fell upon them among the hills at the head of the Firth, and most of the Orcs were driven into the sea. This was not reckoned among the great battles, for the Orcs were not in great number, and only a part of the people of Hithlum fought there. But thereafter there was peace for many years, and no open assault from Angband, for Morgoth perceived now that the Orcs unaided were no match for the Noldor; and he sought in his heart for new counsel. Again after a hundred years Glaurung, the first of the Urulki, the fire-drakes of the North, issued from Angband's gates by night. He was yet young and scarce half-grown, for long and slow is the life of the dragons, but the Elves fled before him to Ered Wethrin and Dorthonion in dismay; and he defiled the fields of Ard-galen. Then Fingon prince of Hithlum rode against him with archers on horseback, and hemmed him round with a ring of swift riders; and Glaurung could not endure their darts, being not yet come to his full armoury, and he fled back to Angband, and came not forth again for many years. Fingon won great praise, and the Noldor rejoiced; for few foresaw the full meaning and threat of this new thing. But Morgoth was ill-pleased that Glaurung had disclosed himself over-soon; and after his defeat there was the Long Peace of wellnigh two hundred years. In all that time there were but affrays on the marches, and all Beleriand prospered and grew rich. Behind the guard of their armies in the north the Noldor built their dwellings and their towers, and many fair things they made in those days, and poems and histories and books of lore. In many parts of the land the Noldor and the Sindar became welded into one people, and spoke the same tongue; though this difference remained between them, that the Noldor had the greater power of mind and body. and were the mightier warriors and sages, and they built with stone, and loved the hill-slopes and open lands. But the Sindar had the fairer voices and were more skilled in music, save only Maglor son of Fanor, and they loved the woods and the riversides; and some of the Grey-elves still wandered far and wide without settled abode, and they sang as they went. Chapter 14 Of Beleriand and Its Realms This is the fashion of the lands into which the Noldor came, in the north of the western regions of Middle-earth, in the ancient days; and here also is told of the manner in which the chieftains of the Eldar held their lands and the leaguer upon Morgoth after the Dagor Aglareb, the third battle in the Wars of Beleriand. In the north of the world Melkor had in the ages past reared Ered Engrin, the Iron Mountains, as a fence to his citadel of Utumno; and they stood upon the borders of the regions of everlasting cold, in a great curve from east to west. Behind the walls of


into Okonkwo's household. When Okonkwo brought him home that day he called his most senior wife and handed him over to her. "He belongs to the clan," he told her. "So look after him." "Is he staying long with us?" she asked. "Do what you are told, woman," Okonkwo thundered, and stammered. "When did you become one of the ndichie of Umuofia?" And so Nwoye's mother took Ikemefuna to her hut and asked no more questions. As for the boy himself, he was terribly afraid. He could not understand what was happening to him or what he had done. How could he know that his father had taken a hand in killing a daughter of Umuofia? All he knew was that a few men had arrived at their house, conversing with his father in low tones, and at the end he had been taken out and handed over to a stranger. His mother had wept bitterly, but he had been too surprised to weep. And so the stranger had brought him, and a girl, a long, long way from home, through lonely forest paths. He did not know who the girl was, and he never saw her again. CHAPTER THREE Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had. He did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit. The story was told in Umuofia, of how his father, Unoka, had gone to consult the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves to find out why he always had a miserable harvest. The Oracle was called Agbala, and people came from far and near to consult it. They came when misfortune dogged their steps or when they had a dispute with their neighbours. They came to discover what the future held for them or to consult the spirits of their departed fathers. The way into the shrine was a round hole at the side of a hill, just a little bigger than the round opening into a henhouse. Worshippers and those who came to seek knowledge from the god crawled on their belly through the hole and found themselves in a dark, endless space in the presence of Agbala. No one had ever beheld Agbala, except his priestess. But no one who had ever crawled into his awful shrine had come out without the fear of his power. His priestess stood by the sacred fire which she built in the heart of the cave and proclaimed the will of the god. The fire did not burn with a flame. The glowing logs only served to light up vaguely the dark figure of the priestess. Sometimes a man came to consult the spirit of his dead father or relative. It was said that when such a spirit appeared, the man saw it vaguely in the darkness, but never heard its voice. Some people even said that they had heard the spirits flying and flapping their wings against the roof of the cave. Many years ago when Okonkwo was still a boy his father,


so what was this? Pity? She’d chosen this moment? This moment, when he needed to walk out of here with some semblance of pride, to go easy on him? Nah. Not having it. He didn’t need this spoiled, trust-fund brat to pull her punches. He’d seen shit during combat that people on this well-manicured lawn couldn’t even fathom in their wildest dreams. He’d jumped out of planes into pitch-black skies. Existed on pure stubbornness for weeks on end in the desert. Suffered losses that still felt as though they’d happened yesterday. And yet you couldn’t even make decent wine. He’d failed Sam. Again. A fact that hurt a damn sight more than this rich girl judging him harshly in front of these people he’d probably never see again after today. In fact, he needed Natalie to just drop the hammer already, so he could show her how little he cared about her opinion. It was his friend’s dream never being realized that should hurt. Not her verdict. August propped his hands on the judging table and leaned forward, seeing nothing but the beautiful, black-haired dream haunter and watching her golden eyes go wide at his audacity. “You’re not waiting for a bribe, are you? Not with a last name like Vos.” He winked at her and leaned down until only Natalie could hear the way he dropped his voice. “Unless you’re hoping for a different kind of bribe, princess, because that can be arranged.” She threw wine in his face. For the second time. Honestly, he couldn’t even blame her. He was lashing out over his failure and Natalie was a convenient target. But he wasn’t going to apologize. What good would it do? She already hated him and he’d just found a way to strengthen that feeling. The best thing he could do to make up for the insult to Natalie was to leave town—and that’s exactly what he planned to do. He’d been given no choice. With wine dripping from his five-o’clock shadow, August pushed off the table, swiped a sleeve over his damp face, and stormed across the lawn to the parking lot, failure like a thorn stuck dead in the center of his chest. He was almost to his truck when a familiar voice called out behind him. Natalie. Was she actually following him after the shit he’d said? “Wait!” Fully expecting to turn around and find a twelve-gauge shotgun leveled at his head, August turned on a booted heel and watched warily as the gorgeous witch approached. Why did he have the ridiculous urge to move in a fast clip back in her direction and catch her up in a kiss? She’d break his fucking jaw if he tried, but God help him, his dick/gut insisted it was the right thing to do. “Yeah? You got something else you want to throw in my face?” “My fist. Among other, sharper objects. But . . .” She jerked a shoulder, appearing to search for the right words. “Look, we’re not friends, August. I get that. I insulted your


… I still don’t get it.” I chinned toward the bulkhead behind her. “And that?” Wanda followed my sightline, then shrugged again. “Someone, I presume Lincoln’s captain, was forced to leave in a hurry … And he left the safe open in all the mayhem.” There was blood on the deck, and signs that someone might have been dragged out of the compartment. I approached, waving away errant tendrils of smoke in the air. The safe was large, large enough for a full-grown man to walk into without ducking his head. I swung the door all the way open. Wanda joined me at my side and together we took in what was inside. I said, “Guess I should go through this stuff. Might give us a clue to what happened.” There were two cylindrical, metallic core loaders on the middle shelf. Each of them had an illuminated, blue-glowing band encircling the top of the units. These were backup system memory stores, which held a mind-bending amount of data. Strange to have these stored within a captain’s ready room vault. “I got these,” Wanda said, discarding the fire extinguisher and hefting one and then two of the heavy-looking memory stores. Her biceps bulged. Giving me a wink, she said, “Each of these babies weighs more than you do.” Ryder was pinging my Jadoo ring. “Go ahead, Ryder.” “I’m here in E & P; things have just started coming alive. Control boards activating … Environmental systems normalizing.” “Yeah, Sonya’s doing her thing. What’s the status of the drives?” “Visually, things seem okay. No physical damage. And like I said, things are coming alive in here.” “Good. Get to the bridge ASAP. We’ve got company.” Hardy trudged forward, the Marines, Max, Grip, Ham, and Hock, keeping pace behind. He listened to them chatting among themselves, razzing one another, their way of dealing with mounting nerves. Thus far, ship compartments, passageways, and major corridors had been devoid of life. Ship lights had yet to come on, the farther forward they went. “This is creepy as fuck,” Grip said. “The ship held what? Thousands? Where the hell is everyone?” No one answered him. Hardy slowed, taking notice of new signs of struggle: dried blood streaks on a bulkhead, weapons damage to the corridor, and other marks he’d yet to decipher. They turned a corner, seeing more blood, a lot more blood, and indications of far more weapons fire. Charred plasma craters pocked virtually every surface. Max said, “Looks like the alien fuckers came through here like a meatgrinder … Ship’s crew fought hard.” They followed the increasing signs of carnage, eventually coming up to one of the ship’s main lower deck holds, some twenty meters up ahead. The entrance hatch doors, extra wide to enable the movement of cargo, had been left open. Max signaled for his crew to take up a stacked line formation. Hardy checked his readings. Although there were signs of “life,” motion sensors detected very little movement. He looked to Max. “No time like the present; it’s time to party, boys.” Hardy breached


