MONKS AND MR. BROWNLOW AT LENGTH MEET. THEIR CONVERSATION, AND THE INTELLIGENCE THAT INTERRUPTS IT The twilight was beginning to close in, when Mr. Brownlow alighted from a hackney-coach at his own door, and knocked softly. The door being opened, a sturdy man got out of the coach and stationed himself on one side of the steps, while another man, who had been seated on the box, dismounted too, and stood upon the other side. At a sign from Mr. Brownlow, they helped out a third man, and taking him between them, hurried him into the house. This man was Monks. They walked in the same manner up the stairs without speaking, and Mr. Brownlow, preceding them, led the way into a back-room. At the door of this apartment, Monks, who had ascended with evident reluctance, stopped. The two men looked at the old gentleman as if for instructions. 'He knows the alternative,' said Mr. Browlow. 'If he hesitates or moves a finger but as you bid him, drag him into the street, call for the aid of the police, and impeach him as a felon in my name.' 'How dare you say this of me?' asked Monks. 'How dare you urge me to it, young man?' replied Mr. Brownlow, confronting him with a steady look. 'Are you mad enough to leave this house? Unhand him. There, sir. You are free to go, and we to follow. But I warn you, by all I hold most solemn and most sacred, that instant will have you apprehended on a charge of fraud and robbery. I am resolute and immoveable. If you are determined to be the same, your blood be upon your own head!' 'By what authority am I kidnapped in the street, and brought here by these dogs?' asked Monks, looking from one to the other of the men who stood beside him. 'By mine,' replied Mr. Brownlow. 'Those persons are indemnified by me. If you complain of being deprived of your liberty--you had power and opportunity to retrieve it as you came along, but you deemed it advisable to remain quiet--I say again, throw yourself for protection on the law. I will appeal to the law too; but when you have gone too far to recede, do not sue to me for leniency, when the power will have passed into other hands; and do not say I plunged you down the gulf into which you rushed, yourself.' Monks was plainly disconcerted, and alarmed besides. He hesitated. 'You will decide quickly,' said Mr. Brownlow, with perfect firmness and composure. 'If you wish me to prefer my charges publicly, and consign you to a punishment the extent of which, although I can, with a shudder, foresee, I cannot control, once more, I say, for you know the way. If not, and you appeal to my forbearance, and the mercy of those you have deeply injured, seat yourself, without


this abode. She found a peasant and his wife, hard working, bent down by care and labour, distributing a scanty meal to five hungry babes. Among these there was one which attracted my mother far above all the rest. She appeared of a different stock. The four others were dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants; this child was thin and very fair. Her hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head. Her brow was clear and ample, her blue eyes cloudless, and her lips and the moulding of her face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness that none could behold her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features. The peasant woman, perceiving that my mother fixed eyes of wonder and admiration on this lovely girl, eagerly communicated her history. She was not her child, but the daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a German and had died on giving her birth. The infant had been placed with these good people to nurse: they were better off then. They had not been long married, and their eldest child was but just born. The father of their charge was one of those Italians nursed in the memory of the antique glory of Italy--one among the schiavi ognor frementi, who exerted himself to obtain the liberty of his country. He became the victim of its weakness. Whether he had died or still lingered in the dungeons of Austria was not known. His property was confiscated; his child became an orphan and a beggar. She continued with her foster parents and bloomed in their rude abode, fairer than a garden rose among dark-leaved brambles. When my father returned from Milan, he found playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub --a creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills. The apparition was soon explained. With his permission my mother prevailed on her rustic guardians to yield their charge to her. They were fond of the sweet orphan. Her presence had seemed a blessing to them, but it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty and want when Providence afforded her such powerful protection. They consulted their village priest, and the result was that Elizabeth Lavenza became the inmate of my parents' house--my more than sister--the beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures. Everyone loved Elizabeth. The passionate and almost reverential attachment with which all regarded her became, while I shared it, my pride and my delight. On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully, "I have a pretty present for my Victor--tomorrow he shall have it." And when, on the morrow, she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon


lion’s head. The building was quaint, with shutters that looked to be black in the starlight. Rosebushes crowded the front yard with scraggly limbs, still bare from winter, and ivy grew up the walls, reaching for the thatched roof. But it was dark within, as if the old house was sleeping or under a spell. A sense of uneasiness washed through Iris as she knocked. The lion’s head clanged far too loud, given how mum the town was. “It doesn’t look like she’s home,” said Attie before swearing under her breath. “Are the lower windows boarded up, or am I imagining it?” Iris stared harder at the windows. Yes, they looked to be boarded up, but from the inside. “What are we going to do if she doesn’t answer?” Attie turned to survey the remainder of the town, which didn’t look promising. “Wait,” Iris said. “I think I hear her.” The girls held their breath, and sure enough, there was the inner pattering of feet, and then a dulcet voice, drawn with an accent, spoke through the front door: “What do you want?” Attie arched her brow, exchanging a dubious glance with Iris. “Helena said she wasn’t expecting us,” Iris reminded her in a whisper, before replying, “We’ve been sent by Helena Hammond, of the Inkridden Tribune.” There was a beat of silence, and then the sound of a lock turning. The green door creaked open a sliver, revealing a woman holding a candle. She had light brown skin and her black hair was bound in a thick braid, spilling over her shoulder. Her bold eyebrows slanted with a frown until she saw the girls, and her face softened instantly. “Blessed Enva, there’s two of you? And you look so young!” she said, full lips parted in shock. “Please, please come inside. I’m sorry, but you took me by surprise a moment ago. These days, you don’t know who comes knocking at night.” “Yes, we noticed it’s rather quiet here,” Attie said, a bit dryly. “It is, and there’s a reason for it, which I’ll explain in a moment,” Marisol said, opening the door further in welcome. Iris stepped inside. The foyer was spacious, with a cold floor of flagstones covered with vibrant rugs. The walls gleamed in the shadows, and Iris realized there was an array of gilded mirrors of all shapes and sizes hanging upon them, even all the way up the stairwell. She caught her dim reflection and felt as if she had stepped back in time. “Have you two eaten?” Marisol asked, locking the door behind them. “Train biscuits” was all Attie had to say. “Then follow me into the kitchen.” Marisol led them down a corridor and into the firelight. The kitchen was large, rustic, and warm. The windows were covered with boards, though, as well as the double doors. As if Marisol needed to keep someone or something out. Herbs and copper pots hung from the rafters above, and there was a table that could seat ten people. This was where both Attie and Iris collapsed,


the answer. “An indicator light …” “What does that mean?” Viv sputtered. “Primary plasma gun … It might have overheated. But no worries. I’m dodging asteroids, not fighting off hostiles.” Selleck’s tone was nonchalant … just another day at the office. Viv didn’t speak but managed a silent nod. “Hang on; we’re coming into the home stretch.” Selleck flew with the assurance of a seasoned pilot, which she was. Get us there safely, and I will personally make sure you get a medal. Suddenly, the craft jostled, dipped, and then righted—a ship upon stormy waters. THUNK! “Dammit! We’re hit.” Viv swallowed. “Hit?” “Yeah, just a fender bender though. Think we’re okay.” Viv took several deep breaths as her anxiety mounted. She wished she had a paper bag to breathe into. “Well, will you look at that?” Selleck said, sounding like she was smiling. Viv looked over Selleck’s shoulder through the Deux Arrow’s canopy. It was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. Chapter 20 Viv hadn’t known what to expect. Now, seeing USS Lincoln through the canopy, her sleek SpaceWing design, her in-flight appearance of swift movement, while, of course, she was perfectly still. She thought how strange it was that ocean-going and deep spaceships were typically thought of in the feminine genre. No … this ship was all masculine. With those three aft, oversized drive engines, the vessel oozed power, screamed raw testosterone. It begged the question: how had such a stalwart-looking vessel been so effectively defeated? “We’re making our approach,” Selleck said. “It’s a little unnerving not getting clearance prior to final approach.” “We already know the Hub Gunther and a few Arrows managed …” “I’m not saying I’m incapable of doing my job,” Selleck spat back. Viv cringed. The young pilot had just lost her boyfriend; she was a mess and doubting every aspect of her life about now. She certainly doesn’t need me pushing her buttons. “You got this, girl. I wouldn’t want any other pilot.” “Oh, so now you resort to patronizing?” She bit her lip. Fuck. “Maybe I’ll just shut up for a while.” “Roger that,” Selleck said. Selleck’s sudden mood change was taking Viv by surprise—still mourning her loss or not, Viv was a superior officer, a major at that; there was only so much leeway she was willing to give here. She couldn’t see the pilot’s face, see what was going on with her. They slowed to a near crawl, the egress into Lincoln’s port-side flight bay getting larger by the moment. The blue-hued energy barrier shimmered and pulsed as if it was cognizant of their arrival—in a sense, perhaps it was. They breached the barrier, Selleck quickly bringing the hovering Arrow to a standstill. Viv blinked, the bright overheads making her squint, cones and rods quickly trying to adjust. Peering down at the deck, Viv said, “Didn’t expect such a full house … Not a lot of parking options, huh?” Selleck didn’t reply. She goosed the throttle, taking them further, deeper, into the bay. “Over to the left. There’s the Gunther!” Viv said,


