instinct had noted but his mind rejected, all stood out now like signposts. He saw her now only as a spy. Their love and his grief were relegated to the boxroom of his mind. Later, perhaps they would be dragged out, dispassionately examined, and then bitterly thrust back with other sentimental baggage he would rather forget. Now he could only think of her treachery to the Service and to her country and of the damage it had done. His professional mind was completely absorbed with the consequences - the covers which must have been blown over the years, the codes which the enemy must have broken, the secrets which must have leaked from the centre of the very section devoted to penetrating the Soviet Union. It was ghastly. God knew how the mess would be cleared up. He ground his teeth. Suddenly Mathis's words came back to him: 'There are plenty of really black targets around,' and, earlier, 'What about SMERSH? I don't like the idea of these chaps running aroundFrance killing anyone they feel has been a traitor to their precious political system.' How soon Mathis had been proved right and how soon his own little sophistries had been exploded in his face! While he, Bond, had been playing Red Indians through the years (yes, Le Chiffre's description was perfectly accurate), the real enemy had been working quietly, coldly, without heroics, right there at his elbow. He suddenly had a vision of Vesper walking down a corridor with documents in her hand. On a tray. They just got it on a tray while the cool secret agent with a Double O number was gallivanting round the world - playing Red Indians. His fingernails dug into the palms of his hands and his body sweated with shame. Well, it was not too late. Here was a target for him, right to hand. He would take on SMERSH and hunt it down. Without SMERSH, without this cold weapon of death and revenge, the MWD would be just another bunch of civil servant spies, no better and no worse than any of the western services. SMERSH was the spur. Be faithful, spy well, or you die. Inevitably and without any question, you will be hunted down and killed. It was the same with the whole Russian machine. Fear was the impulse. For them it was always safer to advance than to retreat. Advance against the enemy and the bullet might miss you. Retreat, evade, betray, and the bullet would never miss. But now he would attack the arm that held the whip and the gun. The business of espionage could be left to the white-collar boys. They could spy, and catch the spies. He would go after the threat behind the spies, the threat that made them spy. The telephone rang and Bond snatched up the receiver. He was on to 'the Link', the outside liaison officer who was the only man in London he might telephone from abroad. Then only in dire necessity. 'This is 007 speaking. This is an open line. It's


mixes up not only the month, but the year. "Well, my dear, could I say? I could only tell him that I was the happiest woman in all the wide world, and that I had nothing to give him except myself, my life, and my trust, and that with these went my love and duty for all the days of my life. And, my dear, when he kissed me, and drew me to him with his poor weak hands, it was like a solemn pledge between us. "Lucy dear, do you know why I tell you all this? It is not only because it is all sweet to me, but because you have been, and are, very dear to me. It was my privilege to be your friend and guide when you came from the schoolroom to prepare for the world of life. I want you to see now, and with the eyes of a very happy wife, whither duty has led me, so that in your own married life you too may be all happy, as I am. My dear, please Almighty God, your life may be all it promises, a long day of sunshine, with no harsh wind, no forgetting duty, no distrust. I must not wish you no pain, for that can never be, but I do hope you will be always as happy as I am now. Goodbye, my dear. I shall post this at once, and perhaps, write you very soon again. I must stop, for Jonathan is waking. I must attend my husband! "Your ever-loving "Mina Harker." LETTER, LUCY WESTENRA TO MINA HARKER. Whitby, 30 August. "My dearest Mina, "Oceans of love and millions of kisses, and may you soon be in your own home with your husband. I wish you were coming home soon enough to stay with us here. The strong air would soon restore Jonathan. It has quite restored me. I have an appetite like a cormorant, am full of life, and sleep well. You will be glad to know that I have quite given up walking in my sleep. I think I have not stirred out of my bed for a week, that is when I once got into it at night. Arthur says I am getting fat. By the way, I forgot to tell you that Arthur is here. We have such walks and drives, and rides, and rowing, and tennis, and fishing together, and I love him more than ever. He tells me that he loves me more, but I doubt that, for at first he told me that he couldn't love me more than he did then. But this is nonsense. There he is, calling to me. So no more just at present from your loving, "Lucy. "P.S.--Mother sends her love. She seems better, poor dear. "P.P.S.--We are to be married on 28 September." DR. SEWARDS DIARY 20 August.--The case of Renfield grows even more interesting. He has now so far quieted that there are spells of cessation from his passion. For the first week after his attack he


to the stable, and no one to send." "I'll go." "No, indeed! It's past nine, and dark as Egypt. I can't stop here, for the house is full. Sallie has some girls staying with her. I'll rest till Hannah comes, and then do the best I can." "I'll ask Laurie. He will go," said Jo," looking relieved as the idea occurred to her. "Mercy, no! Don't ask or tell anyone. Get me my rubbers, and put these slippers with our things. I can't dance anymore, but as soon as supper is over, watch for Hannah and tell me the minute she comes." "They are going out to supper now. I'll stay with you. I'd rather." "No, dear, run along, and bring me some coffee. I'm so tired I can't stir." So Meg reclined, with rubbers well hidden, and Jo went blundering away to the dining room, which she found after going into a china closet, and opening the door of a room where old Mr. Gardiner was taking a little private refreshment. Making a dart at the table, she secured the coffee, which she immediately spilled, thereby making the front of her dress as bad as the back. "Oh, dear, what a blunderbuss I am!" exclaimed Jo, finishing Meg's glove by scrubbing her gown with it. "Can I help you?" said a friendly voice. And there was Laurie, with a full cup in one hand and a plate of ice in the other. "I was trying to get something for Meg, who is very tired, and someone shook me, and here I am in a nice state," answered Jo, glancing dismally from the stained skirt to the coffee-colored glove. "Too bad! I was looking for someone to give this to. May I take it to your sister?" "Oh, thank you! I'll show you where she is. I don't offer to take it myself, for I should only get into another scrape if I did." Jo led the way, and as if used to waiting on ladies, Laurie drew up a little table, brought a second installment of coffee and ice for Jo, and was so obliging that even particular Meg pronounced him a `nice boy'. They had a merry time over the bonbons and mottoes, and were in the midst of a quiet game of BUZZ, with two or three other young people who had strayed in, when Hannah appeared. Meg forgot her foot and rose so quickly that she was forced to catch hold of Jo, with an exclamation of pain. "Hush! Don't say anything," she whispered, adding aloud, "It's nothing. I turned my foot a little, that's all," and limped upstairs to put her things on. Hannah scolded, Meg cried, and Jo was at her wits' end, till se decided to take things into her own hands. Slipping out, she ran down and, finding a servant, asked if he could get her a carriage. It happened to be a hired waiter who knew nothing about the neighborhood and Jo was looking round for help when Laurie, who had heard what


