larger hatbrim. "My dear Newland, I had no idea that you and May had arrived! You yourself came only yesterday, you say? Ah, business--business--professional duties . . . I understand. Many husbands, I know, find it impossible to join their wives here except for the week-end." She cocked her head on one side and languished at him through screwed-up eyes. "But marriage is one long sacrifice, as I used often to remind my Ellen--" Archer's heart stopped with the queer jerk which it had given once before, and which seemed suddenly to slam a door between himself and the outer world; but this break of continuity must have been of the briefest, for he presently heard Medora answering a question he had apparently found voice to put. "No, I am not staying here, but with the Blenkers, in their delicious solitude at Portsmouth. Beaufort was kind enough to send his famous trotters for me this morning, so that I might have at least a glimpse of one of Regina's garden-parties; but this evening I go back to rural life. The Blenkers, dear original beings, have hired a primitive old farm-house at Portsmouth where they gather about them representative people . . ." She drooped slightly beneath her protecting brim, and added with a faint blush: "This week Dr. Agathon Carver is holding a series of Inner Thought meetings there. A contrast indeed to this gay scene of worldly pleasure-- but then I have always lived on contrasts! To me the only death is monotony. I always say to Ellen: Beware of monotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins. But my poor child is going through a phase of exaltation, of abhorrence of the world. You know, I suppose, that she has declined all invitations to stay at Newport, even with her grandmother Mingott? I could hardly persuade her to come with me to the Blenkers', if you will believe it! The life she leads is morbid, unnatural. Ah, if she had only listened to me when it was still possible . . . When the door was still open . . . But shall we go down and watch this absorbing match? I hear your May is one of the competitors." Strolling toward them from the tent Beaufort advanced over the lawn, tall, heavy, too tightly buttoned into a London frock-coat, with one of his own orchids in its buttonhole. Archer, who had not seen him for two or three months, was struck by the change in his appearance. In the hot summer light his floridness seemed heavy and bloated, and but for his erect square- shouldered walk he would have looked like an over-fed and over-dressed old man. There were all sorts of rumours afloat about Beaufort. In the spring he had gone off on a long cruise to the West Indies in his new steam-yacht, and it was reported that, at various points where he had touched, a lady resembling Miss Fanny Ring had been seen in his company. The steam-yacht, built in the Clyde, and fitted with


chops to the club's CHEF because they were underdone, and when he had finished his repast he dipped his finger-ends into a silver bowl of scented water and dried them upon a piece of snowy damask. Chapter 9 50 All day Tarzan followed Kulonga, hovering above him in the trees like some malign spirit. Twice more he saw him hurl his arrows of destruction--once at Dango, the hyena, and again at Manu, the monkey. In each instance the animal died almost instantly, for Kulonga's poison was very fresh and very deadly. Tarzan thought much on this wondrous method of slaying as he swung slowly along at a safe distance behind his quarry. He knew that alone the tiny prick of the arrow could not so quickly dispatch these wild things of the jungle, who were often torn and scratched and gored in a frightful manner as they fought with their jungle neighbors, yet as often recovered as not. No, there was something mysterious connected with these tiny slivers of wood which could bring death by a mere scratch. He must look into the matter. That night Kulonga slept in the crotch of a mighty tree and far above him crouched Tarzan of the Apes. When Kulonga awoke he found that his bow and arrows had disappeared. The black warrior was furious and frightened, but more frightened than furious. He searched the ground below the tree, and he searched the tree above the ground; but there was no sign of either bow or arrows or of the nocturnal marauder. Kulonga was panic-stricken. His spear he had hurled at Kala and had not recovered; and, now that his bow and arrows were gone, he was defenseless except for a single knife. His only hope lay in reaching the village of Mbonga as quickly as his legs would carry him. That he was not far from home he was certain, so he took the trail at a rapid trot. From a great mass of impenetrable foliage a few yards away emerged Tarzan of the Apes to swing quietly in his wake. Kulonga's bow and arrows were securely tied high in the top of a giant tree from which a patch of bark had been removed by a sharp knife near to the ground, and a branch half cut through and left hanging about fifty feet higher up. Thus Tarzan blazed the forest trails and marked his caches. As Kulonga continued his journey Tarzan closed on him until he traveled almost over the black's head. His rope he now held coiled in his right hand; he was almost ready for the kill. The moment was delayed only because Tarzan was anxious to ascertain the black warrior's destination, and presently he was rewarded, for they came suddenly in view of a great clearing, at one end of which lay many strange lairs. Tarzan was directly over Kulonga, as he made the discovery. The forest ended abruptly and beyond lay two hundred yards of planted fields between the jungle and the village. Tarzan must act quickly or his


fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that perversity, which all children have more or less of, and of which little Pearl had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson's question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door. Thesaurus borne: (adj) weak, wanting, spoony, disadvantageous, unfitting, unapt, unacquainted: (adj) unaware, soft, sappy, shallow, little, limited. unfortunate, untimely, untoward. unaccustomed, strange, oblivious, grandfatherly: (adj) kind. ANTONYMS: (adj) opportune, ignorant, unapprized, unapprised, immaturity: (n) immatureness, timely, appropriate, fortunate, unweeting, inexperienced, innocent, childhood, babyhood, adolescence, convenient, suitable. not learned. ANTONYMS: (adj) puerility, crudity, youth, juvenility, perversity: (n) perverseness, accustomed, knowledgeable, callowness, state, viridity. cussedness, evil, perversion, conscious, informed. ANTONYMS: (n) maturity, willfulness, unruliness, corruption, ungracious: (adj) discourteous, adulthood, experience. wilfulness, depravity; (adj) impolite, uncivil, surly, unkind, inopportune: (adj) inconvenient, contumacy, spinosity. unceremonious, churlish, inappropriate, improper, tenfold: (adj) decuple, decimal, tenth, disrespectful, unfriendly, graceless, inexpedient, awkward, containing ten. unpleasing. Nathaniel Hawthorne 105 This phantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the Governor's red roses, as Pearl stood outside of the window, together with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in coming hither.% Old Roger Chillingworth, with a smile on his face, whispered something in the young clergyman's ear. Hester Prynne looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his features--how much uglier they were, how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen-- since the days when she had familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now going forward. "This is awful!" cried the Governor, slowly recovering from the astonishment into which Pearl's response had thrown him. "Here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no further." Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the death. "God gave me the child!" cried she. "He gave her in requital of all things else which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness--she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life!


stairs with her lamp. The light in her hand was like a spark of sun-stuff washing her face in fire. Her shadow behind fell black and headlong down the stairs. Now, in her room, the place tasted fresh again. The wind through the open windows had broomed out all the fetid feeling of absence and nothingness. She closed in and sat down. Combing road-dust out of her hair. Thinking. The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the court- house came and commenced to sing a sobbing sigh out of every corner in the room; out of each and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees. Tea Cake, with the sun for a shawl. Of course he wasn’t dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and think- ing. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see. Afterword Zora Neale Hurston: “A Negro Way of Saying” I. The Reverend Harry Middleton Hyatt, an Episcopal priest whose five-volume classic collection, Hoodoo, Conjuration, Witchcraft, and Rootwork, more than amply returned an investment of forty years’ research, once asked me during an interview in 1977 what had become of another eccentric collector whom he admired. “I met her in the field in the thirties. I think,” he reflected for a few seconds, “that her first name was Zora.” It was an innocent question, made reasonable by the body of confused and often contradictory rumors that make Zora Neale Hurston’s own legend as richly curious and as dense as are the black myths she did so much to preserve in her classic anthropological works, Mules and Men and Tell My Horse, and in her fiction. A graduate of Barnard, where she studied under Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston published seven books—four novels, two books of folklore, and an autobiography—and more than fifty shorter works between the middle of the Harlem Renaissance and the end of the Korean War, when she was the dominant black woman writer in the United States. The dark obscurity into which her career then lapsed reflects her staunchly independent political stances rather than any deficiency of craft or vision. Virtually ignored after the early fifties, even by the Black Arts movement in the sixties, an otherwise noisy and intense spell of black image- and myth-making that rescued so many black writers from remaindered oblivion, Hurston embodied a more or less harmonious but nevertheless problematic unity of opposites. It is this complexity that refuses to lend itself to the glib categories of “radical” or “conservative,” “black” or “Negro,” “revolutionary” or


fills my nose. My eyes water and my throat feels tight. I hold still, hoping no one is here to notice our presence but also desperately praying that Porter is hiding somewhere inside. A half dozen rooms occupy the first floor of the massive lodge. We sweep through a maze of empty sitting rooms and linen closets, almost all of them bare except for dead leaves and mice. The long center hall opens into an expansive foyer. A broken chandelier hangs from a rusted chain, and portraits of various pompous-looking men in strange black robes hang on the walls. To the right of the double-spiral staircase that leads to the upper floors, there is a room whose intricately carved double doors sit slightly ajar. I push them the rest of the way open and find an office with a massive desk in the center. A taxidermic snow owl is perched on top of it. The room is ringed by built-in shelves, and they are all filled with moldering books. I run my hand along the spines and read some of the titles aloud. “Geological History of Upstate New York. Myths and Legends.” I glance at Bezi, who is standing in front of a large, framed photo hung on the wall. “Who the hell was living out here?” “The Owl Society,” Bezi says. “Who?” Her gaze doesn’t move from the photo, and I join her in front of it. Bezi runs her fingers across a dusty silver plaque set into the bottom of the framed photograph. “It says The Owl Society, 1840.” The black-and-white photo shows a bunch of men standing on a large platform. As I lean in and shine my flashlight on the picture, I realize that it’s set in the same location we’d just come from—the outdoor amphitheater in the grove. The photo is blurry, darker around the edges and lighter at the center. The men stand in three rows, but the faces of the ones in the back are unrecognizable. The owl carved into the oak looms over them, and a bright spot on the edge of the frame matches up to where the burning torch had been positioned. “This has to be what Ms. Keane was talking about,” I say. “She kept saying them. It’s gotta be this Owl Society, right?” Bezi nods as she circles the room. “It’s a secret society?” “Looks like it. But what are—were they doing?” It occurs to me in that moment that maybe this so-called Owl Society isn’t some relic of the long-forgotten past. Somebody hurt Tasha, and Porter and Paige are missing. On the wall next to the large photograph, there are smaller portraits in heavy brass and silver frames. Individuals in the same seated pose, all of them wearing black cloaks. The photos go from black-and-white to sepia to full color. Each portrait adorned with a small plaque. Henry Woodsworth Hayward Grand Owl, 1856 Johnathan Laurens Montevallo Grand Owl, 1867 Lawrence Ulrich Davis Grand Owl, 1872 More portraits ring the room, each of them featuring a man in the same