now. I shouldn’t have…” She looked away and rubbed tears from her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I should have gone with you. You shouldn’t have had to find her alone.” “I wasn’t alone,” I said dully. “Who…?” “Ethan Schreiber was there,” I said. “What? Why?” she asked, alarmed. “Did he have something to do with…?” “No, he didn’t,” I said quickly. “He was looking for me, that was all.” “Fuck.” Cass sank down, her back against the door, and tucked her arms tight against herself. “Cass,” I said. “We need to decide what to do.” She looked at my blankly. “There’s nothing to do. She’s dead. We can’t help her anymore.” “What to do about Persephone,” I said. Cass’s mouth opened slightly, as if she was searching for words she couldn’t find. “Naomi, we can’t do anything. Not right now, at least. We have to shut up and let this blow over.” “Blow over?” I echoed, incredulous. She winced. “You know what I mean. We can’t let anyone know about Persephone right now.” “Why the hell not? It’s what Liv wanted. She wanted Persephone to be found. To have peace. We have to do it for her.” I set my jaw, rising to my feet. “We pushed her to this. We were afraid and selfish and we wouldn’t listen.” Cass shook her head. “Naomi. It won’t bring her back. It’ll just cause more hurt.” “What if she didn’t?” I asked. “What do you mean, if she didn’t? If she didn’t kill herself, she’d still be alive.” “I mean, what if someone else killed her? She was shot. She wouldn’t have used a gun. And the pond—that was the fourth ritual. Fours are lucky. It always drove Kimiko crazy, remember, because it’s an unlucky number in Japan, and—” “And what?” “And she wouldn’t have killed herself there,” I said, almost shouting. “Come on, Naomi. Who would want to kill Liv?” Cass said. “She was looking for Persephone. Maybe someone didn’t want her found.” “Don’t,” Cass said in a fragile whisper. “Don’t turn a tragedy into a conspiracy, Naomi. She was sick. She’d tried before. Please. I’m barely holding it together. Please just leave it alone and let her rest.” “She wouldn’t have used a gun,” I insisted. My voice sounded strange to my own ears. “Shit.” Cass rubbed the back of her neck. “Who would want to kill her, though? I mean, other than us.” She gave a strangled kind of laugh. “What do you mean, other than us?” I asked. “Nothing. Just—Liv wanted to tell our big secret, and now she’s dead. If it wasn’t suicide, and the cops find out the truth…” She drew in a long, steadying breath. “But it doesn’t matter. Obviously, we didn’t do it. And you’re right. I’m scared out of my mind, but we don’t really have a choice. We have to tell the cops.” I stared at her, my mouth dry. “Do you have an alibi?” I asked. “Jesus, Naomi.” Cass gave me a shocked look. “I’m serious. Do you have an


closed even when I can tell from her breathing that she’s awake. I don’t sleep. I barely eat. I’m terrified that if I let down my guard for one minute, Meiling will slip away. And I still have no understanding of how this could have happened when I’d been so vigilant in my care of her. “Meiling needs you to be strong,” Miss Zhao says on the fifth day. “You should try to rest.” I refuse, but Miss Zhao is insistent. “I’ll be here. I’ll watch over both of you.” I take Meiling’s limp hand in mine and rest my head on the quilt. I’m drifting off when four men burst into the room. Two of them take positions with their backs to the door, spears planted on the ground. The other two come at Meiling and me. One of them pushes me aside. Then they grab Meiling by her elbows and drag her from the bed. “What are you doing?” I scream, terrified, as Miss Zhao edges into a corner, her hands folded over her mouth. Meiling tries to free herself, but she’s small in stature and weak from all she’s been through. From outside the room come cries of distress—the shrill tones from the eunuchs easily distinguishable from those of the midwives and wet nurses. Meiling’s legs give out, and she sags in the guards’ arms. The burlier of the two men motions to me and Miss Zhao. “You’re coming too.” I can barely breathe, my fear is so great. Miss Zhao and I support each other as we’re herded outside to two waiting palanquins instead of the usual carriage. Lin Ta stands with his hands hidden in his sleeves, his eyes averted. Meiling is pushed into the first palanquin. I’m about to follow her when one of the guards grabs my arm and holds me back. I don’t dare try to shake myself loose, but I won’t be separated from Meiling. “Lin Ta,” I say with a deep bow. “Please…” He releases a hand from his sleeve and wordlessly waves away the guard. Before he can change his mind, I climb in next to Meiling, who’s slumped against a corner of the palanquin. My body pulses, alive with an energy I’ve never experienced before, but Meiling is barely conscious. By now I’m quite familiar with the journey that leads to the Great Within. This time we go in a different direction. “Where are they taking us?” Meiling’s voice is as insubstantial as a blossom left on a stone under the summer sun. I shake my head. The ride is extremely rough, with bumps and lurches, as if the bearers have intended to add to our suffering. When the palanquin lands with a hard thump, Meiling is nearly thrown from the seat. The door swings open, and a pair of hands reaches in and yanks her out. When I exit, I see we’re in a courtyard before the entrance to a hall unknown to me. Miss Zhao descends from her palanquin and joins me as we follow the guards dragging


how long! There was an inhospitable smell in the room, of cold soot and hot dust; and, as I looked up into the corners of the tester over my head, I thought what a number of blue-bottle flies from the butchers', and earwigs from the market, and grubs from the country, must be holding on up there, lying by for next summer. This led me to speculate whether any of them ever tumbled down, and then I fancied that I felt light falls on my face - a disagreeable turn of thought, suggesting other and more objectionable approaches up my back. When I had lain awake a little while, those extraordinary voices with which silence teems, began to make themselves audible. The closet whispered, the fireplace sighed, the little washing-stand ticked, and one guitar-string played occasionally in the chest of drawers. At about the same time, the eyes on the wall acquired a new expression, and in every one of those staring rounds I saw written, DON'T GO HOME. Whatever night-fancies and night-noises crowded on me, they never warded off this DON'T GO HOME. It plaited itself into whatever I thought of, as a bodily pain would have done. Not long before, I had read in the newspapers, how a gentleman unknown had come to the Hummums in the night, and had gone to bed, and had destroyed himself, and had been found in the morning weltering in blood. It came into my head that he must have occupied this very vault of mine, and I got out of bed to assure myself that there were no red marks about; then opened the door to look out into the passages, and cheer myself with the companionship of a distant light, near which I knew the chamberlain to be dozing. But all this time, why I was not to go home, and what had happened at home, and when I should go home, and whether Provis was safe at home, were questions occupying my mind so busily, that one might have supposed there could be no more room in it for any other theme. Even when I thought of Estella, and how we had parted that day for ever, and when I recalled all the circumstances of our parting, and all her looks and tones, and the action of her fingers while she knitted - even then I was pursuing, here and there and everywhere, the caution Don't go home. When at last I dozed, in sheer exhaustion of mind and body, it became a vast shadowy verb which I had to conjugate. Imperative mood, present tense: Do not thou go home, let him not go home, let us not go home, do not ye or you go home, let not them go home. Then, potentially: I may not and I cannot go home; and I might not, could not, would not, and should not go home; until I felt that I was going distracted, and rolled over on the pillow, and looked at the staring rounds upon the wall again. I had


hesitate) and howls, “Betrayal!” I bonk his head. “Violence! Vicious, relentless—” “Everything all right over here, boys?” Zion asks pointedly, looming over us like a tablet-wielding god when, in reality, he’s five years older than us, max. Raj pops up like a daisy, brighter than today’s cloud-covered sun. “Yes, sir, Zion, sir. Tent’s almost up. Pegs behaving. Everything’s in order. If you ask me, I think we’re doing a cracking job.” Zion rolls his eyes and taps at his tablet as he leaves. Shit. Did he at least notice what an effective leader I’m being today? Probably not, since I was leading via mallet attack. “Oops,” Raj says. “That probably wasn’t very committed of us.” “Nope,” I agree. My eyes flicker across the tent-dotted clearing without permission, and I catch a glimpse of Celine. Her tent’s been up for ages. She’s now helping everyone else put up theirs, showing both leadership and team-building skills. If I don’t get this scholarship and Celine does, I’m going to shave off my hair and eat it. “Hey,” Raj says, dragging my attention back to our sad excuse for a tent. He pushes the peg into the grass. “How’s this?” “Wrong. You’re supposed to hold it at a forty-five-degree angle.” “I thought it was a ninety-degree angle?” “No,” I say patiently, “the guide ropes loop into the pegs at a ninety-degree angle. The pegs—” “Come on, Brad,” he interrupts, “just whack the peg for me. You can do it.” I wave the damp scrap of paper that passes as the instructions. “I know you read this, because you got muddy fingerprints all over it—” “Ouch.” “—so you must realize the numbers were very clear. Forty. Five. Degrees. We have to do it right or it’ll…collapse! In the night!” “Brad, we’re not sleeping in these tents tonight.” “No,” I say seriously, “but it’s the principle of the thing.” “Fiiiiiiine,” he says, and takes the sheet, squinting at the diagram. I only realize I’m smiling when the rain streams around my cheeks instead of down them. “All right, how’s this?” I want to appreciate the effort, but mentally, I’m questioning his eyesight. He catches my expression and adjusts his grip again. I wonder if he’s ever studied angles in his life. “Bloody hell,” he laughs, “you hold it, then!” That’s not a bad idea. We switch jobs, and he only bonks my fingers eight or nine times. Once the tent is up, we crawl inside it to admire our handiwork. I eye his muddy walking boots, and he kicks them off before they can spoil our beautiful shiny plastic floor. “Not bad,” he announces. “Not good, either,” I allow. The right side of our tent’s inner lining dips drunkenly toward the floor. “Rubbish. This is a feature, not a bug.” Raj ducks under it and disappears behind a swathe of blue fabric. “Privacy compartment. Now I can get changed without you clocking my six-pack and getting jealous.” “Wow, thank God for that. Did we remember to hook all the clips to the outer lining?” I ask, trying to