not the bad guy. I am the victim here. AT LEAST SOME PEOPLE SPEAK OUT ON MY BEHALF. MOSTLY WHITE people, to be fair, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re in the wrong. Brett, bless him, puts up the following statement: “The recently made allegations against my client Juniper Song are utterly groundless and ill-intentioned. The online attacks have been nothing short of character assassination.” He waxes on a bit about my unimpeachable writing talent, about how hard I’ve worked at my craft since he signed me four years ago, and then finishes with, “I and the Lambert Agency stand firmly behind Juniper Song.” My team at Eden don’t say a thing, which annoys me a bit. But given the sheer number of accounts tagging Eden urging them to drop my contract, Eden’s indifference is a vote of confidence in and of itself. Daniella sent us a concerned email when the allegations first circulated, but when Brett assured her there was no truth to the accusations, she counseled us to keep our heads down. We don’t want to legitimize the claims by responding. Our team has found that in the past, engaging with trolls only emboldens them. I’m sorry this is happening to June, but we do believe the best thing to do is to keep quiet. “These are wild accusations to make without solid proof,” tweets an internet personality who is largely famous for having reasonable and nuanced takes on unreasonable situations. “These are people’s livelihoods at stake. I’m troubled by how eager this community is to delight in the suffering of others. We all need to do better.” A pop-culture blogger with conservative leanings and seventy thousand followers launches a hate campaign against Adele Sparks-Sato. ASS IS A CRAZY PERSON WITH A VENDETTA AGAINST MORE SUCCESSFUL WRITERS, he rants. NEWS FLASH: JEALOUSY LOOKS UGLY ON YOU, ADELE. (This is entertaining to witness, but to be clear, I do not condone such actions. I guess it’s nice to have someone speak in your defense, but in a perfect world, they wouldn’t be frequent commentators on Fox News.) Eden’s Angels, bless them, are firmly on my side. From Jen: So normally I don’t agree with fascists but he’s right about ASS lmao. Marnie: Well you don’t need to be a fascist to know that! Jen: You alright, though? Hanging in there? Marnie: This is horrendous. I am so, so sorry you’re going through this. Let me know if there’s anything we can do. You are so brave. Jen: It’s tall poppy syndrome. They hate seeing young women succeed. That’s all this is. I get shit like this all the time from male CEOS. They can’t STAND us. Marnie: They’re dogpiling on you for clout and attention and they know it. It’s not about you, it’s about them. Jen: Don’t wrestle with pigs, and all that!! Block it out, Junie. Ignore the haters. RISE ABOVE!! IF ONLY I COULD. I CANNOT UNGLUE MYSELF FROM MY DEVICES. WHENEVER I close my eyes, I still see that azure-blue screen. I still imagine the likes racking


Rockettes would expose the truth about her abilities, and there was a good chance the one thing she loved doing would be sullied by other people’s opinions. This was madness, and she’d probably be cut in the first round. She sidled toward the door, wondering if she should make a break for it. Vanessa, meanwhile, had pushed herself to the front of the crowd of girls and stood with a hand on one hip, confident and strong. One by one, they were called over to be measured, standing against a wall while an assistant checked that they were neither shorter than five four nor taller than five eight and a half. Three girls out of the forty assembled were dismissed right away. The rest were given a stiff white card with a number on it and a large black safety pin and told to pin the card to their leotard, just below their left shoulder. Marion got number 310. Vanessa was number 299. A genial-looking man with a wide forehead and a narrow mustache stepped forward. “Ladies.” He clapped his hands. “You’ll notice that there are numbers marked in tape on the floor. Please stand on one now.” They rushed into place while he waited. Vanessa got a good spot at the front, while Marion sought safety in the very back. “I’m Russell Markert, the director for the Rockettes. We are looking for forty-six girls for this year, thirty-six to be performing at any one time while ten have the week off. I’m not going to lie, this job is not for the lazy or the vain. If you pass the audition, you will become part of a machine that operates day after day entertaining this great city. There will be times when we rehearse into the night, then you’ll get up early and perform first thing the next day. If chosen, you will be exhausted, your body pushed beyond its limit. But in return, you will be part of a company that is the most supportive, wonderful dance troupe in the world.” He paused. “Although maybe I’m a little biased.” The girls laughed. “A little history for you first. I founded a precision women’s dance company in 1925 in St. Louis, known as the Missouri Rockets. We came to New York and performed on Radio City’s opening night, way back in 1932. And we’re still going strong today, God help me.” He put a hand to his forehead and pretended to faint, making the girls laugh again. Marion felt her muscles loosening. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Mr. Markert called for his assistant, a woman named Emily who had thick, short bangs and wore a jangle of charms on her wrist. “Emily’s going to show you a ballet routine, four measures, eight counts each. She’ll demonstrate it twice, and then you’ll do it on your own. Emily ran through the combination, a simple petit allegro followed by an adagio with lots of arabesques. It was hard to see her through the rows of bodies in front of Marion,


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

indication of hair. I stood gazing at the ugly snowman I had made, feeling rather foolish and wondering if the king in the tree really meant to step inside the snowman and use it as a vessel. Wendell had said that the king’s body had decayed, so he needed to use something, but I couldn’t really imagine this. Of course, the king was still trapped, so what body he wished to step inside was something of a moot point. I began to wonder if this was all a mistake. Perhaps the king had only meant to enchant Wendell, but since I’d turned up instead, he’d decided he might as well have some fun with me. Dragging a mortal out of bed to build snowmen in the middle of the night seemed like poor sport to me, but I supposed that being trapped in a tree for centuries didn’t afford much opportunity for entertainment. As I was thinking all this, though, a raven fluttered out of the trees and perched on the snowman’s shoulder. Two more followed. They swirled around the snowman, pecking and clawing. When they were done, it looked more like a man—a little more. It was still strange, but no longer hideous. Then, to my horror, the birds fell to the ground dead, blood leaking across the snow from wounds I couldn’t see. They stained the snowman’s feet like an offering, which I suppose they were. The tree murmured, and magic prodded me again. But it did not prod me to move, it prodded my mind. And that was when I realized—the king didn’t know how to free himself. He expected me to come up with a solution. Well, that set my thoughts whirling. Though in truth, they had already been diving in and out of stories and academic papers, holding them up against what I knew of the Hidden Ones and their disgraced king. The Word. The useless, ridiculous, button-gathering Word, which I had long valued as a piece of esoteric trivia, a footnote, perhaps, in a paper I had yet to write. Well, footnotes in dryadology are sometimes like the Folk themselves, leaping out at you from nowhere. A thrill rushed through me. Looking back, this would have been a very good moment to stop and think through the wisdom of what I was doing, but I was too full of the delight of scholarly discovery (and, I suspect, my own conceit) to stop. I turned to the white tree and spoke the Word. And what do you know? A button came sailing out from somewhere among the branches. I caught it and examined it against my palm. It was white and desiccated, like old bone, shedding a fine powder against my skin, with an acorn carved into one side. The button began to melt against my palm, and I dropped it into the snow. The tree had given a shudder when the button came free, but now it was still once more. I spoke the Word again, and out sailed another button. This one had a flower.