stand in your way, nor in the way of either of you!" she declared to Retty that night in the bedroom (her tears running down). "I can't help this, my dear! I don't think marrying is in his mind at all; but if he were ever to ask me I should refuse him, as I should refuse any man." "Oh! would you? Why?" said wondering Retty. "It cannot be! But I will be plain. Putting myself quite on one side. I don't think he will choose either of you." "I have never expected it--thought of it!" moaned Retty. "But O! I wish I was dead!" The poor child, torn by a feeling which she hardly understood, turned to the other two girls who came upstairs just then. "We be friends with her again," she said to them. "She thinks no more of his choosing her than we do." So the reserve went off, and they were confiding and warm. "I don't seem to care what I do now," said Marian, whose mood was turned to its lowest bass. "I was going to marry a dairyman at Stickleford, who's asked me twice; but--my soul--I would put an end to myself rather'n be his wife now! Why don't ye speak, Izz?" "To confess, then," murmured Izz, "I made sure today that he was going to kiss me as he held me; and I lay still against his breast, hoping and hoping, and never moved at all. But he did not. I don't like biding here at Talbothays any longer! I shall go hwome." The air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate with the hopeless passion of the girls. They writhed feverishly under the oppressiveness of an emotion thrust on them by cruel Nature's law--an emotion which they had neither expected nor desired. The incident of the day had fanned the flame that was burning the inside of their hearts out, and the torture was almost more than they could endure. The differences which distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by this passion, and each was but portion of one organism called sex. There was so much frankness and so little jealousy because there was no hope. Each one was a girl of fair common sense, and she did not delude herself with any vain conceits, or deny her love, or give herself airs, in the idea of outshining the others. The full recognition of the futility of their infatuation, from a social point of view; its purposeless beginning; its self-bounded outlook; its lack of everything to justify its existence in the eye of civilization (while lacking nothing in the eye of Nature); the one fact that it did exist, ecstasizing them to a killing joy; all this imparted to them a resignation, a dignity, which a practical and sordid expectation of winning him as a husband would have destroyed. They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the cheese-wring dripped monotonously downstairs. "B' you awake, Tess?" whispered one, half-an-hour later. It was Izz Huett's voice. Tess replied in the affirmative, whereupon also Retty


the air-conditioning vent in the hall for a long time. His wife in the TV parlour paused long enough from reading her script to glance up. "Hey," she said. "The man's THINKING!" "Yes," he said. "I wanted to talk to you." He paused. "You took all the pills in your bottle last night." "Oh, I wouldn't do that," she said, surprised. "The bottle was empty." "I wouldn't do a thing like that. Why would I do a thing like that?" she asked. "Maybe you took two pills and forgot and took two more, and forgot again and took two more, and were so dopy you kept right on until you had thirty or forty of them in you." "Heck," she said, "what would I want to go and do a silly thing like that for?" "I don't know," he said. She was quite obviously waiting for him to go. "I didn't do that," she said. "Never in a billion years." "All right if you say so," he said. "That's what the lady said." She turned back to her script. "What's on this afternoon?" he asked tiredly. She didn't look up from her script again. "Well, this is a play comes on the wall-to-wall circuit in ten minutes. They mailed me my part this morning. I sent in some box-tops. They write the script with one part missing. It's a new idea. The home-maker, that's me, is the missing part. When it comes time for the missing lines, they all look at me out of the three walls and I say the lines: Here, for instance, the man says, `What do you think of this whole idea, Helen?' And he looks at me sitting here centre stage, see? And I say, I say --" She paused and ran her finger under a line in the script. " `I think that's fine!' And then they go on with the play until he says, `Do you agree to that, Helen!' and I say, `I sure do!' Isn't that fun, Guy?" He stood in the hall looking at her. "It's sure fun," she said. "What's the play about?" "I just told you. There are these people named Bob and Ruth and Helen." "Oh." "It's really fun. It'll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed. How long you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall-TV put in? It's only two thousand dollars." "That's one-third of my yearly pay." "It's only two thousand dollars," she replied. "And I should think you'd consider me sometimes. If we had a fourth wall, why it'd be just like this room wasn't ours at all, but all kinds of exotic people's rooms. We could do without a few things." "We're already doing without a few things to pay for the third wall. It was put in only two months ago, remember?" "Is that all it was?" She sat looking at him for a long moment. "Well, good-bye, dear." . "Good-bye," he said. He stopped and turned


see Liv’s room?” I asked. Kimiko’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “I’m probably worried over nothing, but I got a weird call from her, and if I can figure out where she is, I’d feel a lot better.” She gestured toward the hall. “Go ahead, then.” I made my way down the hall, past photographs showing Liv at all ages, a jumbled time line. There was no clear demarcation between Before and After. Maybe I detected a hint of hollowness in her eyes, a fear that hadn’t been there Before, but it was probably my imagination. The only gap came during the college days, after Liv’s big crisis that ended with her back home—for good, as far as anyone could tell. The lock on Liv’s room had been drilled out. I touched the gap in the metal of the knob, remembering that phone call, the worst I’d ever gotten. My turn to sit by a hospital bed, waiting for my friend to wake up—or not. I’ll be here tomorrow. I had to believe she wouldn’t break that promise. Her room was meticulously organized. Liv was a collector. Things became sacred to her easily, taking on an almost mystical significance. She displayed her objects carefully, according to her mood and their meanings. A conch shell on her bookshelf, the four arrowheads laid out in a line next to it. Elsewhere was a nautilus fossil, a cross necklace her grandmother had given to her, the plane ticket she’d never used when she was supposed to fly to Japan right before the tsunami but got stomach flu. There was a lot in the room, but everything was cared for and everything had a specific meaning. Maybe if I had understood them, I could have read the collection of objects like a diary, and they could tell me what I needed to know. Her laptop was out on her desk. Next to it was a stack of articles and environmental reports. Probably something to do with the work she did for her parents’ environmental compliance consulting firm. There was a sticky note on top of the stack with a bunch of numbers and letters jotted down on it—2248DFID, 3376DFWA, 1898DFWA—and a to-do list on a notepad that included “check map ID references” and “pharmacy pickup.” I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Some hint about where she would have gone, or why she would have called suddenly in the middle of the night. What had changed between yesterday morning and last night? I tapped the touchpad, and a password login popped up. No dice. I tried the drawer. There were pencils, a sketchbook, rubber bands, paper clips, hair ties, three pill organizers—which seemed to indicate that she’d taken all of her pills including last night’s, though not this morning’s—and loose photographs, snapshots that had been printed at a drugstore. Most of the photos were of her parents and the cats. Apparently there was a big fluffy gray one in addition to the marmalade gentleman I’d seen on the couch. But there were about a


raises her voice. “There’s good evidence now that June Hayward did not write The Last Front. We’ve all seen the allegations. Let’s not pretend. And I’m sorry, but I’m not going to sit around on this panel and pretend like she’s a colleague who deserves my respect, when Athena’s legacy is at stake—” “Please,” Annie says, more loudly this time. “This is not an appropriate venue for that discussion, and we need to respect all of our invited panelists.” Diana looks like she wants to say something more. But then Noor touches her on the arm, and Diana leans back from her mic, arms crossed. I say nothing. I don’t know what I could say. Diana and the audience have already judged my guilt, and nothing I utter could redeem me in their eyes. I can only sit there, heart racing, awash in the humiliation. “All right?” Annie asks. “Please. Could we move on?” “All right,” Diana says curtly. Annie, audibly relieved, goes on to ask Ailin for her thoughts on Bridgerton. It’s too late. There’s no salvaging this panel. We continue to the end of the hour, but no one cares anymore about Annie’s prepared questions. The audience members that haven’t left the room are typing furiously into their phones, no doubt recapping the whole thing for their followers. Noor and Ailin valiantly play along with Annie’s prompts, as if anyone is still remotely interested in prehistoric Chinese writing systems or Islamic mysticism. Diana doesn’t speak for the rest of the hour, and neither do I. I sit as still as I can, cheeks flaming, chin wobbling, trying my hardest to keep from breaking into tears. I’m sure that people are already creating memes using photos of my stunned face as we speak. When we’re finally free, I gather my things and walk out as quickly as I can without breaking into a full sprint. Annie calls after me, perhaps trying to offer an apology, but I don’t stop until I’ve turned the corner. Right then, all I want is to disappear from sight. Marnie: WOW WHAT A BITCH Jen: Is she ill? Like, is she mentally ill? Marnie: I mean, it doesn’t matter what she thinks she knows. Confronting you like that in public is the Opposite of Classy. She clearly wasn’t looking for a resolution, she just wanted Attention. Jen: RIGHT. Exactly. This performative outrage is disgusting. It’s such a clear ploy for self-enrichment. She’s probably trying to hawk some art deals out of this. Marnie: If you can call that art . . . I chuckle. I’m curled up in bed, my covers pulled up to my chin. God bless the Eden’s Angels, I think. Elsewhere on the internet, Diana’s rant is circulating among gleeful mobs of Juniper Song haters, but for now, I’m happy to watch Jen and Marnie shit all over Diana’s portfolio. Marnie: Maybe I don’t get performance art Marnie: But in this video she’s just giving herself a haircut Marnie: It’s not even a good haircut Marnie: Also her nose ring is ugly Jen:


file out of the room, the last one shutting the door behind him. He’s been meaning to ask his father about expanding the Sunday supplement. Right now it’s a Frankenstein’s monster of syndicated columns, recipes, television listings, and a seemingly random assortment of features. Andy wants to know what it would cost to turn it into a proper magazine—a magazine with the Chronicle’s editorial perspective and the cachet to be financed by something other than ads for department store underwear sales. What he’s not comfortable saying—what he’s not even sure he’s comfortable thinking—is that the Chronicle’s editorial perspective is something he can change. If—God help them all—he’s this paper’s publisher, then that’s very much in his job description. And he’s not sure he can separate his own perspective from the paper’s. He’s not sure he should. Right now Andy’s perspective is shaped by too many things to count: the values he had passed on to him by his parents, the things he saw in Washington, the fact that Nick’s been shutting the curtains before so much as cooking dinner in case someone across the street has a telephoto lens. For now, though, he’s only asking about budgets. But his father speaks first. “Have you decided whether to put your mother’s apartment on the market?” Andy had offhandedly mentioned this plan last week, but the idea of actually getting rid of all his mother’s things is daunting both physically and emotionally. And he’s a little hesitant to sell the apartment without Nick having said— Well, Andy isn’t sure what he’s expecting Nick to say. He isn’t expecting an engraved invitation to spend the rest of their lives together, but he needs to know that Nick actually wants him to stay. That isn’t quite accurate—it’s pretty obvious that Nick does want him there, but deciding to settle down with someone can’t possibly be as simple as Andy not moving out. He feels like there ought to be a conversation, some kind of confirmation that what they’re doing actually is settling down. He’s had this thought so many times that the phrase settling down has ceased to carry any meaning. “Not yet,” Andy says. “I wondered if you needed help finding a new place to live.” “I don’t,” Andy says, feeling churlish for not offering any more information than that. His father is trying. His father takes off his glasses and polishes them. “There’s always room at my apartment.” “Thank you,” Andy says, “but I’m happy where I am.” His father puts his glasses back on, regards Andy, then apparently thinks better of it and resumes polishing his glasses. “During the war I knew men who . . .” He sighs, polishing his glasses some more. “I know that ‘enlightened minds’ would have us think of it as an affliction, and before that it was just garden-variety sexual perversion, but . . .” He trails off again, and Andy thinks he’ll never recover from hearing his father say the word sexual. “But I never thought so,” he says now, looking Andy squarely in the eye.