stand on. It would sort itself out. God what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his tongue. "Yellow," he thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with. Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path. Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn't know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats. He was by no means a great warrior: in fact he was a nervous worried man. Today he was particularly nervous and worried because something had gone seriously wrong with his job - which was to see that Arthur Dent's house got cleared out of the way before the day was out. "Come off it, Mr Dent,", he said, "you can't win you know. You can't lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely." He tried to make his eyes blaze fiercely but they just wouldn't do it. Arthur lay in the mud and squelched at him. "I'm game," he said, "we'll see who rusts first." "I'm afraid you're going to have to accept it," said Mr Prosser gripping his fur hat and rolling it round the top of his head, "this bypass has got to be built and it's going to be built!" "First I've heard of it," said Arthur, "why's it going to be built?" Mr Prosser shook his finger at him for a bit, then stopped and put it away again. "What do you mean, why's it got to be built?" he said. "It's a bypass. You've got to build bypasses." Bypasses are devices which allow some people to drive from point A to point B very fast whilst other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people of point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people of point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be. Mr Prosser wanted to be at point D. Point D wasn't anywhere in particular, it was just any convenient point a very long way from points A, B and C. He would have a nice little cottage at point D, with axes over the


head sadly and closes his eyes. “I got lost in the moment,” he says unconvincingly. I frown at him, and he sighs. “Ana, orgasm denial is a standard tool in—You never—” He stops. I shift in his lap, and he winces. Oh. I flush. “Sorry,” I mutter. He rolls his eyes, then leans back suddenly, taking me with him, so that we’re both lying on the bed, me in his arms. My bra is uncomfortable, and I adjust it. “Need a hand?” he asks quietly. I shake my head. I don’t want him to touch my breasts. He shifts so he’s looking down at me, and tentatively raising his hand, he strokes his fingers gently down my face. Tears pool in my eyes again. How can he be so callous one minute and so tender the next? “Please don’t cry,” he whispers. I’m dazed and confused by this man. My anger has deserted me in my hour of need . . . I feel numb. I want to curl up in a ball and withdraw. I blink, trying to hold back my tears as I gaze into his harrowed eyes. I take a shuddering breath, my eyes not leaving his. What am I going to do with this controlling man? Learn to be controlled? I don’t think so . . . “I never what?” I ask “Do as you’re told. You changed your mind; you didn’t tell me where you were. Ana, I was in New York, powerless and livid. If I’d been in Seattle I’d have brought you home.” “So you are punishing me?” He swallows, then closes his eyes. He doesn’t have to answer, and I know that punishing me was his exact intention. “You have to stop doing this,” I murmur. His brow furrows. “For a start, you only end up feeling shittier about yourself.” He snorts. “That’s true,” he mutters. “I don’t like to see you like this.” “And I don’t like feeling like this. You said on the Fair Lady that you hadn’t married a submissive.” “I know. I know.” His voice is soft and raw. 242/551 “Well stop treating me like one. I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I won’t be so selfish again. I know you worry about me.” He gazes at me, scrutinizing me closely, his eyes bleak and anxious. “Okay. Good,” he says eventually. He leans down, but pauses before his lips touch mine, silently asking if it’s allowed. I raise my face to his, and he kisses me tenderly. “Your lips are always so soft when you’ve been crying,” he murmurs. “I never promised to obey you, Christian,” I whisper. “I know.” “Deal with it, please. For both our sakes. And I will try and be more consid- erate of your . . . controlling tendencies.” He looks lost and vulnerable, completely at sea. “I’ll try,” he murmurs, his voice burning with sincerity. I sigh, a long shuddering sigh. “Please do. Besides, if I had been here . . .” “I know,” he says and blanches. Lying back, he puts his free


Nine, the only way to take vengeance on the Muses for their part in the fury-born genocide. They knew that Io would come for Bianca. That Io would find the mob queen threadless and try to save her by taking her to the Nine. They’d left Bianca locked in a cell because they knew Io. They knew her better, perhaps, than anybody else. Io took a breath that scraped down her lungs. “Do you want justice?” With animal speed, Bianca moved in Io’s direction. She stopped a few feet away, a finger raised straight in Io’s face. “You know who did this to me?” The greenhouse was empty now. Edei and the Muses were gone, hopefully somewhere safe, far away from here. Io and Bianca stood in a room of beautiful corpses. Io exhaled shakily. “If it’s justice you want, you need to do exactly what I tell you.” “And what is that?” A terrifying calm had descended on Io. “You’re going to help me get a confession out of them.” “So you do know,” snarled Bianca. “Who did this to me.” Yes, Io knew. Of course she did. It had been a trap, from the very beginning. A trap designed specifically for Io, relying on a single choice: that Io would find Bianca dying and choose to save her. That Io, a professional breaker of hearts, with all her guilt and her shame, couldn’t bear to hurt Ava again. Thais’s question echoed in the deathful night. You would do anything for Ava, wouldn’t you? CHAPTER XXXV ENDLESS SHADES OF GRAY IO SAT ALONE in the middle of a room full of death, pulling on the thread. Three short tugs, two long: the Ora sisters’ call to arms. Silver flowed through her fingers, casting a snowy iridescence against the furred bodies around her. Nightfall had arrived in Alante like a drape tonight, the heavy smog swallowing all light. The glass doors were all unlocked, exposing every side of the greenhouse. Chill air kissed her cheeks and billowed the curtains. The hair on the dead women’s heads stirred on the marble, like streams of ice water after the thaw. Bianca had disappeared to carry out the last of Io’s commands. They had undressed and redressed the bodies in the room, arranged the chimerini furs just right. Io’s left eye had swollen shut, her heart beat in her ears, but her focus was razor-sharp. Her mind was clear for the first time since she took on this case. She felt no terror, no sadness, no guilt. There was only resolution: to find the single piece missing from the puzzle. We are all the same, Muses and moira-born and grace-born. Whatever they may be, these women are of the gods. There is no god with powers like these. Even gods change. The gods are dead. Go on. Ask. How had the wraiths been made? Io gathered the thread slowly on her lap, like an old woman at a loom. She heard it first: footsteps on the gravel path, the whoosh of fine fabric, the jingle


in the cold. Someone called out behind us and we waited for her to catch up. Good Lord: It was Priscilla Mancio, who was still teaching French. “Bodie Kane,” she said. “Unbelievable. I never would’ve recognized her,” she told Petra, “if they hadn’t run her picture in the magazine.” She was walking her bulldog, a delicious beast she introduced as Brigitte, and whom I squatted to scratch. Petra said, “You’ve changed since eighteen.” I find it hard to tell if people with German accents are asking questions. “Sure,” Madame Mancio said, “but—well, most alums, they either look the same, or worse. You know, it’s the boys. They go sloppy in the middle. But you look so much prettier, Bodie! Was your hair always that color?” I said, “Yep, this is my hair.” It was still dark—just no longer stringy and self-cut and ruined by cheap shampoo. “Well, I’ve listened to your podcast, and I suppose I was picturing your old face.” To Petra she said, “She had such a round little face!” Madame Mancio, meanwhile, looked shockingly unchanged. If she’d been thirty when I was at Granby, she was maybe in her early fifties now, but with the same androgynous haircut, the same tall, bony frame. She still dressed as if she might head off at any moment to hike the mountains. She said, “We were always so worried about her, especially at the end there. There are those students you just worry about. And look at her, turning out so successful, so put-together.” I was glad to be on Brigitte’s eye level rather than hers. The dog licked my face, and I marveled at the little pocket her wrinkles made between her eyes. You could stash a spare piece of kibble in there. We walked toward campus, the two of them discussing the lawsuit in the paper, the details of which I couldn’t grasp. Petra said to me, “Granby is always being sued. So is every other school in the country.” “For what?” “Oh God,” Madame Mancio said, “anything. Mostly it’s families threatening to sue. Suspensions, grades, negligence, the kid didn’t get into the right college, a coach didn’t put the kid on varsity. I wish I were kidding. All those lawyers the school pays? They’re busy.” I said, “I didn’t know.” Beneath the bridge, the Tigerwhip was surely frozen solid under its blanket of snow. I could see boot prints heading down the ravine slope and across the flat surface that was, now, only a suggestion of water. (We’d sat on those slopes during junior year bio, Ms. Ramos making us each sketch ten plants. I wore a sweater long enough to hide my backside, and it got ruined in the dirt.) Fifteen miles away, where the creek emptied into the Connecticut River, the ice would be looser, chunkier, yielding to slush and running water. “Has the campus changed much?” Petra asked me. Madame Mancio, whom I ought to be thinking of as Priscilla if I were to have any chance of a normal conversation with her, said, “Not as