hereafter our sister. I do not know whether I ever before mentioned to you my feelings on this subject, but I will not leave the country without confiding them, and I trust you will not esteem them unreasonable. My brother admires her greatly already, he will have frequent opportunity now of seeing her on the most intimate footing, her relations all wish the connection as much as his own, and a sister's partiality is not misleading me, I think, when I call Charles most capable of engaging any woman's heart. With all these circumstances to favour an attachment and nothing to prevent it, am I wrong, my dearest Jane, in indulging the hope of an event which will secure the happiness of so many?'' ``What think you of _this_ sentence, my dear Lizzy?'' -- said Jane as she finished it. ``Is it not clear enough? -- Does it not expressly declare that Caroline neither expects nor wishes me to be her sister; that she is perfectly convinced of her brother's indifference, and that if she suspects the nature of my feelings for him, she means (most kindly!) to put me on my guard? Can there be any other opinion on the subject?'' ``Yes, there can; for mine is totally different. -- Will you hear it?'' ``Most willingly.'' ``You shall have it in few words. Miss Bingley sees that her brother is in love with you, and wants him to marry Miss Darcy. She follows him to town in the hope of keeping him there, and tries to persuade you that he does not care about you.'' Jane shook her head. ``Indeed, Jane, you ought to believe me. -- No one who has ever seen you together, can doubt his affection. Miss Bingley I am sure cannot. She is not such a simpleton. Could she have seen half as much love in Mr. Darcy for herself, she would have ordered her wedding clothes. But the case is this. We are not rich enough, or grand enough for them; and she is the more anxious to get Miss Darcy for her brother, from the notion that when there has been one intermarriage, she may have less trouble in achieving a second; in which there is certainly some ingenuity, and I dare say it would succeed, if Miss de Bourgh were out of the way. But, my dearest Jane, you cannot seriously imagine that because Miss Bingley tells you her brother greatly admires Miss Darcy, he is in the smallest degree less sensible of _your_ merit than when he took leave of you on Tuesday, or that it will be in her power to persuade him that instead of being in love with you, he is very much in love with her friend.'' ``If we thought alike of Miss Bingley,'' replied Jane, ``your representation of all this, might make me quite easy. But I know the foundation is unjust. Caroline is incapable of wilfully deceiving any one; and all that I can hope in this case is, that she is deceived herself.'' ``That is right.


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

sorry for him that he was not a magistrate like the other boys' fathers. Then why was he sent to that place with them? But his father had told him that he would be no stranger there because his granduncle had presented an address to the liberator there fifty years before. You could know the people of that time by their old dress. It seemed to him a solemn time: and he wondered if that was the time when the fellows in Clongowes wore blue coats with brass buttons and yellow waistcoats and caps of rabbitskin and drank beer like grown-up people and kept greyhounds of their own to course the hares with. He looked at the window and saw that the daylight had grown weaker. There would be cloudy grey light over the playgrounds. There was no noise on the playgrounds. The class must be doing the themes or perhaps Father Arnall was reading out of the book. It was queer that they had not given him any medicine. Perhaps Brother Michael would bring it back when he came. They said you got stinking stuff to drink when you were in the infirmary. But he felt better now than before. It would be nice getting better slowly. You could get a book then. There was a book in the library about Holland. There were lovely foreign names in it and pictures of strange looking cities and ships. It made you feel so happy. How pale the light was at the window! But that was nice. The fire rose and fell on the wall. It was like waves. Someone had put coal on and he heard voices. They were talking. It was the noise of the waves. Or the waves were talking among themselves as they rose and fell. He saw the sea of waves, long dark waves rising and falling, dark under the moonless night. A tiny light twinkled at the pierhead where the ship was entering: and he saw a multitude of people gathered by the waters' edge to see the ship that was entering their harbour. A tall man stood on the deck, looking out towards the flat dark land: and by the light at the pierhead he saw his face, the sorrowful face of Brother Michael. He saw him lift his hand towards the people and heard him say in a loud voice of sorrow over the waters: --He is dead. We saw him lying upon the catafalque. A wail of sorrow went up from the people. --Parnell! Parnell! He is dead! They fell upon their knees, moaning in sorrow. And he saw Dante in a maroon velvet dress and with a green velvet mantle hanging from her shoulders walking proudly and silently past the people who knelt by the water's edge. * * * * * A great fire, banked high and red, flamed in the grate and under the ivy-twined branches of the chandelier the Christmas table was spread. They had come home a little late and still dinner was not ready: but it would be


The way he said it belied the words. Lore scowled at his back, gathering her hem high to avoid the water. “He’s just as caught up in all this as I am.” “Be that as it may, Gabriel’s loyalty is to one person alone. And diverting as you are, Lore, I don’t think you can compete with Apollius. If the opportunity arises for Remaut to use you in service to his god, he’ll take it.” He turned to face her, the flame gilding his dark hair in fiendish light, keeping his eyes in shadow. “In fact, it seems like I’m the only person in the Citadel who knows who you are and what you’re capable of, and isn’t trying to make you a tool.” It wasn’t true, but neither was it comforting. Gabe didn’t know what she was, not really. Not like Bastian did. Bleeding God and Buried Goddess, she hoped that wasn’t a mistake. “Gabe isn’t trying to use me,” she said softly. “Gabe is trying to keep me safe.” The prince turned around with a rueful noise, shaking his head. “Are you so accustomed to being used that you don’t realize when it’s happening, as long as it’s done kindly?” She had no answer for that. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Nature bends toward wickedness—consider the eclipse. The sky grows dark when it should be light, the moon overtaking the sun. Such is a time when dark power rises. But fear not, for even this can be used. —The Book of Holy Law, Tract 7451 The trip through the short tunnel didn’t take long, but Lore was soaked to the waist by the time they splashed up onto the ledge at the other end, and walking through all that water had been taxing enough to make her break a sweat. She desperately wanted to wipe her face, but was afraid of what might be on her hands. “How often do you do this?” she asked, turning to Bastian. “And how in all myriad hells do you hide that much laundry?” “It used to be once a week or so, but I assume I’ll have to cut back now that at least two of the betting enforcers know who I am.” Bastian sloshed up next to her, barely winded. “And I usually just leave all my clothes in the culvert and walk back through the gardens naked. It’s refreshing, and whoever finds my cast-offs certainly needs them more than I do.” “Please tell me you aren’t planning to shuck off your clothes right now.” “I’ll protect your delicate sensibilities, though it is sure to result in agonizing chafing.” Bastian grasped her by the waist and boosted her up, out of the culvert and into the Citadel gardens. Right into Gabriel. The Presque Mort stumbled back, arms closing around Lore to hold her steady. “You’re safe?” he asked, his hands running from her shoulders to her wrists. “He didn’t hurt you?” “Should I be offended?” Bastian climbed out of the culvert, a smile on his face and daggers in his eyes. “I think I’m offended.”


public shame. This was the kind of license we obtained, then we drove immediately to a hotel in Montecito, where we’d rented a private villa overlooking the coast. On the villa’s lawn, the hotel’s general manager officiated at a ceremony with no other witnesses. I don’t know if this is the wedding Noah and I would have had if not for Covid, but of course I don’t know if we’d have had any wedding if not for Covid; I don’t know if we’d have found each other again. And I realize it’s not the wedding most people would want, but I found a deep beauty in its irreducibility. We spent that weekend ordering room service, marveling at our new circumstances, and, well, making love in July. That Monday, we returned to Topanga and called our family and friends to tell them. On Tuesday, Noah’s publicist released a statement announcing our marriage and suggesting that anyone who wanted to help us celebrate could do so by making a donation to a nonprofit working to elect Democratic women. “We need to offset my reentry into the ultimate heteropatriarchal institution,” I’d said, and he’d laughed and replied, “As newlywed wives often tell their husbands.” That, among lots of my former colleagues, both Autumn and Elliot contributed struck me as unnecessarily magnanimous of them. The Internet had opinions about Noah marrying me, and though I’ve inferred that some people saw it as a tragedy for him while others considered it a victory for feminism and/or mousy-looking straight women everywhere (two entities that are not, in fact, interchangeable), I’ve managed to avoid reading the vast majority of the comments. By the time we got married, Noah and I were both, with effort, in the habit of leaving our phones in a drawer in the kitchen overnight. When I awaken in the morning, I sometimes go to that other far bathroom even now, but I always return. Noah is usually asleep when I do, and his unguarded face is startlingly handsome; the truth is that I still can’t believe a hot, smart, kind man loves me back. Often when I climb into bed, he reaches for me, opening his eyes as he does, smiling because he’s glad to see me. There are, presumably, texts and tweets and news articles I’m missing, but in these moments none seem all that urgent. For beloved and funny C ACKNOWLEDGMENTS For facts, anecdotes, and analysis, I’m indebted to many sources. These include the books Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live as Told by Its Stars, Writers, and Guests, edited by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales; A Very Punchable Face by Colin Jost; Gasping for Airtime: Two Years in the Trenches of Saturday Night Live by Jay Mohr; Bossypants by Tina Fey; Yes Please by Amy Poehler; Girl Walks into a Bar…: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle by Rachel Dratch; I Am the New Black by Tracy Morgan with Anthony Bozza; Hello, Molly! by Molly Shannon with Sean Wilsey; and The Bedwetter: Stories