ever someone was meant to go to college, Nicole is. To my dismay, we have nothing to offer to help her pay for it. * * * Just as I had noticed that everyone around me was white, it didn’t escape my notice that many people we knew lived in bigger houses, or had nicer cars, or went on exciting vacations my family couldn’t afford. But I had everything I needed, and might not have been aware of our relative precarity at all had I not been both predisposed to pay attention and conditioned to care about what was “normal.” I’d always been interested in how other people lived and moved through the world, because from a young age I understood that I existed beyond the margins of what was typical, wanted, or accepted in our insular community. To be an Asian girl in the place I grew up was an isolating experience, and I’d felt like an anomaly since the day I began hearing slurs from my second-grade classmates. White adults called me an “Asian princess” and demanded to know where I was from; white teachers got stuck on my surname and demanded to know how I’d gotten it; a white girl pushed me to tell her whether what she’d heard about Asian girls’ vaginas was true; a white boy subjected me to “ching-chong” chants every day at recess. Observation and anticipation were among the first and only tools I had to defend myself, and so I was the sort of kid who was constantly on the lookout, measuring the delta between me and everyone I knew; between desire and reality; between the sense of safety and belonging I craved and what I actually felt. I had made up my mind to leave southern Oregon years before I figured out how. “Of course you have to go,” my on-again-off-again pediatrician told me once, laughing. “You’ll never be satisfied here—or find anyone to marry, for that matter.” No one, not even my mother, had ever said as much to me aloud, and it was somehow both affirming and mortifying to have my ambition and loneliness so clearly read by someone who barely knew me. I knew what I wanted, but I did not feel entitled to it. I was sure that I wasn’t the most impressive student at my school. As glossy brochures began to fill our mailbox, sent from competitive universities located in distant towns and regions I knew nothing about, I asked my forbearing guidance counselor if he thought I was setting myself up for disappointment. “Some of the colleges on your list might seem like a reach now,” he said, “but I do think you’re right to consider them. I’m sure that at least a few will want to consider you.” Should I have been more worried about leaving my family? I was not privy to all the details of what they were facing, but I know there were signs I missed, or perhaps thought too little of, even as I scrambled to compensate. My mother was still recovering,


There he started to pull on his tattered shorts, to be ready for anything. Ralph stood, one hand holding back his hair, the other clenched. Simon was climbing out of the water. Piggy was rubbing his glasses on his shorts and squinting at the sea. Maurice had got both legs through one leg of his shorts. Of all the boys, only Ralph was still. "I can't see no smoke," said Piggy incredulously. "I can't see no smoke, Ralph--where is it?" Ralph said nothing. Now both his hands were clenched over his forehead so that the fair hair was kept out of his eyes. He was leaning forward and already the salt was whitening his body. "Ralph--where's the ship?" Simon stood by, looking from Ralph to the horizon. Maurice's trousers gave way with a sigh and he abandoned them as a wreck, rushed toward the forest, and then came back again. The smoke was a tight little knot on the horizon and was uncoiling slowly. Beneath the smoke was a dot that might be a funnel. Ralph's face was pale as he spoke to himself. "They'll see our smoke." Piggy was looking in the right direction now. "It don't look much." He turned round and peered up at the mountain. Ralph continued to watch the ship, ravenously. Color was coming back into his face. Simon stood by him, silent. "I know I can't see very much," said Piggy, "but have we got any smoke?" Ralph moved impatiently, still watching the ship. "The smoke on the mountain." Maurice came running, and stared out to sea. Both Simon and Piggy were looking up at the mountain. Piggy screwed up his face but Simon cried out as though he had hurt himself. "Ralph! Ralph!" The quality of his speech twisted Ralph on the sand. "You tell me," said Piggy anxiously. "Is there a signal?" Ralph looked back at the dispersing smoke in the horizon, then up at the mountain. "Ralph--please! Is there a signal?" Simon put out his hand, timidly, to touch Ralph; but Ralph started to run, splashing through the shallow end of the bathing pool, across the hot, white sand and under the palms. A moment later he was battling with the complex undergrowth that was already engulfing the scar. Simon ran after him, then Maurice. Piggy shouted. "Ralph! Please--Ralph!" Then he too started to run, stumbling over Maurice's discarded shorts before he was across the terrace. Behind the four boys, the smoke moved gently along the horizon; and on the beach, Henry and Johnny were throwing sand at Percival who was crying quietly again; and all three were in complete ignorance of the excitement. By the time Ralph had reached the landward end of the scar he was using precious breath to swear. He did desperate violence to his naked body among the rasping creepers so that blood was sliding over him. Just where the steep ascent of the mountain began, he stopped. Maurice was only a few yards behind him. "Piggy's specs!" shouted Ralph. "If the fire's all out, we'll need them--"


that chemical explosives?" "You know this from what you smell?" It was another man's voice. And Paul realized she was speaking for his benefit, that she wanted him to make a quick acceptance of this assault on his nostrils. There came a buzz of activity at the head of the troop and a prolonged indrawn breath that seemed to pass through the Fremen, and Paul heard hushed voices back down the line: "It's true then--Liet is dead." Liet, Paul thought. Then: Chani, daughter of Liet. The pieces fell together in his mind. Liet was the Fremen name of the planetologist. Paul looked at Farok, asked: "Is it the Liet known as Kynes?" "There is only one Liet," Farok said. Paul turned, stared at the robed back of a Fremen in front of him. Then Liet-Kynes is dead, he thought. "It was Harkonnen treachery," someone hissed. "They made it seem an accident . . . lost in the desert . . . a 'thopter crash . . . " Paul felt a burst of anger. The man who had befriended them, helped save them from the Harkonnen hunters, the man who had sent his Fremen cohorts searching for two strays in the desert . . . another victim of the Harkonnens. "Does Usul hunger yet for revenge?" Farok asked. Before Paul could answer, there came a low call and the troop swept forward into a wider chamber, carrying Paul with them. He found himself in an open space confronted by Stilgar and a strange woman wearing a flowing wraparound garment of brilliant orange and green. Her arms were bare to the shoulders, and he could see she wore no stillsuit. Her skin was a pale olive. Dark hair swept back from her high forehead, throwing emphasis on sharp cheekbones and aquiline nose between the dense darkness of her eyes. She turned toward him, and Paul saw golden rings threaded with water tallies dangling from her ears. "This bested my Jamis?" she demanded. "Be silent, Harah," Stilgar said. "It was Jamis' doing--he invoked the tahaddi al-burhan." "He's not but a boy!" she said. She gave her head a sharp shake from side to side, setting the water tallies to jingling. "My children made fatherless by another child? Surely, 'twas an accident!" "Usul, how many years have you?" Stilgar asked. "Fifteen standard," Paul said. Stilgar swept his eyes over the troop. "Is there one among you cares to challenge me?" Silence. Stilgar looked at the woman. "Until I've learned his weirding ways. I'd not challenge him." She returned his stare. "But--" "You saw the stranger, woman who went with Chani to the Reverend Mother?" Stilgar asked. "She's an out-freyn Sayyadina, mother to this lad. The mother and son are masters of the weirding ways of battle." "Lisan al-Gaib," the woman whispered. Her eyes held awe as she turned them back toward Paul. The legend again, Paul thought. "Perhaps," Stilgar said. "It hasn't been tested, though." He returned his attention to Paul. "Usul, it's our way that you've now the responsibility for Jamis' woman here and


take that route, and the latter determined to do so. 'The road from this hamlet,' said Valancourt, 'and that to Beaujeu, part at the distance of about a league and a half from hence; if you will give me leave, I will direct your muleteer so far. I must wander somewhere, and your company would make this a pleasanter ramble than any other I could take.' St. Aubert thankfully accepted his offer, and they set out together, the young stranger on foot, for he refused the invitation of St. Aubert to take a seat in his little carriage. The road wound along the feet of the mountains through a pastoral valley, bright with verdure, and varied with groves of dwarf oak, beech and sycamore, under whose branches herds of cattle reposed. The mountain-ash too, and the weeping birch, often threw their pendant foliage over the steeps above, where the scanty soil scarcely concealed their roots, and where their light branches waved to every breeze that fluttered from the mountains. The travellers were frequently met at this early hour, for the sun had not yet risen upon the valley, by shepherds driving immense flocks from their folds to feed upon the hills. St. Aubert had set out thus early, not only that he might enjoy the first appearance of sunrise, but that he might inhale the first pure breath of morning, which above all things is refreshing to the spirits of the invalid. In these regions it was particularly so, where an abundance of wild flowers and aromatic herbs breathed forth their essence on the air. The dawn, which softened the scenery with its peculiar grey tint, now dispersed, and Emily watched the progress of the day, first trembling on the tops of the highest cliffs, then touching them with splendid light, while their sides and the vale below were still wrapt in dewy mist. Meanwhile, the sullen grey of the eastern clouds began to blush, then to redden, and then to glow with a thousand colours, till the golden light darted over all the air, touched the lower points of the mountain's brow, and glanced in long sloping beams upon the valley and its stream. All nature seemed to have awakened from death into life; the spirit of St. Aubert was renovated. His heart was full; he wept, and his thoughts ascended to the Great Creator. Emily wished to trip along the turf, so green and bright with dew, and to taste the full delight of that liberty, which the izard seemed to enjoy as he bounded along the brow of the cliffs; while Valancourt often stopped to speak with the travellers, and with social feeling to point out to them the peculiar objects of his admiration. St. Aubert was pleased with him: 'Here is the real ingenuousness and ardour of youth,' said he to himself; 'this young man has never been at Paris.' He was sorry when they came to the spot where the roads parted, and his heart took a more affectionate leave of him than is usual after so