with one hand holding a pike-head in the coals, and with the other at his forge's lungs, when captain ahab came along, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While yet a little distance from the forge, moody Ahab paused; till at last, Perth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon the anvil --the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights, some of which flew close to Ahab. Are these thy Mother Carey's chickens, Perth? they are always flying in thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all; --look here, they burn; but thou--thou liv'st among them without a scorch. Because I am scorched all over, Captain Ahab, answered Perth, resting for a moment on his hammer; I am past scorching; not easily can'st thou scorch a scar. Well, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad? --What wert thou making there? Welding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it. And can'st thou make it all smooth, again, blacksmith, after such hard usage as it had? I think so, sir. And I suppose thou can'st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never mind how hard the metal, blacksmith? Aye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one. .. <p 483 > Look ye here, then, cried Ahab, passionately advancing, and leaning with both hands on Perth's shoulders; look ye here -- here --can ye smoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith, sweeping one hand across his ribbed brow;;if thou could'st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my head upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes. Answer! Can'st thou smoothe this seam? Oh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one? aye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for though thou only see'st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into the bone of my skull -- that is all wrinkles! But, away with child's play; no more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here! jingling the leathern bag, as if it were full of gold coins. I, too, want a harpoon made; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth; something that will stick in a whale like his own fin-bone. There's the stuff, flinging the pouch upon the anvil. Look ye, blacksmith, these are the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses. Horse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Ahab, thou hast here, then, the best and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work. I know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from the melted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge me first, twelve rods


other. Archie makes a similar decision. “I was saying goodnight.” “Since when do you say goodnight to Lenora?” “Ever since Miss Hope first took ill,” Archie says. “Every night, I make sure to stop by and see how she’s doing.” “Let’s walk,” I say. What I really mean is that I want to talk where Lenora can’t hear us. Archie nods and follows me into the hallway, where the tilt of the house is noticeably more pronounced. Just when I had gotten used to it, too. “Every night?” I say. “You told me you and Lenora were no longer close.” “I said it wasn’t like it used to be,” Archie says. “And that’s the truth. It’s evolved over the years. Just because I don’t make a show of it doesn’t mean I don’t care about Miss Hope. We’re both on the same side, Kit. We’re both here to watch over her. We just go about it in different ways.” “Why haven’t I seen you visit her before?” “Because it’s kind of our little secret. Something kept just between me and Miss Hope. I’m sure you understand.” Archie pauses, as if he now wants me to share one of my secrets. I decline. Because that movie about the cat burglars who decided to trust each other? It ends with one betraying the other. I’m not about to let the same thing happen to me. “How late do you visit?” “Usually a little after Miss Hope goes to bed and a little before I do the same.” We descend the service stairs slowly, our shoes crunching over bits of plaster that have fallen from the walls. “Ever visit her in the middle of the night?” “No,” Archie says. “An early riser like me can’t afford to stay up that late.” He sounds honest enough that I almost believe him. Then again, Archie also sounded honest when he lied about knowing Lenora had a baby. Right now, I suspect there’s a seventy-five percent chance he’s telling the truth. Using that math, I conclude that Archie was the gray blur I saw at Lenora’s window my first night here. I’m less sure about him causing the middle-of-the-night noises in Lenora’s room. Or the shadow I watched pass the adjoining door. Or the typewritten message Lenora blamed on Virginia. “Do you know if anyone else sneaks into Lenora’s room at night on a regular basis?” “I doubt it,” Archie says with a vagueness that drops the truth-o-meter to fifty percent. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” “And I’m certain it’s something.” I stop halfway down the steps. “What aren’t you telling me? When I told all of you Lenora said her sister—her dead sister—was in her room typing, you didn’t seem surprised. Why is that?” “Because it was outlandish,” Archie says. “Or maybe because something like that has happened before over the years.” Archie attempts to descend another step, but I block his way, standing with my arms outstretched and both palms against the stairwell’s cracked walls. “Was Lenora telling the truth?” I should feel ridiculous for even thinking


chimed in. “Stifling independent thought. Prohibitive to freedom.” “But with the power of NuLife, you can be free anywhere,” Tyrell said, nodding to me. “You wake up every morning doubting yourselves and doubt yourselves until you go to sleep.” I began walking up and down the aisles, watching the inmates’ heads swivel to accommodate my movement. “You spend an inordinate amount of time living under the suspicion that you are frauds, undignified, unworthy of the special attentions and affections of others. On the outside, you labor in your jobs, assuming that if you make more money, you’ll be happier, and then of course you’re not happier. You deny yourselves bliss. You deny yourselves simple, beautiful, uncritical living. You hunger after betterness, and that hunger—even the betterness itself—makes for unhappiness.” This is when Tyrell played dumb. He let out a little laugh and pulled at the collar of his uniform. “So how’re you planning to solve the problem of betterness?” All eyes on me again, some bald heads gleaming with the ceiling’s fluorescence, some tattooed arms folded. It was incredible to have an audience like this, phone-less and understimulated, more rapt than any audience I could have had on the outside. This was my milieu. “Synthesis,” I said. A raised hand, this one from Al, who’d blown up a bar in which members of a rival gang were celebrating someone’s birthday. When I called on him, he slouched forward, forehead wrinkled thoughtfully, hands squeezed between his knees. “I was wondering—maybe I missed this—but what’s Synthesis?” “You didn’t miss anything, Al,” I said, and resumed my pacing. “It’s difficult to explain exactly what Synthesis is. I won’t even attempt to do it now. Suffice it to say that it rebuilds your memories and leaves you in a state of complete and uninhibited bliss. It gathers the shards of your self-worth up off the ground.” “My self-worth?” “See, you have to stop thinking on a big, macro scale,” I blazed ahead. “We all have traumas, right? But what are the specific moments that those traumas became most salient in our lives? You hate your dad? Okay great. But what was the one thing he did that made you hate him most? You’re scared of heights? Makes sense—so am I. Synthesis takes you back to the moment when you got stuck at the top of the Ferris wheel, or when you were peering over the cliff’s edge, or when you couldn’t climb down from that tree. It asks you to take sovereignty over those moments.” “Sovereignty,” Tyrell repeated slowly, like a schoolteacher. “Basically, like, ownership.” “You could say I’m the first beneficiary of Synthesis,” I said. “I’ve undergone it myself, and by now I’ve watched countless people undergo it, and believe me, it’s life-changing.” I didn’t tell them about Orson: the little crack in his morning voice, his eyes meeting mine as we woke up, his smile anticipating my own, his hair matted from sleep. I didn’t tell them about the Farm, about the hundreds of people sitting cross-legged awaiting his appearance, listening with rapt devotion


“What’s the treatment?” Mercy closed her book. “That’s less clear. Soup made from scratch and Bible verses were both suggested.” “Yes, please, and no, thank you.” Alex dragged herself out of bed and fumbled around in her dresser. She pulled a hoodie over her sweats. Was she even allowed to wear Lethe sweats anymore? Was she supposed to return them? She had no idea. She had a lot of questions she should have asked Anselm instead of flipping him off, but it had still been very satisfying. She found the tiny bottle of basso belladonna wedged against the back of the drawer and squeezed drops into both of her eyes. There was no way she was getting through this day without a little help. What’s stopping us? Mercy had asked. The answer was nothing. Alex didn’t want to go through hell again. But if they’d done it once, then they’d know what to expect the second time around. Dawes would have to choose a night of portent—assuming she and the others were willing to make a second run at the Gauntlet—and they wouldn’t have armor for Mercy, but they could load her up with other protections, figure out a way around the alarms if they couldn’t brew another tempest. Why not try again? What was there to lose? They’d come close enough that they had to take another shot. She checked her phone. There was a text from Dawes from the day before. All clear at Black Elm. No changes? she texted back. A long pause followed and then finally: He’s right where we left him. The circle doesn’t look right. Because it was getting weaker. They might not be able to wait for a night of portent. That was the other problem. Anselm had scolded them for putting Lethe and the campus in danger. But he didn’t really understand the game they were playing. He didn’t know Darlington was caught between worlds, that the creature sitting in the ballroom at Black Elm was both demon and man. And Alex wasn’t going to tell him. As soon as Anselm understood what they’d done, he’d find some spell to banish Darlington to hell forever rather than risk another use of the Gauntlet. “I’m sorry last night was such a shit show,” Alex said. “Are you kidding?” said Mercy. “It was great. I’m pretty sure I saw William Chester Minor. Honestly, I thought it would be a lot tougher.” You should have been fighting wolves with us. “I think I’m going to get kicked out of school,” Alex blurted. “Is that … a prediction or a plan?” Alex almost laughed. “A prediction.” “Then we have to get Darlington back. He can plead your case to Lethe. And maybe scare them with a lawsuit or something.” Maybe he could. Maybe he’d have more on his mind after a prolonged stay in hell. They wouldn’t know until they walked the Gauntlet again. But God, Alex was tired. The descent had been a beating and it wasn’t just her body that hurt. She texted their group chat:


towards him, and something whispered me that I was betraying it in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since that day no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death, and still he knows you not. In permitting this I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true!" "What choice had you?" asked Roger Chillingworth. "My finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon, thence, peradventure, to the gallows!" Thesaurus betraying: (adj) treacherous, revealing, extort: (v) exact, soak, compel, take, permitting: (adj) lenient, permitted. Judas. wring, force, extract, pry; (adj) bleed, pledging: (n) marriage. burrow: (adj, v) delve, dig, gouge, fleece, overcharge. pulpit: (n) platform, dais, ambo, mine; (n, v) tunnel, earth; (n) lair, den, misgivings: (n) anxiety, doubt, lectern, hustings, stump, rostrum, hole, cavity; (v) nestle. ANTONYMS: misgiving, apprehension, fear, forum, desk, stand, state. (v) fill, plant. suspicion, doubts, concern, thence: (adv) therefore, thus, clutch: (n, v) clasp, grip, clench, grasp, consternation, disbelief, foreboding. therefrom, thereof, consequently, hold, clinch, gripe; (v) grab, grapple, ANTONYM: (n) equanimity. then, so, thereafter, thenceforth, embrace; (adj, v) catch. ANTONYMS: peradventure: (adv) perchance, since, on account of. (n) loose; (v) release, unfasten. perhaps, possibly, mayhap, by weep: (v) wail, bawl, lament, sob, deriving: (n) etymologizing, ancestry, chance, haply, fortunately, gracefully, blubber, moan, howl, drip, greet, account, thought. felicitously; (n) chance; (conj) if. whimper; (n) tear. 162 The Scarlet Letter "It had been better so!" said Hester Prynne.% "What evil have I done the man?" asked Roger Chillingworth again. "I tell thee, Hester Prynne, the richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid his life would have burned away in torments within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Hester, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet letter. Oh, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough. What art can do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes and creeps about on earth is owing all to me!" "Better he had died at once!" said Hester Prynne. "Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!" cried old Roger Chillingworth, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. "Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew, by some spiritual sense--for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this--he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heartstrings, and that an