recipient off guard and startling the truth from them? Is that your strategy?” He didn’t blink. “Generally, yes.” “Might I ask how you’ve reached this conclusion?” “The power I felt when I touched you in the Relic Room should have torn me to pieces,” he said calmly. I stilled. We had yet to openly discuss the details of what had occurred in the war room. “Instead, it barely stopped me from killing you.” Niphran was right, I marveled. “Are you typically so overcome when you sense magic?” “Nothing was typical of my behavior.” Disturbingly pale blue eyes studied me. “Yours is not a simple magic.” Another diversion. I imagined the Nizahl Heir’s tutors must have been driven mad at his expert evasions of any clear reply. He went on. “Jasadi magic cannot be hidden from me. I should have detected it at the river, when you placed your hand in mine. At the very least, it should have reacted last night. Pain and peril are two of the surest ways to ignite magic. Yours reacts to mine in unusual ways. I can sense it, I can draw it close, but it will not leave the limits of your body.” He frowned at a cobweb on top of the weapons chest before redirecting his attention to me. “That is how I’ve reached my conclusion.” “Your touch boiled my magic. It nearly killed me,” I said flatly. “It saved you. Twice.” Aha. “And how can a nonmagical touch do such a thing, Your Highness?” A glimmer of approval passed over his features. I had neatly walked him into my own trap. “Under normal circumstances, it can’t. I sense magic because I am immune to it, and I can drain the magic from a Jasadi with the same touch that seems to ignite yours.” I did not try to hide the horror written on my face. He could drain magic with a touch? My cuffs tightened around the sudden force of my magic. How many Jasadis had he robbed of the very advantage for which they were hunted? How many had felt their magic stripped from them in the moment they needed it most? “I don’t understand.” He watched me coolly. “You don’t need to.” “Explain what you mean by ‘draining magic,’ and I will answer your query.” Surprise darted in the Heir’s eyes, gone before I could chase it. He had expected me to ask how his touch came to be its own weapon. And indeed, I should have asked that. The mechanics of how he drained magic did not affect me; my cuffs prevented him from doing more than pulling my magic to the surface. Damn it to the tombs. The stupid moving wall had thrown me off-balance. Affected my judgment. “Jasadi magic is not a bottomless well. Every Jasadi has a finite supply from which to draw. Imagine one uses their magic sparingly, easing the drudgeries of daily chores. Another spends their allotment on some spectacular display. For the first Jasadi, replenishing their magic is not an issue, because they never reached


and that means I am too. I’m here because somebody has to bear witness. Somebody has to remember. I touch the jagged scar that runs across my abdomen. Six surgeries later and things still aren’t the same, but the scars remind me that what happened to me and to Charity and everyone else was real. Sometimes it seems so much like a nightmare that I wonder if one day, I’ll wake up and find that it was all just an awful dream. Now I’m the final girl. A title I took from Charity—one I wish almost every day I could give back to her. I should have died right here on the shore of Mirror Lake, but I didn’t. And as it turns out, my frantic call went through, but the 911 operator thought my pleas for help were some kind of sick prank. It took them hours to actually reach me, and by the time they showed up, Kyle was long gone. Unlike before, when people had died at Mirror Lake and the whole thing had been hushed up, the media turned its full attention to me in the aftermath of what people were calling a real-life sequel to The Curse of Camp Mirror Lake. I was the final girl, and there wasn’t any way to get away from the photographers and the journalists looking for a good spin on the tragedy that had unfolded here. They wanted me to talk about what it had been like to play dead for hours or what it had been like to realize the things unfolding at Camp Mirror Lake were so much worse than the events Charity and the staff had re-created as part of the terror simulation. That’s how it went for months. It wasn’t until the following summer that things seemed to calm down. The press was on to the next, more interesting thing, and all I was left with was the grief and the sadness and the scars. Paige, in her obsession with slasher films, had always talked to me about the rules. She was the one who seemed to know how that night, exactly one year ago, would go. It was her voice that drove Charity and me to make the decisions we did. It’s her voice I hear now as I sit at the edge of Mirror Lake in the dark. “The final act is never really the end,” she said to me and Charity once as we watched the original Friday the 13th under a pile of blankets on a chilly Halloween night when we were about thirteen. “There’s always a twist, but it only works if you don’t see it coming.” I watched the whole movie through my fingers, and when Jason Voorhees’s mother had her head removed by that movie’s final girl, I breathed a sigh of relief. Paige smiled at me and told me to keep my eyes on the screen. I almost choked on a piece of pizza when Jason’s decomposing corpse reappeared from the depths of Crystal Lake. As I sit here


side of the doorway many times in the past, comforting families. In those moments, grieving mothers and fathers asked him whether the sacrifice was worth it—“worth the life of someone they brought into the world, raised and nurtured, and looked forward to seeing grow up… meeting husbands and wives… having kids of their own,” he said. Kelly had felt ill-equipped to answer such a heartbreaking question without having experienced it himself. “I learned I was right,” he said. Until he received the knock on the door himself, he had no idea how deep the grief could go. The day Kelly buried his own son at Arlington National Cemetery, he described the feeling of emptiness in his heart. He arrived at an answer to the question other parents asked themselves in mourning. Was it worth it? “Robert volunteered to risk everything—including himself—to serve our country,” Kelly explained. “So was it worth his life? That wasn’t up to me. My son answered the question for me.” When it came time to deliver options on Afghanistan, Kelly was worried that Trump was unprepared. The thick briefing memo that had landed on the president’s desk was beyond the man’s comprehension or reading ability, truly. I was asked to boil the fifty- or sixty-page document down to a page or two—in the president’s voice. So overnight in my office, I stayed awake writing a Wikipedia-style 101 about why America was in Afghanistan and what was at stake, all in the Trumpian vernacular. The title of the unclassified version felt like a parody: “Afghanistan: How to Put America First—And Win!” If we pulled out of the country too fast, I wrote, we would be mocked as “losers” by terrorists. If we wanted to be “winners,” we needed to fight smarter and harder, then cut a “great deal” to hand over security to the Afghans. A career DHS expert helped me workshop the absurd document so that it sounded like Trump but also made sense from a national security standpoint, strident rhetoric notwithstanding. The memo went to Camp David with the president for decision day. After hours of waiting, we got word. Trump reluctantly agreed with our recommendation to keep U.S. forces in place. He wanted to be “a winner.” Left unsaid in the memo was the solemn promise the U.S. government had made to the families of the fallen, like the Kellys. America had pledged to memorialize their service and sacrifice by ending the conflict, in due course, in the same spirit that their loved ones had fought and died: honorably. I couldn’t figure out how to put that in Trump’s words. * * * In July, Kelly told the president we were moving forward with the aviation security plan in response to the spiderweb of terrorist plots we were tracking. The White House was worried about the massive scope of the “GASP” proposal, spanning nearly three hundred airports in more than one hundred countries; I was more worried about going too slow, fearing that Trump’s alleged comments to the Russians in the Oval Office might cause terrorists


