cold heart!" "What?" said Estella, preserving her attitude of indifference as she leaned against the great chimney-piece and only moving her eyes; "do you reproach me for being cold? You?" "Are you not?" was the fierce retort. "You should know," said Estella. "I am what you have made me. Take all the praise, take all the blame; take all the success, take all the failure; in short, take me." "O, look at her, look at her!" cried Miss Havisham, bitterly; "Look at her, so hard and thankless, on the hearth where she was reared! Where I took her into this wretched breast when it was first bleeding from its stabs, and where I have lavished years of tenderness upon her!" "At least I was no party to the compact," said Estella, "for if I could walk and speak, when it was made, it was as much as I could do. But what would you have? You have been very good to me, and I owe everything to you. What would you have?" "Love," replied the other. "You have it." "I have not," said Miss Havisham. "Mother by adoption," retorted Estella, never departing from the easy grace of her attitude, never raising her voice as the other did, never yielding either to anger or tenderness, "Mother by adoption, I have said that I owe everything to you. All I possess is freely yours. All that you have given me, is at your command to have again. Beyond that, I have nothing. And if you ask me to give you what you never gave me, my gratitude and duty cannot do impossibilities." "Did I never give her love!" cried Miss Havisham, turning wildly to me. "Did I never give her a burning love, inseparable from jealousy at all times, and from sharp pain, while she speaks thus to me! Let her call me mad, let her call me mad!" "Why should I call you mad," returned Estella, "I, of all people? Does any one live, who knows what set purposes you have, half as well as I do? Does any one live, who knows what a steady memory you have, half as well as I do? I who have sat on this same hearth on the little stool that is even now beside you there, learning your lessons and looking up into your face, when your face was strange and frightened me!" "Soon forgotten!" moaned Miss Havisham. "Times soon forgotten!" "No, not forgotten," retorted Estella. "Not forgotten, but treasured up in my memory. When have you found me false to your teaching? When have you found me unmindful of your lessons? When have you found me giving admission here," she touched her bosom with her hand, "to anything that you excluded? Be just to me." "So proud, so proud!" moaned Miss Havisham, pushing away her grey hair with both her hands. "Who taught me to be proud?" returned Estella. "Who praised me when I learnt my lesson?" "So hard, so hard!" moaned Miss Havisham, with her former action. "Who taught me to be hard?"


unknown dangers of the jungle. Possibly, too, he thought, the professor and Philander might have returned to camp. Yes, that was more than likely. At least he would return and see, before he continued what seemed to be a most fruitless quest. And so he started, stumbling back through the thick and matted underbrush in the direction that he thought the cabin lay. To Tarzan's surprise the young man was heading further into the jungle in the general direction of Mbonga's village, and the shrewd young ape-man was convinced that he was lost. To Tarzan this was scarcely incomprehensible; his judgment told him that no man would venture toward the village of the cruel blacks armed only with a spear which, from the awkward way in which he carried it, was evidently an unaccustomed weapon to this white man. Nor was he following the trail of the old men. That, they had crossed and left long since, though it had been fresh and plain before Tarzan's eyes. Tarzan was perplexed. The fierce jungle would make easy prey of this unprotected stranger in a very short time if he were not guided quickly to the beach. Yes, there was Numa, the lion, even now, stalking the white man a dozen paces to the right. Chapter 14 Clayton heard the great body paralleling his course, and now there rose upon the evening air the beast's thunderous roar. The man stopped with upraised spear and faced the brush from which issued the awful sound. The shadows were deepening, darkness was settling in. God! To die here alone, beneath the fangs of wild beasts; to be torn and rended; to feel the hot breath of the brute on his face as the great paw crushed down up his breast! For a moment all was still. Clayton stood rigid, with raised spear. Presently a faint rustling of the bush apprised him of the stealthy creeping of the thing behind. It was gathering for the spring. At last he saw it, not twenty feet away--the long, lithe, muscular body and tawny head of a huge black-maned lion. The beast was upon its belly, moving forward very slowly. As its eyes met Clayton's it stopped, and deliberately, cautiously gathered its hind quarters behind it. In agony the man watched, fearful to launch his spear, powerless to fly. He heard a noise in the tree above him. Some new danger, he thought, but he dared not take his eyes from the yellow green orbs before him. There was a sharp twang as of a broken banjo-string, and at the same instant an arrow appeared in the yellow hide of the crouching lion. With a roar of pain and anger the beast sprang; but, somehow, Clayton stumbled to one side, and as he turned again to face the infuriated king of beasts, he was appalled at the sight which confronted him. Almost simultaneously with the lion's turning to renew the attack a half-naked giant dropped from the tree above squarely on the brute's back. With lightning speed an arm that was


necessarily.” Harder than that, apparently. Bastian pulled her to the center of the floor, through courtiers that parted like a jewel-toned wave. He raised a hand and gestured to the band in the corner. Abruptly, the music changed, moving to something slow and measured. “But I’ve decided I’m over the katairos.” Bastian grinned, placing one hand on her waist. A beat, and he swept her into something Lore thought was a waltz. Hopefully, her guise as a country cousin would be ample cover for her lack of grace. “So the Kirythean music was just for Gabriel’s benefit, then?” Lore cocked her head, smile still in place, though there was a hint of venom behind the question. The Mort was stuffy and overimportant and built like he could take care of himself, but their odd circumstances made her feel almost protective of him. “It wasn’t for Gabe’s benefit at all.” Bastian spun her out, then pulled her back in, close to his black-clad chest. He was shorter than Gabriel, but only just, and Lore’s forehead would’ve knocked into his chin if he didn’t lean gracefully away, making it look like part of the dance. “The Kirythean music was because I like it.” “I’m sure that thrills your father.” His eyes sparked behind his mask, the slight smile on his mouth going sharp. “Nothing I do thrills my father. He’s decided I’m worthless, and I don’t particularly care enough to try and change his mind.” Another spin, under his arm this time, his hand staying on the small of her back to guide her through. “And just so we’re clear,” he murmured as she passed close again, “I wouldn’t taunt Gabe about his family. I know he thinks I’m awful, and he has his reasons, but even I’m not that heartless.” Lore hoped her laugh didn’t sound as false as it felt. “But you’d make sure he doesn’t have a mask, so that everyone here can see his face.” “I wanted the court to know he was here. To give him an opportunity to see what he’s missing, maybe decide to stay instead of slink back to the Presque Mort.” Bastian’s voice was pleasant, but the ridge of his jaw could carve stone. “My uncle has been half mad since his accident, even if everyone wants to pretend like it’s something holy, and he’s controlled Gabe’s life for fourteen years. I saw an opportunity to set him free, at least for a few weeks, and I took it. He should thank me.” Lore wondered what Bastian would think if he knew that Gabe was only in the court because of Anton. That his uncle’s control was still ironclad. “How exactly would making sure the court sees him here make him want to stay?” she asked. Bastian waved a hand at the party. “Stick a man in a den of iniquity after he’s been cloistered for over a decade, and it’s likely he’ll fall into sin. If it was public enough, Anton might not let him come back into the monkish fold. That was the


catwalk. "You gonna take it back, Fra- ancis?" But I was too quick on the draw. Francis shot back into the kitchen, so I retired to the steps. I could wait patiently. I had sat there perhaps five minutes when I heard Aunt Alexandra speak: "Where's Francis?" "He's out yonder in the kitchen." "He knows he's not supposed to play in there." Francis came to the door and yelled, "Grandma, she's got me in here and she won't let me out!" "What is all this, Jean Louise?" I looked up at Aunt Alexandra. "I haven't got him in there, Aunty, I ain't holdin' him." "Yes she is," shouted Francis, "she won't let me out!" "Have you all been fussing?" "Jean Louise got mad at me, Grandma," called Francis. "Francis, come out of there! Jean Louise, if I hear another word out of you I'll tell your father. Did I hear you say hell a while ago?" "Nome." "I thought I did. I'd better not hear it again." Aunt Alexandra was a back-porch listener. The moment she was out of sight Francis came out head up and grinning. "Don't you fool with me," he said. He jumped into the yard and kept his distance, kicking tufts of grass, turning around occasionally to smile at me. Jem appeared on the porch, looked at us, and went away. Francis climbed the mimosa tree, came down, put his hands in his pockets and strolled around the yard. "Hah!" he said. I asked him who he thought he was, Uncle Jack? Francis said he reckoned I got told, for me to just sit there and leave him alone. "I ain't botherin' you," I said. Francis looked at me carefully, concluded that I had been sufficiently subdued, and crooned softly, "Nigger-lover..." This time, I split my knuckle to the bone on his front teeth. My left impaired, I sailed in with my right, but not for long. Uncle Jack pinned my arms to my sides and said, "Stand still!" Aunt Alexandra ministered to Francis, wiping his tears away with her handkerchief, rubbing his hair, patting his cheek. Atticus, Jem, and Uncle Jimmy had come to the back porch when Francis started yelling. "Who started this?" said Uncle Jack. Francis and I pointed at each other. "Grandma," he bawled, "she called me a whore-lady and jumped on me!" "Is that true, Scout?" said Uncle Jack. "I reckon so." When Uncle Jack looked down at me, his features were like Aunt Alexandra's. "You know I told you you'd get in trouble if you used words like that? I told you, didn't I?" "Yes sir, but-" "Well, you're in trouble now. Stay there." I was debating whether to stand there or run, and tarried in indecision a moment too long: I turned to flee but Uncle Jack was quicker. I found myself suddenly looking at a tiny ant struggling with a bread crumb in the grass. "I'll never speak to you again as long as I live! I hate you an' despise you an' hope you die tomorrow!" A statement that