She’s wearing her circular glasses today and recently cut her brown hair into a bob. Teamed with her five-foot-two height and wind-painted cheeks, she looks younger than her forty-seven years. “Morning, Katherine. How was your weekend?” “Lovely, thanks. David and I caught the penultimate performance of Closer Still at the Lyceum—have you seen it?” “No, not yet.” I never will; remaining tickets, last time I checked, cost somewhere in the three-figure bracket. “Would you recommend it?” “Oh, definitely.” She unbuttons her blazer and crosses her legs at the ankles. “It was brilliant—you really have to try to catch the final show on Thursday.” Claire, the general manager, walks in and asks, “Is this Closer Still?” Her dark ponytail swings like a pendulum even when she stops and she has her work shoes in her hands, ready to swap out her trainers. “Incredible, wasn’t it?” I leave them to their conversation and return to my emails—mostly people asking for Katherine’s time. The simple answer is she doesn’t have any and they know this, but they also know that Katherine suffers famously from FOMO (fear of missing out). On a senior level where she is one of only two women, she feels she can’t turn any meeting down, so she instructs me to find the time, even if it’s during her lunch hour. A couple of weeks ago, she was diagnosed with depression. She told those working directly under her, then told me herself after she’d accidentally copied me into an email to HR explaining why she’d need time off. Despite a month’s leave being granted, she returned to work the following week and took to smiling in front of us and crying in the toilets, returning with red eyes and puffy cheeks. No one did anything about it. Claire even pulled me aside and told me not to mention it to anyone because if even one of the eleven (out of thirteen) male directors found out that “Katherine couldn’t cope,” they’d think her too weak for her position. “Does that really matter?” I asked. “I mean, what they’ll think of her? Katherine’s not well.” “Of course it matters,” Claire said. She barely reined in an eye roll before replacing it with folded arms. “Even though she does more and works harder than any of them, they’ll replace her with yet another man if they find out she’s depressed. She and I have seen it happen twice already. Why don’t you make her a cup of tea?” she suggested. “Katherine will be fine in an hour.” Claire was wrong. “Morning, Maddie.” Ellie’s next to arrive. She too rushes in, but likely because she woke up late; her blond hair is scraped back, she’s missed a button on her corduroy dungarees and her Converse lace has come undone. She sits and lets out a breath of air. “Morning, Ellie.” Ellie’s my line manager, even though she started after me and is only a year older. We were friendlier at first, joked around a bit more, but that dried up like the arse of a prune


lights circles Caladan . . . but I'll never again see my home. The longing for Caladan was a sudden pain in his breast. He felt that it did not come from within himself, but that it reached out to him from Caladan. He could not bring himself to call this dry wasteland of Arrakis his home, and he doubted he ever would. I must mask my feelings, he thought. For the boy's sake. If ever he's to have a home, this must be it. I may think of Arrakis as a hell I've reached before death, but he must find here that which will inspire him. There must be something. A wave of self-pity, immediately despised and rejected, swept through him, and for some reason he found himself recalling two lines from a poem Gurney Halleck often repeated-- "My lungs taste the air of Time Blown past falling sands . . . " Well, Gurney would find plenty of falling sands here, the Duke thought. The central wastelands beyond those moon-frosted cliffs were desert--barren rock, dunes, and blowing dust, an uncharted dry wilderness with here and there along its rim and perhaps scattered through it, knots of Fremen. If anything could buy a future for the Atreides line, the Fremen just might do it. Provided the Harkonnens hadn't managed to infect even the Fremen with their poisonous schemes. They have tried to take the life of my son! A scraping metal racket vibrated through the tower, shook the parapet beneath his arms. Blast shutters dropped in front of him, blocking the view. Shuttle's coming in, he thought. Time to go down and get to work. He turned to the stairs behind him, headed down to the big assembly room, trying to remain calm as he descended, to prepare his face for the coming encounter. They have tried to take the life of my son! The men were already boiling in from the field when he reached the yellow-domed room. They carried their spacebags over their shoulders, shouting and roistering like students returning from vacation. "Hey! Feel that under your dogs? That's gravity, man!" "How many G's does this place pull? Feels heavy." "Nine-tenths of a G by the book." The crossfire of thrown words filled the big room. "Did you get a good look at this hole on the way down? Where's all the loot this place's supposed to have?" "The Harkonnens took it with 'em!" "Me for a hot shower and a soft bed!" "Haven't you heard, stupid? No showers down here. You scrub your ass with sand!" "Hey! Can it! The Duke!" The Duke stepped out of the stair entry into a suddenly silent room. Gurney Halleck strode along at the point of the crowd, bag over one shoulder, the neck of his nine-string baliset clutched in the other hand. They were long-fingered hands with big thumbs, full of tiny movements that drew such delicate music from the baliset. The Duke watched Halleck, admiring the ugly lump of a man, noting the glass-splinter eyes with their gleam of savage


He felt the tender enthusiasm stealing upon himself in a degree that became almost painful; his features assumed a serious air, and he could not forbear secretly sighing--'Perhaps I shall some time look back to these moments, as to the summit of my happiness, with hopeless regret. But let me not misuse them by useless anticipation; let me hope I shall not live to mourn the loss of those who are dearer to me than life.' To relieve, or perhaps to indulge, the pensive temper of his mind, he bade Emily fetch the lute she knew how to touch with such sweet pathos. As she drew near the fishing-house, she was surprised to hear the tones of the instrument, which were awakened by the hand of taste, and uttered a plaintive air, whose exquisite melody engaged all her attention. She listened in profound silence, afraid to move from the spot, lest the sound of her steps should occasion her to lose a note of the music, or should disturb the musician. Every thing without the building was still, and no person appeared. She continued to listen, till timidity succeeded to surprise and delight; a timidity, increased by a remembrance of the pencilled lines she had formerly seen, and she hesitated whether to proceed, or to return. While she paused, the music ceased; and, after a momentary hesitation, she re-collected courage to advance to the fishing-house, which she entered with faltering steps, and found unoccupied! Her lute lay on the table; every thing seemed undisturbed, and she began to believe it was another instrument she had heard, till she remembered, that, when she followed M. and Madame St. Aubert from this spot, her lute was left on a window seat. She felt alarmed, yet knew not wherefore; the melancholy gloom of evening, and the profound stillness of the place, interrupted only by the light trembling of leaves, heightened her fanciful apprehensions, and she was desirous of quitting the building, but perceived herself grow faint, and sat down. As she tried to recover herself, the pencilled lines on the wainscot met her eye; she started, as if she had seen a stranger; but, endeavouring to conquer the tremor of her spirits, rose, and went to the window. To the lines before noticed she now perceived that others were added, in which her name appeared. Though no longer suffered to doubt that they were addressed to herself, she was as ignorant, as before, by whom they could be written. While she mused, she thought she heard the sound of a step without the building, and again alarmed, she caught up her lute, and hurried away. Monsieur and Madame St. Aubert she found in a little path that wound along the sides of the glen. Having reached a green summit, shadowed by palm-trees, and overlooking the vallies and plains of Gascony, they seated themselves on the turf; and while their eyes wandered over the glorious scene, and they inhaled the sweet breath of flowers and herbs that enriched the grass, Emily played and sung several of


raised a hell's chorus of delight. Buck did not cry out. He did not check himself, but drove in upon Spitz, shoulder to shoulder, so hard that he missed the throat. They rolled over and over in the powdery snow. Spitz gained his feet almost as though he had not been overthrown, slashing Buck down the shoulder and leaping clear. Twice his teeth clipped together, like the steel jaws of a trap, as he backed away for better footing, with lean and lifting lips that writhed and snarled. In a flash Buck knew it. The time had come. It was to the death. As they circled about, snarling, ears laid back, keenly watchful for the advantage, the scene came to Buck with a sense of familiarity. He seemed to remember it all,--the white woods, and earth, and moonlight, and the thrill of battle. Over the whiteness and silence brooded a ghostly calm. There was not the faintest whisper of air--nothing moved, not a leaf quivered, the visible breaths of the dogs rising slowly and lingering in the frosty air. They had made short work of the snowshoe rabbit, these dogs that were ill-tamed wolves; and they were now drawn up in an expectant circle. They, too, were silent, their eyes only gleaming and their breaths drifting slowly upward. To Buck it was nothing new or strange, this scene of old time. It was as though it had always been, the wonted way of things. Spitz was a practised fighter. From Spitzbergen through the Arctic, and across Canada and the Barrens, he had held his own with all manner of dogs and achieved to mastery over them. Bitter rage was his, but never blind rage. In passion to rend and destroy, he never forgot that his enemy was in like passion to rend and destroy. He never rushed till he was prepared to receive a rush; never attacked till he had first defended that attack. In vain Buck strove to sink his teeth in the neck of the big white dog. Wherever his fangs struck for the softer flesh, they were countered by the fangs of Spitz. Fang clashed fang, and lips were cut and bleeding, but Buck could not penetrate his enemy's guard. Then he warmed up and enveloped Spitz in a whirlwind of rushes. Time and time again he tried for the snow-white throat, where life bubbled near to the surface, and each time and every time Spitz slashed him and got away. Then Buck took to rushing, as though for the throat, when, suddenly drawing back his head and curving in from the side, he would drive his shoulder at the shoulder of Spitz, as a ram by which to overthrow him. But instead, Buck's shoulder was slashed down each time as Spitz leaped lightly away. Spitz was untouched, while Buck was streaming with blood and panting hard. The fight was growing desperate. And all the while the silent and wolfish circle waited to finish off whichever dog went down. As Buck grew winded, Spitz took to rushing, and he