Vic knew. So very close. Taking Hap’s hand, he said, “Come on. We need to find Dad while we still have time.” “But how will we get him to come with us?” Rambo asked. “We don’t have a heart to give him.” “Then we remind him where he came from and hope for the best.” Hap led them down a series of maze-like hallways. By the time they turned yet another corner, Vic was lost. He couldn’t be sure he’d be able to find his way out on his own. Shortly after battling the HARP, they’d had to duck into what turned out to be a storage closet as a group of smooth men passed by. They stood in the dark, listening to the footsteps just on the other side of the door. “Do you think they know about the HARP?” Rambo asked. Hap shook his head. “HARPs go offline to r-reset. We h-have t-time, though not much. They’ll f-find it before l-long.” Once they were sure the smooth men had gone, Hap opened the door a sliver, staring back out into the hall. He waited a beat before opening the door wide, motioning them through. They went. Down a hall. Right. Another hall. Left. Another hall. Vic was about to ask—demand—where they were, how much farther they had to go, if they were lost, lost, lost, when Hap stopped suddenly. Vic bumped into him, wincing as Nurse Ratched and Rambo did the same to him. “What is it?” he asked. Hap had stopped in front of a door. It looked just like all the others: white and inconspicuous, a darkened panel next to it. But there was one tiny difference. On this door, in a circle in the center, was the symbol of a tree. It reminded Vic of the trees in the forest around their home, the pine needles carved with such care that he could almost smell them. Hap reached up with his free hand, tracing over the limbs and trunk of the tree before pressing his hand flat against it and closing his eyes. He said in hushed reverence, “Here. I th-think I remember this. The tree. I asked h-him about it once. A t-tree. Why a t-tree?” He swayed side to side. “He s-said because they were old. Older th-than almost anything else in all the w-world. That after w-we were g-gone, they would r-remain.” He opened his eyes. “Giovanni. He’s in here. This is his laboratory.” “Are you sure?” Vic asked just as quietly. Hap pulled his hand away from the tree. “Yes. I’m s-sure.” “Do we knock?” Rambo asked, rocking side to side on top of Nurse Ratched. Vic stared at the tree before shaking his head slowly. “No. Hap.” Hap didn’t hesitate. He pressed his hand against the panel. It lit up underneath his fingers. A deep chime sounded around them, causing Vic to shiver. The panel flashed green. The door opened, cool air spilling out and washing over them. CHAPTER 24 The first thing Vic noticed was how bright it was. Beams of


did not know her, would probably have been interpreted as an expression of bitter anger and ill-will. But it was no such thing. She, in fact, felt a reverence for the pictured visage, of which only a far-descended and time-stricken virgin could be susceptible; and this forbidding scowl was the innocent result of her near-sightedness, and an effort so to concentrate her powers of vision as to substitute a firm outline of the object instead of a vague one. We must linger a moment on this unfortunate expression of poor Hepzibah's brow. Her scowl,--as the world, or such part of it as sometimes caught a transitory glimpse of her at the window, wickedly persisted in calling it,--her scowl had done Miss Hepzibah a very ill office, in establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid; nor does it appear improbable that, by often gazing at herself in a dim looking-glass, and perpetually encountering her own frown with its ghostly sphere, she had been led to interpret the expression almost as unjustly as the world did. "How miserably cross I look!" she must often have whispered to herself; and ultimately have fancied herself so, by a sense of inevitable doom. But her heart never frowned. It was naturally tender, sensitive, and full of little tremors and palpitations; all of which weaknesses it retained, while her visage was growing so perversely stern, and even fierce. Nor had Hepzibah ever any hardihood, except what came from the very warmest nook in her affections. All this time, however, we are loitering faintheartedly on the threshold of our story. In very truth, we have an invincible reluctance to disclose what Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon was about to do. It has already been observed, that, in the basement story of the gable fronting on the street, an unworthy ancestor, nearly a century ago, had fitted up a shop. Ever since the old gentleman retired from trade, and fell asleep under his coffin-lid, not only the shop-door, but the inner arrangements, had been suffered to remain unchanged; while the dust of ages gathered inch-deep over the shelves and counter, and partly filled an old pair of scales, as if it were of value enough to be weighed. It treasured itself up, too, in the half-open till, where there still lingered a base sixpence, worth neither more nor less than the hereditary pride which had here been put to shame. Such had been the state and condition of the little shop in old Hepzibah's childhood, when she and her brother used to play at hide-and-seek in its forsaken precincts. So it had remained, until within a few days past. But Now, though the shop-window was still closely curtained from the public gaze, a remarkable change had taken place in its interior. The rich and heavy festoons of cobweb, which it had cost a long ancestral succession of spiders their life's labor to spin and weave, had been carefully brushed away from the ceiling. The counter, shelves, and floor had all been scoured, and the latter was overstrewn with fresh blue sand.


and depository of his profoundest reflections. In his later writing mythology and poetry sank down behind his theological and philosophical preoccupations: from which arose incompatibilities of tone. On my father's death it fell to me to try to bring the work into publishable form. It became clear to me that to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book the diversity of the materials - to show The Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century - would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential I set myself therefore to work out a single text selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative. In this work the concluding chapters (from the death of Trin Turambar) introduced peculiar difficulties, in that they had remained unchanged for many years, and were in some respects in serious disharmony with more developed conceptions in other parts of the book. A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father's) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all at heavy and needless cost. Moreover, my father came to conceive The Silmarillion as a compilation, a compendious narrative, made long afterwards from sources of great diversity (poems, and annals, and oral tales) that had survived in agelong tradition; and this conception has indeed its parallel in the actual history of the book, for a great deal of earlier prose and poetry does underlie it, and it is to some extent a compendium in fact and not only in theory. To this may be ascribed the varying speed of the narrative and fullness of detail in different parts, the contrast (for example) of the precise recollections of place and motive in the legend of Trin Turambar beside the high and remote account of the end of the First Age, when Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown; and also some differences of tone and portrayal, some obscurities, and, here and there, some lack of cohesion. In the case of the Valaquenta, for instance, we have to assume that while it contains much that must go back to the earliest days of the Eldar in Valinor, it was remodelled in later times; and thus explain its continual shifting of tense and viewpoint, so that the divine powers seem now present and active in the world, now remote, a vanished order known only to memory. The book, though entitled as it must be The Silmarillion, contains not only the Quenta Silmarillion, or Silmarillion proper, but also four other short works. The Ainulindal and Valaquenta, which are given at the beginning, are indeed closely related with The Silmarillion; but the Akallabth and Of the Rings of Power, which appear at the end, are (it must to emphasised) wholly separate and independent. They are included according to my father's explicit intention; and by their inclusion is set forth