to grumble. John Trelawney The next morning he and I set out on foot for the Admi- Postscript—I did not tell you that Blandly, who, by the ral Benbow, and there I found my mother in good health and way, is to send a consort after us if we don’t turn up by the spirits. The captain, who had so long been a cause of so much end of August, had found an admirable fellow for sailing discomfort, was gone where the wicked cease from troubling. Contents master—a stiff man, which I regret, but in all other respects a The squire had had everything repaired, and the public rooms treasure. Long John Silver unearthed a very competent man and the sign repainted, and had added some furniture—above Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 60 61 all a beautiful armchair for mother in the bar. He had found stage, for when I was awakened at last it was by a punch in her a boy as an apprentice also so that she should not want the ribs, and I opened my eyes to find that we were standing help while I was gone. still before a large building in a city street and that the day It was on seeing that boy that I understood, for the first had already broken a long time. time, my situation. I had thought up to that moment of the “Where are we?” I asked. adventures before me, not at all of the home that I was leav- “Bristol,” said Tom. “Get down.” ing; and now, at sight of this clumsy stranger, who was to stay Mr. Trelawney had taken up his residence at an inn far here in my place beside my mother, I had my first attack of down the docks to superintend the work upon the schooner. tears. I am afraid I led that boy a dog’s life, for as he was new Thither we had now to walk, and our way, to my great de- to the work, I had a hundred opportunities of setting him light, lay along the quays and beside the great multitude of right and putting him down, and I was not slow to profit by ships of all sizes and rigs and nations. In one, sailors were them. singing at their work, in another there were men aloft, high The night passed, and the next day, after dinner, Redruth over my head, hanging to threads that seemed no thicker than and I were afoot again and on the road. I said good-bye to a spider’s. Though I had lived by the shore all my life, I Mother and the cove where I had lived since I was born, and seemed never to have been near the sea till then. The smell of the dear old Admiral Benbow—since he was repainted, no tar and salt was something new. I saw the most wonderful longer quite so dear. One of my last thoughts was of the figureheads, that had all been far over the ocean. I saw, be- captain, who had


to the board, in this point of view, the more manifold the advantages of the step appeared; so, they came to the conclusion that the only way of providing for Oliver effectually, was to send him to sea without delay. Mr. Bumble had been despatched to make various preliminary inquiries, with the view of finding out some captain or other who wanted a cabin-boy without any friends; and was returning to the workhouse to communicate the result of his mission; when he encountered at the gate, no less a person than Mr. Sowerberry, the parochial undertaker. Mr. Sowerberry was a tall gaunt, large-jointed man, attired in a suit of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the same colour, and shoes to answer. His features were not naturally intended to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general rather given to professional jocosity. His step was elastic, and his face betokened inward pleasantry, as he advanced to Mr. Bumble, and shook him cordially by the hand. 'I have taken the measure of the two women that died last night, Mr. Bumble,' said the undertaker. 'You'll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry,' said the beadle, as he thrust his thumb and forefinger into the proferred snuff-box of the undertaker: which was an ingenious little model of a patent coffin. 'I say you'll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry,' repeated Mr. Bumble, tapping the undertaker on the shoulder, in a friendly manner, with his cane. 'Think so?' said the undertaker in a tone which half admitted and half disputed the probability of the event. 'The prices allowed by the board are very small, Mr. Bumble.' 'So are the coffins,' replied the beadle: with precisely as near an approach to a laugh as a great official ought to indulge in. Mr. Sowerberry was much tickled at this: as of course he ought to be; and laughed a long time without cessation. 'Well, well, Mr. Bumble,' he said at length, 'there's no denying that, since the new system of feeding has come in, the coffins are something narrower and more shallow than they used to be; but we must have some profit, Mr. Bumble. Well-seasoned timber is an expensive article, sir; and all the iron handles come, by canal, from Birmingham.' 'Well, well,' said Mr. Bumble, 'every trade has its drawbacks. A fair profit is, of course, allowable.' 'Of course, of course,' replied the undertaker; 'and if I don't get a profit upon this or that particular article, why, I make it up in the long-run, you see--he! he! he!' 'Just so,' said Mr. Bumble. 'Though I must say,' continued the undertaker, resuming the current of observations which the beadle had interrupted: 'though I must say, Mr. Bumble, that I have to contend against one very great disadvantage: which is, that all the stout people go off the quickest. The people who have been better off, and have paid rates for many years, are the first to sink when they come into the house; and let me tell you, Mr. Bumble, that three or four inches over


he hain't ever done anything to hurt anybody. Just fishes a little, to get money to get drunk on -- and loafs around considerable; but lord, we all do that -- leastways most of us -- --------------------------------------------------------- -218- preachers and such like. But he's kind of good -- he give me half a fish, once, when there warn't enough for two; and lots of times he's kind of stood by me when I was out of luck." "Well, he's mended kites for me, Huck, and knitted hooks on to my line. I wish we could get him out of there." "My! we couldn't get him out, Tom. And besides, 'twouldn't do any good; they'd ketch him again." "Yes -- so they would. But I hate to hear 'em abuse him so like the dickens when he never done -- that." "I do too, Tom. Lord, I hear 'em say he's the bloodiest looking villain in this country, and they wonder he wasn't ever hung before." "Yes, they talk like that, all the time. I've heard 'em say that if he was to get free they'd lynch him." "And they'd do it, too." The boys had a long talk, but it brought them little comfort. As the twilight drew on, they found themselves hanging about the neighborhood of the little isolated jail, perhaps with an undefined hope that something would happen that might clear away their difficulties. But nothing happened; there seemed to be no angels or fairies interested in this luckless captive. The boys did as they had often done before -- went to the cell grating and gave Potter some tobacco --------------------------------------------------------- -219- and matches. He was on the ground floor and there were no guards. His gratitude for their gifts had always smote their consciences before -- it cut deeper than ever, this time. They felt cowardly and treacherous to the last degree when Potter said: "You've been mighty good to me, boys -- better'n anybody else in this town. And I don't forget it, I don't. Often I says to myself, says I, 'I used to mend all the boys' kites and things, and show 'em where the good fishin' places was, and befriend 'em what I could, and now they've all forgot old Muff when he's in trouble; but Tom don't, and Huck don't -- they don't forget him, says I, 'and I don't forget them.' Well, boys, I done an awful thing -- drunk and crazy at the time -- that's the only way I account for it -- and now I got to swing for it, and it's right. Right, and best, too, I reckon -- hope so, anyway. Well, we won't talk about that. I don't want to make you feel bad; you've befriended me. But what I want to say, is, don't you ever get drunk -- then you won't ever get here. Stand a litter furder west -- so -- that's it; it's a prime comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck of trouble, and there don't


her concentration was on Milo, the human being she’d knit death around, and how she could unravel it. If she could unravel it. “Will he remember?” she asked Gabe quietly. “When he’s… un-stoned?” His answer came low, and chilly as the wind soughing off the sea. “In the few times this has happened before,” he said, with a deliberate tone that said he highly disapproved of every single time, “the victim hasn’t remembered much from the last few hours before they were attacked. He likely won’t recall seeing us at all.” Victim. Attack. Deliberate choices of language. Lore’s shoulders hunched. Gabe’s fingers flexed in and out of fists, an unreadable look in his one visible eye. “So how do you want to do this?” She’d hoped he would have an idea, but that must’ve been a bridge too far. Lore swallowed, bending her hands back and forth in preparation for pins and needles. “I guess the same way I fixed the corpse in the vaults,” she said finally. “Just try to… reverse it.” He nodded, one hard jerk of his chin. “I’ll help.” It didn’t sound like an offer of assistance, though. It sounded more like an order. Like he didn’t trust her to do it on her own. And even though Lore didn’t really trust herself, either, it still felt like salt in a cut. Bastian noticed the tension hovering between them, so thick it was nearly visible, and herded Val and Mari back toward the office, still talking. Val looked irritated, Mari bemused. Still, both of them seemed to sense that this was something done better without an audience, and let Bastian lead them away. Good. She didn’t want them to watch this. Banishing thoughts of her childhood and her surrogate mothers, Lore turned to Milo and his terrified stone eyes. “All right,” she murmured. “Here we go.” Tentatively, she stretched out her hands. She felt the air displace next to her as Gabe did the same. A breath into two sets of lungs, taken and held, dropping them into the space where Mortem and Spiritum became tangible. Lore’s senses flooded with death immediately. This wasn’t like with Horse, a natural expansion of Mortem as the body died, a widening corona of darkness. The entropy surrounding Milo was thick as tar, a conundrum of nothingness made nearly solid by its sheer mass. The contradiction of it made Lore’s mind slippery. She gritted her teeth. This wasn’t about thinking—the two times she’d done this, it’d been on pure instinct. It was about feeling. Her eyes stayed open, her vision graying out into the black-and-white that showed life and death in stark contrasts. The man before her was all in black, a nimbus of blazing dark outlining his form. Dark threads spun from her fingers, thin filaments like spiderwebs, connecting her to the Mortem she’d channeled into his body, the shell of it she’d spun. But at his center was colorless light, a kernel of life untouched. He could be saved. To turn living matter to stone, she’d knit death into the


faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen. First came ten soldiers carrying clubs; these were all shaped like the three gardeners, oblong and flat, with their hands and feet at the corners: next the ten courtiers; these were ornamented all over with diamonds, and walked two and two, as the soldiers did. After these came the royal children; there were ten of them, and the little dears came jumping merrily along hand in hand, in couples: they were all ornamented with hearts. Next came the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and among them Alice recognised the White Rabbit: it was talking in a hurried nervous manner, smiling at everything that was said, and went by without noticing her. Then followed the Knave of Hearts, carrying the King's crown on a crimson velvet cushion; and, last of all this grand procession, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS. Alice was rather doubtful whether she ought not to lie down on her face like the three gardeners, but she could not remember every having heard of such a rule at processions; `and besides, what would be the use of a procession,' thought she, `if people had all to lie down upon their faces, so that they couldn't see it?' So she stood still where she was, and waited. When the procession came opposite to Alice, they all stopped and looked at her, and the Queen said severely `Who is this?' She said it to the Knave of Hearts, who only bowed and smiled in reply. `Idiot!' said the Queen, tossing her head impatiently; and, turning to Alice, she went on, `What's your name, child?' `My name is Alice, so please your Majesty,' said Alice very politely; but she added, to herself, `Why, they're only a pack of cards, after all. I needn't be afraid of them!' `And who are THESE?' said the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners who were lying round the rosetree; for, you see, as they were lying on their faces, and the pattern on their backs was the same as the rest of the pack, she could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or courtiers, or three of her own children. `How should I know?' said Alice, surprised at her own courage. `It's no business of MINE.' The Queen turned crimson with fury, and, after glaring at her for a moment like a wild beast, screamed `Off with her head! Off--' `Nonsense!' said Alice, very loudly and decidedly, and the Queen was silent. The King laid his hand upon her arm, and timidly said `Consider, my dear: she is only a child!' The Queen turned angrily away from him, and said to the Knave `Turn them over!' The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot. `Get up!' said the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the three gardeners instantly jumped up, and began bowing to the King, the Queen, the royal children, and everybody else. `Leave off that!' screamed the Queen. `You make me giddy.' And


mounted in the village as the seventh week approached since the impudent missionaries built their church in the Evil Forest. The villagers were so certain about the doom that awaited these men that one or two converts thought it wise to suspend their allegiance to the new faith. At last the day came by which all the missionaries should have died. But they were still alive, building a new red-earth and thatch house for their teacher, Mr. Kiaga. That week they won a handful more converts. And for the first time they had a woman. Her name was Nneka, the wife of Amadi, who was a prosperous farmer. She was very heavy with child. Nneka had had four previous pregnancies and child-births. But each time she had borne twins, and they had been immediately thrown away. Her husband and his family were already becoming highly critical of such a woman and were not unduly perturbed when they found she had fled to join the Christians. It was a good riddance. One morning Okonkwo's cousin, Amikwu, was passing by the church on his way from the neighbouring village, when he saw Nwoye among the Christians. He was greatly surprised, and when he got home he went straight to Okonkwo's hut and told him what he had seen. The women began to talk excitedly, but Okonkwo sat unmoved. It was late afternoon before Nwoye returned. He went into the obi and saluted his father, but he did not answer. Nwoye turned round to walk into the inner compound when his father, suddenly overcome with fury, sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck. "Where have you been?" he stammered. Nwoye struggled to free himself from the choking grip. "Answer me," roared Okonkwo, "before I kill you!" He seized a heavy stick that lay on the dwarf wall and hit him two or three savage blows. "Answer me!" he roared again. Nwoye stood looking at him and did not say a word. The women were screaming outside, afraid to go in. "Leave that boy at once!" said a voice in the outer compound. It was Okonkwo's uncle, Uchendu. "Are you mad?" Okonkwo did not answer. But he left hold of Nwoye, who walked away and never returned. He went back to the church and told Mr. Kiaga that he had decided to go to Umuofia where the white missionary had set up a school to teach young Christians to read and write. Mr. Kiaga's joy was very great. "Blessed is he who forsakes his father and his mother for my sake," he intoned. "Those that hear my words are my father and my mother." Nwoye did not fully understand. But he was happy to leave his father. He would return later to his mother and his brothers and sisters and convert them to the new faith. As Okonkwo sat in his hut that night, gazing into a log fire, he thought over the matter. A sudden fury rose within him and he felt a strong desire to take up his machete, go to


fragile peace Arin and I had fostered disappeared. To my consternation, his gamble paid off. Now that he knew my magic reacted to threats against Sefa or Marek, he found creative ways to ensure I felt genuine fear for them every session. He had Vaun take them for a walk to Essam, and my magic hurled a spade into the board. Another session, he described exactly how a tribunal would condemn Sefa for assaulting the High Counselor, and the methods they might choose to put her to death. I managed to levitate one of the war chests. Only for a second, while magic burned my cuffs and fear for Sefa tightened my gut. Today, the war chest flew across the room, cracking against the image of Niyar. It flickered, revealing the white wall behind the animated painting, before re-forming. Instead of rejoicing in this development, Arin seemed to grow grimmer. “Are you eating?” I was thrown. “Yes?” Though the quality of food had improved from the milky wheat nonsense of the first week, the guards’ talent for cooking had not improved with it. I had used Wes’s bread as a weapon the other day. “Jasadi magic is a well that replenishes at unpredictable speeds. If you reach the bottom of your well too quickly, you might be left powerless until it refills. You are scraping stone.” “I’m moving the chests.” The rest was irrelevant. I had been weak and weary before. I could work through it. I thought of Marek’s body strung across the Citadel’s gates. The pulse at my wrists didn’t sting this time. The weapons Arin arranged on top of the chest hovered in the air for a millisecond, then flew into the wall on the far side of the center with deadly accuracy. The perimeters of my vision blurred. When I opened my eyes, the fake sky greeted me. Arin’s head moved over the sun. He glowered at me. “I’ll need a moment,” I said casually. “You need more than a moment.” He reached down, and the room spun again as I was hauled upright. My traitorous legs buckled. Arin caught me with an arm around my waist, his frown deepening. Plastered to his side and weightless, I opened my mouth to shriek obscenities directly into his ear, then reconsidered. Why bother? I didn’t have the energy for a respectable tantrum. His body was a solid line against my own. This was the closest I’d been to a man I wasn’t trying to stab. The closest I had been to anyone not actively trying to kill me, actually. How depressing. I waited for the swell of panic to hit at his touch. I had chalked up its absence the last time he touched me as a fluke. I was too distracted wondering if he would snap my neck to consider panicking. But he was touching me now and—nothing. No panic. Still plenty of discomfort, though. The moment we were near enough, I wriggled away, stumbling toward my bed. Arin did not prevaricate. “Wes and Jeru will accompany you to


Tim when he came back and had found the note gone. So they knew the two children had taken it- and they couldn't imagine why they had not obeyed what George had said in the note, and come down to the dungeons! Dick heard their voices. He clutched hold of Anne to make her keep quiet. He saw through the broken archway that the men were going in the opposite direction. "Anne! I know where we can hide!" said the boy, excitedly. "Down the old well! We can climb down the ladder a little way and hide there. I'm sure no one would ever look there!" Anne didn't at all want to climb down the well even a little way. But Dick pulled her to her feet and hurried her off to the middle of the old courtyard. The men were hunting around the other side of the castle. There was just time to climb in. Dick slipped aside the old wooden cover of the well and helped Anne down the ladder. She was very scared. Then the boy climbed down himself and slipped the wooden cover back again over his head, as best he could. The old stone slab that Tim had sat on when he fell down the well was still there. Dick climbed down to it and tested it. It was immovable. "It's safe for you to sit on, Anne, if you don't want to keep clinging to the ladder," he whispered. So Anne sat shivering on the stone slab across the well-shaft, waiting to see if they were discovered or not. They kept hearing the voices of the men, now near at hand and now far-off. Then the men began to shout for them. "Dick! Anne! The others want you! Where are you? We've exciting news for you." "Well, why don't they let Julian and George come up and tell us then?" whispered Dick. "There's something wrong, I know there is. I do wish we could get to Julian and George and find out what has happened." The two men came into the courtyard. They were angry. "Where have those kids got to?" said Jake. "Their boat is still in the cove, so they haven't got away. They must be hiding somewhere. We can't wait all day for them." "Well, let's take some food and drink down to the two we've locked up," said the other man. "There's plenty in that little stone room. I suppose it's a store the children brought over. We'll leave half in the room so that the other two kids can have it. And we'll take their boat with us so that they can't escape." "Right," said Jake. "The thing to do is to get the gold away as quickly as possible, and make sure the children are prisoners here until we've made a safe getaway. We won't bother any more about trying to buy the island. After all, it was only the idea of getting the ingots that put us up to the idea of getting Kirrin Castle and the island." "Well-come


joy. His father was alive beside her. His people were around him. He wasn’t the hall monitor anymore. He was a hero, a king, a damn senator. He was allowed to love them and be loved by them in return. His wife stood to his left, her smile radiant. She caught his eye, and the look they shared said it all. Better than anyone she knew how hard he had worked, how much they’d sacrificed to get to this moment. There were no mysteries anymore, no monsters but the ones you had to have lunch with in DC. He would take a little rest. They would go down to Miami, or they’d treat themselves to a trip to the Caribbean. He would make up for every moment he’d been absent or distracted in pursuit of this goal. “We did it,” she whispered in his ear. He drew her close. All is well. Darlington sat in his office at Black Elm, looking out at the borders lush with flowers, the neatly trimmed hedge maze. As always, the house was full of people, friends who had come to visit, scholars staying to make use of his extensive library or give seminars. He heard laughter floating through the halls, lively conversation from somewhere in the kitchen. He knew everything he wished to know. He need only touch his hand to a book and he grasped its contents. He could pick up a teacup and know the history of anyone who had ever held it. He visited travelers and mystics on their deathbeds, held their hands, eased their pain. He saw the scope of their lives, absorbed their knowledge through his touch. The mysteries of this world and the next had been revealed to him. Not because he’d undergone some ritual, not even through rigorous study of the arcane, but because magic was in his blood. He’d almost given up hope, abandoned childish wishes. But it had been there all along, a secret power, just waiting to awaken. He saw Alex in the garden, a black-winged bird, night gathered around her like a silken shroud shot through with stars. His monstrous queen. His gentle ruler. He knew what she was now too. He returned to his writings. All is well. Alex stood outside of a freshly painted bungalow—white adobe, trimmed in blue. Wind chimes hung from the porch. A stone Buddha held court in the garden, lush with lavender and sage. Her mother sat sipping tea on a daybed heaped with colorful cushions. This was her house—a real house, not a lonely apartment with a balcony that faced the wall of another lonely apartment. Mira rose and stretched and went inside, leaving the door open behind her. Alex drifted after her. The house was tidy, cozy; crystals crowded the fireplace mantel. Her mother rinsed her cup in the sink. A knock sounded. A blond woman stood at the door, a rolled yoga mat slung over her shoulder. She looked familiar, but Alex wasn’t sure how. “Ready?” the woman asked. “Just about,” Mira said. They couldn’t see