weapon is gone. Hazel undoubtedly took it. Was Jesse stabbed with my knife? Am I going to be framed for his murder? A shopping cart crashes into a post, and I jump, my heart hammering in my throat. I need to get out of here. Someone could be looking for me right now. Righting myself, I fumble with the keys in the ignition and pull carefully out of the lot. As I drive toward Jesse’s apartment, I make a deal with myself. If the cops are there, I will ditch my car somewhere and go to the airport. I’ll pack a bag, turn my cash into Bitcoin, and start my life over. People do it all the time. I will become Kelly Wilcox. I will accept all the things I do not know, and I will let Jesse and Hazel go. His slack face, the punctures in his chest, the metallic scent of his blood revisit me and I feel queasy. But I push the images from my mind and keep driving until the blocky apartment building appears in the distance. I cruise past it, eyes darting around for any signs of police. Or Benjamin Laval’s security detail. Or anyone suspicious. But all seems quiet, normal. An Uber driver delivers a pizza to the building next door. A woman with a green helmet rides past on her bike. At the end of the block, a landlord in sweatpants waters a sad flower bed. Parking on a side street, I face the next hurdle. Getting inside. Last night, I’d opened the small office window as Jesse searched for my keys. If he hadn’t closed it, I will be able to climb through it. I slip down the side of the building, concealed by the heavy evergreens that border it. The office window is closed, but the kitchen window is open a few inches. I yank it fully open and hoist myself onto the ledge. Wriggling inside, I land on the kitchen counter, out of breath. With my feet on the parquet floor, I freeze, listening. The apartment is silent. The blinds are tightly closed over the barred windows, a single lamp burns in the living room, though it is daylight. Tentatively, I move through the space, peeking into the bedroom and bathroom, ensuring I am alone. That I am safe. At least for now. My throat clogs with nostalgia as I take in the familiar surroundings. The dark gray couch where we’d sat and kissed; chatted about his sister and his nieces; had coffee and muffins. The table where we’d eaten coq au vin and sipped red wine. The bedroom where he had held me and made love to me and made me feel like I was desirable. Like I was enough. And then the frantic, almost animal sex we’d had in the entryway, against the kitchen counter, on the parquet floor. Hazel’s warning runs through my mind. Jesse is not who you think he is. “Neither were you, Hazel,” I mutter to myself. I know I can’t trust her, but those words


the woods or down by the rocks. He turned and looked out to sea. Here, on the other side of the island, the view was utterly different. The filmy enchantments of mirage could not endure the cold ocean water and the horizon was hard, clipped blue. Ralph wandered down to the rocks. Down here, almost on a level with the sea, you could follow with your eye the ceaseless, bulging passage of the deep sea waves. They were miles wide, apparently not breakers or the banked ridges of shallow water. They traveled the length of the island with an air of disregarding it and being set on other business; they were less a progress than a momentous rise and fall of the whole ocean. Now the sea would suck down, making cascades and waterfalls of retreating water, would sink past the rocks and plaster down the seaweed like shining hair: then, pausing, gather and rise with a roar, irresistibly swelling over point and outcrop, climbing the little cliff, sending at last an arm of surf up a gully to end a yard or so from him in fingers of spray. Wave after wave, Ralph followed the rise and fall until something of the remoteness of the sea numbed his brain. Then gradually the almost infinite size of this water forced itself on his attention. This was the divider, the barrier. On the other side of the island, swathed at midday with mirage, defended by the shield of the quiet lagoon, one might dream of rescue; but here, faced by the brute obtuseness of the ocean, the miles of division, one was clamped down, one was helpless, one was condemned, one was-- Simon was speaking almost in his ear. Ralph found that he had rock painfully gripped in both hands, found his body arched, the muscles of his neck stiff, his mouth strained open. "You'll get back to where you came from." Simon nodded as he spoke. He was kneeling on one knee, looking down from a higher rock which he held with both hands; his other leg stretched down to Ralph's level. Ralph was puzzled and searched Simon's face for a clue. "It's so big, I mean--" Simon nodded. "All the same. You'll get back all right. I think so, anyway." Some of the strain had gone from Ralph's body. He glanced at the sea and then smiled bitterly at Simon. "Got a ship in your pocket?" Simon grinned and shook his head. "How do you know, then?" When Simon was still silent Ralph said curtly, "You're batty." Simon shook his head violently till the coarse black hair flew backwards and forwards across his face. "No, I'm not. I just _think you'll get back all right._" For a moment nothing more was said. And then they suddenly smiled at each other. Roger called from the coverts. "Come and see!" The ground was turned over near the pig-run and there were droppings that steamed. Jack bent down to them as though he loved them. "Ralph--we need meat even if we are hunting the


in particular, stood in a spray of ferns and yellow flowers and next to it a stone sundial pedestal housed the main computer terminal. Cunningly deployed lighting and mirrors created the illusion of standing in a conservatory overlooking a wide stretch of exquisitely manicured garden. Around the periphery of the conservatory area stood marble-topped tables on intricately beautiful wrought-iron legs. As you gazed into the polished surface of the marble the vague forms of instruments became visible, and as you touched them the instruments materialized instantly under your hands. Looked at from the correct angles the mirrors appeared to reflect all the required data readouts, though it was far from clear where they were reflected from. It was in fact sensationally beautiful. Relaxing in a wickerwork sun chair, Zaphod Beeblebrox said, "What the hell happened?" "Well I was just saying," said Arthur lounging by a small fish pool, "there's this Improbability Drive switch over here ..." he waved at where it had been. There was a potted plant there now. "But where are we?" said Ford who was sitting on the spiral staircase, a nicely chilled Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster in his hand. "Exactly where we were, I think ..." said Trillian, as all about them the mirrors showed them an image of the blighted landscape of Magrathea which still scooted along beneath them. Zaphod leapt out of his seat. "Then what's happened to the missiles?" he said. A new and astounding image appeared in the mirrors. "They would appear," said Ford doubtfully, "to have turned into a bowl of petunias and a very surprised looking whale ..." "At an Improbability Factor," cut in Eddie, who hadn't changed a bit, "of eight million seven hundred and sixty-seven thousand one hundred and twenty-eight to one against." Zaphod stared at Arthur. "Did you think of that, Earthman?" he demanded. "Well," said Arthur, "all I did was ..." "That's very good thinking you know. Turn on the Improbability Drive for a second without first activating the proofing screens. Hey kid you just saved our lives, you know that?" "Oh," said Arthur, "well, it was nothing really ..." "Was it?" said Zaphod. "Oh well, forget it then. OK, computer, take us in to land." "But ..." "I said forget it." Another thing that got forgotten was the fact that against all probability a sperm whale had suddenly been called into existence several miles above the surface of an alien planet. And since this is not a naturally tenable position for a whale, this poor innocent creature had very little time to come to terms with its identity as a whale before it then had to come to terms with not being a whale any more. This is a complete record of its thoughts from the moment it began its life till the moment it ended it. Ah ... ! What's happening? it thought. Er, excuse me, who am I? Hello? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I? Calm down, get a grip now ... oh! this


Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

his hermitage. It was rather weak in me I confess, but his manner on this occasion nettled me. Not only did there seem to lurk in it a certain calm disdain, but his perverseness seemed ungrateful, considering the undeniable good usage and indulgence he had received from me. Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortified as I was at his behavior, and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my offices, nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind. At last, familiarly drawing my chair behind his screen, I sat down and said: “Bartleby, never mind then about revealing your history; but let me entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may be with the usages of this office. Say now you will help to examine papers to-morrow or next day: in short, say now that in a day or two you will begin to be a little reasonable:—say so, Bartleby.” “At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply. Just then the folding-doors opened, and Nippers approached. He seemed suffering from an unusually bad night’s rest, induced by severer indigestion then common. He overheard those final words of Bartleby. “Prefer not, eh?” gritted Nippers—”I’d prefer him, if I were you, sir,” addressing me—”I’d prefer him; I’d give him preferences, the stubborn mule! What is it, sir, pray, that he prefers not to do now?” Bartleby moved not a limb. “Mr. Nippers,” said I, “I’d prefer that you would withdraw for the present.” Somehow, of late I had got into the way of involuntarily using this word “prefer” upon all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I trembled to think that my contact with the scrivener had already and seriously affected me in a mental way. And what further and deeper aberration might it not yet produce? This apprehension had not been without efficacy in determining me to summary means. As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was departing, Turkey blandly and deferentially approached. “With submission, sir,” said he, “yesterday I was thinking about Bartleby here, and I think that if he would but prefer to take a quart of good ale every day, it would do much towards mending him, and enabling him to assist in examining his papers.” “So you have got the word too,” said I, slightly excited. “With submission, what word, sir,” asked Turkey, respectfully crowding himself into the contracted space behind the screen, and by so doing, making me jostle the scrivener. “What word, sir?” “I would prefer to be left alone here,” said Bartleby, as if offended at being mobbed in his privacy. “That’s the word, Turkey,” said I—”that’s it.” “Oh, prefer? oh yes—queer word. I never use it myself. But, sir, as I was saying, if he would but prefer—” “Turkey,” interrupted I, “you will please withdraw.” “Oh certainly,