exploded closer now, pounding deep into the ground. Before she could cower, Roman was pressing her upright against the wall of the trench, covering her with his body. If anything hurt her, it would have to come through him first. But his mind was racing. Behind them was the dead man’s zone, which suddenly felt more perilous than he had ever imagined. Roman realized Dacre’s soldiers could be creeping closer to their trenches, using the cover of smoke. They could be creeping like shadows across the scorched grass, rifles in their hands, mere meters away from them. He envisioned a battle coming to a head; he envisioned fighting. Would Iris run if he ordered her to? Should he let her out of his sight? He envisioned hiding her in a bunker, fleeing through the trenches with her, fueled by white hot fear. He waited for the bombardment to cease, his hand cupping the back of her neck, keeping her close. His fingers were lost in her hair. Lieutenant Lark was suddenly shaking sense into him, grabbing Roman’s shoulder. The artillery continued to scream, cascade, and explode, and he had to shout so they could hear him. “You both need to retreat to the town! That’s a direct order.” Roman nodded, relieved to be given a command, and he pulled Iris away from the wall. His fingers wove with hers as he began to lead her through the chaos of the trenches. Over riven wood and mounds of earth and kneeling soldiers. It took Roman a moment to realize some of them were wounded, bowed over in pain. Blood was splattered along the floor planks. Odd pieces of metal flared in the sun. She began to pull back. “Kitt. Kitt!” Roman whirled to look at her. His panic was rushing through him like hot oil. “We have to run, Iris.” “We can’t just leave them like this!” She was screaming, but he could hardly hear her. His ears felt full of wax. His throat felt raw. “We were given an order,” Roman replied. “You and I … we’re not soldiers, Winnow.” But he knew the exact emotion she was experiencing. It felt wrong to run. To flee when others were hunkering down, preparing to fight. When men and women were on the ground, moaning in pain. Torn apart by mortar shells, waiting to die with the splintered shine of their bones and the bright red sheen of their blood. Roman hesitated. That was when he saw the small round object arcing through the air. At first he thought it was a mere clot of dirt until it landed right behind Iris in the trench with a plink. It spun on the wood for a moment, and Roman stared at it, realizing … realizing it was a … “Shit!” He grasped the collar of Iris’s jumpsuit, picking her up as if she were weightless. He spun them around until he had come between her and the hand grenade. The terror tasted sour in his mouth and he realized he was about to heave the


through, and then my mother’s parents moved into a small house across town, giving them another tether to the area—and a future child-care provider in my energetic grandmother. In July 1981, they drove up to Seattle to adopt a ten-week-old Korean girl some friends had told them about, born severely premature to an immigrant family that did not believe they could raise a medically complex child. The doctors told my adoptive parents that I would have multiple disabilities and might never live independently, but they had spent weeks praying about the adoption and believed that I was meant to be theirs. Though they had initially wondered how their families would react to having an Asian child in the family, they stopped worrying when my grandmother charged them to go get that baby girl and bring her home to us. Given my history, they weren’t surprised when I crawled and walked later than average; they were surprised that by age two I spoke in paragraphs and was able to memorize anything that was read to me. Every day was a ceaseless drumbeat of questions and observations: why this, why that, I saw, I heard, I want to tell you, did you notice, do you think . . . ? A neighbor with four children jokingly told my mother that if I had been her first, she would have stopped at one. They were still adjusting to their new life as parents when Dad’s mother fell ill again, her body rejecting its foreign organ. My father took me to Cleveland to see her. In photos from that visit, I am a chubby, happy one-year-old in a flowered blouse and a blue corduroy jumper, no longer small for my age, boasting a toothy grin, chipmunk cheeks, and black hair that sticks straight up in defiance of my parents’ styling efforts—no one had ever told them about Asian baby hair. My grandmother, who looks so much like my father with her wide smile, broad nose, and brown hair so dark it could almost be black like mine, reaches toward me as Dad props me up on her hospital bed. He must have known that the trip was an introduction as well as a goodbye. As grieved as he would be when his mother died a few months later, a part of him was relieved that she was finally beyond her pain. * * * When I try to picture my father as he was in my youth, healthy and strong, I see him working a busy lunch or dinner shift, wearing dark pants and a short-sleeved white dress shirt with a name tag pinned to it, chatting with customers. He managed a series of pizza restaurants for most of my childhood, and if I had no school and no one else was available to watch me, sometimes I’d go with him for part of the day. I remember following him into dark industrial kitchens in the predawn chill, watching him check and order inventory. Every now and then I would try to be helpful, wiping down


moonlight, made the place so clear that there was no need of striking a match--I remember how I suddenly dropped, sank upon the edge of the bed from the force of the idea that he must know how he really, as they say, "had" me. He could do what he liked, with all his cleverness to help him, so long as I should continue to defer to the old tradition of the criminality of those caretakers of the young who minister to superstitions and fears. He "had" me indeed, and in a cleft stick; for who would ever absolve me, who would consent that I should go unhung, if, by the faintest tremor of an overture, I were the first to introduce into our perfect intercourse an element so dire? No, no: it was useless to attempt to convey to Mrs. Grose, just as it is scarcely less so to attempt to suggest here, how, in our short, stiff brush in the dark, he fairly shook me with admiration. I was of course thoroughly kind and merciful; never, never yet had I placed on his little shoulders hands of such tenderness as those with which, while I rested against the bed, I held him there well under fire. I had no alternative but, in form at least, to put it to him. "You must tell me now--and all the truth. What did you go out for? What were you doing there?" I can still see his wonderful smile, the whites of his beautiful eyes, and the uncovering of his little teeth shine to me in the dusk. "If I tell you why, will you understand?" My heart, at this, leaped into my mouth. WOULD he tell me why? I found no sound on my lips to press it, and I was aware of replying only with a vague, repeated, grimacing nod. He was gentleness itself, and while I wagged my head at him he stood there more than ever a little fairy prince. It was his brightness indeed that gave me a respite. Would it be so great if he were really going to tell me? "Well," he said at last, "just exactly in order that you should do this." "Do what?" "Think me--for a change--BAD!" I shall never forget the sweetness and gaiety with which he brought out the word, nor how, on top of it, he bent forward and kissed me. It was practically the end of everything. I met his kiss and I had to make, while I folded him for a minute in my arms, the most stupendous effort not to cry. He had given exactly the account of himself that permitted least of my going behind it, and it was only with the effect of confirming my acceptance of it that, as I presently glanced about the room, I could say-- "Then you didn't undress at all?" He fairly glittered in the gloom. "Not at all. I sat up and read." "And when did you go down?" "At midnight. When I'm bad I AM bad!" "I see,


so. But you will find that all I say is really to the point. I have a professional commission for you, but absolute secrecy is quite essential--absolute secrecy, you understand, and of course we may expect that more from a man who is alone than from one who lives in the bosom of his family.' "'If I promise to keep a secret,' said I, 'you may absolutely depend upon my doing so.' "He looked very hard at me as I spoke, and it seemed to me that I had never seen so suspicious and questioning an eye. "'Do you promise, then?' said he at last. "'Yes, I promise.' "'Absolute and complete silence before, during, and after? No reference to the matter at all, either in word or writing?' "'I have already given you my word.' "'Very good.' He suddenly sprang up, and darting like lightning across the room he flung open the door. The passage outside was empty. "'That's all right,' said he, coming back. 'I know the clerks are sometimes curious as to their master's affairs. Now we can talk in safety.' He drew up his chair very close to mine and began to stare at me again with the same questioning and thoughtful look. "A feeling of repulsion, and of something akin to fear had begun to rise within me at the strange antics of this fleshless man. Even my dread of losing a client could not restrain me from showing my impatience. "'I beg that you will state your business, sir,' said I; 'my time is of value.' Heaven forgive me for that last sentence, but the words came to my lips. "'How would fifty guineas for a night's work suit you?' he asked. "'Most admirably.' "'I say a night's work, but an hour's would be nearer the mark. I simply want your opinion about a hydraulic stamping machine which has got out of gear. If you show us what is wrong we shall soon set it right ourselves. What do you think of such a commission as that?' "'The work appears to be light and the pay munificent.' "'Precisely so. We shall want you to come to-night by the last train.' "'Where to?' "'To Eyford, in Berkshire. It is a little place near the borders of Oxfordshire, and within seven miles of Reading. There is a train from Paddington which would bring you there at about 11:15.' "'Very good.' "'I shall come down in a carriage to meet you.' "'There is a drive, then?' "'Yes, our little place is quite out in the country. It is a good seven miles from Eyford Station.' "'Then we can hardly get there before midnight. I suppose there would be no chance of a train back. I should be compelled to stop the night.' "'Yes, we could easily give you a shake-down.' "'That is very awkward. Could I not come at some more convenient hour?' "'We have judged it best that you should come late. It is to recompense you for any inconvenience that we are paying to you, a young and