facts: 1. He was still in the building. 2. He was not responding to any of my attempts at contact. 3. He did not hold the elevator doors. Plus, racking my brain did not yield anything—at all—that I might have done to him to push him away. I’d been worried that seeing his final portrait might make him run off screaming—but he hadn’t even seen it yet. And other than that, I hadn’t yelled at him or lied to him or—god forbid—asked him for help. Wait—I hadn’t let myself need him, had I? I’d let myself want him, but that wasn’t the same thing. Unless asking him to sit for the portrait counted. But wait—I hadn’t asked him to do that! He’d offered! Weren’t those different things? Should I never have accepted? I could have asked these questions all night. But Sue needed to get off the phone. She and Witt were headed to the dinner car for a jazz concert. “Guess what the Canadian cocktail of the day is called?” “What?” I asked glumly. “The Angry Canadian.” “Joke’s on you,” I said flatly. “There’s no such thing.” “That’s what I said!” Sue responded, maybe hoping we could talk about something, anything, else. But no luck. At last, in conclusion, Sue said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe he’s got a terminal illness.” * * * BUT I KNEW better than to hope for a terminal illness. And I just couldn’t seem to believe that he was a bad person, either. It had to have been me. Desperation over the art show had made me needy. I should’ve kept my distance. Stayed aloof. Said no when he offered to be my model. What was I thinking? Of course he’d glimpsed my life and bolted. Who’d want to get anywhere near it? In the end, I took the portrait to the gallery without ever showing it to Joe—or seeing him at all. And then I spent the next two days being ignored and obsessing over why that was happening. In the meantime, I rearranged my paints. Organized my canvases. Restacked the dishes in my cabinets. Painted Peanut’s toenails with glitter polish. Watched a video tutorial about how to make one large T-shirt into twelve different outfits. And stewed. Emotionally. Oh, and I googled “Why men don’t text you back.” But it wasn’t very helpful. I also had another brain scan to check my edema. And that wasn’t helpful, either. Dr. Estrera reported that, shockingly, according to the scan, the edema had now largely resolved. He compared last week’s scan with this week’s scan—both of which looked quite similar to me. “We’re seeing an eighty-one percent reduction in swelling in the area,” Dr. Estrera said proudly. Big news, I guess—but it didn’t do me much good if nothing else had changed. And nothing else had changed. After the scan, Dr. Nicole gave me a battery of facial recognition tests to compare to my baseline. And I was exactly the same on those as I’d been a month ago. The same identical numerical score. I knocked


throw it away. I slid my thumb under the flap. The envelope tore. I fumbled the letter out. It was a single lined page, folded into thirds, the handwriting sloppy. Ms. Shaw or Cunningham or whatever your name is now— I have thought a lot about what I would say to you if I got the chance, but now that I’m actually doing it I have trouble finding the words. You turned my whole reality upside down. I lost all my friends, my house, my life. My dad. The man I thought he was turned out not to be real at all. He wasn’t my loving father, he was a monster. But the thing is, you lied. My father didn’t attack you. You lied on the stand and sent the wrong man to jail. What I want to know is: Why? Were you protecting someone? Are they still out there? Have they hurt other little girls because you covered for them? I am trying to understand. I have been trying for years to put together the pieces of my childhood in a way that makes them make sense, to comprehend what happened to the father I loved. I can’t comprehend your part in it. If you’re ready to tell the truth, I’d like to hear it. —AJ I could barely read the words, my hands were trembling so much. AJ. Alan Stahl, Jr. I’d almost forgotten that Stahl had a son. He’d never been in court. The only image I could summon up was a snapshot, a gangly kid in a striped shirt with Stahl’s arm around him. I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it. He knows. A wave of nausea rolled over me. I threw the letter aside, wrenched open the door, and staggered out onto the road. A cold wind sliced past me. Alan Michael Stahl was an evil man. Liv and Cass had seen him. It was him. Or had they seen someone who looked enough like him that the police could push traumatized children into identifying the wrong person? The forest stood dark and deep before me. Persephone was in there, somewhere. Because she was why we’d been out there that day, because Stahl was one secret and she was the other, they’d tangled together in my mind. My monster and my goddess, their fingers always catching at my hair, trying to drag me back to that day. I’d always fought that pull. There was a flashlight in the trunk. I’d gotten it out before I quite knew what I was doing. I stood a moment, flashlight in one hand, bottle in the other, and waited for my better judgment to arrive. There was only the wind, and the distant calling of an owl. I crossed the road, hopped over the small ditch, and walked straight in among the trees. I wondered what my therapist would think of me thrashing through the underbrush. Probably not the version of “reintegrating my past selves” that she’d imagined. I should probably call her. That would probably be the smart thing to


both use a nap, I think.” It wasn’t a lie. Between Bastian’s party and waking up at the first snap of dawn, she was tired, too. Gabe turned, brow arched. His one blue eye dipped to the book she held, then widened. “That’s the one you’re taking?” The gilt cover glinted up as she turned the book around to study it for the first time. More erotic poetry. The painting on the front depicted a randy satyr chasing a nymph wearing nothing but lots of long blond hair. Her smile grew wicked edges. “What’s the matter with it, Mort?” “Nothing at all.” He strode toward the door, stiff-legged. “Maybe you could read it, too. Learn something. Since you’ve been celibate your whole life—” “You’re so sure I’ve never broken my vows, then?” She tilted her head curiously. “Have you?” Gabe gave her a cool glance over his shoulder, chin lifted. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” The door opened as Gabe was reaching for it, letting in a rather harriedlooking Malcolm dressed head-to-toe in Presque Mort black. He straightened, clearly ready to bring down the force of a holy stare onto flighty nobles, then started when he recognized them, his flinty expression dissolving into a smile. “Good afternoon, Lore. And Your Grace.” “Spare me,” Gabe muttered, but he clapped the other man companionably on the back. “Didn’t expect to see you two here without your royal charge.” Malcolm held a pile of books in his hands; he passed them to enter the library and headed to one of the small staircases that led to the upper floors. “Anton made it sound like he wants Lore sewed to the Sun Prince’s ass.” “I’m actually on my way to find him now,” Lore said quickly. Gabe and Malcolm were obviously friends, and she liked the man from the little time she’d spent with him, but she assumed he was just as conditioned to report everything to Anton as Gabe was. “Gabe thought Bastian might be here, but it appears he’s spending his leisure hours elsewhere.” Like in the stables, trying to feed apples to a dead horse. Malcolm looked down from the second story, leaning over the gilded railing just long enough to see the cover of Lore’s book. His dark eyes widened as he snorted a laugh. “Taking get close to Bastian very seriously, I see.” “I always follow orders,” Lore replied. Gabe grimaced, but was too preoccupied with what Malcolm was doing to make a snide comment. “Is Anton moving more books out of the Church library?” “Not quite.” Malcolm set his book pile down on the floor, then hefted one of them into an empty space in the shelf. The thing was thick, and Malcolm’s muscles strained as he pushed it into place. Truly, it was a waste how goodlooking all the Presque Mort were. “He asked for these to be brought to him for study. Newer editions of the Compendium, some translated from other languages and then back into Auverrani.” Another over-thick book was pushed into its space. “No idea why,


word comes out frayed and uneven. “Are there children? Any girls?” The two men exchange glances. I’m not sure what this means. Maybe no one’s been counting… Maybe there are too many to count… My next question is the most important because the answer will tell me what has already happened and what is still to come. “How long has the pestilence been in residence?” “The first cases appeared two weeks ago,” one of the men answers, which means the worst effects of the disease have arrived. I try to slow my racing heart. “Is my husband here?” “Young Master Yang is in Nanjing.” Relief. He’s safe, but then I’m drawn back into the frightening reality. I’m not brave enough… I’m not knowledgeable enough… I put three fingers over my lips. Tap, tap, tap. The motion is calming, while at the same time the pattern echoes the calculations I’m making—like moving the pieces on an abacus to arrive at a solution. I must protect my son… I must find my daughters… Tap, tap, tap. I turn to Poppy. She is white with fear. I try to reassure her. “You have nothing to worry about. You already survived smallpox, as did I.” She slowly nods, but I’m not sure she believes me. “Follow me.” I hurry to my chambers. Once inside, I give the baby to Poppy, who mutely stares at me. “Keep him here,” I tell her. “Do not leave for any reason, and do not let anyone in.” I exit the room, pull the door closed, and wait until I hear Poppy clamp the lock into place. I stay alert, placing each foot carefully in front of the last, not wanting to fall in my haste. When I reach my daughters’ room, I try the handle. The door is locked, which I take to be a good sign. I knock and call to my eldest daughter in a low voice, “Yuelan.” I hear movement inside. Then close, so close, just on the other side of the door, Yuelan says, “Mama.” “Are you well?” “Chunlan and I are fine, but Ailan…” Yuelan starts to cry. “We put her outside when the fever came. Someone took her to the garden.” With that, as filled with doubts as I am, I know what I must do. First, though, I try to bolster my daughters’ spirits for whatever might come next. “You did everything correctly,” I say. “I’m proud to have you as my children. Don’t ever forget that.” The wrenching sounds of my two oldest girls weeping follows me down the corridor back to my bedchamber. Poppy unbolts the door and lets me in. I hurriedly scan my shelves, putting whatever herbs I think will be useful into satchels. When I tell her what I’m going to do, she starts to cry big, gulping sobs. I’m working hard to tamp down my own fear and have neither the time nor the will to comfort her. Poppy puts my satchels in the corridor, I take Lian in my arms, and together we go to my