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

and closed it quickly. "Where was I?" said Hagrid, but at that moment, Uncle Vernon, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight. "He's not going," he said. Hagrid grunted. "I'd like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him," he said. "A what?" said Harry, interested. "A Muggle," said Hagrid, "it's what we call nonmagic folk like thern. An' it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on." "We swore when we took him in we'd put a stop to that rubbish," said Uncle Vernon, "swore we'd stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!" "You knew?" said Harry. "You knew I'm a -- a wizard?" "Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. "Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that -- that school -- and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was -- a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!" She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years. "Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as -- as -- abnormal -- and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!" Harry had gone very white. As soon as he found his voice he said, "Blown up? You told me they died in a car crash!" "CAR CRASH!" roared Hagrid, jumping up so angrily that the Dursleys scuttled back to their corner. "How could a car crash kill Lily an' James Potter? It's an outrage! A scandal! Harry Potter not knowin' his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!" "But why? What happened?" Harry asked urgently. The anger faded from Hagrid's face. He looked suddenly anxious. "I never expected this," he said, in a low, worried voice. "I had no idea, when Dumbledore told me there might be trouble gettin' hold of yeh, how much yeh didn't know. Ah, Harry, I don' know if I'm the right person ter tell yeh -- but someone's gotta -- yeh can't go off ter Hogwarts not knowin'." He threw a dirty look at the Dursleys. "Well, it's best yeh know as much as I can tell yeh -- mind, I can't tell yeh everythin', it's a great myst'ry, parts of it..." He sat down, stared into the fire for a few seconds, and then said, "It begins, I suppose, with -- with a person called -- but it's incredible yeh don't know his name, everyone in our world knows --


ever remember seeing, Mom sighed and squeezed my hand. Quite a send-off. My father never feels closer or farther away than when I return to this place to find him gone. Now I’m walking a dog he never met, wondering if he knows what my mother is facing; what we are going through without him. I turn around, the mountains a reassuring wall at my back, and let Buster lead us home for lunch. 16 On the day after Christmas, I took my mother out to her favorite diner. My husband, kids, and I had flown to Oregon to spend the week with her, and my sister, Cindy, and her family made the trip down from Portland with a carful of Christmas decorations to deck the halls of our Airbnb. My mom didn’t have extra beds or space for guests, and we wanted her to be able to retreat to her own space and have privacy when she needed, so we had rented a house not far from hers. I drove over each morning to pick her up and bring her to the Airbnb and drove her back when she was ready to go to bed. That morning, I’d thrown on some clothes and stopped for doughnuts on the way to her place. While she dug into the sticky pink box, searching for a maple bar, I tidied up her living room and took Buster out to do his business. Mom had slipped and fractured her knee two days before our arrival; she was waiting to see an orthopedic surgeon, making do with a knee brace and a cane. We didn’t yet know that the break was the result of the cancer eating away at her tibia and femur, or that it would prove unmendable—as the surgeon would put it, There’s not enough healthy bone left to repair. We didn’t know that she would never walk unassisted again. We wouldn’t get her latest scan results until after New Year’s, and so we were still able to tell ourselves that we might get what her oncologist called more quality time—a phrase implying that the quality of her time would slowly leech away as her cancer advanced, until it no longer made sense to continue treatment. After I unhooked Buster’s leash and washed my hands at the kitchen sink, I asked Mom what she wanted for lunch. She thought for a moment, then named her wish: a Reuben sandwich from the diner one town over. We set off in the rental car, and I found myself wishing we had farther to go. It was an afternoon of cold, sunlit beauty in the mountains. I was still struggling to put myself back together after falling apart the night before. We all had a surprisingly good Christmas together, with a full house of family and friends. My brother-in-law deep-fried a turkey. My kids had gotten a mini Polaroid camera for Christmas, and the coffee table soon filled up with their tiny developing portraits. My mother, a largely stationary and therefore easy subject, materialized in shot after


that was capable of heaven. "Hepzibah," asked Clifford, after watching Phoebe to the corner, "do you never go to church?" "No, Clifford!" she replied,--"not these many, many years!" "Were I to be there," he rejoined, "it seems to me that I could pray once more, when so many human souls were praying all around me!" She looked into Clifford's face, and beheld there a soft natural effusion; for his heart gushed out, as it were, and ran over at his eyes, in delightful reverence for God, and kindly affection for his human brethren. The emotion communicated itself to Hepzibah. She yearned to take him by the hand, and go and kneel down, they two together,--both so long separate from the world, and, as she now recognized, scarcely friends with Him above,--to kneel down among the people, and be reconciled to God and man at once. "Dear brother," said she earnestly, "let us go! We belong nowhere. We have not a foot of space in any church to kneel upon; but let us go to some place of worship, even if we stand in the broad aisle. Poor and forsaken as we are, some pew-door will be opened to us!" So Hepzibah and her brother made themselves, ready--as ready as they could in the best of their old-fashioned garments, which had hung on pegs, or been laid away in trunks, so long that the dampness and mouldy smell of the past was on them,--made themselves ready, in their faded bettermost, to go to church. They descended the staircase together,--gaunt, sallow Hepzibah, and pale, emaciated, age-stricken Clifford! They pulled open the front door, and stepped across the threshold, and felt, both of them, as if they were standing in the presence of the whole world, and with mankind's great and terrible eye on them alone. The eye of their Father seemed to be withdrawn, and gave them no encouragement. The warm sunny air of the street made them shiver. Their hearts quaked within them at the idea of taking one step farther. "It cannot be, Hepzibah!--it is too late," said Clifford with deep sadness. "We are ghosts! We have no right among human beings,--no right anywhere but in this old house, which has a curse on it, and which, therefore, we are doomed to haunt! And, besides," he continued, with a fastidious sensibility, inalienably characteristic of the man," it would not be fit nor beautiful to go! It is an ugly thought that I should be frightful to my fellow-beings, and that children would cling to their mothers' gowns at sight of me!" They shrank back into the dusky passage-way, and closed the door. But, going up the staircase again, they found the whole interior of the house tenfold, more dismal, and the air closer and heavier, for the glimpse and breath of freedom which they had just snatched. They could not flee; their jailer had but left the door ajar in mockery, and stood behind it to watch them stealing out. At the threshold, they felt his pitiless gripe upon them. For, what


he and Albert fought over me first. Albert and Joyce didn’t last long, but Eddie and I were made for each other. Keepers, that’s the word they use nowadays.’ ‘So what happened?’ ‘Joyce happened. She drank too much one evening when Eddie and I and she were out together. He took me home first – he had a car – then he arranged to see her safely home, to make sure she was all right.’ ‘And?’ Cecily’s face was etched with sadness. ‘Eddie told me Joyce seduced him – she took off her clothes and he couldn’t help himself. Of course, that’s complete nonsense. If he’d loved me, he’d have kept his hands off her.’ ‘How did you find out?’ Cecily’s voice was quivering. ‘Joyce was pregnant and she told everyone that the baby was Eddie’s. Eddie had been a fool, but he was honest. He admitted it – they had slept together once, and that was it.’ ‘So, what did you do?’ ‘In those days, there was only one thing a man could do when he got a woman in the family way,’ Cecily said. ‘He did the decent thing and married her.’ ‘Oh, Cecily.’ ‘I told him to – I insisted on it.’ Cecily spoke firmly. ‘It was his duty. I gave Eddie his ring back and he and Joyce married in May.’ ‘That must have been hard for you.’ ‘I went to the church service.’ Cecily’s eyes glistened. ‘It broke my heart. But he was the baby’s father.’ Lin nodded slowly. ‘Then what happened?’ ‘Joyce had a baby girl. She called her Elizabeth Cecily and asked me to be the godmother. Of course, I refused. It wouldn’t have been appropriate.’ ‘So, what did you do?’ ‘Lin, I saw them together all the time and I couldn’t bear the way he still looked at me. I knew he still had strong feelings – I did too. He was a good man, despite everything. Eddie and I had always talked of having a child – it was heart-breaking to see the three of them, the little girl in his arms, the way Joyce looked at him as if he was her world.’ ‘And you still loved him?’ ‘Absolutely. I wanted to take him back in an instant. But I had to be strong.’ Cecily put a shaky finger to the corner of her eye. ‘So I made a decision and left. I couldn’t stay – Joyce was a happy mum, oblivious, and Eddie’s eyes were full of sadness every time he saw me. I wanted nothing more than to break all the rules and throw myself into his arms. I knew he wanted the same thing. I had to go.’ ‘And you became a teacher?’ ‘I couldn’t settle for anyone else, not after Eddie. He was my one true love. But…’ Cecily gazed into her empty glass. ‘I loved teaching; I loved my pupils and I dedicated my life to them. I’m not sorry I made that choice.’ ‘It seems such a shame.’ ‘It was,’ Cecily agreed. ‘Eddie didn’t love Joyce.