Madness was an explanation. But the woman had said, There are crimes that cannot go unpunished. That was motive, however mystifying. Io asked the old woman, “What crimes did you punish him for?” The wraith didn’t reply. Since she entered the office, she hadn’t stopped staring at Bianca, with what could only be described as hunger. Io stepped in front of the mob queen, blocking the wraith’s view. “He hurt you,” Io guessed. Half the art of sleuthing was in fishing up the truth. “You wanted revenge.” The wraith’s attention switched, pressing like a dagger on Io’s throat. “Revenge is for the wicked,” the woman replied. “My purpose is justice. I am its servant, and it is mine.” Io’s pulse spiked. She forced herself to stand still and collect her thoughts, then spoke to the room at large. “There have been other victims?” “Oh, you are good, little sleuth.” Bianca shoved her hands casually in her pockets. “She killed one of my men a few days ago. She managed to escape, but not before Edei gleaned the same bit of information you did: she wanted my man to repent. But this is not the first killer we’ve found lurking in the Silts, spewing the words of a lunatic. The first appeared two weeks ago. Another woman, as ragged as this one, strangled a border guard to death, right in front of his family.” “Our people told me,” Edei said, “that she kept saying, Your crimes demand punishment.” A shiver crawled down Io’s spine. “Her hands, were they bent like this?” She indicated the wraith with her chin, whose pale fingers closed around the thread, invisible to anyone but the moira-born. “Was her appearance similar, the . . . skin?” Edei nodded. “We found the first woman dead five days later—” “Fools!” the wraith spat. With a horrible smile, she inched forward. Edei and the girl surrounded her at once, brass bars pushing at her chest. The redhead fumbled at the back of his trousers and produced a gun. Io had never seen a revolver up close; it was big, with a wooden handle and a long nose. It caught the sunlight, the metal glistening bright orange. “Let them see your weapon, they told me.” The woman spoke in a hiss. “Let them see what’s coming for them, they said. I’m neither crazy, nor dying. I am ascended.” Faster than lightning, the wraith whipped her severed thread in Io’s direction, like a lasso. It sailed across the room; Io gasped and scrambled out of the way—but she was never its target. It happened fast: the thread looped around Bianca Rossi’s throat. The redheaded boy fired the gun, hitting the wraith’s torso. Bianca fell on her knees, hands around her neck, gasping for air. Edei launched at the wraith, someone shouted, furniture toppled. Io swiped at her chest for a thread. With practiced fingers, she grabbed one, skidded on her boots across the floor, and brought it inches from the wraith’s severed life-thread. “Stop!” she screamed. Bianca Rossi was clutching at her neck, face


might appreciate is that there are two separate actresses, Angela Shinske and Kathryn Woo, who the media often says Making Love in July is about, and Angela goes along with these claims, even though she and I only ever went on two dates, and by then it was 2004. Kathryn and I dated for longer, and she was my date to the 2002 Grammys, but I’d written the song well before then. So…is your marketing firm currently hiring? from: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> to: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> date: Jul 25, 2020, 10:59 AM subject: Actually Wait, who DID you lose your virginity to? (Yes, I am ending a sentence with a preposition, but that’s how urgently I need to know.) Did you tell the other person she’d deflowered you? I’ve always assumed that the Great Pool Boning of August 2000 was Martin’s first time, too, and I wouldn’t say it was magical, but it wasn’t a negative experience, which I think counts as a win? I hope you are not disappointed to learn that I don’t find it shocking or embarrassing that you didn’t have sex until you were twenty. I beat you by, what, just a year or two? Regarding our emailing versus my emailing with Martin, this situation feels pretty different. Because you and I are adults? And because he and I had hardly spoken outside the pool (or in the pool, for that matter) whereas you and I have before this correspondence had many deep conversations about cheese, panthers, and snakes. Hmm, maybe these aren’t such persuasive points after all. But I suspect unless either of us has changed dramatically in the last two years, we have a sense of what it’s like to talk to each other in the same room. Although, since we have arrived at this somewhat weird juncture…I don’t know…do you have a handle on what we’re doing here? Can you tell I’m borrowing your ellipses right now? To…convey…my…laidback…chill…personality… from: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> to: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> date: Jul 25, 2020, 11:26 AM subject: Actually Nope, I can’t say that I have a handle on what we’re doing. But it’s fun, huh? I lost my virginity to…I am white knuckling it here…a model named Brittain Smith. Brittain and I met at the premiere of a movie I had a song in and dated for just a few months. I much later seriously dated one other model, whose name is Maribel Johnson. For the record, those are the only two models I’ve ever dated, period. Not that I feel the need to justify it…in fact, it seems very sexist that anyone would automatically assume a relationship with a model is shallow. But the bigger reason I reacted badly when you said that thing in the bar about 22-year-old models is that when someone brings it up as a way of accusing me of being a playboy, it’s not only insulting but just plain wrong. Send the marriage/mindfuck pdf! from: Sally Milz <Smilz@TNOshow.com> to: Noah Brewster <NoahRBrewster@gmail.com> date: Jul 25, 2020, 5:12 PM subject: Actually This might seem


keys out of her pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house, doing any wild mischief that came into her head. They say she had nearly burned her husband in his bed once; but I don't know about that. However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her own; and then she got down to a lower story, and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess' (she was like as if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at her) and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately. The governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Rochester sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage quite savage on his disappointment; he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous after he lost her. He would be alone, too. He sent Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she deserved it for she was a very good woman. Miss Adle, a ward he had, was put to school. He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut himself up, like a hermit, at the Hall:"     "What! did he not leave England?"     "Leave England? Bless you, no! He would not cross the door-stones of the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses which it is my opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma'am. He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his own, if ever man had. I knew him from a boy, you see; and for my part I have often wished that Miss Eyre had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall."     "Then Mr. Rochester was at home when the fire broke out?"     "Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them down himself and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell. And then they called out to him that she was on the roof; where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off. I saw her and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

to know not to trust him one inch. “Ask for my true name, and I’ll give it to you.” “Why on earth would you do that?” I demanded, yanking my hand back. “Oh, Em,” he said forlornly. “You are the cleverest dolt I have ever met.” I stared at him, my heart thundering. Of course, I am not a dolt in any sense; I had supposed he felt something for me and had only hoped he would keep it to himself. Forever. Not that a part of me didn’t wish for the opposite. But that was when I assumed his feelings in that respect were equivalent to what he felt for any of the nameless women who passed in and out of his bed. And why would I lower myself to that, when he and I already had something that was vastly more valuable? But he was offering me his name? Once, while following a trail of blue foxberries in the woods east of Novosibirsk, I had tripped over a root and gone tumbling end-over-end down the side of a gully, landing with a great splash in the little stream at the bottom. Luckily, I fell into a pile of sodden leaves trapped in a side channel by the current, and not upon the sharp rocks only inches to my left. But the breath was knocked out of me entirely, and I simply lay there aching from innumerable bruises for several minutes—and yet even then, I hadn’t been stunned like this. He sighed. “Well, I don’t expect you to do anything with this information. I have grown rather used to pining, so it won’t put me out to keep at it, I suppose.” “I would order you to do all sorts of terrible things,” I managed, though my voice sounded very far away. “You seem to have a talent for that already.” “I would have you accompany me on every field study,” I said. “I would have you rising at six and carrying my cameras and equipment everywhere. You would never escape a day of hard work again. And you would certainly have to retract all of the studies you faked.” He glared at me. “Yes, you would do all that, wouldn’t you? Well then, instead, why don’t you just marry me?” I said nothing for several minutes. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the pit-pat of snow upon the windows. “That’s a more sensible suggestion,” I said. He burst out laughing. By the time he finished, he was wiping at his eyes. “Sensible, she says. Sensible.” “Well, it is,” I snapped. “I didn’t say we would marry. But why would I want your name? I don’t wish to order you about like a servant. You may keep it, and your mad faerie logic, to yourself.” “Very well,” he said. “Is that it, then? Your answer is no?” “I didn’t say that,” I snapped, irritated and hopelessly flustered. I thought inanely that this sort of thing would never have happened with Leopold. Leopold had been predictable in every