the merit of fitting to a nicety and adjusted my clean white tucker, I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs. Fairfax, and that antipathy new pupil would not at least recoil from me with antipathy. Having opened my chamber window, and seen that I left all things straight and neat on the toilet table, I ventured forth.     Traversing the long and matted gallery, I descended the slippery steps of oak; then I gained the hall. I halted there a minute. I looked at some pictures on the walls (one I remember represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace) at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak, curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing. Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur. The hall door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold. It was a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields. Advancing on to the lawn I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion. It was three stories high, of proportions not vast, though considerable a gentleman's manor-house, not a nobleman's seat; battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look. Its gray front stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing; they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn-trees, strong, knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion's designation. Farther off were hills not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so craggy, nor so like barriers of separation from the living world, but yet quiet and lonely enough hills, and seeming to embrace Thornfield with a seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near the stirring locality of Millcote. A little hamlet, whose roofs were blent with trees, straggled up the side of one of these hills; the church of the district stood nearer Thornfield; its old tower-top looked over a knoll between the house and gates.     I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, and listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying the wide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking what a great place it was for one lonely little dame like Mrs. Fairfax to inhabit, when that lady appeared at the door.     "What! out already?" said she. "I see you are an early riser." I went up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand.     "How do you like Thornfied?" she asked. I told her I liked it very much.     "Yes," she said, "it is a


them. The internet and the millions of computers associated with it, the virtual reality that therein exists and that will become more vivid in the years ahead, is not a reality at all, and to live in such a fabrication is to be buried alive without the release of death. Desperate and empty and confused people might choose such an existence. Such a choice will lead not to Shangri-la, but to a vortex of madness. Avatars do not make a community; they are shadows of people, not people. Mile by mile, Michael more fully understands the truth of the future that could overtake him, and he is chilled to his core. Nina needs him, and John needs him. Michael needs them even more than they need him. His commitment to them must be complete, at the risk of a second and permanent death, if he is to have a hope of a life in true community with others. HORSEMEN Bearing no light, Aleem and Kuba and Hakeem and Carlisle and Jason and Speedo are born out of the dead trees like a final fall of spoiled fruit. Before them, buildings slab the clearing, darker than the night and without detail, large but giving the impression of greater size than they possess, magnified by their mystery. Aleem is reminded of a cool video game in which the ultimate sequence is set in a ruined castle where the Princess of Time lies bespelled in a secret redoubt, during the last hours of the world. She alone has the power to turn back the clock to an age of peace and plenty. As a player, you can choose to be Prince Endymion, in which case your goal is to find the princess and wake her so that she can live in the world to save it. Or you can be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—Pestilence, War, Famine, or Death—who are seeking the princess to murder her and complete the destruction of the world. Because the weapons given to Pestilence and Famine take longer to obliterate someone, Aleem has always chosen to be either War on a red horse or Death on a pale horse. The horses look like powerful stallions, but they are really machines equipped with all kinds of kick-ass weapons. With his skill at devising strategies and tactics, with his keen reflexes, Aleem routinely runs up such a kill score of knights defending the princess that Prince Endymion is doomed, the princess remains asleep, and the world ends in a most satisfying frenzy of rats and bats and bursting bombs. Here, no princess awaits him. Just maybe one uppity bitch who needs to be brought to her knees, apologize, plead for her life, and be buried alive with the boy she’s turned into a hopeless pussy. As satisfying as burying her alive would be, Aleem knows that he might have to forego that pleasure because of the need to deal with the SUVs. Although Kuba has hoped to use Nina for a while, he’ll have to be satisfied to wet


he could enjoy the cold rather than endure it. She wished that she could love him in the same way that he loved her, except she didn’t know how. * * * After they’d travelled across a wilderness too desolate and remote to sustain any human colony, there appeared on the horizon, like an acid-trip mirage, a collection of some of humanity’s most famous historic monuments. This area was known as Landmark Plateau. At the foot of Mount Vinson the tallest mountain on the continent, sat many of the greatest landmarks ever constructed, each scooped out of their original location by the alien occupiers and floated through the sky, only to be neatly deposited on this continent like a museum collection. From Beijing, the Forbidden City had been positioned next to the Pyramids of Cairo, which was now neighbours with the Palace of Versailles. From Florence, the Duomo had been parked next to Peru’s Machu Picchu, which in turn sat beside the gleaming steel of the Frank Gehry concert hall from downtown Los Angeles. The world’s most recognizable statues had been positioned in an orderly line as if they were waiting in an immigration queue – Christ the Redeemer standing in front of the Buddhas of Bayman, in front of the Angel of Independence with the Statue of Liberty at the very front. Behind them the sacred places of worship had been grouped like a theme-park zone – Saint Basil’s Cathedral, Notre-Dame, the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia and the great Mosque of Mecca huddled around the Tibetan monastery of Paro Taktsang, including a portion of the Himalayan mountain it had been nestled upon. There was no clear purpose to this, giving the impression that the alien occupiers were complying with some cumbersome interstellar legal obligation, a subsection of the planetary conquest lawbook stating that: ‘No indigenous species shall be relocated to a reservation without due respect being paid to their cultural heritage.’ In twenty years of enduring the strongest winds and fiercest colds, none of the landmarks had suffered any damage, each imbued with a miraculous alien forcefield. While ice and snow settled on them, rendering them winter-wonderland versions of their former selves, their foundations were as strong as they’d ever been. When controversial attempts had been made to scavenge their precious resources – the idea of smelting the Statue of Liberty and turning her into ice picks had been met with dismay – no human tool could chip their stone or cut their steel, and to date the landmarks remained perfectly preserved, an open-air museum of our greatest achievements. The convoy of snow vehicles came to a stop beside the Taj Mahal, the white marble mausoleum built four hundred years ago by order of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favourite wife, carved out from the seventeen hectares of gardens beside the banks of the Yamuna River. The greatest example of Indo-Islamic architecture now nestled in the ice and snow, as majestic in this landscape as it had been in the Mughal gardens. The ice-adapted students and


He finally got the pack open. He dug around until he felt the wood and gears wrapped in cloth. He pulled it out. He hesitated before handing it over. The Blue Fairy opened the cloth, looking at the pieces within. “No, you haven’t gotten very far at all.” “I know. But I—” “Such a silly little thing,” they said. “It isn’t much, is it? And yet, it changes almost everything. Your HARP is evidence of that. Perhaps I can be of assistance. I can see the shape of it. The design. Quite simple, really. I hope I never have one of my own. But I can fix it for you. It will be more precise than what you have given the HARP.” “You will?” Vic asked, shocked. “Yes,” they said, with a glint in their eyes Vic didn’t like. “You want to know the reason your father was taken by the Authority? It was for one reason, and one reason only: not to create, but to eradicate.” “Eradicate what?” Rambo asked in a small voice. “Free will,” the Blue Fairy said. “Choice. The power to make our own decisions. The Authority wants it removed from all of us. And you will be the ones to stop them.” After, Vic’s head spun in a maelstrom as the Blue Fairy led them from the sphere room. The Doorman waited on the other side of the door. He frowned when he saw them. “Well?” “Provide our guests a room,” they said. “They’ll stay with us tonight before setting off in the morning. Victor needs his rest.” The Doorman bowed low. “As you wish. Do you need anything else before we depart?” “No. Thank you, Doorman. That will be all.” They turned to Vic. “I expect this will be the last time I see you. Either you’ll succeed or you won’t. Regardless, this is farewell.” Without forethought, Vic took their hand in his, bringing it to his lips. The metal was cold. “Charmer,” the Blue Fairy said, unmistakable fondness in their voice. “How lovely you are. Will you think of me?” He dropped their hand. “I will.” “I should hope so,” they said. “I’m told I’m impossible to forget.” They glanced at Hap. “Protect this one, HARP 217.” “Y-you don’t have to tell m-me.” “No, I suppose I don’t.” They studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment. Then, “I could take it from you, if you’d like. I could take it all back. Lock away the memories so the past stays in the past. You won’t even know it was there.” Hap didn’t speak for a long moment. “I d-don’t want to forget anymore.” “I see,” they said, stepping back. “Off with you. Do what you came here to do. But first, sleep. And dream.” They whirled around, disappearing back into the sphere room. The door slid shut behind them. “Come on,” the Doorman said. “Before they change their mind.” Vic followed the others in a daze, mind racing. He was exhausted, his eyes filled with sand. His feet dragged along the floor, his pack was