more, and wisely makes no comment on my mother’s lack of maternal concern. I feel rather than hear the buzz of his BlackBerry. He doesn’t let me stand up but fishes it awk- wardly out of his pocket. “Andrea,” he snaps, businesslike again. I make another move to stand and he stops me, frowning and holding me tightly around my waist. I nestle back against his chest and listen to the one-sided conversation. “Good . . . ETA is what time? . . . And the other, um . . . packages?” Christian glances at his watch. “Does the Heathman have all the details? . . . Good . . . Yes. It can hold until Monday morning, but e-mail it just in case—I’ll print, sign, and scan it back to you . . . They can wait. Go home, Andrea . . . No, we’re good, thank you.” He hangs up. “Everything okay?” “Yes.” “Is this your Taiwan thing?” 363/551 “Yes.” He shifts beneath me. “Am I too heavy?” He snorts. “No, baby.” “Are you worried about the Taiwan thing?” “No.” “I thought it was important.” “It is. The shipyard here depends on it. There are lots of jobs at stake.” Oh! “We just have to sell it to the unions. That’s Sam and Ros’s job. But the way the economy’s heading, none of us have a lot of choice.” I yawn. “Am I boring you, Mrs. Grey?” He nuzzles my hair again, amused. “No! Never . . . I’m just very comfortable on your lap. I like hearing about your business.” “You do?” He sounds surprised. “Of course.” I lean back to gaze directly at him. “I like hearing any bit of in- formation you deign to share with me.” I smirk, and he regards me with amuse- ment and shakes his head. “Always hungry for more information, Mrs. Grey.” “Tell me.” I urge him as I snuggle up against his chest again. “Tell you what?” “Why you do it.” “Do what?” “Work the way you do.” “A guy’s got to earn a living.” He’s amused. “Christian, you earn more than a living.” My voice is full of irony. He frowns and is quiet for a moment. I think he’s not going to divulge any secrets, but he surprises me. “I don’t want to be poor,” he says, his voice low. “I’ve done that. I’m not go- ing back there again. Besides . . . it’s a game,” he murmurs. “It’s about winning. A game I’ve always found very easy.” “Unlike life,” I murmur to myself. Then I realize I said the words out loud. “Yes, I suppose.” He frowns. “Though it’s easier with you.” Easier with me? I hug him tightly. “It can’t all be a game. You’re very philanthropic.” 364/551 He shrugs, and I know he’s growing uncomfortable. “About some things, maybe,” he says quietly. “I love philanthropic Christian,” I murmur. “Just him?” “Oh, I love megalomaniac Christian, too, and control-freak Christian, sex- pertise Christian, kinky Christian, romantic Christian, shy Christian . . . the list is endless.”


persons, and I never saw the man angry, nor heard the dog bark. During the service the dog would not come to its master, who was on the seat with us, but kept a few yards off, barking and howling. Its master spoke to it gently, and then harshly, and then angrily. But it would neither come nor cease to make a noise. It was in a fury, with its eyes savage, and all its hair bristling out like a cat's tail when puss is on the war path. Finally the man too got angry, and jumped down and kicked the dog, and then took it by the scruff of the neck and half dragged and half threw it on the tombstone on which the seat is fixed. The moment it touched the stone the poor thing began to tremble. It did not try to get away, but crouched down, quivering and cowering, and was in such a pitiable state of terror that I tried, though without effect, to comfort it. Lucy was full of pity, too, but she did not attempt to touch the dog, but looked at it in an agonised sort of way. I greatly fear that she is of too super sensitive a nature to go through the world without trouble. She will be dreaming of this tonight, I am sure. The whole agglomeration of things, the ship steered into port by a dead man, his attitude, tied to the wheel with a crucifix and beads, the touching funeral, the dog, now furious and now in terror, will all afford material for her dreams. I think it will be best for her to go to bed tired out physically, so I shall take her for a long walk by the cliffs to Robin Hood's Bay and back. She ought not to have much inclination for sleep-walking then. CHAPTER 8 MINA MURRAY'S JOURNAL Same day, 11 o'clock P.M.--Oh, but I am tired! If it were not that I had made my diary a duty I should not open it tonight. We had a lovely walk. Lucy, after a while, was in gay spirits, owing, I think, to some dear cows who came nosing towards us in a field close to the lighthouse, and frightened the wits out of us. I believe we forgot everything, except of course, personal fear, and it seemed to wipe the slate clean and give us a fresh start. We had a capital `severe tea' at Robin Hood's Bay in a sweet little old-fashioned inn, with a bow window right over the seaweed-covered rocks of the strand. I believe we should have shocked the `New Woman' with our appetites. Men are more tolerant, bless them! Then we walked home with some, or rather many, stoppages to rest, and with our hearts full of a constant dread of wild bulls. Lucy was really tired, and we intended to creep off to bed as soon as we could. The young curate came in, however, and Mrs. Westenra asked him to stay for supper. Lucy and I had


Jasmine put on a month-long performance piece in Washington Square Park, during which she ate only the food people brought her and wore only the clothes people brought her. How this wasn’t just vagrancy and an insult to the homeless, I was unsure. It garnered enough attention that in January she was the subject of a lengthy feature in New York magazine. The article revisited her piece about Jerome, included new quotes from her about him, and featured a black-and-white photo of the two of them at a costume party in 2003 as Artemis and Zeus. There was no new revelation, just a bigger platform. Twitter was once again where the fallout happened. People tagged Jerome’s new gallery, telling them to drop him. They asked Jerome for a long-overdue public apology. (This, he’d been advised, was a trap: There was no apology they’d accept. And defending himself would be worse.) They tried to drag me into it again, asking how I could stand by him. Fortunately, they caught on soon enough to the divorce going through, and assumed Jasmine was the reason. I didn’t correct them. You might guess that I had come around on Jasmine Wilde. That I’d realized how wronged she was, how much a victim. Or maybe you’re hoping that I realized: If Jasmine had voluntarily dated Jerome, maybe the love between you and Thalia was just as simple. Absolutely not. I’d thought about it, how Thalia, at seventeen, had only been four years younger than Jasmine was when she dated Jerome. It seemed so little, but then four years is the difference between eleven and fifteen—ages no one could argue are the same. Four years was the length of my entire time at Granby: an entire education. It had been four years now since I’d returned there to teach and my life had changed. The good news was, I was not the arbiter of Jerome’s goodness. And the divorce made that official. I’d seen someone for a few months before the pandemic hit, and then, during that brief wave of postvaccine optimism in the summer of ’21, Yahav flew out to LA for a conference and we spent the weekend sleeping together, which threw me back into full-tilt longing and then into a pained equilibrium, an acceptance that Yahav’s place in my life would be two to forty-eight hours here and there for an unspecified number of years. Like a stomach bug that overtook me entirely for a weekend and then vanished. “By the way, funny thing,” Jerome said. “Somebody rang my cell yesterday looking for you. They were trying to figure out your address. I hung up.” “Yeesh,” I said. “Man? Woman?” “Sounded like a young woman, pretty nervous. I think, you know, an amateur sleuth.” I’d been so flooded with emails in the past three years that I’d put an autoreply on my account asking people with information about the case to contact the defense team. The thing was, no one ever had information about the case. They had theories. There was that one serial killer


Hannah Whitten - The Foxglove King-Orbit (2023).txt

still holding the dagger at Bastian’s neck and Bastian looking singularly unbothered by it. It came to Lore to break the silence, since Gabe and Bastian seemed able to sit in it for hours. She rounded on the Sun Prince. “Do you have someone following us?” “Of course not. I followed you.” With a flick of his eyes toward Gabe, Bastian reached up and pushed the dagger aside with one finger. Gabe’s knuckles whitened, but he lowered the blade. “Unlike my father,” Bastian continued, “I prefer to do my own spying.” A bead of sweat slid down Lore’s back. She’d been a fool to think they could outsmart this man, to think there was a way to stay here unharmed while Bastian knew she was a spy. August’s underestimation of his son was going to be the death of her, and of Gabe, too— But Bastian didn’t suddenly produce a sword or shackles, didn’t call for guards that would send her to the Burnt Isles before the sun came up. Instead he turned back toward the doorway that led into the Citadel proper, pinching out the flames in the alcoves as he went. He glanced at them over his shoulder, one curling black lock falling over his eye. “You two coming?” “Absolutely not.” Gabe spoke through clenched teeth. The carefully reined deference he’d shown the prince this afternoon was all gone now, nothing but cold rage in its place. “Pity.” Bastian shrugged. “And here I was going to get you into the vaults. After we take a detour, anyway.” He leaned a shoulder against the wall, pushed back his artfully mussed hair. The prince wasn’t dressed for bed or debauchery; instead he wore a loose white shirt and dark pants, boots that climbed to his knees. Similar to the clothes people wore out in the Wards. “Think of all the exciting things you’ll have to report to my father and uncle, afterward.” Lore swallowed. Gabe’s hands tightened to fists. Bastian grinned. “So, I ask again. You two coming?” A pause. Then Gabe gave a truncated nod. “Excellent.” Bastian turned to move down the dark hall, extinguishing the last of the candles as he passed. They fell into step behind the Sun Prince, Gabe fuming, anxiety chewing at Lore’s stomach. They were caught, decisively so, and she had no idea what Bastian would do with them now. Turn them over to Kirythea, if August’s suspicions were true? Blackmail them into reporting on August and Anton, playing both sides? She shot a look at Gabe. Going down by herself was bad enough; she hated dragging him along, too. Warm fingers caught hers. Gabe. He gave her hand a squeeze, gave her a laden look from the corner of his eye. It settled her nerves, squared her shoulders. Even if the body she’d raised had reanimated, like Horse, there was no one there to give an order. The child might be aware, insofar as something dead could be, but it’d be like he was sleeping, safe inside the vault. As much as she hated to


with myself. And three proposals! But, for goodness' sake, don't tell any of the girls, or they would be getting all sorts of extravagant ideas, and imagining themselves injured and slighted if in their very first day at home they did not get six at least. Some girls are so vain! You and I, Mina dear, who are engaged and are going to settle down soon soberly into old married women, can despise vanity. Well, I must tell you about the three, but you must keep it a secret, dear, from every one except, of course, Jonathan. You will tell him, because I would, if I were in your place, certainly tell Arthur. A woman ought to tell her husband everything. Don't you think so, dear? And I must be fair. Men like women, certainly their wives, to be quite as fair as they are. And women, I am afraid, are not always quite as fair as they should be. Well, my dear, number One came just before lunch. I told you of him, Dr. John Seward, the lunatic asylum man, with the strong jaw and the good forehead. He was very cool outwardly, but was nervous all the same. He had evidently been schooling himself as to all sorts of little things, and remembered them, but he almost managed to sit down on his silk hat, which men don't generally do when they are cool, and then when he wanted to appear at ease he kept playing with a lancet in a way that made me nearly scream. He spoke to me, Mina, very straightfordwardly. He told me how dear I was to him, though he had known me so little, and what his life would be with me to help and cheer him. He was going to tell me how unhappy he would be if I did not care for him, but when he saw me cry he said he was a brute and would not add to my present trouble. Then he broke off and asked if I could love him in time, and when I shook my head his hands trembled, and then with some hesitation he asked me if I cared already for any one else. He put it very nicely, saying that he did not want to wring my confidence from me, but only to know, because if a woman's heart was free a man might have hope. And then, Mina, I felt a sort of duty to tell him that there was some one. I only told him that much, and then he stood up, and he looked very strong and very grave as he took both my hands in his and said he hoped I would be happy, and that If I ever wanted a friend I must count him one of my best. Oh, Mina dear, I can't help crying, and you must excuse this letter being all blotted. Being proposed to is all very nice and all that sort of thing, but it isn't at all a happy thing when you have