upon scarlet mats, blew through long pipes of reed or brass, and charmed, or feigned to charm, great hooded snakes and horrible horned adders. The harsh intervals and shrill discords of barbaric music stirred him at times when Schubert's grace, and Chopin's beautiful sorrows, and the mighty harmonies of Beethoven himself, fell unheeded on his ear. He collected together from all parts of the world the strangest instruments that could be found, either in the tombs of dead nations or among the few savage tribes that have survived contact with Western civilizations, and loved to touch and try them. He had the mysterious juruparis of the Rio Negro Indians, that women are not allowed to look at, and that even youths may not see till they have been subjected to fasting and scourging, and the earthen jars of the Peruvians that have the shrill cries of birds, and flutes of human bones such as Alfonso de Ovalle heard in Chili, and the sonorous green stones that are found near Cuzco and give forth a note of singular sweetness. He had painted gourds filled with pebbles that rattled when they were shaken; the long clarin of the Mexicans, into which the performer does not blow, but through which he inhales the air; the harsh tur of the Amazon tribes, that is sounded by the sentinels who sit all day long in trees, and that can be heard, it is said, at a distance of three leagues; the teponaztli, that [70] has two vibrating tongues of wood, and is beaten with sticks that are smeared with an elastic gum obtained from the milky juice of plants; the yotl-bells of the Aztecs, that are hung in clusters like grapes; and a huge cylindrical drum, covered with the skins of great serpents, like the one that Bernal Diaz saw when he went with Cortes into the Mexican temple, and of whose doleful sound he has left us so vivid a description. The fantastic character of these instruments fascinated him, and he felt a curious delight in the thought that Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices. Yet, after some time, he wearied of them, and would sit in his box at the Opera, either alone or with Lord Henry, listening in rapt pleasure to "Tannhuser," and seeing in that great work of art a presentation of the tragedy of his own soul. On another occasion he took up the study of jewels, and appeared at a costume ball as Anne de Joyeuse, Admiral of France, in a dress covered with five hundred and sixty pearls. He would often spend a whole day settling and resettling in their cases the various stones that he had collected, such as the olive-green chrysoberyl that turns red by lamplight, the cymophane with its wire-like line of silver, the pistachio-colored peridot, rose-pink and wine-yellow topazes, carbuncles of fiery scarlet with tremulous four-rayed stars, flame- red cinnamon-stones, orange and violet spinels, and amethysts with their alternate layers of ruby and sapphire. He loved the red


ELEVEN, A CHANGELING, KIDNAPPED, DRESSED IN AN ETON SUIT WITH GLASS SHOES AND A LITTLE BRONZE HELMET, HOLDING A BOOK IN HIS HAND. HE READS FROM RIGHT TO LEFT INAUDIBLY, SMILING, KISSING THE PAGE.) BLOOM: (WONDERSTRUCK, CALLS INAUDIBLY) Rudy! RUDY: (GAZES, UNSEEING, INTO BLOOM'S EYES AND GOES ON READING, KISSING, SMILING. HE HAS A DELICATE MAUVE FACE. ON HIS SUIT HE HAS DIAMOND AND RUBY BUTTONS. IN HIS FREE LEFT HAND HE HOLDS A SLIM IVORY CANE WITH A VIOLET BOWKNOT. A WHITE LAMBKIN PEEPS OUT OF HIS WAISTCOAT POCKET.) -- III -- Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of the shavings and handed Stephen the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he very badly needed. His (Stephen's) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom in view of the hour it was and there being no pump of Vartry water available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit upon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cabman's shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt bridge where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to get a conveyance of some description which would answer in their then condition, both of them being e.d.ed, particularly Stephen, always assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly after a few such preliminaries as brushing, in spite of his having forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in the shaving line, they both walked together along Beaver street or, more properly, lane as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left from thence debouching into Amiens street round by the corner of Dan Bergin's. But as he confidently anticipated there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star hotel and there was no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Bloom, who was anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice. This was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it which they accordingly did.


or signing a note for somebody--I never quite knew, because Mamma would never speak of it. But she was brought up in the country because her mother had to leave New York after the disgrace, whatever it was: they lived up the Hudson alone, winter and sum- met, till Mamma was sixteen. It would never have occurred to Grandmamma Spicer to ask the family to `countenance' her, as I understand Regina calls it; though a private disgrace is nothing compared to the scandal of ruining hundreds of innocent people." "Yes, it would be more becoming in Regina to hide her own countenance than to talk about other people's," Mrs. Lovell Mingott agreed. "I understand that the emerald necklace she wore at the Opera last Friday had been sent on approval from Ball and Black's in the afternoon. I wonder if they'll ever get it back?" Archer listened unmoved to the relentless chorus. The idea of absolute financial probity as the first law of a gentleman's code was too deeply ingrained in him for sentimental considerations to weaken it. An adventurer like Lemuel Struthers might build up the millions of his Shoe Polish on any number of shady dealings; but unblemished honesty was the noblesse oblige of old financial New York. Nor did Mrs. Beaufort's fate greatly move Archer. He felt, no doubt, more sorry for her than her indignant relatives; but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune. As Mr. Letterblair had said, a wife's place was at her husband's side when he was in trouble; but society's place was not at his side, and Mrs. Beaufort's cool assumption that it was seemed almost to make her his accomplice. The mere idea of a woman's appealing to her family to screen her husband's business dishonour was inadmissible, since it was the one thing that the Family, as an institution, could not do. The mulatto maid called Mrs. Lovell Mingott into the hall, and the latter came back in a moment with a frowning brow. "She wants me to telegraph for Ellen Olenska. I had written to Ellen, of course, and to Medora; but now it seems that's not enough. I'm to telegraph to her immediately, and to tell her that she's to come alone." The announcement was received in silence. Mrs. Welland sighed resignedly, and May rose from her seat and went to gather up some newspapers that had been scattered on the floor. "I suppose it must be done," Mrs. Lovell Mingott continued, as if hoping to be contradicted; and May turned back toward the middle of the room. "Of course it must be done," she said. "Granny knows what she wants, and we must carry out all her wishes. Shall I write the telegram for you, Auntie? If it goes at once Ellen can probably catch tomorrow morning's train." She pronounced the syllables of the name with a peculiar clearness, as if she had tapped on two silver bells. "Well, it can't go at once. Jasper


short homily for his own sake. A vain idea! The service lasted precisely three hours; and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us de- scending, 'What! done already?' On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners! " 'You forget you have a master here,' says the ty- rant. 'I'll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. O boy! was that you?----Frances darling, pull his hair as you go by. I heard him snap his fingers.' Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her hus- band's knee; and there they were, like two babies, kiss- ing and talking nonsense by the hour---foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of. We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph on an er- rand from the stables. He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks,--- " 'T' maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath no o'ered, und t' sound o' t' gospel still i' yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking! Shame on ye! Sit ye down, ill childer; there's good books eneugh if ye'll read 'em. Sit ye down, and think o' yer sowls!' "Saying this, he compelled us so to square our posi- tions that we might receive from the far-off flre a dull ray to show us the text of the lumber he thrust upon us. I could not bear the employment. I took my dingy vol- ume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book. Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. Then there was a hubbub! " 'Maister Hindley!' shouted our chaplain. 'Maister, coom hither! Miss Cathy's riven th' back off "Th' Hel- met o' Salvation," un Heathcliff's pawsed his fit into t' first part o' "T' Brooad Way to Destruction!" It's fair flaysome that ye let 'em go on this gait. Ech! th' owd man wad ha' laced 'em properly; but he's goan!' "Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back kitchen, where, Joseph asseverated, `owd Nick' would fetch us as sure as we were living; and, so comforted, we each sought a separate nook to await his advent. "I reached this book, and a pot of ink from a shelf, and pushed the house-door ajar to give me light, and I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient and proposes that we should appropriate the dairy woman's cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion-- and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophesy verified--we cannot be damper,