wear the same threadbare sweatshirt I always wear, without a pinching-ass digging-ass bra, and we watch thirteen straight hours of television and then make out in the dark and go to sleep in separate rooms and maybe I’ll use my high-tech vibrator that simulates sucking human lips alone (you need one of those!), if I’m not too exhausted. You’re lying if you say that doesn’t sound like the best night of your life. No one is actually fantasizing about figuring out which leg hole is which in the Sexy-Illusion Bodystocking! I can’t find this on Pornhub anymore, so I’ve got “Two Old Nuns Having Amzing [sic] Lesbian Sex” queued up on a site purporting to have “the best in lesbian erotica.” And I want to talk about how this porn movie you are supposed to furtively jerk off to in your linen closet, or wherever you hide from your family, is thirty-nine minutes and eleven seconds long. I am genuinely curious: Does anyone need this much time to bring themselves to orgasm, as they risk second-degree-burning the tops of their thighs from a blisteringly hot laptop? Also, are there people who watch porn like a show and, I don’t know, take note of the cinematography and shit while they eat chips? Thirty-nine minutes is such a long time to keep one hand hovering over the pause button in case someone wakes up or comes home! I would like to be finished in a maximum of three minutes and nineteen seconds!!!!!! Okay so, we open with a sweeping overhead shot of the Italian (?) countryside (??), and then we follow the camera inside the convent to find a very stern “nun” in a bright white habit, draped in large wooden beads and pretending to read a thick, old Bible. I typically fast-forward through this part because I can feel God watching me and shaking his head with disapproval. There’s a knock at the door and another nun enters the room, eyes cast downward as she says, “I found the other book you wanted, in the archives.” You know what just occurred to me? I could probably write something like this. I have no idea what it would pay or how permanent the (cum) stain on my career might be, but I certainly could come up with something more titillating than “I found this old book in the archives”??? The archival nun (work with me here, okay) is younger than the stern nun, who snatches the book away meanly from her hands while saying, “Let me see!” The room they’re in looks vaguely churchy, with stark white walls, filled with old books and flickering votives in red glass holders. The stern nun sits to flip through the book as her nun apprentice leans curiously (and sexily!) over her shoulder, trying to get a peek. It’s very Meryl Streep and Amy Adams in Doubt, if it was about hot sex instead of, ugh, well, not hot sex? The young nun is reading over the stern nun’s shoulder about “modesty in the fifteenth century for cloistered


the book,” observed the doctor. end a grand total had been made out after five or six wrong The squire and I were both peering over his shoulder as additions, and these words appended, “Bones, his pile.” he opened it, for Dr. Livesey had kindly motioned me to come “I can’t make head or tail of this,” said Dr. Livesey. round from the side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy “The thing is as clear as noonday,” cried the squire. “This the sport of the search. On the first page there were only is the black-hearted hound’s account-book. These crosses stand some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand for the names of ships or towns that they sank or plundered. might make for idleness or practice. One was the same as the The sums are the scoundrel’s share, and where he feared an tattoo mark, “Billy Bones his fancy”; then there was “Mr. W. ambiguity, you see he added something clearer. ‘Offe Caraccas,’ Bones, mate,” “No more rum,” “Off Palm Key he got itt,” and now; you see, here was some unhappy vessel boarded off that some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I coast. God help the poor souls that manned her—coral long could not help wondering who it was that had “got itt,” and ago.” what “itt” was that he got. A knife in his back as like as not. “Right!” said the doctor. “See what it is to be a traveller. “Not much instruction there,” said Dr. Livesey as he passed Right! And the amounts increase, you see, as he rose in rank.” on. There was little else in the volume but a few bearings of The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious places noted in the blank leaves towards the end and a table series of entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at for reducing French, English, and Spanish moneys to a com- the other a sum of money, as in common account-books, but mon value. Contents instead of explanatory writing, only a varying number of “Thrifty man!” cried the doctor. “He wasn’t the one to be crosses between the two. On the 12th of June, 1745, for cheated.” Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 52 53 “And now,” said the squire, “for the other.” point of north inlet cape, bearing E. and a The paper had been sealed in several places with a thimble quarter N. by way of seal; the very thimble, perhaps, that I had found in J.F. the captain’s pocket. The doctor opened the seals with great care, and there fell out the map of an island, with latitude and That was all; but brief as it was, and to me incomprehen- longitude, soundings, names of hills and bays and inlets, and sible, it filled the squire and Dr. Livesey with delight. every particular that would be needed to bring a ship to a safe “Livesey,” said the squire, “you will give up this wretched anchorage


anxious eye. He was already wearied by his walk, and this ascent was formidable to him. He thought, however, it would be less toilsome than the long and broken road, and he determined to attempt it; but Emily, ever watchful of his ease, proposing that he should rest, and dine before they proceeded further, Valancourt went to the carriage for the refreshments deposited there. On his return, he proposed removing a little higher up the mountain, to where the woods opened upon a grand and extensive prospect; and thither they were preparing to go, when they saw a young woman join the children, and caress and weep over them. The travellers, interested by her distress, stopped to observe her. She took the youngest of the children in her arms, and, perceiving the strangers, hastily dried her tears, and proceeded to the cottage. St. Aubert, on enquiring the occasion of her sorrow, learned that her husband, who was a shepherd, and lived here in the summer months to watch over the flocks he led to feed upon these mountains, had lost, on the preceding night, his little all. A gang of gipsies, who had for some time infested the neighbourhood, had driven away several of his master's sheep. 'Jacques,' added the shepherd's wife, 'had saved a little money, and had bought a few sheep with it, and now they must go to his master for those that are stolen; and what is worse than all, his master, when he comes to know how it is, will trust him no longer with the care of his flocks, for he is a hard man! and then what is to become of our children!' The innocent countenance of the woman, and the simplicity of her manner in relating her grievance, inclined St. Aubert to believe her story; and Valancourt, convinced that it was true, asked eagerly what was the value of the stolen sheep; on hearing which he turned away with a look of disappointment. St. Aubert put some money into her hand, Emily too gave something from her little purse, and they walked towards the cliff; but Valancourt lingered behind, and spoke to the shepherd's wife, who was now weeping with gratitude and surprise. He enquired how much money was yet wanting to replace the stolen sheep, and found, that it was a sum very little short of all he had about him. He was perplexed and distressed. 'This sum then,' said he to himself, 'would make this poor family completely happy--it is in my power to give it--to make them completely happy! But what is to become of me?--how shall I contrive to reach home with the little money that will remain?' For a moment he stood, unwilling to forego the luxury of raising a family from ruin to happiness, yet considering the difficulties of pursuing his journey with so small a sum as would be left. While he was in this state of perplexity, the shepherd himself appeared: his children ran to meet him; he took one of them in his arms, and,


think my daddy put her in that damn lake thinking he’d get something he wanted. All I wanted was to have her back.” Silence engulfs us for a long time before Mr. Lamont speaks again. “It all went to shit after that,” Mr. Lamont says. “The camp closed. The Owl Society members went underground, and I had to wait for my own father to die so that I could take over here. I never really got what I wanted, and neither did he.” His voice sounds far away now, like he’s remembering something. “Imagine my delight when those Hollywood folks came around asking if they could make a movie here. They didn’t even know what happened in ’71. They were just scouting for a location, and there I was. I let them shoot their little movie here on the grounds, on the condition that I could give some input. They loved my ideas—a masked killer who grows stronger with every kill!” He slaps his leg and grins. “You saw that freak with the mask. He probably asked for that power, that strength. And there I was, a kid hoping to bring his dead mama back from the grave.” His gaze becomes steely again. “We all want something different.” There’s a knock. Mr. Lamont smiles and backs up toward the door. He flips the lock and in walks Ms. Keane, a bandage wrapped around her head and carrying a machete a foot long. I jump up, and Mr. Lamont points the gun at me. “Sit,” he barks. I don’t. I stay standing as Ms. Keane nuzzles up to Mr. Lamont. He kisses her on the top of her head, and she locks the door. “What is this?” Bezi asks. “What does it look like?” Mr. Lamont asks. “My wife wants in on the fun. It’s only right.” “I can’t believe you,” Kyle mumbles under his breath. Ms. Keane marches up to him and smacks him so hard, a mist of spittle sprays from Kyle’s lips. “Shut up!” she screams in his face, gripping the handle of her weapon so hard that her knuckles pale. “You’ve been betraying us this whole time, you selfish little bastard! You dug up that bird and put it on the porch, hoping they’d get scared and leave.” She balls her hand into a fist. “You had to hide the keys and cut the tires and I could barely get you to do it without you crying like a baby. You’re so goddamn worthless!” I turn to Kyle and watch as sweat cascades from his forehead, dampening the collar of his shirt. He cowers in front of Ms. Keane. “You think I don’t know that you were hiding out there when these two and that other little brat showed up to our house?” she says angrily. “I knew you were out there! Sneaking around! Betraying your family! You’re pathetic!” Kyle doesn’t look at me. I recall how he disappeared as Ms. Keane held us at gunpoint but he also saved us. “You—you told me Tasha and Javi left in


had most studied the devices of Sauron of old. Galadriel indeed had wished that Mithrandir should be the Lead of the Council, and Saruman begrudged them that, for his pride and desire of mastery was grown great; but Mithrandir refused the office, since he would have no ties and no allegiance, save to those who sent him, and he would abide in no place nor be subject to any summons. But Saruman now began to study the lore of the Rings of Power, their making and their history. Now the Shadow grew ever greater, and the hearts of Elrond and Mithrandir darkened. Therefore on a time Mithrandir at great peril went again to Dol Guldur and the pits of the Sorcerer, and he discovered the truth of his fears, and escaped. And returning to Elrond he said: 'True, alas, is our guess. This is not one of the lairi, as many have long supposed. It is Sauron himself who has taken shape again and now grows apace; and he is gathering again all the Rings to his hand; and he seeks ever for news of the One, and of the Heirs of Isildur, if they live still on earth.' And Elrond answered: 'In the hour that Isildur took the Ring and would not surrender it, this doom was wrought, that Sauron should return.' 'Yet the One was lost,' said Mithrandir, 'and while it still lies hid, we can master the Enemy, if we gather our strength and tarry not too long.' Then the White Council was summoned; and Mithrandir urged them to swift deeds, but Curunr spoke against him, and counselled them to wait yet and to watch. 'For I believe not,' said he, 'that the One will ever be found again in Middle-earth. Into Anduin it fell, and long ago, I deem, it was rolled to the Sea. There it shall lie until the end, when all this world is broken and the deeps are removed.' Therefore naught was done at that time, though Elrond's heart misgave him, and he said to Mithrandir: 'Nonetheless I forbode that the One will yet be found, and then war will arise again, and in that war this Age will be ended. Indeed in a second darkness it will end, unless some strange chance deliver us that my eyes cannot see.' 'Many are the strange chances of fee world,' said Mithrandir, 'and help oft shall come from the hands of the weak when the Wise falter.' Thus the Wise were troubled, but none as yet perceived that Curunr had turned to dark thoughts and was already a traitor in heart: for he desired that he and no other should find the Great Ring, so that he might wield it himself and order all the world to his will. Too long he had studied the ways of. Sauron in hope to defeat him, and now he envied him as a rival rather than hated his works. And he deemed that the Ring, which was Sauron's, would seek for its master as he became manifest once more;