has to be bred into you across centuries.” “I’m sure,” he says. “I’m not like that, by the way.” “Gently bred to laugh through your nose?” His chin tips, his gaze knowing. “The impression you have of me. I don’t play with people’s feelings. I have rules.” “Rules?” I say. “Such as?” “Such as, never tell the rules to someone you’ve just met.” “Oh, come on,” I say. “We’re stepfriends now. You might as well tell me.” “Well, for one thing, Parth and I made a pact to never date our friends. Or each other’s friends.” He casts me a sidelong glance. “As for stepfriends, I’m not sure what the policy is.” “Wait, wait, wait,” I say. “You don’t date your friends? Who do you date, Wyn? Enemies? Strangers? Malevolent spirits who died in your apartment building?” “It’s a good policy,” he says. “It keeps things from getting messy.” “It’s dating, Wyn, not an all-you-can-eat barbecue buffet,” I say. “Although, from what I’ve heard, maybe for you they’re the same thing.” He looks at me through his lashes and tuts. “Are you slut-shaming me, Harriet?” “Not at all,” I say. “I love sluts! Some of my best friends are sluts. I’ve dabbled in sluttery myself.” Another bar of moonlight briefly lights his eyes, paling them to smoky silver. “Didn’t suit you?” he guesses. “Never got the chance to find out,” I say. “Because you fell in love,” he says. “Because men never really picked me up.” He laughs. “Okay.” “I’m not being self-deprecating,” I say. “Once men get to know me, they’re sometimes interested, but I’m not the one their eyes go to first. I’ve made peace with it.” His gaze slides down me and back up. “So you’re saying you’re slow- release hot.” I nod. “That’s right. I’m slow-release hot.” He considers me for a moment. “You’re not what I expected.” “Three-dimensional and blue-haired,” I say. “Among other things,” he says. “I expected you to be Parth 2.0,” I admit. His eyes narrow. “You thought I’d be better dressed.” “Than a torn sweatshirt and jeans?” I say. “No such thing.” He doesn’t seem to hear me, instead studying me with a furrowed brow. “You’re not slow-release hot.” I look away, fumble the radio on as heat scintillates across my chest. “Yeah, well,” I say, “most people don’t start by seeing me naked before we’ve spoken.” “It’s not about that,” he says. I feel the moment his gaze lifts off me and returns to the windshield, but he’s left a mark: from now on, dark cliffs, wind racing through hair, cinnamon paired with clove and pine—all of it will only mean Wyn Connor to me. A door has opened, and I know I’ll never get it shut again. Regency era or not, in a lot of ways, he ruins me. 5 REAL LIFE Monday WE’RE TRAPPED IN the kitchen for the length of three more toasts to undying love before Wyn finally asks our friends to excuse us and pulls me away to “settle in.” Kimmy purrs throatily, and Parth high-fives her


massive jolts of morphine or procaine. The pawn was then tossed in the incinerator. A new game began. Montag stayed upstairs most nights when this went on. There had been a time two years ago when he had bet with the best of them, and lost a week's salary and faced Mildred's insane anger, which showed itself in veins and blotches. But now at night he lay in his bunk, face turned to the wall, listening to whoops of laughter below and the piano-string scurry of rat feet, the violin squeaking of mice, and the great shadowing, motioned silence of the Hound leaping out like a moth in the raw light, finding, holding its victim, inserting the needle and going back to its kennel to die as if a switch had been turned. Montag touched the muzzle. . The Hound growled. Montag jumped back. The Hound half rose in its kennel and looked at him with green-blue neon light flickering in its suddenly activated eyebulbs. It growled again, a strange rasping combination of electrical sizzle, a frying sound, a scraping of metal, a turning of cogs that seemed rusty and ancient with suspicion. "No, no, boy," said Montag, his heart pounding. He saw the silver needle extended upon the air an inch, pull back, extend, pull back. The growl simmered in the beast and it looked at him. Montag backed up. The Hound took a step from its kennel. Montag grabbed the brass pole with one hand. The pole, reacting, slid upward, and took him through the ceiling, quietly. He stepped off in the half-lit deck of the upper level. He was trembling and his face was green-white. Below, the Hound had sunk back down upon its eight incredible insect legs and was humming to itself again, its multi-faceted eyes at peace. Montag stood, letting the fears pass, by the drop-hole. Behind him, four men at a card table under a green-lidded light in the corner glanced briefly but said nothing. Only the man with the Captain's hat and the sign of the Phoenix on his hat, at last, curious, his playing cards in his thin hand, talked across the long room. "Montag . . . ?" "It doesn't like me," said Montag. "What, the Hound?" The Captain studied his cards. "Come off it. It doesn't like or dislike. It just `functions.' It's like a lesson in ballistics. It has a trajectory we decide for it. It follows through. It targets itself, homes itself, and cuts off. It's only copper wire, storage batteries, and electricity." Montag swallowed. "Its calculators can be set to any combination, so many amino acids, so much sulphur, so much butterfat and alkaline. Right?" "We all know that." "All of those chemical balances and percentages on all of us here in the house are recorded in the master file downstairs. It would be easy for someone to set up a partial combination on the Hound's 'memory,' a touch of amino acids, perhaps. That would account for what the animal did just now. Reacted toward me." "Hell," said the


now that work was over, sauntered out of the garden. The women went back to the huts to clean up and prepare the supper, while a good many of the men strolled down the road to the public-house. A glass of beer was very pleasant after the day's work. The Athelnys' bin was the last to be dealt with. When the measurer came Mrs. Athelny, with a sigh of relief, stood up and stretched her arms: she had been sitting in the same position for many hours and was stiff. "Now, let's go to The Jolly Sailor," said Athelny. "The rites of the day must be duly performed, and there is none more sacred than that." "Take a jug with you, Athelny," said his wife, "and bring back a pint and a half for supper." She gave him the money, copper by copper. The bar-parlour was already well filled. It had a sanded floor, benches round it, and yellow pictures of Victorian prize-fighters on the walls. The licencee knew all his customers by name, and he leaned over his bar smiling benignly at two young men who were throwing rings on a stick that stood up from the floor: their failure was greeted with a good deal of hearty chaff from the rest of the company. Room was made for the new arrivals. Philip found himself sitting between an old labourer in corduroys, with string tied under his knees, and a shiny-faced lad of seventeen with a love-lock neatly plastered on his red forehead. Athelny insisted on trying his hand at the throwing of rings. He backed himself for half a pint and won it. As he drank the loser's health he said: "I would sooner have won this than won the Derby, my boy." He was an outlandish figure, with his wide-brimmed hat and pointed beard, among those country folk, and it was easy to see that they thought him very queer; but his spirits were so high, his enthusiasm so contagious, that it was impossible not to like him. Conversation went easily. A certain number of pleasantries were exchanged in the broad, slow accent of the Isle of Thanet, and there was uproarious laughter at the sallies of the local wag. A pleasant gathering! It would have been a hard-hearted person who did not feel a glow of satisfaction in his fellows. Philip's eyes wandered out of the window where it was bright and sunny still; there were little white curtains in it tied up with red ribbon like those of a cottage window, and on the sill were pots of geraniums. In due course one by one the idlers got up and sauntered back to the meadow where supper was cooking. "I expect you'll be ready for your bed," said Mrs. Athelny to Philip. "You're not used to getting up at five and staying in the open air all day." "You're coming to bathe with us, Uncle Phil, aren't you?" the boys cried. "Rather." He was tired and happy. After supper, balancing himself against the wall of the hut


Tom's tooth with a loop and tied the other to the bedpost. Then she seized the chunk of fire and suddenly thrust it almost into the boy's face. The tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. But all trials bring their compensations. As Tom wended to school after breakfast, he was the envy of every boy he met because the gap in his upper row of teeth enabled him to expectorate in a new and admirable way. He gathered quite a following of lads interested in the exhibition; and one that had cut his finger and had been a centre of fascination and homage up to this time, now found himself suddenly without an adherent, and shorn of his glory. His heart was heavy, and he said with a disdain which he did not feel that it wasn't anything to spit like Tom Sawyer; but another boy said, "Sour grapes!" and he wandered away a dismantled hero. Shortly Tom came upon the juvenile pariah of the village, Huckleberry Finn, son of the town drunkard. Huckleberry was cordially hated and dreaded by all the mothers of the town, because he was idle and lawless and vulgar and bad -- and because all their children admired him so, and delighted in his forbidden society, and wished they dared to be like him. Tom was like the rest of the respectable boys, in that he envied Huckleberry his --------------------------------------------------------- -71- gaudy outcast condition, and was under strict orders not to play with him. So he played with him every time he got a chance. Huckleberry was always dressed in the cast-off clothes of full-grown men, and they were in perennial bloom and fluttering with rags. His hat was a vast ruin with a wide crescent lopped out of its brim; his coat, when he wore one, hung nearly to his heels and had the rearward buttons far down the back; but one suspender supported his trousers; the seat of the trousers bagged low and contained nothing, the fringed legs dragged in the dirt when not rolled up. Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he pleased; he was always the first boy that went barefoot in the spring and the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything that goes to make life precious that boy had. So thought every harassed, hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg. Tom hailed the romantic outcast: "Hello, Huckleberry!" "Hello yourself, and see how you like it." "What's that you got?" --------------------------------------------------------- -72- "Dead cat." "Lemme see him, Huck. My, he's pretty stiff. Where'd you get him ?"