would mean my WASPy parents successfully brainwashed me after all?” “What about a beagle?” I said. “To renounce your WASPiness and also because they’re objectively the best dogs.” He took my hand. “Beagles are the best small dog. I’ll grant you that.” “But they’re not small dogs. I mean, I’m sure no beagle thinks that. Small dogs are Pomeranians or Chihuahuas.” “Doesn’t it depend on the beagle?” We’d reached the parking lot, and we were walking toward Noah’s car, which was a silver Lexus hybrid SUV. “Sugar weighs twenty-five pounds,” I said. “Twenty-five pounds of beautiful, lustrous, formidable canine that could never fit in someone’s purse.” “I’m not disagreeing that Sugar—” Noah began, but he was interrupted by a male voice saying with some urgency, “Hey, Noah!” Immediately, Noah dropped my hand and said very quietly, “Keep walking.” The parking lot was half-full, and about ten people in configurations of twos and threes were milling around. After scanning the line of cars to figure out who’d spoken, I spotted a man kneeling by a Volvo sedan. “Noah, who’s your friend?” the man said. “What’s your friend’s name?” The man looked to be in his twenties, holding a big black camera with its lens extended, and in the ensuing quiet, I could hear the shutter click repeatedly. “Come on, man,” Noah said. “Not now.” “You cut off your hair, right?” the man said. “Did you shave your head? When did you do that?” Noah was walking so quickly that I’d fallen a foot or two behind him. He’d removed the keys from his shorts pocket, and there was a beep just before he climbed in the driver’s side door of the Lexus and started the engine. As I entered the passenger side, the paparazzo said to me, “Hey, what’s your name? Are you and Noah dating? How long have you known Noah?” Noah’s jaw was clenched as he reversed out of the parking space and drove toward the exit. I glanced back toward the paparazzo, and Noah said in a low voice, “Don’t look at him.” He’d turned onto the road when, still in a tight voice, he said, “You’d think those guys would lay off with everything happening now.” I said nothing, and when he turned his head toward me, we made eye contact for the first time in several minutes. “Are you okay?” he asked. We both were quiet as we passed a high school that was low and palm-tree-bedecked like a high school in a movie, and finally I said, “Are you afraid he’ll sell a picture of you holding my hand?” I could hear that my voice was weird, too, though not how Noah’s was—mine was sharp and distant. There was a warmly teasing way we’d gotten in the habit of speaking to each other, and this was its opposite. “I hope he doesn’t for your sake,” Noah said. “Oh, really? For my sake?” Noah looked over again as he said, “Are you accusing me of something? Because that’s what it sounds like.” “If I were a hot twenty-five-year-old


have told her what to do with her failing àkàrà business, about the shouting matches she and her husband got into every day, with her life. It took about a year for Abọ́sẹ̀dé to accept that she was never going to become an Ìyá Alákàrà. She packed away the frying pan, but once she had her son and became Ìyá Ẹniọlá, she made sure her family had àkàrà for breakfast every Saturday morning. Often, while they ate, she would tell stories about her grandmother until her husband and son began to nod in that way they did when they were no longer listening. And now, even though the money she was counting came to only ₦2,370—not even enough to pay half of one child’s school fees—she peeled off a fifty-naira note and asked Ẹniọlá to go buy as much àkàrà as the money would cover. Yes, there was some gaàrí in the cupboard that held pots and foodstuff. Yes, sometimes the children were not hungry in the morning or pretended not to be. Yes, her husband now seemed able to live on just air and water. But she had fed her family àkàrà every Saturday morning for fifteen years, and no, nothing was going to change that now. She was still, no matter what else had become of her, the granddaughter of Ìyá Alákàrà, and every Saturday morning, she ate àkàrà. That was that. Spending fifty naira out of the school-fees stash was not what would keep her children out of school. Having Ẹniọlá had been good for her marriage. That, as a baby, he would wake up screaming if someone dropped a pin in the next room meant she and her husband had to disagree without shouting. And after a few months of not screaming at each other, she began to remember why she had chosen him and not any of the suitors she’d wondered about since she got married. She started her ice lolly business after Ẹniọlá began crawling, and so many young children in the neighbourhood loved her mix of Tasty Time, sugar and water, she was soon able to buy a small fridge that was used only to freeze the lollies. Her life had spread out before her, bright and open as her son’s smile. For her son, she created a menu that she hoped he would remember with some longing once he left home. Sunday nights were for fried rice, and every first Saturday, to celebrate the start of a new month, she made pounded yam and two different soups. Egusi for the normal people in her home, and okro for her husband, who would not eat pounded yam with anything else. Now all Ìyá Ẹniọlá could do was cook whatever was available. But on Saturday mornings, she could pretend she was still in a version of her life where menus were possible. Throughout that week, as her children came home from school, backs bruised red, faces creased with pain and anger, bodies testifying to all the ways she had failed them, before Bùsọ́lá even opened her


deigned to add ought of civility to his ordinary style? for I dare not hope,'' he continued in a lower and more serious tone, ``that he is improved in essentials.'' ``Oh, no!'' said Elizabeth. ``In essentials, I believe, he is very much what he ever was.'' While she spoke, Wickham looked as if scarcely knowing whether to rejoice over her words, or to distrust their meaning. There was a something in her countenance which made him listen with an apprehensive and anxious attention, while she added, ``When I said that he improved on acquaintance, I did not mean that either his mind or manners were in a state of improvement, but that from knowing him better, his disposition was better understood.'' Wickham's alarm now appeared in a heightened complexion and agitated look; for a few minutes he was silent; till, shaking off his embarrassment, he turned to her again, and said in the gentlest of accents, ``You, who so well know my feelings towards Mr. Darcy, will readily comprehend how sincerely I must rejoice that he is wise enough to assume even the _appearance_ of what is right. His pride, in that direction, may be of service, if not to himself, to many others, for it must deter him from such foul misconduct as I have suffered by. I only fear that the sort of cautiousness, to which you, I imagine, have been alluding, is merely adopted on his visits to his aunt, of whose good opinion and judgment he stands much in awe. His fear of her has always operated, I know, when they were together; and a good deal is to be imputed to his wish of forwarding the match with Miss De Bourgh, which I am certain he has very much at heart.'' Elizabeth could not repress a smile at this, but she answered only by a slight inclination of the head. She saw that he wanted to engage her on the old subject of his grievances, and she was in no humour to indulge him. The rest of the evening passed with the _appearance_, on his side, of usual cheerfulness, but with no farther attempt to distinguish Elizabeth; and they parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again. When the party broke up, Lydia returned with Mrs. Forster to Meryton, from whence they were to set out early the next morning. The separation between her and her family was rather noisy than pathetic. Kitty was the only one who shed tears; but she did weep from vexation and envy. Mrs. Bennet was diffuse in her good wishes for the felicity of her daughter, and impressive in her injunctions that she would not miss the opportunity of enjoying herself as much as possible; advice, which there was every reason to believe would be attended to; and in the clamorous happiness of Lydia herself in bidding farewell, the more gentle adieus of her sisters were uttered without being heard. __ CHAPTER XIX (42) HAD Elizabeth's opinion been all drawn from her own family,


prince of this world, then no task of greater importance exists than to bring hard justice to him and his legion of princelings in the name of the innocent and generations yet unborn. Since coming to life in a makeshift morgue, Michael has not been able quite to see the shape of his future, to understand how he can best use his power. The encounter at the lonely grave has clarified his intentions for him. If he survives this night, he has a good idea how to be the agent of truth that events have made him. Already he has slid into the DMV records and learned the name of the owner of that SUV. He has obtained the GPS code from the manufacturer of the vehicle and will know where it stops when the fleeing murderer garages it. He has also found a smartphone GPS locater issuing from the identical position of the SUV and moving with it now. It surely belongs to the killer. Rifle in hand, he hurries into the kitchen. Nina and John have packed one cooler and closed it. The boy is almost done layering the last of the money in the second cooler, and Nina is shaping a length of aluminum foil to lay over it. Michael puts the AR-15 down and helps with the ice, then with the cans of soda and beer. They’re finished with the task in two minutes. Nina expects to load the containers in the back of the Range Rover, but Michael says, “No time. Leave them here and come with me. Bring your Tac Light.” “Come where?” “Upstairs. An attic if there is one. As far off the battlefield as we can get.” John is confused. “We’re hiding?” “I’ll explain when we’re safe.” He snatches the rifle off the counter. “They’re less than three miles away, maybe eight minutes out.” Mother and son are equally baffled and speak simultaneously: “Who? Who is?” “The cavalry,” he says and further startles them by unlocking the back door. He brooks no further delay, herding them through the ground floor to the front stairs. Throughout the kitchen work, Michael has been both there and elsewhere, scooping ice but also swimming through the shared data networks of the nation’s telecom providers, seeking a name to match with the GPS signal issuing from the SUV that had been parked near the grave. By the time that he follows Nina and John as far as the landing between floors, he has the identity of the man who possesses the phone; it’s the same name the DMV lists as the owner of that vehicle. The murderer. THE MYSTERY OF EVIL Like a falcon on its hunting gyre, Calaphas circles the house. The stillness of the night’s creatures is reminiscent of the hush of the funeral home in which he was raised. Soon he will silence three more voices, bringing an even deeper quiet to this isolate, fateful property. His rifle comes with a sound suppressor attached, but even if the crack of a shot carries some distance through


you can have them published at once. TELEGRAPH. IRISH HOMESTEAD. --I will try, Stephen said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors slightly. --That will do, Mr Deasy said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the City Arms hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get it into your two papers. What are they? --THE EVENING TELEGRAPH ... --That will do, Mr Deasy said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to answer that letter from my cousin. --Good morning, sir, Stephen said, putting the sheets in his pocket. Thank you. --Not at all, Mr Deasy said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like to break a lance with you, old as I am. --Good morning, sir, Stephen said again, bowing to his bent back. He went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield. The lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate: toothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Mulligan will dub me a new name: the bullockbefriending bard. --Mr Dedalus! Running after me. No more letters, I hope. --Just one moment. --Yes, sir, Stephen said, turning back at the gate. Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath. --I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why? He frowned sternly on the bright air. --Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile. --Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly. A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the air. --She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why. On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. * * * * * * * Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, MAESTRO DI COLOR CHE SANNO. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see. Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at


Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

us. “Bartleby,” said I, “are you aware that you are the cause of great tribulation to me, by persisting in occupying the entry after being dismissed from the office?” No answer. “Now one of two things must take place. Either you must do something, or something must be done to you. Now what sort of business would you like to engage in? Would you like to re-engage in copying for some one?” “No; I would prefer not to make any change.” “Would you like a clerkship in a dry-goods store?” “There is too much confinement about that. No, I would not like a clerkship; but I am not particular.” “Too much confinement,” I cried, “why you keep yourself confined all the time!” “I would prefer not to take a clerkship,” he rejoined, as if to settle that little item at once. “How would a bar-tender’s business suit you? There is no trying of the eyesight in that.” “I would not like it at all; though, as I said before, I am not particular.” His unwonted wordiness inspirited me. I returned to the charge. “Well then, would you like to travel through the country collecting bills for the merchants? That would improve your health.” “No, I would prefer to be doing something else.” “How then would going as a companion to Europe, to entertain some young gentleman with your conversation,—how would that suit you?” “Not at all. It does not strike me that there is any thing definite about that. I like to be stationary. But I am not particular.” “Stationary you shall be then,” I cried, now losing all patience, and for the first time in all my exasperating connection with him fairly flying into a passion. “If you do not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound—indeed I am bound—to—to—to quit the premises myself!” I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not with what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance. Despairing of all further efforts, I was precipitately leaving him, when a final thought occurred to me—one which had not been wholly unindulged before. “Bartleby,” said I, in the kindest tone I could assume under such exciting circumstances, “will you go home with me now—not to my office, but my dwelling—and remain there till we can conclude upon some convenient arrangement for you at our leisure? Come, let us start now, right away.” “No: at present I would prefer not to make any change at all.” I answered nothing; but effectually dodging every one by the suddenness and rapidity of my flight, rushed from the building, ran up Wall-street towards Broadway, and jumping into the first omnibus was soon removed from pursuit. As soon as tranquility returned I distinctly perceived that I had now done all that I possibly could, both in respect to the demands of the landlord and his tenants, and with regard to my own desire and sense of duty, to benefit Bartleby, and shield him from rude persecution. I now strove to be entirely care-free and quiescent; and my conscience justified


engineers. Or three-year-olds at the sandbox. Theorists think they’re smarter (spoiler alert: we are), and experimentalists think they’re more useful (re-spoiler re-alert: they are not). It makes for some . . . Yeah. Acrimony. Monica, thank the universe and the subatomic particles it’s made of, is a theorist. We exchange a long, loaded, understanding look. “I am aware,” I say. “Good. And you might have heard that Jonathan Smith-Turner has recently joined MIT?” I stiffen. “I had not.” “But you are familiar with Jonathan Smith-Turner. And with his . . . article.” It’s not a question. Monica is wise and fully aware that there is no dimension, no parallel universe, no hypothetical self-contained plane of existence in which a theoretical physicist wouldn’t know who he is. Because Jonathan Smith-Turner is an experimentalist—no, the experimentalist. And several years ago, when I was in middle school and he was probably a grown-ass man who should have known better, he did something horrible. Something unforgivable. Something abominable. He made theoretical physicists look dumb. Driven by what I can only assume was bitterness, an overabundance of free time, and involuntary celibacy, he set out to prove to the world that . . . actually, I don’t know what he wanted to prove. But he wrote a scientific article on quantum mechanics that was just full enough of jargon and math to sound like it was written by a theorist. Except that the article was completely made up. Bogus. A parody, if you will. That turned into a prank when he submitted it to Annals of Theoretical Physics, our most prestigious journal, and waited. Rubbing his hands together evilly, one can only assume. And that’s where things went wrong. Because despite undergoing supposedly rigorous peer review, the article was accepted. And published. And it stayed published for several weeks, or at least until shit hit the fan—in the form of a blog post by someone likely affiliated with Smith-Turner, back in the olden times when blogging was a thing. “Is Theoretical Physics Pseudoscience?” had been the title. The post, which detailed how Smith-Turner had gotten a bunch of nonsense published in the most respected theory journal, was even worse. “Has the field of physics lost its way? . . . Is it all made up?” And my personal favorite: “If theoretical physics is gibberish, is it fair to compensate theorists with federal tax money?” I’m not being needlessly dramatic when I say that it was a whole thing. On Facebook. On the news, including 60 Minutes. Even Oprah talked about it —the Jonathan Smith-Turner Affair, the Theoretical Hoax, the Physics Scandal. Einstein rolled in his grave. Newton puked up his apple. Feynman quietly stepped in a tank of liquid helium. Young Elsie, who in her early teens already knew what she wanted to be when she grew up, seethed and growled and boycotted all coverage of the topic, declaring a ban on all media in the Hannaway household. (The ban was unheeded, as the Hannaway household tended to forget young Elsie existed; her parents were probably too


Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman almost a bride was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hay-field and corn-field lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and fragrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild and white as pine forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which was my master's which he had created; it shivered in my heart like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester's arms it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted confidence destroyed. Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been: for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me: but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea; and from his presence I must go;that I perceived well. When how whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful passion: that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes! How weak my conduct!     My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me a remembrance of God: it begot an unuttered prayer. These words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered; but no energy was found to express them: "Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help."     It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips it came: in full, heavy swing the torrent


Knowing that she would see her soon alleviated some of the terror. “I think you’d better call Mom,” Annette told her as they ate microwaved chicken pot pie out of paper trays. “I’ve been holding her off, but if you don’t, she’s going to show up here tomorrow.” Later, Maud dialed her parents’ number and asked her mother to get her father on the line as well. “I know Annette told you that I’m staying with her for a while,” she said. “She told me you aren’t eating,” her mother said. “I’m eating. It’s been rough.” “Well, make sure that you do,” her mother said. “Low blood sugar runs on your father’s side of the family.” “Hang in there, kid,” her father said. “You and Peter will work it out.” “I don’t know that we will, Dad.” “I guess the world won’t end if you don’t,” her mother said. After hanging up, Maud sat on the couch with the phone in her hand. She was going to disappoint her parents even more than she already had. She was going to be their divorced daughter. And how strange, how humiliating even, that she cared—some old root system like the prayers that came to her mouth in moments of crisis to a God she didn’t believe existed. Thursday morning, she drank three cups of coffee to clear her head and ate the bowl of instant oatmeal that Annette made her force down. In the waiting room at Lone Pines, her heart palpitated whenever the door opened. Finally, Peter and Ella arrived. Ella barely looked over when Maud stood up. “Rita said to go right in,” Peter said. “I’ll wait here.” Maud followed Ella, wanting to touch the back of her arm, smooth the strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail, grab on to her and not let her go. Sitting across from Rita’s desk, she knotted her hands and waited. “Ella’s written things down to make it easier for her,” Rita said. Ella took a folded piece of paper from the pocket of her sweatshirt. “I thought Gabriel was my friend,” she read aloud. “But then I started to think that you were telling him stuff about me behind my back. You acted strange with him. All jokey and smiley. And I woke up one night to go to the bathroom and you two were sitting outside. I knew you were probably doing that all the time. Then one day when I was at his place, he was in the shower, and he got a text and I read it. It was from you. About meeting by the hedge.” She paused and glanced up at Maud. The room grew close. “That afternoon, after you dropped me off from camp and left, I went down there and hid behind a tree, where I could see. I was going to tell you and Gabriel that I knew you were meeting each other in secret. I was mad at him too. I saw him waiting then you got there and I was going to


across to the other side of the garden, where Alice could see it trying in a helpless sort of way to fly up into a tree. By the time she had caught the flamingo and brought it back, the fight was over, and both the hedgehogs were out of sight: `but it doesn't matter much,' thought Alice, `as all the arches are gone from this side of the ground.' So she tucked it away under her arm, that it might not escape again, and went back for a little more conversation with her friend. When she got back to the Cheshire Cat, she was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round it: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once, while all the rest were quite silent, and looked very uncomfortable. The moment Alice appeared, she was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and they repeated their arguments to her, though, as they all spoke at once, she found it very hard indeed to make out exactly what they said. The executioner's argument was, that you couldn't cut off a head unless there was a body to cut it off from: that he had never had to do such a thing before, and he wasn't going to begin at HIS time of life. The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense. The Queen's argument was, that if something wasn't done about it in less than no time she'd have everybody executed, all round. (It was this last remark that had made the whole party look so grave and anxious.) Alice could think of nothing else to say but `It belongs to the Duchess: you'd better ask HER about it.' `She's in prison,' the Queen said to the executioner: `fetch her here.' And the executioner went off like an arrow. The Cat's head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had come back with the Dutchess, it had entirely disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game. CHAPTER IX The Mock Turtle's Story `You can't think how glad I am to see you again, you dear old thing!' said the Duchess, as she tucked her arm affectionately into Alice's, and they walked off together. Alice was very glad to find her in such a pleasant temper, and thought to herself that perhaps it was only the pepper that had made her so savage when they met in the kitchen. `When I'M a Duchess,' she said to herself, (not in a very hopeful tone though), `I won't have any pepper in my kitchen AT ALL. Soup does very well without--Maybe it's always pepper that makes people hot-tempered,' she went on, very much pleased at having found out a new kind of rule, `and vinegar that makes them sour--and camomile that makes