at buildings that hadn’t changed, at the thin ridge of White Mountain crest rising above the eastern tree line, it was easy to imagine the place had been cryogenically preserved. Fran had offered me her couch, but the way she said it—“I mean, there’s the dog, and Jacob’s always at volume eleven, and Max still doesn’t sleep through the night”—made it seem more gesture than invitation. So I’d opted to stay in one of the two guest apartments, located right above the ravine in a small house that used to be the business office. There were a bedroom and bathroom on each floor, plus a downstairs kitchen to share. The whole place, I found, smelled like bleach. I unpacked, worrying I hadn’t brought enough sweaters, and thinking, of all things, about Granby pay phones. Imagine me (remember me), fifteen, sixteen, dressed in black even when I wasn’t backstage, my taped-up Doc Martens, the dark, wispy hair fringing my Cabbage Patch face; imagine me, armored in flannel, eyes ringed thick with liner, passing the pay phone and—without looking—picking it up, twirling it upside down, hanging it back the wrong way. That was only at first, though; by junior year, I couldn’t pass one without picking up the receiver, pressing a single number, and listening—because there was at least one phone on which, if you did this, you could hear another conversation through the static. I discovered the trick when I started to call my dorm from the gym lobby phone to ask if I could be late for 10:00 check-in, but after I pressed the first button I heard a boy’s voice, muffled, half volume, complaining to his mother about midterms. She asked if he’d been getting his allergy shots. He sounded whiny and homesick and about twelve years old, and it took me a while to recognize his voice: Tim Busse, a hockey player with bad skin but a beautiful girlfriend. He must have been on a pay phone in his own dorm common, across the ravine. I didn’t understand what rules of telecommunications allowed this to occur, and when I told my husband this story once, he shook his head, said, “That couldn’t happen.” I asked if he was accusing me of lying, or if he thought I’d been hearing voices. “I just mean,” Jerome replied evenly, “that it couldn’t happen.” I stood in the gym lobby mesmerized, not wanting to miss a word. But eventually I had to; I called my own dorm, asked the on-duty teacher for ten extra minutes to run across campus and get the history book I’d left in Commons. No, she said, I could not. I had three minutes till check-in. I hung up, lifted the receiver again, pressed one number. There was Tim Busse’s voice still. Magic. He told his mother he was failing physics. I was surprised. And now I had a secret about him. A secret secret, one he hadn’t meant to share. I had a sidelong crush after that on Tim Busse, to whom I’d never previously paid an ounce of


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

on his own, besides.” Again, a slant of her eyes to Lore, so quick it could’ve been imagined. “Is he building ships, too?” Alie asked. “Not quite,” Dani answered. “Apparently, a new company has been hiring men off the docks to do transfer work. Carrying cargo from one place to another, things like that. They pay ridiculously well, and it’s usually only a night or two of labor.” She took a contemplative sip of tea. “It’s not exactly aboveboard, I assume, but if they’re paying the cargo carriers that well, their budget for bribes is probably quite healthy. Not that anyone would dare arrest Luc, once they found out who his father was.” After hearing from Cecelia where the courtiers got their poison and how thin the rules held when you introduced money, Lore was sure that was true. “What’s the cargo?” “I don’t know,” Dani said. “And I don’t care, really—it’s a lot of money, enough that Luc could buy a town house in one of the nicer Wards and pay my dowry even before his father dies and leaves him the business.” Something tugged in Lore’s gut, not sitting quite right. As if this conversation was somehow a continuation of the one she’d been having all week in the Church library. “Anyway, enough about all that.” Danielle waved a hand, dismissing talk of betrothals. “I believe we were discussing the handsome Duke Remaut and his presence in court, yes?” “Apollius’s wounds,” Alie muttered, burying her face in her hands. Lore took another drink of her tea, too quickly, burning the roof of her mouth. Brigitte and Danielle’s eyes fastened on her—clearly, she was supposed to speak next. “It really is just to escort me,” she said finally. “My parents wanted a relative to help me through the season, and Gabriel was the only option. He wasn’t pleased about it.” Alie made a small sound from behind her hands. “I mean,” Lore said quickly, “there were parts he was looking forward to.” She turned to Alie. “I know he was excited to see you again.” Technically a lie—Gabe had told her no such thing—but it didn’t feel like one. “Truly?” Alie dropped her hands with a sigh. “Because I feel I made a mess of it all. It’s just been such a shock, seeing him again. Seeing him so… so grown up.” Bare chest in firelight, the shadow of an eye patch made darker by the brilliant blue staring down at her. Lore swallowed more too-hot tea. Grown-up indeed. Memories closer at hand were less pleasant. The clench of his jaw as he read another seemingly useless book. The way he’d drawn inward in the past few days, always preoccupied by something he wouldn’t talk to her about. “He was taken aback, too,” Lore said. “It’s been… complicated for him, I think.” “More complicated than it would be for anyone else, probably.” Dani shook her head in sympathy. “Some of us thought he was coming back to court for good, at first. But it seems like he’s holding fast to those


gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of everything. I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a minute in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly the account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, and it was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, as I presently glanced about the room, I could say-- "Then you didn't undress at all?" He fairly glittered in the gloom. "Not at all. I sat up and read." "And when did you go down?" "At midnight. When I'm bad I AM bad!" "I see, I see--it's charming. But how could you be sure I would know it?" "Oh, I arranged that with Flora." His answers rang out with a readiness! "She was to get up and look out." "Which is what she did do." It was I who fell into the trap! "So she disturbed you, and, to see what she was looking at, you also looked--you saw." "While you," I concurred, "caught your death in the night air!" He literally bloomed so from this exploit that he could afford radiantly to assent. "How otherwise should I have been bad enough?" he asked. Then, after another embrace, the incident and our interview closed on my recognition of all the reserves of goodness that, for his joke, he had been able to draw upon. XII The particular impression I had received proved in the morning light, I repeat, not quite successfully presentable to Mrs. Grose, though I reinforced it with the mention of still another remark that he had made before we separated. "It all lies in half a dozen words," I said to her, "words that really settle the matter. 'Think, you know, what I MIGHT do!' He threw that off to show me how good he is. He knows down to the ground what he `might' do. That's what he gave them a taste of at school." "Lord, you do change!" cried my friend. "I don't change--I simply make it out. The four, depend upon it, perpetually meet. If on either of these last nights you had been with either child, you would clearly have understood. The more I've watched and waited the more I've felt that if there were nothing else to make it sure it would be made so by the systematic silence of each. NEVER, by a slip of the tongue, have they so much as alluded to either of their old friends, any more than Miles has alluded to his expulsion. Oh, yes, we may sit here and look at them, and they may show off to us there to their fill; but even while they pretend to be lost in their fairytale they're steeped in their vision of the dead restored. He's not reading to her," I declared; "they're talking of THEM--they're talking horrors! I go on, I know, as if


have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary childish grace as a thing I could actively cultivate, and it may be imagined if I neglected now to address myself to this source for whatever it would yield. Stranger than I can express, certainly, was the effort to struggle against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, a greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought strange things about them; and the circumstances that these things only made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they WERE so immensely more interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could only be-- blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself: "What will they think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?" It would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours of peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queerness in the traceable increase of their own demonstrations. They were at this period extravagantly and preternaturally fond of me; which, after all, I could reflect, was no more than a graceful response in children perpetually bowed over and hugged. The homage of which they were so lavish succeeded, in truth, for my nerves, quite as well as if I never appeared to myself, as I may say, literally to catch them at a purpose in it. They had never, I think, wanted to do so many things for their poor protectress; I mean--though they got their lessons better and better, which was naturally what would please her most-- in the way of diverting, entertaining, surprising her; reading her passages, telling her stories, acting her charades, pouncing out at her, in disguises, as animals and historical characters, and above all astonishing her by the "pieces" they had secretly got by heart and could interminably recite. I should never get to the bottom--were I to let myself go even now-- of the prodigious private commentary, all under still more private correction, with which, in these days, I overscored their full hours. They had shown me from the first a facility for everything, a general faculty which, taking a fresh start, achieved remarkable flights. They got their little tasks as if


in blissful silence. "Pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said Injun Joe. "'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used to be around here one summer," the stranger observed. "I know it," said Injun Joe; "and this looks like it, I should say." "Now you won't need to do that job." The half-breed frowned. Said he: "You don't know me. Least you don't know all about that thing. 'Tain't robbery altogether -- it's revenge!" and a wicked light flamed in his eyes. "I'll need your help in it. When it's finished -- then Texas. Go home to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me." --------------------------------------------------------- -246- "Well -- if you say so; what'll we do with this -- bury it again?" "Yes. [Ravishing delight overhead.] No ! by the great Sachem, no! [Profound distress overhead.] I'd nearly forgot. That pick had fresh earth on it! [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.] What business has a pick and a shovel here? What business with fresh earth on them? Who brought them here -- and where are they gone? Have you heard anybody? -- seen anybody? What! bury it again and leave them to come and see the ground disturbed? Not exactly -- not exactly. We'll take it to my den." "Why, of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number One?" "No -- Number Two -- under the cross. The other place is bad -- too common." "All right. It's nearly dark enough to start." Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously peeping out. Presently he said: "Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be up-stairs?" The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife, halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came creaking up the stairs -- the intolerable distress of the situation woke the stricken resolution of the lads -- they were about to spring for the closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers --------------------------------------------------------- -247- and Injun Joe landed on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered himself up cursing, and his comrade said: "Now what's the use of all that? If it's anybody, and they're up there, let them stay there -- who cares? If they want to jump down, now, and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes -- and then let them follow us if they want to. I'm willing. In my opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or devils or something. I'll bet they're running yet." Joe grumbled awhile; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving. Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box. Tom and Huck