fascination upon the face of the live young creature by his side. She noticed that he was watching her and thinking that he wished his ornament again she held it out to him. He took it from her and taking the chain in his two hands he placed it about her neck, smiling at her expression of surprise at his unexpected gift. Jane shook her head vehemently and would have removed the golden links from about her throat, but Tarzan would not let her. Taking her hands in his, when she insisted upon it, he held them tightly to prevent her. At last she desisted and with a little laugh raised the locket to her lips. Tarzan did not know precisely what she meant, but he guessed correctly that it was her way of acknowledging the gift, and so he rose, and taking the locket in his hand, stooped gravely like some courtier of old, and Chapter 20 113 pressed his lips upon it where hers had rested. It was a stately and gallant little compliment performed with the grace and dignity of utter unconsciousness of self. It was the hall-mark of his aristocratic birth, the natural outcropping of many generations of fine breeding, an hereditary instinct of graciousness which a lifetime of uncouth and savage training and environment could not eradicate. It was growing dark now, and so they ate again of the fruit which was both food and drink for them; then Tarzan rose, and leading Jane to the little bower he had erected, motioned her to go within. For the first time in hours a feeling of fear swept over her, and Tarzan felt her draw away as though shrinking from him. Contact with this girl for half a day had left a very diferent Tarzan from the one on whom the morning's sun had risen. Now, in every fiber of his being, heredity spoke louder than training. He had not in one swift transition become a polished gentleman from a savage ape-man, but at last the instincts of the former predominated, and over all was the desire to please the woman he loved, and to appear well in her eyes. So Tarzan of the Apes did the only thing he knew to assure Jane of her safety. He removed his hunting knife from its sheath and handed it to her hilt first, again motioning her into the bower. The girl understood, and taking the long knife she entered and lay down upon the soft grasses while Tarzan of the Apes stretched himself upon the ground across the entrance. And thus the rising sun found them in the morning. When Jane awoke, she did not at first recall the strange events of the preceding day, and so she wondered at her odd surroundings--the little leafy bower, the soft grasses of her bed, the unfamiliar prospect from the opening at her feet. Slowly the circumstances of her position crept one by one into her mind. And then a great wonderment arose in her heart--a mighty wave of thankfulness and gratitude


had stopped. It was very cold. The Other slid forward on silent feet. In its hand was a longsword like none that Will had ever seen. No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed almost to vanish when seen edge-on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing, a ghost-light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew it was sharper than any razor. Ser Waymar met him bravely. "Dance with me then." He lifted his sword high over his head, defiant. His hands trembled from the weight of it, or perhaps from the cold. Yet in that moment, Will thought, he was a boy no longer, but a man of the Night's Watch. The Other halted. Will saw its eyes; blue, deeper and bluer than any human eyes, a blue that burned like ice. They fixed on the longsword trembling on high, watched the moonlight running cold along the metal. For a heartbeat he dared to hope. They emerged silently from the shadows, twins to the first. Three of them . . . four . . . five . . . Ser Waymar may have felt the cold that came with them, but he never saw them, never heard them. Will had to call out. It was his duty. And his death, if he did. He shivered, and hugged the tree, and kept the silence. The pale sword came shivering through the air. Ser Waymar met it with steel. When the blades met, there was no ring of metal on metal; only a high, thin sound at the edge of hearing, like an animal screaming in pain. Royce checked a second blow, and a third, then fell back a step. Another flurry of blows, and he fell back again. Behind him, to right, to left, all around him, the watchers stood patient, faceless, silent, the shifting patterns of their delicate armor making them all but invisible in the wood. Yet they made no move to interfere. Again and again the swords met, until Will wanted to cover his ears against the strange anguished keening of their clash. Ser Waymar was panting from the effort now, his breath steaming in the moonlight. His blade was white with frost; the Other's danced with pale blue light. Then Royce's parry came a beat too late. The pale sword bit through the ringmail beneath his arm. The young lord cried out in pain. Blood welled between the rings. It steamed in the cold, and the droplets seemed red as fire where they touched the snow. Ser A GAME OF THRONES 9 Waymar's fingers brushed his side. His moleskin glove came away soaked with red. The Other said something in a language that Will did not know; his voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking. Ser Waymar Royce found his fury. "For Robert!" he shouted, and he came up snarling, lifting the frost-covered longsword with both hands


is not an item on my Steps to Success board. Quite the opposite, in fact. My Steps to Success board, which is pinned up by the side of my bed, has pictures of Katharine Breakspeare, advertising CEO Karen Blackett, and management consultant Dame Vivian Hunt—three of the most influential Black businesswomen in the UK—as well as a life plan that should take me from age seventeen to twenty-one: Maintain flawless school record. Keep up with TikTok (unique extracurricular, will stand out on applications, also someone in admissions might be a genius who understands the joy of a good conspiracy). Finish PERFECT Cambridge application and receive conditional offer. ACE EXAMS AND GET THE GRADES. Charm all Cambridge law staff members with sparkling wit and joie de vivre (also: find YouTube tutorials on sparkling wit and joie de vivre). Secure training position with Sharma & Moncrieff. Sharma & Moncrieff is the second-best corporate law firm in the East Midlands. My dad’s is the first, but that will change when I rise as a giant in the field and Luke Skywalker his arse with the spiked heel of my Louboutin. It’s going to be epic. Boardrooms will crumble. Empires will fall! He’ll— Oh, sorry, back to the point: clearly, a broken wrist is absolutely nowhere in my plan. I should sue Bradley for this because he definitely did it on purpose. I mean, I know I’m a hefty babe, but he’s supposed to be some kind of super sportsman and his biceps are the size of grapefruits. He had me. He did. And then he didn’t. Plus, I landed harder than I would’ve without his oh-so-helpful momentary pawing of my T-shirt because I was too stunned by his audacity to concentrate on falling well. In short, I would be well within my rights to demand blood. Or his firstborn. Or whatever I wanted, really, except his integrity, because he doesn’t have any. Giselle unfolds a never-ending arm and presses her finger between my eyebrows. “Stop scowling, baby. Or the wind will change, and you’ll be stuck like that.” “Good. It would suit my personality.” She rolls onto her back and laughs at the ceiling. My sister is twenty-four—seven years older than me—and when I was a kid, I wanted to be her. Maybe that’s why, even now, whenever she laughs, I do too. We’re still giggling when someone knocks on my door. I wait a second for Mum to breeze in without permission, plonk herself on the bed, and steal my phone to scroll through TikTok. When that doesn’t happen, I frown in confusion and Giselle grins in response. “Oh yeah. Forgot to mention: Bradley’s here.” “What?” It’s supposed to come out frosty and disgusted, but I accidentally squawk like a bird. Giselle snickers and taps my forehead again. “Deep breaths, Cel.” Then she gets up and saunters to the door. I don’t quite believe her until it swings open and, yep, Bradley’s standing right there. I haven’t seen him framed by my doorway in…years. He looks different but the same: taller and older, sure,


was Zillah, the stout housewife, who at length issued forth to inquire into the nature of the uproar. She thought that some of them had been laying violent hands on me; and, not daring to attack her mas- ter, she turned her vocal artillery against the younger scoundrel. "Well, Mr. Earnshaw," she cried, "I wonder what you'll have agait next! Are we going to murder folk on our very door-stones? I see this house will never do for me. Look at t' poor lad; he's fair choking!--Wisht, wisht! you munn't go on so. Come in, and I'll cure that. There now, hold ye still." With these words she suddenly splashed a pint of icy water down my neck, and pulled me into the kitchen. Mr. Heathcliff followed, his accidental merriment ex- piring quickly in his habitual moroseness. I was sick exceedingly, and dizzy and faint, and thus compelled perforce to accept lodgings under his roof. He told Zillah to give me a glass of brandy, and then passed on to the inner room; while she condoled with me on my sorry predicament, and having obeyed his orders, whereby I was somewhat revived, ushered me to bed. CHAPTER III. While leading the way upstairs, she recommended that I should hide the candle, and not make a noise, for her master had an odd notion about the cham- ber she would put me in, and never let anybody lodge there willingly. I asked the reason. She did not know, she answered. She had only lived there a year or two; and they had so many queer goings on, she could not begin to be curious. Too stupefied to be curious myself, I fastened my door and glanced round for the bed. The whole furni- ture consisted of a chair, a clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut out near the top resembling coach windows. Having approached this structure, I looked inside, and perceived it to be a singular sort of old-fashioned couch, very conveniently designed to ob- viate the necessity for every member of the family hav- ing a room to himself. In fact, it formed a little closet; and the ledge of a window, which it enclosed, served as a table. I slid back the panelled sides, got in with my light, pulled them together again, and felt secure against the vigilance of Heathcliff and every one else. The ledge where I placed my candle had a few mil- dewed books piled up in one corner, and it was covered with writing scratched on the paint. This writing, how- ever, was nothing but a name repeated in all kinds of characters, large and small---Catherine Earnshaw, here and there varied to Catherine Heathcliff and then again to Catherine Linton. In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the win- dow, and continued spelling over Catherine Earnshaw ---Heathcliff---Linton, till my eyes closed. But they had not rested five minutes when a glare of white letters started from the dark as vivid as spectres---the air swarmed with Catherines; and rousing myself to dispel the


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 on," said his companion. "We will take the food down now, and not bother about the other kids. You stay here and see if you can spot them while I go down." Dick and Anne hardly dared to breathe when they heard all this. How they hoped that the men wouldn't think of looking down the well! They heard one man walk to the little stone room. It was plain that he was getting food and drink to take down to the two prisoners in the dungeons below. The other man stayed in the courtyard, whistling softly. After what seemed a very long time to the hidden children, the first man came back. Then the two talked together, and at last went off to the cove. Dick heard the motor-boat being started up. "It's safe to get out now, Anne," he said. "Isn't it cold down here? I'll be glad to get out into the sunshine." They climbed out and stood warming themselves in the hot summer sunshine. They could see the motor-boat streaking towards the mainland. "Well, they're gone for the moment," said Dick. "And they've not taken our boat, as they said. If only we could rescue Julian and George, we could get help, because George could row us back." "Why can't we


Eton for

the weekend.

I woke to find Pa on the edge of my bed, saying I was going back to

Africa.

Africa, Pa?