the absence of Benjen Stark. Mormont stood before the altar, the rainbow shining on his broad bald head. "You came to us outlaws," he began, "poachers, rapers, debtors, killers, and thieves. You came to us children. You came to us alone, in chains, with neither friends nor honor. You came to us rich, and you came to us poor. Some of you bear the names of proud houses. Others have only bastards' names, or no names at all. It makes no matter. All that is past now. On the Wall, we are all one house. "At evenfall, as the sun sets and we face the gathering night, you shall take your vows. From that moment, you will be a Sworn Brother of the Night's Watch. Your crimes will be washed away, your debts forgiven. So too you must wash away your former loyalties, put aside your grudges, forget old wrongs and old loves alike. Here you begin anew. "A man of the Night's Watch lives his life for the realm. Not for a king, nor a lord, nor the honor of this house or that house, neither for gold nor glory nor a woman's love, but for the realm, and all the people in it. A man of the Night's Watch takes no wife and fathers no sons. Our wife is duty. Our mistress is honor. And you are the only sons we shall ever know. "You have learned the words of the vow. Think carefully before you say them, for once you have taken the black, there is no turning back. The penalty for desertion is death." The Old Bear paused for a moment before he said, "Are there any among you who wish to leave our company? If so, go now, and no one shall think the less of you." No one moved. "Well and good," said Mormont. "You may take your vows here at evenfall, before Septon Celladar and the first of your order. Do any of you keep to the old gods?" Jon stood. "I do, my lord." "I expect you will want to say your words before a heart tree, as your uncle did," Mormont said. "Yes, my lord," Jon said. The gods of the sept had nothing to do with him; the blood of the First Men flowed in the veins of the Starks. He heard Grenn whispering behind him. "There's no godswood here. Is there? I never saw a godswood." A GAME OF THRONES 455 "You wouldn't see a herd of aurochs until they trampled you into the snow," Pyp whispered back. "I would so," Grenn insisted. "I'd see them a long way off." Mormont himself confirmed Grenn's doubts. "Castle Black has no need of a godswood. Beyond the Wall the haunted forest stands as it stood in the Dawn Age, long before the Andals brought the Seven across the narrow sea. You will find a grove of weirwoods half a league from this spot, and mayhap your gods as well." "My lord." The voice made Jon glance back in surprise. Samwell Tarly was on


exactly help that—” Karl began. “By your terms, it sounds like any legitimate business could be described as a pyramid scheme.” And before Karl could answer: “Where’s the CFO in all of this?” “Ezra Green is, in my opinion, a pawn of Orson Ortman,” Karl said, and the PowerPoint skipped ahead several slides to a graphic of the company masthead arrayed like a crime family: Orson at the top, followed by me and Elaine, then Delpy and Renhauser, all the way down to faceless gray boxes labeled “Farm residents.” “I don’t really think Ezra Green is engineering anything,” Karl said. “He’s passive. Everyone’s just doing their job except for Mr. Ortman, who invents his own rules. At best, they’re completely clueless like Mr. Green. At worst, they’re fleecing people while hiding behind corporate bureaucracy. A bunch of Eichmanns with stock options.” I snorted and poured myself another shot, nearly missing the glass. “Don’t you think that’s kind of a harsh comparison, Mr. Rothenberg?” “Any other questions?” Karl asked, his voice shaking. I told Brianna I’d seen enough and she switched off the TV. I felt bad for Karl. I felt bad for myself. There were thousands of places I would rather have been than sitting in my office with Brianna, blinking through my tunnel vision as distant purrs of thunder accompanied the occasional flash of lightning outside. “It feels like everything’s falling apart,” Brianna said. “Nothing’s falling apart. You’d be the first to know if everything was falling apart.” “I think I’d be the last to know.” I fixed her in my gaze. It was a little frightening to be almost drunk on top of being almost blind. “Do you want three hundred million dollars?” “What?” “As a bonus.” “Ez, what are you talking about? Where would that money come from?” I shrugged and poured another shot. “You’ve been loyal,” I said. “You’ve kept all my secrets.” “I have no idea where the money would come from, though.” “Does it matter? It’d come from somewhere.” She screwed up her face. It seemed like she really wanted to know where the money would come from. “It’d come from a shell Elaine and I created to hold some assets off the books. We’d dissolve it and give you the money.” “I couldn’t take that.” “Well, it’s yours if you ever decide you want it.” She said something in response but I didn’t hear it: pain clanged behind my eyes and my vision began to stutter. I cast my gaze around the room as if looking at the sofa or the extra chairs or the art on the walls was going to keep what was happening from happening, but of course it wasn’t. There was what felt like an electrical surge—everything got very bright, radiant almost—and then everything went black. “Fuck,” I mumbled, as if we’d just lost power. I could hear her sitting forward, could hear the motherly tone in her voice again. “What is it?” I shook my head. “Ez?” I considered trying to pour more of the Pappy Old Rip Van Winkle


a septon's get, and Cotter Pyke is the baseborn son of a tavern wench. Now he commands Eastwatch by the Sea." "I don't care," Jon said. "I don't care about them and I don't care about you or Thorne or Benjen Stark or any of it. I hate it here. It's too . . . it's cold." "Yes. Cold and hard and mean, that's the Wall, and the men who walk it. Not like the stories your wet nurse told you. Well, piss on the stories and piss on your wet nurse. This is the way it is, and you're here for life, same as the rest of us." "Life," Jon repeated bitterly. The armorer could talk about life. He'd had one. He'd only taken the black after he'd lost an arm at the siege of Storm's End. Before that he'd smithed for Stannis Baratheon, the king's brother. He'd seen the Seven Kingdoms from one end to the other; he'd feasted and wenched and fought in a hundred battles. They said it was Donal Noye who'd forged King Robert's warhammer, the one that crushed the life from Rhaegar Targaryen on the Trident. He'd done all the things that Jon would never do, and then when he was old, well past thirty, he'd taken a glancing blow from an axe and the wound had festered until the whole arm had to come off. Only then, crippled, had Donal Noye come to the Wall, when his life was all but over. "Yes, life," Noye said. "A long life or a short one, it's up to you, Snow. The road you're walking, one of your brothers will slit your throat for you one night." "They're not my brothers," Jon snapped. "They hate me because I'm better than they are." "No. They hate you because you act like you're better than they are. They look at you and see a castle-bred bastard who thinks he's a lordling." The armorer leaned close. "You're no lordling. Remember that. You're a Snow, not a Stark. You're a bastard and a bully." "A bully?" Jon almost choked on the word. The accusation was so unjust it took his breath away. "They were the ones who came after me. Four of them." "Four that you've humiliated in the yard. Four who are probably afraid of you. I've watched you fight. It's not training with you. Put a A GAME OF THRONES 163 good edge on your sword, and they'd be dead meat; you know it, I know it, they know it. You leave them nothing. You shame them. Does that make you proud?" Jon hesitated. He did feel proud when he won. Why shouldn't he? But the armorer was taking that away too, making it sound as if he were doing something wrong. "They're all older than me," he said defensively. "Older and bigger and stronger, that's the truth. I'll wager your master-at-arms taught you how to fight bigger men at Winterfell, though. Who was he, some old knight?" "Ser Rodrik Cassel," Jon said warily. There was a trap here. He