derivable from kicking an unoffending animal to allay them, is matter for argument and consideration. Whatever was the cause, the effect was a kick and a curse, bestowed upon the dog simultaneously. Dogs are not generally apt to revenge injuries inflicted upon them by their masters; but Mr. Sikes's dog, having faults of temper in common with his owner, and labouring, perhaps, at this moment, under a powerful sense of injury, made no more ado but at once fixed his teeth in one of the half-boots. Having given in a hearty shake, he retired, growling, under a form; just escaping the pewter measure which Mr. Sikes levelled at his head. 'You would, would you?' said Sikes, seizing the poker in one hand, and deliberately opening with the other a large clasp-knife, which he drew from his pocket. 'Come here, you born devil! Come here! D'ye hear?' The dog no doubt heard; because Mr. Sikes spoke in the very harshest key of a very harsh voice; but, appearing to entertain some unaccountable objection to having his throat cut, he remained where he was, and growled more fiercely than before: at the same time grasping the end of the poker between his teeth, and biting at it like a wild beast. This resistance only infuriated Mr. Sikes the more; who, dropping on his knees, began to assail the animal most furiously. The dog jumped from right to left, and from left to right; snapping, growling, and barking; the man thrust and swore, and struck and blasphemed; and the struggle was reaching a most critical point for one or other; when, the door suddenly opening, the dog darted out: leaving Bill Sikes with the poker and the clasp-knife in his hands. There must always be two parties to a quarrel, says the old adage. Mr. Sikes, being disappointed of the dog's participation, at once transferred his share in the quarrel to the new comer. 'What the devil do you come in between me and my dog for?' said Sikes, with a fierce gesture. 'I didn't know, my dear, I didn't know,' replied Fagin, humbly; for the Jew was the new comer. 'Didn't know, you white-livered thief!' growled Sikes. 'Couldn't you hear the noise?' 'Not a sound of it, as I'm a living man, Bill,' replied the Jew. 'Oh no! You hear nothing, you don't,' retorted Sikes with a fierce sneer. 'Sneaking in and out, so as nobody hears how you come or go! I wish you had been the dog, Fagin, half a minute ago.' 'Why?' inquired the Jew with a forced smile. 'Cause the government, as cares for the lives of such men as you, as haven't half the pluck of curs, lets a man kill a dog how he likes,' replied Sikes, shutting up the knife with a very expressive look; 'that's why.' The Jew rubbed his hands; and, sitting down at the table, affected to laugh at the pleasantry of his friend. He was obviously very ill at ease, however. 'Grin away,' said Sikes, replacing the poker, and surveying him with savage


Hardy wore a too-small-for-his-size biker-style leather vest. Unfortunately, Iris was no more—had died while heroically fighting the Ziu. And while this Tina fairy had relentlessly tried to tell Hardy that she was actually Iris, inhabiting the Tina fairy form, Hardy had yet to accept her as … well, Iris. I told you it was a complicated situation. What can I say? At the moment, Hardy was refusing to look up at the still-circling Symbio fairy. Viv looked down at Sonya, offering up a crooked smile. “You seem to be doing fine. Slightly elevated temperature, but that’s to be expected.” “Good, then can I get out of here?” “Ha ha, no. Ask me again in a week.” “A week! Seriously? I have to stay in this closet of a room for a week?” “How about if we move you out to the general patient compartment sometime tomorrow? But only if you get some rest. And no more visitors.” Viv gave me a disapproving sideways glance. Sonya nodded, her eyes heavy-lidded. “I am getting a little tired.” “You heard her. Both of you, out!” Viv said, making a two-handed scoot gesture toward the exit. I stood and gave Sonya’s leg a couple of pats. “I’ll come see you tomorrow.” But the teenager was already asleep. I said to Hardy, “Head back to the bridge. I’ll be along shortly.” Hardy looked from me to Doc Viv and then back to me again. “Oh … you want to talk. Like without me here. Like, just the two of you—” “Go, Hardy,” I said, not in the mood for any of the robot’s antics. Once Hardy had tromped out of the compartment, I turned to Viv. Before I could say one word, she held up a palm. “I don’t have time for this, Quintos. I told you my decision; nothing’s changed.” She tucked blonde curls behind one ear while looking uncomfortable. “You’re just making things harder … Being here.” “You know, we may never find a way to leave this place, this realm.” “You’ll think of something. You always do. And when you do, I’m leaving. I can’t do this anymore. Look at me; I’m holding on by a thread. The constant stress and tension, the injuries … the death. I want to go home. I want to be back on Earth and have a normal life.” I tried to think of something to say. Something that would change her mind. Did she know how I felt about her? I wasn’t sure. Would it make a difference? I was certain it wouldn’t. I was losing her and there was nothing to stop that. She looked at me, the most beautiful, intelligent, compassionate woman I had ever met, and right now I was speechless. Just as my Jadoo ring started to vibrate, an overhead klaxon began wailing. Overhead, Sir Calvin’s British voice boomed: CAPTAIN QUINTOS, YOUR IMMEDIATE PRESENCE IS REQUIRED ON THE BRIDGE … CAPTAIN QUINTOS, YOUR IMMEDIATE PRESENCE IS REQUIRED ON THE BRIDGE … Chapter 3 Both Hardy and I quansported back to Deck 13 just outside


into a small room with dimmed lights and candles in the corner. My hands start to shake, and I don’t know where to look. Then I see him and a helpless cry escapes before Ros even manages to close the door behind her. No. “Oh, Dad.” The coffin lid is propped up, resting against the wall. Waiting. That’s it. He really is gone. “No.” I shake my head. “No.” Mum rubs my back. “It’s okay, Maame.” “No! It’s not okay!” Mum pulls me to her, and I cry into her jumper until my throat is tight. I step away and roughly dry my eyes because I need to see him. This will be my last chance to see him. I turn my head and notice he looks … the same, except maybe his lips have thinned a little. He could be sleeping. I stare until I realize I’m waiting for his eyes to open. There’s no look of frustration or uncertainty on his face, the expressions I’d grown used to seeing. His forehead is smooth, and his hands, placed on his stomach, are still. He’s not in pain anymore. He has on his gray wedding suit, a white shirt underneath, and I press a hand to my mouth when I see he also wears his chunky silver bracelet, the bracelet he has on in the photograph I have of him, the bracelet that has been on his wrist through sickness and in health. Mum speaks to him in Twi. “May God bless you, Fiifi. Go with Him, okay? Go with God; see your parents again; they’re calling you and waiting for you. Have peace and have rest.” She’s crying harder than I’ve ever seen before. Tears are streaming from her eyes and she punctuates her sentences with hiccups. “You have suffered so much,” she says to him, “trapped, but now you are finally free. See? Look at you already? Your swollen foot is no more. You’re already free. Go with God and be free.” It’s comforting to hear, not so much the words, but my mother tongue. The language of my parents—they rarely spoke to each other in English. You really should learn to speak Twi. Before we leave, I look at his face one last time and say, “I love you, Dad. Very much, okay?” * * * An intense peace settles on me when I board the train, almost like I’ll never cry again. I know that isn’t true, but I’m happy to believe it for now. It was Nia’s idea to do something after so that I didn’t have to go straight home. She knew that before seeing Dad, I wouldn’t be able to stomach breakfast, so she suggested lunch. I said, sure, but so long as it was somewhere I haven’t tried before. Somewhere new. Nia picked a spot in London Bridge called Casa de Maria. A Portuguese restaurant she went to years ago with an old boyfriend. It’s lowly lit and the tables and chairs are wooden. There are plants in the corners and posters on the


necessary) that if I'm to be reproached with having done nothing again about more school--" "Yes, miss--" my companion pressed me. "Well, there's that awful reason." There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she was excusable for being vague. "But--a-- which?" "Why, the letter from his old place." "You'll show it to the master?" "I ought to have done so on the instant." "Oh, no!" said Mrs. Grose with decision. "I'll put it before him," I went on inexorably, "that I can't undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled--" "For we've never in the least known what!" Mrs. Grose declared. "For wickedness. For what else--when he's so clever and beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? He's exquisite--so it can be only THAT; and that would open up the whole thing. After all," I said, "it's their uncle's fault. If he left here such people--!" "He didn't really in the least know them. The fault's mine." She had turned quite pale. "Well, you shan't suffer," I answered. "The children shan't!" she emphatically returned. I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. "Then what am I to tell him?" "You needn't tell him anything. _I_'ll tell him." I measured this. "Do you mean you'll write--?" Remembering she couldn't, I caught myself up. "How do you communicate?" "I tell the bailiff. HE writes." "And should you like him to write our story?" My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were again in her eyes. "Ah, miss, YOU write!" "Well--tonight," I at last answered; and on this we separated. XVII I went so far, in the evening, as to make a beginning. The weather had changed back, a great wind was abroad, and beneath the lamp, in my room, with Flora at peace beside me, I sat for a long time before a blank sheet of paper and listened to the lash of the rain and the batter of the gusts. Finally I went out, taking a candle; I crossed the passage and listened a minute at Miles's door. What, under my endless obsession, I had been impelled to listen for was some betrayal of his not being at rest, and I presently caught one, but not in the form I had expected. His voice tinkled out. "I say, you there--come in." It was a gaiety in the gloom! I went in with my light and found him, in bed, very wide awake, but very much at his ease. "Well, what are YOU up to?" he asked with a grace of sociability in which it occurred to me that Mrs. Grose, had she been present, might have looked in vain for proof that anything was "out." I stood over him with my candle. "How did you know I was there?" "Why, of course I heard you. Did you fancy you made no noise? You're like a