Yes, darling boy.

Why?

It was the same old problem, he explained. I was facing a longish school

holiday, over Easter, and something needed to be done with me. So, Africa.

Botswana, to be precise. A safari.

Safari! With you, Pa?

55

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

No. Alas, he wouldn’t be going along this time. But Willy would.

Oh, good.

And someone very special, he added, acting as our African guide.

Who, Pa?

Marko.

Marko? I barely knew the man, though I’d heard good things. He was

Willy’s minder, and Willy seemed to like him very much. Everyone did, for

that matter. Of all Pa’s people there was consensus that Marko was the best.

The roughest, the toughest, the most dashing.

Longtime Welsh Guard. Raconteur. Man’s man, through and through.

I was so excited about the prospect of this Marko-led safari, I don’t know

how I got through the following weeks of school. I don’t actually recall

getting through them, in fact. Memory winks out completely, right after Pa

delivered the news, then snaps back into focus as I’m boarding a British

Airways jet with Marko and Willy and Tiggy—one of our nannies. Our

favorite nanny, to be accurate, though Tiggy couldn’t stand being called that.

She’d bite the head off anyone who tried. /’m not the nanny, I’m your friend!

Mummy, sadly, didn’t see it that way. Mummy saw Tiggy not as a nanny

but as a rival. It’s common knowledge that Mummy suspected Tiggy was

being groomed as her future replacement. (Did Mummy see Tiggy as her

Spare?) Now this same woman whom Mummy feared as her possible

replacement was her actual replacement—how dreadful for Mummy. Every

hug or head pat from Tiggy, therefore, must’ve unleashed some


Mrs. Bone studied the darkness. What’s this, then? she wondered. A girl from the room next door, after a spare blanket? Someone feeling unwell? Her skin prickled. The moment lengthened. There was a tiny noise, the softest footstep, or a breath—and then silence. * * * In the morning she counted the faces around the table, trying to keep hold of the numbers. Five kitchen maids. Sue. Five under-footmen. The chauffeur, Mr. Doggett. The boy with the face like a rodent had vanished, and the house-parlormaids were on active maneuvers upstairs. There were entirely too many people here. They couldn’t possibly all have enough chores to do. Yet they were in constant motion, coming and going. It made it nigh on impossible to track them. “Sleep all right, my girl?” she asked Sue. Sue nodded, eyes down. “Yes, thanks, Mrs. Bone.” “Here,” said one of the under-footmen, depositing another pile of pans on the table with a clang. “Look sharp.” My poor hands, she thought gloomily, looking at the polishing rags. “Hark at you,” said Cook. “Eh?” Mrs. Bone said. “Mumbling to yourself.” Mrs. Bone flushed. Reporting to Cook was going to be a very disagreeable experience. Choose your words carefully. “Now, Cook,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to ask. I saw a lot of dirty picture frames upstairs. Very greasy. Someone ought to take a look at them.” The head footman caught her eye. “And what were you doing upstairs?” he asked. His name was William. Very handsome. Maybe thirty-five, thirty-six. Dark hair. Long nose. Out of his liveries he could’ve been a forester, a woodsman. There was something wild in his gaze, something golden and jaguar-like. She’d heard the others whispering about him and Mrs. King over supper the night before. Good for you, Dinah, she thought, approving and disapproving all at the same time. Cook spoke before she could reply. “And what are you telling me for? I don’t take care of upstairs chores. I take care of the kitchen, that’s my job, and we’ve more than enough work already. You’re the bleedin’ daily woman, for heaven’s sake...” Mrs. Bone raised her hands for peace. “I’ll make up some soda.” Cook snapped her fingers to her girls. “Fetch three ounces of eggs, some chloride of potass, and someone give her ladyship here a mixing bowl.” Her eyes glittered. “Dirty frames. I ask you. I’d like to come and look at those myself!” Mrs. Bone fetched a bucket. “You rest here, Cook,” she said. “No need to trouble yourself in the least.” * * * The bucket was full of foaming liquid, and she had to grit her teeth, concentrating, to make sure she didn’t spill any and stain the marble. She slid the dining room door open with her foot. The room loomed large around her, the mirror big as a church window. The dining table irked her. It was octagonal, and very small—tiny, really. She felt a nasty snag of recognition. Like brother, like sister. She always positioned her desk far away from the door. Made people walk


a village. But I really loved her. I am quite sure that I loved her. All during this wonderful May that we have been having, I used to run down and see her two or three times a week. Yesterday she met me in a little orchard. The apple-blossoms kept tumbling down on her hair, and she was laughing. We were to have gone away together this morning at dawn. Suddenly I determined to leave her as flower-like as I had found her." "I should think the novelty of the emotion must have given you a thrill of real pleasure, Dorian," interrupted Lord Henry. "But I can finish your idyl for you. You gave her good advice, and broke her heart. That was the beginning of your reformation." "Harry, you are horrible! You mustn't say these dreadful things. Hetty's heart is not broken. Of course she cried, and all that. But there is no disgrace upon her. She can live, like Perdita, in her garden." "And weep over a faithless Florizel," said Lord Henry, laughing. "My dear Dorian, you have the most curious boyish moods. Do you think this girl will ever be really contented now with any one of her own rank? I suppose she will be married some day to a rough carter or a grinning ploughman. Well, having met you, and loved you, will teach her to despise her husband, and she will be wretched. From a moral point of view I really don't think much of your great renunciation. [95] Even as a beginning, it is poor. Besides, how do you know that Hetty isn't floating at the present moment in some mill-pond, with water-lilies round her, like Ophelia?" "I can't bear this, Harry! You mock at everything, and then suggest the most serious tragedies. I am sorry I told you now. I don't care what you say to me, I know I was right in acting as I did. Poor Hetty! As I rode past the farm this morning, I saw her white face at the window, like a spray of jasmine. Don't let me talk about it any more, and don't try to persuade me that the first good action I have done for years, the first little bit of self-sacrifice I have ever known, is really a sort of sin. I want to be better. I am going to be better. Tell me something about yourself. What is going on in town? I have not been to the club for days." "The people are still discussing poor Basil's disappearance." "I should have thought they had got tired of that by this time," said Dorian, pouring himself out some wine, and frowning slightly. "My dear boy, they have only been talking about it for six weeks, and the public are really not equal to the mental strain of having more than one topic every three months. They have been very fortunate lately, however. They have had my own divorce-case, and Alan Campbell's suicide. Now they have got the mysterious disappearance of an artist. Scotland Yard still


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

nodded vigorously. "Where do you come from, anyway?" Harry asked. The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Harry peered at it. Boa Constrictor, Brazil. "Was it nice there?" The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again and Harry read on: This specimen was bred in the zoo. "Oh, I see -- so you've never been to Brazil?" As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Harry made both of them jump. "DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!" Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could. "Out of the way, you," he said, punching Harry in the ribs. Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened -- one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror. Harry sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits. As the snake slid swiftly past him, Harry could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, "Brazil, here I come...Thanksss, amigo." The keeper of the reptile house was in shock. "But the glass," he kept saying, "where did the glass go?" The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of strong, sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as Harry had seen, the snake hadn't done anything except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time they were all back in Uncle Vernon's car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for Harry at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, "Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?" Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, "Go -- cupboard -- stay -- no meals," before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy. *** Harry lay in his dark cupboard much later, wishing he had a watch. He didn't know what time it was and he couldn't be sure the Dursleys were asleep yet. Until they were, he couldn't risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food. He'd lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as he could remember, ever since he'd been a baby and his parents had died in that car crash. He couldn't remember being in the car when his parents had died. Sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash


front wheels spinning and its great headlights searching the sky. For a split second, resting on the petrol tank, it seemed to paw at the heavens like a giant praying-mantis. Then slowly it toppled over backwards and fell with a splintering crash of coachwork and glass. In the deafening silence, the near-side front wheel whispered briefly on and then squeaked to a stop. Le Chiffre and his two men only had to walk a few yards from their ambush. 'Put your guns away and get him out,' he ordered brusquely. 'I'll keep you covered. Be careful of him. I don't want a corpse. And hurry up, it's getting light.' The two men got down on their knees. One of them took out a long knife and cut some of the fabric away from the side of the convertible hood and took hold of Bond's shoulders. He was unconscious and immovable. The other squeezed between the upturned car and the bank and forced his way through the crumpled window-frame. He eased Bond's legs, pinned between the steering-wheel and the fabric roof of the car. Then they inched him out through a hole in the hood. They were sweating and filthy with dust and oil by the time they had him lying in the road. The thin man felt his heart and then slapped his face hard on either side. Bond grunted and moved a hand. The thin man slapped him again. 'That's enough,' said Le Chiffre. 'Tie his arms and put him in the car. Here,' he threw a roll of flex to the man. 'Empty his pockets first and give me his gun. He may have got some other weapons, but we can get them later.' He took the objects the thin man handed him and stuffed them and Bond's Beretta into his wide pockets without examining them. He left the men to it and walked back to the car. His face showed neither pleasure nor excitement. It was the sharp bite of the wire flex into his wrists that brought Bond to himself. He was aching all over as if he had been thrashed with a wooden club, but when he was yanked to his feet and pushed towards the narrow side-road where the engine of the Citron was already running softly, he found that no bones were broken. But he felt in no mood for desperate attempts to escape and allowed himself to be dragged into the back seat of the car without resisting. He felt thoroughly dispirited and weak in resolve as well as in his body. He had had to take too much in the past twenty-four hours and now this last stroke by the enemy seemed almost too final. This time there could be no miracles. No one knew where he was and no one would miss him until well on into the morning. The wreck of his car would be found before very long, but it would take hours to trace the ownership to him. And Vesper. He looked to the right, past the thin man