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

as though Harry was being stupid on purpose. Getting desperate, Harry asked for the train that left at eleven o'clock, but the guard said there wasn't one. In the end the guard strode away, muttering about time wasters. Harry was now trying hard not to panic. According to the large clock over the arrivals board, he had ten minutes left to get on the train to Hogwarts and he had no idea how to do it; he was stranded in the middle of a station with a trunk he could hardly lift, a pocket full of wizard money, and a large owl. Hagrid must have forgotten to tell him something you had to do, like tapping the third brick on the left to get into Diagon Alley. He wondered if he should get out his wand and start tapping the ticket inspector's stand between platforms nine and ten. At that moment a group of people passed just behind him and he caught a few words of what they were saying. " -- packed with Muggles, of course -- " Harry swung round. The speaker was a plump woman who was talking to four boys, all with flaming red hair. Each of them was pushing a trunk like Harry's in front of him -- and they had an owl. Heart hammering, Harry pushed his cart after them. They stopped and so did he, just near enough to hear what they were saying. "Now, what's the platform number?" said the boys' mother. "Nine and three-quarters!" piped a small girl, also red-headed, who was holding her hand, "Mom, can't I go..." "You're not old enough, Ginny, now be quiet. All right, Percy, you go first." What looked like the oldest boy marched toward platforms nine and ten. Harry watched, careful not to blink in case he missed it -- but just as the boy reached the dividing barrier between the two platforms, a large crowd of tourists came swarming in front of him and by the time the last backpack had cleared away, the boy had vanished. "Fred, you next," the plump woman said. "I'm not Fred, I'm George," said the boy. "Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother? Can't you tell I'm George?" "Sorry, George, dear." "Only joking, I am Fred," said the boy, and off he went. His twin called after him to hurry up, and he must have done so, because a second later, he had gone -- but how had he done it? Now the third brother was walking briskly toward the barrier -- he was almost there -- and then, quite suddenly, he wasn't anywhere. There was nothing else for it. "Excuse me," Harry said to the plump woman. "Hello, dear," she said. "First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new, too." She pointed at the last and youngest of her sons. He was tall, thin, and gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose. "Yes," said Harry. "The thing is -- the thing is, I don't know how to -- " "How to get onto the platform?" she


slip her a pair of drugstore aviators. Hazel looks about to say something else, but a muscular woman wrapped in a towel emerges from the shower. Before the woman can spot us together, Hazel is gone. 23 IT IS NOT UNTIL I am in the black Mercedes, driving toward Hazel’s waterfront home, that the magnitude of my mission hits me. If something goes wrong, I could be arrested. Or assaulted. Maybe even shot. I am a homeless person impersonating a wealthy woman. If I am found inside her home, it will not go well for me. And Hazel won’t be around to back up my story. Will they think I’ve done something to her? Kidnapped her? Disappeared her? Panic billows in my chest, but then I remember her bruises, her tears, her tales of Benjamin’s twisted sexual games. I know I have to risk it. I have to set her free. I am setting myself free, too. In just over an hour, Lee Gulliver will be gone. Her debts, the anger and grievances against her, will vanish. I push thoughts of my family from my mind, the finality of this goodbye. They let me go. They chose Teresa. As I wind my way through the tall cedars and firs, I breathe slowly through my nose. I can do this. I must do this. For Hazel and for me. The driveway to the Laval home is black, freshly paved. With a brief wave of my fingertips, I pass the security guard parked at the end of it. As Hazel instructed, I ease into a parking spot to the right of the garage. I don’t see a camera here, but when I move toward the door, I spot it and lower my gaze. The back of the house facing the road is rather unassuming, but I know the home is spectacular. Hazel has pointed to it from the beach. One night, I’d picked my way across the rocks and logs to get a better view. It is an architectural masterpiece of glass and steel, clinging precariously to the cliffside. The lights were on and I could see the high-end furnishings, but no one was inside. As I approach the entrance now, I look down, pretend to fumble with my keys. Hazel has marked the front door key with a small red dot, and I slip it into the lock. My hands tremble, but it turns easily. I open the door and step inside. It is tempting to gape at the open-plan splendor of this place. A two-story wall of glass displays the navy-blue Pacific, a backdrop to sleek white furniture, low-slung and modern with dark wood accents. But I am Hazel. She would not gawk in wonder at her own home. I casually drop my car keys into a glass bowl on the teak sideboard and move into the living room. With a casual stride, I approach the windows. Surely Hazel does this—stares out at the glorious view. I won’t attract Benjamin’s attention if I take a moment to drink it in. Whitecaps stipple


respect and admiration welled up within me. Captain Glenn Stone had exemplified the unwavering resolve that defined us as US Space-Navy officers, as leaders. He had faced the horrors of the Liquilids head-on, his crew fighting valiantly until the bitter end. It was a reminder of the price we paid for the freedoms we held dear, the sacrifices made in pursuit of Earth’s, humanity’s, survival. As the screen faded to black, leaving me in a void of darkness, a surge of determination pulsed through my veins. I would not allow Captain Stone’s sacrifice to be in vain. USS Adams, my ship, my crew, would continue the fight against the Liquilids, against the forces that threatened our very existence. But beneath that resolve, a tempest of conflicting emotions churned within me. Doubt whispered in the recesses of my mind, questioning my ability to lead, to make the decisions necessary to outwit this particular enemy. Captain Glenn Stone, as valiantly as he had fought, had not been equal to the challenge. So why would I be? Memories of past encounters with the Liquilids, both Stone’s and my own, flashed before me, a montage of chaos and destruction. Their insidious tactics, their relentless pursuit, had forced both Lincoln and Adams into the same defensive stance. The memory of Captain Stone’s final moments resonated within me. No, I couldn’t let doubt cloud my judgment. I turned in my chair and closed my eyes, blocking out replaying the echoed cries of Captain Stone’s desperate crew members. Opening my eyes, I met my own reflection in the diamond glass porthole window. The face that stared back at me was also weathered and weary, etched with the weight of too many sleepless nights and impossible choices. But it was also the face of a leader, one who had risen to impossible challenges before this. It was not the absence of fear that defined true leadership, but the ability to confront it head-on, to channel it into unwavering determination. With renewed purpose, I straightened my posture and lifted my gaze, my reflection transformed from one of vulnerability to one of steely resolve. The weight of the past, of Captain Stone’s sacrifice, merged with the weight of the present and future, fueling a fire within me. I couldn’t allow doubt to paralyze me, to cloud my judgment. The crew depended on my clarity of mind and unwavering determination. The hatch door to the ready room slid open, and I turned to face the entryway. The crew member who entered looked at me, her eyes filled with a mix of apprehension and something else. In that moment, I realized that without this person in my life, this struggle would be far more difficult, if not impossible. Viv’s hair was wet; she must have just gotten out of the shower. No longer donning shapeless pastel-colored scrubs, she was wearing off-duty civies. Snug-fitting jeans and a white button-down top. She took a step into the compartment. The hatch door slid shut behind her. Standing there in the dim light, her eyes sparkled. She had


must have been reprimanded for his leniency because he now insists that I stay inside with the doors locked. I must trust that others are trying to find my mother, that they care as much as I do. I send a list of addresses to the care home: the dental practice my mom used to work for, her best friend’s house, the pool where she used to swim laps when I was a kid. I give them the details of Benjamin’s vacation home on Orcas Island, and his condo adjacent to the golf course in Semiahmoo. (I tell them that my mom spent time there, not that I suspect she could be held captive.) Greta Williams promises her security guards will visit the local spots on a rotating basis. She assures me that she’ll give all the addresses to the police, who will check into them when they can. But it’s not enough. I should be out there, scouring the city, looking for my mom. But I am stuck here. Trapped and powerless. A missing bulletin is placed with the local media. “A senior citizen has wandered away from her care facility in Northeast Seattle,” the news anchor says, voice tinged with professional concern. “Melanie Sinclair is sixty-seven years old and suffers from dementia.” A recent photograph of my mom, looking frail and vacant, appears in the top right corner of the screen. There is a birthday cake in front of her, aglow with candles. I wasn’t in attendance. I wasn’t allowed to go. “If you see Melanie,” the polished announcer continues, “please stay with her and call the Arbutus Care Home or Seattle Police.” If Benjamin—or Nate, or another one of my husband’s lackeys—abducted my mother he has not told me how to get her back. What does he want in exchange for my mom’s release? I can’t stop the prosecutor from coming after him; they have already built their case. Our prenup ensures I’ll get basically nothing in the divorce—although I might be able to challenge it given recent events. Is that why Benjamin took my mom? Or was it just to hurt me? To punish me. To show me that he can still get to me. I spend my captivity tearing through the house searching for clues to my mother’s whereabouts. I dig deep into closets, explore the basement crawl space, pull boxes out of the garage, and meticulously sift through them. Deep in a dusty crate, I find an unfamiliar ring of keys. There are three keys of varied shapes, but none of them are labeled. Is my mother behind a locked door somewhere? Secreted away in a storage locker? Held captive in a seedy back room? The thought makes me feel sick. When the police came with the search warrant, they went through my husband’s study, including the safe. They riffled through all the cupboards and drawers, but they were unable to find the Total Power Exchange contract. But it has to be here somewhere. If I can find it, it will at least validate our toxic