as my sister decided. Once, she chose to keep me locked in for an additional twelve hours. I spent that entire night screaming and pounding on the door, demanding to be let out. When that didn’t work, I tried breaking down the door by throwing myself against it. The door never budged. Even though I had lost, my father and sister never relented. I remained locked inside until midmorning. That’s how it feels to be in this house, this room, this body. Like I’ve been locked inside during one of my father’s games and there’s no one on the other side of the door holding the key that can set me free. SIX Lenora and I have adjoining rooms, a fact I discover after bringing my belongings upstairs. The first thing I unpack is the metal lockbox I use to store medication. The same one that got me suspended and investigated by the police after I failed to use it. Now empty, I slide it under the bed and drop the key in a nightstand drawer. Next are my clothes. After opening the suitcase, I try the door to what I think is a closet. Instead, I find myself looking straight into Lenora’s room. Mrs. Baker is still there, putting a slim pair of headphones over Lenora’s ears. They’re attached to a brick-like Walkman resting in Lenora’s lap. “Ah, Kit,” Mrs. Baker says as she presses the Walkman’s play button. “Let’s go over Miss Hope’s routine.” I drift into Lenora’s room, curious. She’s a strange sight—a woman in her seventies, slumped in a wheelchair that likely hasn’t been made since the forties, enjoying the latest technology of the eighties. “What is she listening to?” “A book on cassette tape,” Mrs. Baker says, as if offended by the very concept. “Jessica records herself reading aloud and then gives the tapes to Miss Hope to listen to.” “That’s very nice of her.” “If you say so.” Mrs. Baker goes to a sideboard beneath the window. Inside are dozens of cassette tapes in plastic cases. Scrawled on the labels in red Magic Marker are many titles I recognize. The Thorn Birds. Clan of the Cave Bear. More than a few books by Jackie Collins. Nearby, Lenora listens to one of the tapes with a look of contentment on her face. Like a child just handed their favorite toy. She remains that way as Mrs. Baker gives me a crash course on how to take care of her. We first go over Lenora’s medications, of which there are many. Aspirin, a water pill, an anticoagulant, a statin, a pill to control muscle spasms, another to prevent osteoporosis. All of them sit on Lenora’s nightstand. Six little orange bottles arranged in a row atop a silver serving tray. I open each bottle, familiarizing myself with the pills’ shapes, sizes, and colors. Also on the tray are a mortar and pestle. Their presence tells me I’m to crush the pills. “I mix them in with Miss Hope’s food, right?” “Three with breakfast, three with dinner,” Mrs. Baker says.


her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.% It may seem marvellous that, with the world before her--kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure--free to return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being--and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her--it may seem marvellous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester Prynne's wild and dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth--even that village of rural England, where happy Thesaurus fatality: (n) disaster, calamity, death, moraliser, egalitarian, dictator, laze, neglect. mishap, demise, misadventure, authoritarian, elitist. vivify: (adj, v) quicken, stimulate, lethality, adversity, loss, decease, tinge: (n, v) color, hue, tint, dye, stain, accelerate; (v) animate, revive, dead. touch, tincture; (n) shade, cast, enliven, reanimate, refresh, inscrutable: (adj) inexplicable, undertone; (adj, n, v) dash. resuscitate, invigorate, energize. incomprehensible, mysterious, weird, ANTONYMS: (v) whiten, pale; (n) wildness: (n) fierceness, ferocity, cryptic, cryptical, deep, enigmatic, white, information, pallor. savageness, abandon, rage, uncanny, hidden, arcane. toil: (n, v) labor, work, drudge, sweat, extravagance, ferociousness, ANTONYMS: (adj) transparent, drudgery, grind, labour, travail; (v) intensity, vehemence; (v) wilderness; expressive, clear, straightforward. plod; (n) effort, exertion. (n, v) waste. ANTONYMS: (n) moralist: (n) disciplinarian, martinet, ANTONYMS: (n) pastime, tameness, order, meekness, philosopher, utilitarian, stickler, entertainment, fun, relaxation; (v) gentleness, caution, orderliness. Nathaniel Hawthorne 75 infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago--were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.% It might be, too--doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole--it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar


sure what raccoon-chop soup was, or if the woman was being serious. “Please have a seat, um, Meg … you too, Wyatt.” She gestured to the small waiting room with one hand. Viv watched as Meg and Wyatt settled into two straight-back molded plastic seats. It was as if time had stood still here in this small town. The so-called hospital was more like a health clinic straight out of the twentieth century. The reception room was about two hundred square feet, with speckled brown and white linoleum tiles, egg-colored walls half covered with battered oak wainscoting having seen better days decades ago. There was a large bay window in serious need of a good scrubbing, but it at least allowed the morning sun in to brighten the all but otherwise unremarkable room. The adjacent wall donned two faded framed posters, matching alpine scenes, a group of colorfully clad skiers traversing steep, powdered slopes. Both posters seemed to be identical to one another, which Viv found to be a strange decorating choice. The glass overhead dome light put out little illumination, probably because of the inside layer of long-deceased insect parts. In one corner of the room was a water cooler surrounded by flowered Dixie cups. A low Crayola-strewn table held several dogeared coloring books, several Tonka toy trucks, and a lone stuffed rabbit, sans one ear. Staring at nothing in particular, she blinked, then blinked again. This wasn’t the first time she’d caught herself. She briefly wondered if it was possible to actually die of boredom. Was there a medical term for that? She moved back behind the reception desk, passed by the closed door of patient room 1. Although muffled, she could hear Grif’s country drawl, the easy, friendly cadence of his voice. Everyone loved Grif. She checked patient room #2—there were only two patient rooms within this facility—making sure everything was ready before she was to escort in one more catastrophic medical emergency: impacted earwax, a sprained ankle, or maybe an infected hangnail. Jingle. Jingle. Another patient had moseyed in … She stopped, closed her eyes, and told herself that it would be fine. Transitions like this were always a shock to one’s psyche. You didn’t go from treating disemboweled SWM workers or pilots with third-degree facial burns and not need a minute … But it had been three months since she’d arrived here, and she had yet to see a patient on her own. So she’d been shadowing Dr. Grif around like a clueless puppy. Apparently, Grif wanted to ensure that her doctoring techniques were … what was the phrase he’d used? In alignment with that of this hospital. Pfft. If he had any clue of what she was capable of, the surgical expertise she’d routinely exhibited on a daily basis, well, he’d probably … No, I can’t do that. I can’t expect him or anyone to appreciate my worth. That will come in time. She hoped the day would get better … The townsfolk would continue to stream in like a swarm of mosquitoes on a hot


had been sealed off and safety officers posted at the door—Yale police, not NHPD. The university president was holding an emergency meeting for concerned students in Woolsey Hall that night. The Yale Daily News had written up a brief summary of the murder—a suspected robbery, police already pursuing a strong lead outside of the New Haven community. That smacked of spin: Don’t worry, parents, this isn’t a Yale crime, it isn’t even a New Haven crime. No need to pack your children off to Cambridge. If Professor Stephen’s death had barely caused a ripple, Dean Beekman’s murder was like someone heaving a grand piano into a lake. Turner picked up Alex in front of one of the new hotels on Chapel, far enough from the crime scene and campus that neither of them had to worry about being spotted. She tried to prepare him on the way to Black Elm, but he didn’t say a word as she gave him the bare-bones account of her theory on Darlington and how against all odds she’d been proven right. Turner just let her talk, sitting in cold silence, as if he were a mannequin who’d been placed behind the steering wheel to demonstrate safe driving. Only yesterday she’d given Mercy a similar speech, but Mercy had soaked it all up and come back hungry for more. Turner looked like he might just drive them both off a cliff. She had texted Dawes that they were on their way to Black Elm because it seemed like the right thing to do, but Alex regretted it as soon as she saw her standing at the front door in her shapeless sweats, her bright red hair in its usual lopsided bun, like a lumpy candle topped by an unexpected flame. Her lips were compressed in a disapproving line. “She looks happy,” Turner observed. “Does anyone look happy when they see the cops coming?” “Yes, Miss Stern, people having their shit stolen or trying to avoid being stabbed usually do seem happy to see us.” At least she knew Turner had been listening on the drive over. Only talk of magic and the occult could put him in this kind of mood. “Centurion,” Dawes greeted him, and Alex winced. “My name is Detective Abel Turner and you damn well know it. You look exhausted, Dawes. They’re not paying you enough.” Dawes looked surprised, then said, “Probably not.” “I left an open case file to be here. Can we get this going?” Dawes led them inside, but once they were trailing Turner up the stairs, she whispered, “This is a bad idea.” Alex agreed, but she also didn’t see what choice they had. “He’s going to tell Anselm,” Dawes fretted as they followed Turner down the hall to the ballroom. “The new Praetor. The police!” “No, he’s not.” At least Alex hoped he wouldn’t. “We need his help and that means we need to show him what we’re up against.” “Which is what exactly? Just admit you’re making it up as you go along.” She was. But something in