seen in her childhood. The dominant features she remembered were the bag on his back, his stooped shoulders, and an "expression of face that led her to think he was an alien from his fellows," according to her publisher John Blackwood. Look at this figure silhouetted against the sky--solitary, sad, and weighed down. It's a strong visual image, which would make a striking opening shot of a movie. Because the weavers come from another part of the country, villagers see them as a threat and shun them. Eliot asks you to understand the mentality of people who have no contact with the world outside their home village. In Eliot's time, this was already hard for readers to grasp. Just think how much harder it is for us, living in our mobile society of supersonic jets, long-distance telephones, satellite television, and space shuttles! Try, however, to put yourself into the villagers' frame of mind for a minute, and imagine how you would regard the lone figure of the weaver. Now, after the broad sweeping opening, Eliot moves from the general to the particular--to one weaver named Silas Marner. She shows you the precise location of his cottage and makes you hear the rasping sound of his loom. Some readers have pointed out that Silas is unlike the villagers because he works with a machine. Others point out that the farmers work with machines, too--Eliot mentions the winnowing-machine and flail--but those sounds are familiar to Raveloers, while the loom's sound is not. The loom does seem to have taken over Silas' spirit. As the lively village boys peer in the window, you see Silas bent like a slave at his work, unaware of the world around him. Notice how Eliot shifts in and out of different minds. One moment she is with the boys, looking in the window. The next moment, she sympathizes with harmless Silas, irritated at the interruption. Then she shares the boys' terror as they run from Silas' goggle-eyed stare. She moves from there into the minds of their parents, with their primitive superstitions. NOTE: AUTHOR'S COMMENTS Eliot pauses to discuss this superstitious quality of the peasant mind. In her sociological analysis, however, her language becomes abstract and incomprehensible. What she's really saying is that the peasants' life is hard, so they naturally think God is harsh, too. It's interesting that Eliot refers to her own experience with an old laborer to illustrate this concept. It's as if she's proving her credentials as a social analyst. Now Eliot fills in the details of her setting. She locates Raveloe on the map, in the English Midlands. She sets a date for the story, by referring to coach-roads (by Eliot's own day, railroads had replaced coaches) and the Napoleonic Wars. She describes the buildings of the village and sketches its social hierarchy, headed by a few farmers with large land holdings. Picture the village to yourself. Do you think it's a glorified vision or a realistic one? What evidence can you point to? Silas came to this place from the north fifteen years


me here?" "Don't you know?" said he, with a deadly look "Why have you set upon me in the dark?" "Because I mean to do it all myself. One keeps a secret better than two. Oh you enemy, you enemy!" His enjoyment of the spectacle I furnished, as he sat with his arms folded on the table, shaking his head at me and hugging himself, had a malignity in it that made me tremble. As I watched him in silence, he put his hand into the corner at his side, and took up a gun with a brass-bound stock. "Do you know this?" said he, making as if he would take aim at me. "Do you know where you saw it afore? Speak, wolf!" "Yes," I answered. "You cost me that place. You did. Speak!" "What else could I do?" "You did that, and that would be enough, without more. How dared you to come betwixt me and a young woman I liked?" "When did I?" "When didn't you? It was you as always give Old Orlick a bad name to her." "You gave it to yourself; you gained it for yourself. I could have done you no harm, if you had done yourself none." "You're a liar. And you'll take any pains, and spend any money, to drive me out of this country, will you?" said he, repeating my words to Biddy in the last interview I had with her. "Now, I'll tell you a piece of information. It was never so well worth your while to get me out of this country as it is to-night. Ah! If it was all your money twenty times told, to the last brass farden!" As he shook his heavy hand at me, with his mouth snarling like a tiger's, I felt that it was true. "What are you going to do to me?" "I'm a-going," said he, bringing his fist down upon the table with a heavy blow, and rising as the blow fell, to give it greater force, "I'm a-going to have your life!" He leaned forward staring at me, slowly unclenched his hand and drew it across his mouth as if his mouth watered for me, and sat down again. "You was always in Old Orlick's way since ever you was a child. You goes out of his way, this present night. He'll have no more on you. You're dead." I felt that I had come to the brink of my grave. For a moment I looked wildly round my trap for any chance of escape; but there was none. "More than that," said he, folding his arms on the table again, "I won't have a rag of you, I won't have a bone of you, left on earth. I'll put your body in the kiln - I'd carry two such to it, on my shoulders - and, let people suppose what they may of you, they shall never know nothing." My mind, with inconceivable rapidity, followed out all the consequences of such a death. Estella's father would believe I had


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

reached inside her and clawed everything out. “Bastian,” Anton said, turning back around. “I think it best if you stay here.” A bark of harsh laughter. “There it is.” Bastian sat back in his chair, shook his wrists so his chains clanked. “So I’m a prisoner now?” “Think of it as being a guest,” Anton said. Bastian didn’t respond, but his eyes glittered a cold, violent promise. “I will keep you safe, nephew,” Anton murmured, almost reverently. “Everything will be revealed in time.” Lore didn’t know what that meant. It looked like Bastian didn’t, either. She let Gabe unlock her chains, let him lead her silently to the door. When she looked back, day had fully broken in the window behind Bastian, casting his features in shadow, limning their edges gold. It illuminated him like rays around a sun, like a halo. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT Sometimes, you can see love coming. And when it takes a different path, you should be thankful. —Fragment from the work of Marya Addou, Malfouran poet The walk back to their apartments was silent. Gabe stayed behind her, a one-eyed shadow dogging her steps and making sure she went where she was supposed to. She no longer wore chains, but it was the first time Lore had truly felt like a prisoner in the Citadel. Their room was locked. Lore had the key half fitted in the door before Gabe stepped up beside her. “It won’t work.” His voice was low. “Anton had the lock changed.” She looked at him and said nothing. There was nothing to say. Gabe swallowed. He unlocked the door with a key he produced from his pocket, then stepped aside to let her in first. The apartments felt strange now—foreign and ill fitting, where before they’d been as close to comfortable as she could find here. Especially knowing Anton had changed the lock sometime after she left last night. Myriad hells, he’d probably had someone waiting in the halls, watching for her to leave so they could immediately set to work. Because Gabe told him. Gabe told him everything. Her wrists felt raw. The iron had made them itch. Lore rubbed and rubbed at them, trying to force the feeling out of her skin, trying to make it stop— Gentle pressure, Gabe’s fingers interposed where hers had been. “Lore, you’re going to hurt yourself—” It’d been the truth when she told Gabe and Bastian that she was no good at brawling, but instinct made do. Lore snatched her wrist from Gabe’s hand and struck out with the heel of her opposite palm, smacking him in the shoulder, pushing him off balance and away. “Don’t touch me,” she snarled. “Don’t fucking touch me.” He stared at her, one blue eye wide. His jaw clenched beneath the reddish stubble on his chin. “I was trying to keep you safe.” “By going to the very person we knew was lying?” “He’s on our side! You heard everything I just did, you know that Anton is working against August!” “But you didn’t.” Her fingers went back to