grateful to Marie Howe, whose words have long been a source of solace and inspiration, for permitting me to title this book with a phrase from her poem “For Three Days” and excerpt “What the Living Do” within. The quotations from Saint John Climacus’s The Ladder of Divine Ascent are from the 2012 Revised Edition by the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Brookline, Massachusetts, translated by Father Lazarus Moore. A Living Remedy exists thanks to the skill and abiding faith of Ecco publisher Helen Atsma, my editor and fellow Oregonian. From our first conversation, it was clear how much she believed in and understood this book, two things that remained true even as the story I thought I would write gave way to something new and far more arduous. Thank you, Helen, for helping to make this the book it needed to be, and for the abundant grace and care you’ve shown me. Warmest gratitude to my agent, Maria Massie, source of so much compassionate advice, whose dedication and thoughtfulness has made all the difference in my career: how lucky I am to have you in my corner. To Carrie Frye, who’s had to listen to me talk about this book for longer than anyone else, and whom I was thrilled to collaborate with after years of trading editorial quips and metaphors: thank you for believing when I didn’t, seeing what I couldn’t, and not letting me go onstage with my kilt on my head. I have the most brilliant and supportive publishing team, and am forever indebted to the all-star crew at Ecco Books, including Sonya Cheuse, Jin Soo Chun, Meghan Deans, Caitlin Mulrooney-Lyski, Miriam Parker, and Rachel Sargent. Many thanks to Michael Taeckens of Broadside PR. And Vivian Rowe, your cover is a dream—a poem in and of itself. Heartfelt thanks to Julie Buntin, Kat Chow, Yuka Igarashi, Megha Majumdar, Imani Perry, and Bryan Washington for their generosity, care, and early reads. Jasmine Guillory, I treasure our friendship and genuinely don’t know where I’d be without you. Crystal Hana Kim and R. O. Kwon, sisters and stalwarts of the group chat, I am thankful for you every day. Much gratitude to Kristie Ahola, Angela Chen, Nicole Cliffe, Tope Fadiran, Alyssa Keiko Furukawa, Elon Green, Taylor Harris, Anna Hetherington, Danny Lavery, Karen Maeda Allman, Rita Maldonado, Rebecca Onion, Greg Pak, Samantha Powell, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Jaya Saxena, Christina Tucker, Esmé Weijun Wang, Maria Wheeler, and Jess Zimmerman. Tajja Isen, Matt Ortile, Stella Cabot Wilson, Allisen Hae Ji Lichtenstein, Leah Johnson, Arriel Vinson, Gabrielle Bellot, Eliza Harris, Sirin Thada: I’m always rooting for you. I continue to be grateful for the ongoing efforts of Megan Fishmann and Lena Moses-Schmitt at Catapult and Elaine Trevorrow at EMT Agency. Thank you to all the booksellers and librarians and educators who have stocked or shared my books (special shoutout to Hannah, Christine, and Amy at Loyalty Books for setting up a signed preorder campaign in record time, during a week when half of us were on vacation!). And sincere thanks to all those who’ve


together. “What else?” “There doesn’t need to be a winner and a loser. You just have to care how the other person feels. You have to care more about them than you do about being right.” “This doesn’t sound like fighting,” I tell him. “This information came straight from Hank,” he says. I can’t help but smile. “Then I guess we’d better trust it.” “Do you want to try?” he says. “Something minor?” I say. He nods. “You load the dishwasher wrong,” I say. He breaks into a smile. “Wrong?” “Fine, not wrong,” I say. “But in a way that I hate.” His smile splits open on an exhalation of laughter. “Go on. Don’t hold back.” “You fill the bottom rack too full,” I say, “and the water can’t get to the top rack. And you don’t rinse things well enough, so even when everything does get soaped, there’s still, like, full pieces of cereal stuck inside the bowls.” He fights his way back to a somber expression. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right. I hurry when I do the dishes, and it ends up making more work. What else?” “I don’t like when you downplay your intelligence.” “I’m working on that,” he says. “And honestly, the medicine helps. So does feeling good at my job.” My rib cage seems to shrink, or else my heart grows. “Good. You should be at least a fraction as proud of yourself as I am of you.” “Those,” he says quietly, smiling, “are not fighting words.” “That’s because it’s your turn,” I say. “You’re mad at me too.” “I am?” he says. “Furious,” I say. He squeezes me to him. “Furious,” he breathes. “About what again?” Sabrina’s words replay in my head: You’re losing the love of your life because you’re too indecisive to just pick a wedding date . . . Parth saw what Wyn wrote . . . you sat there and let your life happen to you instead of fighting for what you want. My stomach flip-flops. “Maybe because of the wedding.” “What wedding?” he says. “Ours,” I say. “We didn’t have one,” he says. “And maybe you think I didn’t care,” I say. “Or that I was afraid to commit to you, and that’s why I couldn’t make any decisions. Maybe you think I was intentionally putting it off.” He swallows, murmurs, “Weren’t you?” My head swims at the confirmation, the final piece of the puzzle clicking into place, five months too late. Tears gloss my eyes. It wasn’t one moment when everything went wrong, when I failed him, when we lost each other. There were dozens, on either side. Missed signs. Dropped lines. It fucking hurts to realize it. To understand that I made him think I didn’t want him. “I was trying to be easy, Wyn,” I choke out. “You were so unhappy. And I didn’t want to rush you while you were mourning. I didn’t want to need you when you were in so much pain, so I pretended I was fine. I was scared that if you


down. My father won't let people talk me over either. The servants are not allowed to speak about me. If I live I may be a hunchback, but I shan't live. My father hates to think I may be like him." "Oh, what a queer house this is!" Mary said. "What a queer house! Everything is a kind of secret. Rooms are locked up and gardens are locked up--and you! Have you been locked up?" "No. I stay in this room because I don't want to be moved out of it. It tires me too much." "Does your father come and see you?" Mary ventured. "Sometimes. Generally when I am asleep. He doesn't want to see me." "Why?" Mary could not help asking again. A sort of angry shadow passed over the boy's face. "My mother died when I was born and it makes him wretched to look at me. He thinks I don't know, but I've heard people talking. He almost hates me." "He hates the garden, because she died," said Mary half speaking to herself. "What garden?" the boy asked. "Oh! just--just a garden she used to like," Mary stammered. "Have you been here always?" "Nearly always. Sometimes I have been taken to places at the seaside, but I won't stay because people stare at me. I used to wear an iron thing to keep my back straight, but a grand doctor came from London to see me and said it was stupid. He told them to take it off and keep me out in the fresh air. I hate fresh air and I don't want to go out." "I didn't when first I came here," said Mary. "Why do you keep looking at me like that?" "Because of the dreams that are so real," he answered rather fretfully. "Sometimes when I open my eyes I don't believe I'm awake." "We're both awake," said Mary. She glanced round the room with its high ceiling and shadowy corners and dim fire-light. "It looks quite like a dream, and it's the middle of the night, and everybody in the house is asleep--everybody but us. We are wide awake." "I don't want it to be a dream," the boy said restlessly. Mary thought of something all at once. "If you don't like people to see you," she began, "do you want me to go away?" He still held the fold of her wrapper and he gave it a little pull. "No," he said. "I should be sure you were a dream if you went. If you are real, sit down on that big footstool and talk. I want to hear about you." Mary put down her candle on the table near the bed and sat down on the cushioned stool. She did not want to go away at all. She wanted to stay in the mysterious hidden-away room and talk to the mysterious boy. "What do you want me to tell you?" she said. He wanted to know how long she had been at Misselthwaite; he wanted to know which corridor her room


branches and how many stars the faerie could see from his window, but little else. It was a myopic view of the courtly fae, filtered through the eyes of a self-absorbed child, and thus not particularly helpful. Either the changeling did not know or he could not remember why he had been brought to Hrafnsvik, though he did believe that he would be taken away again, and swore a great many dire revenges upon me when this occurred. Once I had tired of his moaning, I handed him his coat. He drew this around his body and huddled in the corner, shuddering, as slowly he gained weight and substance again. I did not leave Mord and Aslaug wholly unprotected, of course. I told them about the inside-out trick I had used with my clothing—this would not prevent the visions, of course, but it would lessen their hold over them. Aslaug, returned from her walk, welcomed me with a warmth I did not expect, but she was an unsettling sight—far too thin, her eyes shadowed, and her hair lank. She hummed almost constantly, and at times seemed to become lost in herself, oblivious to conversation until Mord went to her side and squeezed her shoulder. While I am first and foremost a scientist and value my objectivity, I would have helped them if I could. But I saw no way of doing so. I returned to the cottage to compile my notes. It was empty, though I could see two tiny specks upon a distant mountainside that I recognized by the colour of their cloaks as Lizzie and Henry. I caught the flicker of a spyglass and guessed they were observing the rock formations below. As for Bambleby, I had no idea. Perhaps he had drowned in the spring. I decided to venture thither myself. I wished to pay my respects to my new friend; one can never predict the effects of being kind to the common fae, and I still hoped to earn his confidences. The spring was deserted, but I was content to remove my boots and wait. I splashed my face with water, and then, after a quick glance over my shoulder, plunged my head under. I scrubbed my hair for the first time since arriving in Hrafnsvik, dislodging dirt and leaves that I hadn’t even realized were there. When I finished, I squeezed it out and tied it back up, feeling infinitely better. It was as if I had washed off some of the darkness from the farmhouse. The afternoon held the sort of borrowed, ephemeral warmth that interrupts the advance of winter sometimes, and I found myself wondering what summer was like in this place. With the sun filtering through the trees, I was feeling quite content. I ate my lunch while I waited, after first restocking the faerie’s candy. He had not liked the caramels one bit, complaining that they stuck in his teeth. The chocolates, though, he had instantly taken to. I would have to write to my brother for more; no doubt sweets at Groa’s