but retreated around and around the camp, advertising plainly that when his desire was met, he would come in and be good. Francois sat down and scratched his head. Perrault looked at his watch and swore. Time was flying, and they should have been on the trail an hour gone. Francois scratched his head again. He shook it and grinned sheepishly at the courier, who shrugged his shoulders in sign that they were beaten. Then Francois went up to where Sol-leks stood and called to Buck. Buck laughed, as dogs laugh, yet kept his distance. Francois unfastened Sol-leks's traces and put him back in his old place. The team stood harnessed to the sled in an unbroken line, ready for the trail. There was no place for Buck save at the front. Once more Francois called, and once more Buck laughed and kept away. "T'row down de club," Perrault commanded. Francois complied, whereupon Buck trotted in, laughing triumphantly, and swung around into position at the head of the team. His traces were fastened, the sled broken out, and with both men running they dashed out on to the river trail. Highly as the dog-driver had forevalued Buck, with his two devils, he found, while the day was yet young, that he had undervalued. At a bound Buck took up the duties of leadership; and where judgment was required, and quick thinking and quick acting, he showed himself the superior even of Spitz, of whom Francois had never seen an equal. But it was in giving the law and making his mates live up to it, that Buck excelled. Dave and Sol-leks did not mind the change in leadership. It was none of their business. Their business was to toil, and toil mightily, in the traces. So long as that were not interfered with, they did not care what happened. Billee, the good-natured, could lead for all they cared, so long as he kept order. The rest of the team, however, had grown unruly during the last days of Spitz, and their surprise was great now that Buck proceeded to lick them into shape. Pike, who pulled at Buck's heels, and who never put an ounce more of his weight against the breast-band than he was compelled to do, was swiftly and repeatedly shaken for loafing; and ere the first day was done he was pulling more than ever before in his life. The first night in camp, Joe, the sour one, was punished roundly-- a thing that Spitz had never succeeded in doing. Buck simply smothered him by virtue of superior weight, and cut him up till he ceased snapping and began to whine for mercy. The general tone of the team picked up immediately. It recovered its old-time solidarity, and once more the dogs leaped as one dog in the traces. At the Rink Rapids two native huskies, Teek and Koona, were added; and the celerity with which Buck broke them in took away Francois's breath. "Nevaire such a dog as dat Buck!" he cried. "No, nevaire! Heem worth one t'ousan'


hemlock, hellebore, insignificant, futile, empty, nautical: (adj) maritime, aquatic, kangaroo apple, horse nettle, unavailing, void, trivial; (adj, v) oceangoing, yachting, naval, marine henbane, deadly nightshade, ineffective, ineffectual, trifling, Shells, nautic; (v) seafaring; (n) sea, belladonna, climbing nightshade, inconsequential shipping morel, common nightshade, aconite numbness: (n) dullness, anesthesia, necessities: (n) supplies, necessity, nighttime: (n) night, dark, period, stupor, torpor, apathy, symptom, Nathaniel Hawthorne 307 torpidity, lethargy, deadness, observable: (adj, adv) noticeable, bough, offset, derivative, indifference, anaesthesia. perceptible; (adj) discernible, descendant, division, wing, scion, ANTONYMS: (n) sensation, feeling apparent, appreciable, visible, faction nuptial: (adj, n) bridal, marriage; evident, noteworthy, notable, oftentimes: (adv) frequently, (adj) marital, matrimonial, spousal, detectable, remarkable. ofttimes, oft, frequent, repeatedly, connubial, hymeneal, conjugal, ANTONYMS: (adj) hidden, much, a great deal. ANTONYM: wedding, married; (n) matrimony imperceptible, invisible (adv) rarely nurture: (v) foster, cherish, bring up, observance: (n) ceremony, olden: (adj) old, past, former, grow, nourish, care, maintain, commemoration, observation, rite, whilom, archaic, bygone, early, educate, nurse; (n) education, fulfillment, obedience, manner, previous, immemorial, outmoded, breeding. ANTONYMS: (n, v) compliance, discharge, conformity, old-world. ANTONYMS: (adj) neglect custom. ANTONYMS: (n) breaking, contemporary, modern nutriment: (n, v) nourishment; (n) disobedience, disregard, ominous: (adj) baleful, inauspicious, food, fare, diet, nutrient, nutrition, nonobservance, inattention, ill, menacing, threatening, black, alimentation, feed, nurture, meat, omission sinister, minatory, unlucky, meal observing: (adj) observant, mindful, forbidding, minacious. nymph: (n) dryad, houri, cocoon, watchful, commemorative, ANTONYMS: (adj) promising, naiad, Daphne, caterpillar, Aurelia, conscious, observative, perceptive, auspicious, reassuring, bright, lucky, Ariel, maiden, wench, staddle thoughtful; (n) investigation wonderful oaken: (adj) woody obstinacy: (n) stubbornness, ominously: (adv) inauspiciously, oaks: (n) beech family, Castanopsis, firmness, bullheadedness, portentously, forbiddingly, Nothofagus, Lithocarpus, genus determination, contumacy, balefully, threateningly, menacingly, Quercus, Genera Castanea, family mulishness, impenitence, resolve, blackly, direly; (adj, adv) gloomily, Fagaceae, Fagus, Fagaceae, resoluteness, impenitency, fatefully, unpromisingly. chestnuts pertinacity. ANTONYMS: (n) ANTONYMS: (adv) favorably, oath: (n) expletive, malediction, cooperation, compliance innocently imprecation, promise, affidavit, obstructed: (adj) blind, blocked, oneness: (n) identity, unity, cuss, swearing, pledge, assurance, congested, impeded, impedite, sameness, individuality, harmony, asseveration; (v) swear foiled, tight, thwarted, stymied, one, integrity, identicalness, obedience: (n) meekness, submission, frustrated, impassable. ANTONYM: concord, agreement, entirety deference, obeisance, acquiescence, (adj) unobstructed onward: (adv) ahead, forwards, subordination, bow, observance, obstruction: (n, v) hindrance, before, forth, onwards, along, in docility, loyalty, allegiance. impediment, interruption, check, advance, frontward, forrader; (adv, ANTONYMS: (n) disobedience, difficulty; (n) bar, hitch, blockage, prep) on; (adj) progressive. defiance, naughtiness, resistance, blockade, block, hurdle. ANTONYM: (adv) backward divergence, chaos, wildness ANTONYMS: (n) success, boost, opaque: (adj) dense, muddy, obscure, obeisance: (n) homage, curtsy, help cloudy, hazy, murky, thick, deference, bowing, reverence, obtrusive: (adj) blatant, conspicuous, unintelligible, milky, misty, vague. obedience, respect, courtesy; (v) officious, impudent, intrusive, ANTONYM: (adj) transparent genuflexion, kowtow, genuflection pushy, saucy, prominent, forward, opportune: (adj, v) appropriate; (adj) obeying: (adv) under protrusive, rude. ANTONYMS: (adj) favorable, apropos, auspicious, obliterated: (adj) obliterate, unobtrusive, helpful expedient, happy, handy, timely, destroyed, lost, forgotten, invisible; obtuseness: (n) bluntness, dulness, felicitous, favourable; (v) becoming. (v) erased, effaced stupidity, dimness, ignorance, ANTONYMS: (adj) untimely, oblivion: (n) limbo, Lethe, void, stolidity, density, heaviness, disadvantageous, inappropriate, absolution, forgiveness, drowsiness, impenetrability, inconvenient, unfortunate, unlucky obliviousness,


quarreled. We shall be returning to Winterfell." "I shall begin making arrangements at once, my lord. We will need a fortnight to ready everything for the journey." "We may not have a fortnight. We may not have a day. The king mentioned something about seeing my head on a spike." Ned frowned. He did not truly believe the king would harm him, not Robert. He was angry now, but once Ned was safely out of sight, his rage would cool as it always did. Always? Suddenly, uncomfortably, he found himself recalling Rhaegar Targaryen. Fifteen years dead, yet Robert hates him as much as ever. It was a disturbing notion . . . and there was the other matter, the business with Catelyn and the dwarf that Yoren had warned him of last night. That would come to light soon, as sure as sunrise, and with the king in such a black fury . . . Robert might not care a fig for Tyrion Lannister, but it would touch on his pride, and there was no telling what the queen might do. "It might be safest if I went on ahead," he told Poole. "I will take my daughters and a few guardsmen. The rest of you can follow when you are ready. Inform Jory, but tell no one else, and do nothing until the girls and I have gone. The castle is full of eyes and ears, and I would rather my plans were not known." "As you command, my lord." When he had gone, Eddard Stark went to the window and sat brooding. Robert had left him no choice that he could see. He ought to thank him. It would be good to return to Winterfell. He ought never have left. His sons were waiting there. Perhaps he and Catelyn would make a new son together when he returned, they were not so old yet. And of late he had often found himself dreaming of snow, of the deep quiet of the wolfswood at night. And yet, the thought of leaving angered him as well. So much was still undone. Robert and his council of cravens and flatterers would beggar the realm if left unchecked . . . or, worse, sell it to the Lannisters in payment of their loans. And the truth of Jon Arryn's death still eluded him. Oh, he had found a few pieces, enough to convince him that Jon had indeed been murdered, but that was no more than the spoor of an animal on the forest floor. He had not sighted the beast itself yet, though he sensed it was there, lurking, hidden, treacherous. It struck him suddenly that he might return to Winterfell by sea. A GAME OF THRONES 315 Ned was no sailor, and ordinarily would have preferred the kingsroad, but if he took ship he could stop at Dragonstone and speak with Stannis Baratheon. Pycelle had sent a raven off across the water, with a polite letter from Ned requesting Lord Stannis to return to his seat on the small council. As yet,