based on what we learn from the inter-action of the first two. And I hardly think a very old man and a fireman turned sour could do much this late in the game..." "I can get books." "You're running a risk." "That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want." "There, you've said an interesting thing," laughed Faber, "without having read it!" "Are things like that in books. But it came off the top of my mind!" "All the better. You didn't fancy it up for me or anyone, even yourself." Montag leaned forward. "This afternoon I thought that if it turned out that books were worth while, we might get a press and print some extra copies--" " We?" "You and I" "Oh, no ! " Faber sat up. "But let me tell you my plan---" "If you insist on telling me, I must ask you to leave." "But aren't you interested?" "Not if you start talking the sort of talk that might get me burnt for my trouble. The only way I could possibly listen to you would be if somehow the fireman structure itself could be burnt. Now if you suggest that we print extra books and arrange to have them hidden in firemen's houses all over the country, so that seeds of suspicion would be sown among these arsonists, bravo, I'd say!" "Plant the books, turn in an alarm, and see the firemen's houses bum, is that what you mean?" Faber raised his brows and looked at Montag as if he were seeing a new man. "I was joking." "If you thought it would be a plan worth trying, I'd have to take your word it would help." "You can't guarantee things like that! After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need a breather. We do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caesar's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, `Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.' Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore." Faber got up and began to pace the room. "Well?" asked Montag. "You're absolutely serious?" "Absolutely." "It's an insidious plan, if I do say so myself." Faber glanced nervously at his bedroom door. "To see the firehouses burn across the land, destroyed as hotbeds of treason. The salamander devours his tail! Ho,


her in near perpetual distress, some faked but much of it real, Michael was at times overcome by a tenderness toward her, and by a desire to fix whatever was broken in the woman, though he knew he hadn’t the power to make her right. However, day by day, week by week, year by year, he came to see how he could console her with no risk of becoming like her; he could be amused by her, find sanctuary in his amusement, without disrespecting her. That was not an easy path to take, but he found a satisfaction in it that he could not name until he was much older—compassion, mercy, forgiveness. The year of spider terror came to a quiet end. Having reason to be suspicious, Michael waited till his mother was across the street, berating neighbors for an offense they had not committed, whereupon he went into the attic. That place was forbidden to him, because his mother claimed it harbored hornet’s nests and rats bearing numerous diseases. He found no hornets or rats, but he did find three quart-size mason jars with numerous pinholes in their lids. One was empty. The other two contained dead flies and pill bugs that Mother had provided as larder, a few drops of water, and a variety of spiders that she had somehow gathered and imprisoned, ten in all, clinging to life in ill-spun webs that sagged away from the glass walls. You can’t depend on nature always to supply a spider when you most need one. Michael, Mickey, Mouse, Boything, Little Shit carried the jars downstairs. He took the occupied pair into the backyard and set the prisoners free. They scurried across his hands without biting him. In the kitchen, he washed the jars, dried them with paper towels, and stood them on the counter by the door to the pantry. He went to his room and was soon lost in a book. He heard his mother return home. She slammed the door and cursed the world on her way to the kitchen and the chardonnay. Her sudden silence lasted perhaps two hours, until she’d drunk enough to start softly singing Celtic songs to which she didn’t know all the words. Later, she ordered in dinner from a restaurant on the corner, all his favorite dishes, allowed him to read his book at the table, and did not trouble him with conversation. Such were the limits of her grace and confession. Michael knew even this tacit recognition of the humanity of another was torment for her, and he asked nothing more. A NAMELESS PLACE Many of the larger estates in Rancho Santa Fe have names, but this sixteen-thousand-square-foot house on twelve acres currently lacks one. It changed hands a year earlier, and the new owners, having no interest in horses, removed the name from the entrance monument because it made reference to equine pursuits. They have three homes in other states and don’t currently live here, but they are developing plans to extensively rebuild and expand the house, as well as to


she could murmur to herself with a grim smile, and a half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed wonder, pity, and growing affection,-- "What a nice little body she is! If she only could be a lady; too--but that's impossible! Phoebe is no Pyncheon. She takes everything from her mother." As to Phoebe's not being a lady, or whether she were a lady or no, it was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but which could hardly have come up for judgment at all in any fair and healthy mind. Out of New England, it would be impossible to meet with a person combining so many ladylike attributes with so many others that form no necessary (if compatible) part of the character. She shocked no canon of taste; she was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against surrounding circumstances. Her figure, to be sure,--so small as to be almost childlike, and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier to it than rest,would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess. Neither did her face--with the brown ringlets on either side, and the slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly remembrances of the April sun and breeze--precisely give us a right to call her beautiful. But there was both lustre and depth in her eyes. She was very pretty; as graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall while evening is drawing nigh. Instead of discussing her claim to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard Phoebe as the example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a state of society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist. There it should be woman's office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and to gild them all, the very homeliest,--were it even the scouring of pots and kettles,--with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy. Such was the sphere of Phoebe. To find the born and educated lady, on the other hand, we need look no farther than Hepzibah, our forlorn old maid, in her rustling and rusty silks, with her deeply cherished and ridiculous consciousness of long descent, her shadowy claims to princely territory, and, in the way of accomplishment, her recollections, it may be, of having formerly thrummed on a harpsichord, and walked a minuet, and worked an antique tapestry-stitch on her sampler. It was a fair parallel between new Plebeianism and old Gentility. It really seemed as if the battered visage of the House of the Seven Gables, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have shown a kind of cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as Phoebe passed to and fro in the interior. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon became aware of the girl's


said, ‘Get up!’” the man ordered. Through the hair that had fallen over her face, Stacy stared up at him, dark above the bright beam of light from his flashlight. He was going to kill her. If she let him, he’d strangle her with that damned fake rosary while the bullfrogs croaked and mosquitoes hummed in this godforsaken swamp. “Now!” he yelled, and something in the bracken behind him rustled, an animal of some kind scurrying or slithering through the woods. For a second he was distracted, glanced over his shoulder, and she caught sight of her dropped shoe. Her fingers wrapped around the narrow arch of the stiletto as she stood, keeping her right hand out of sight. He swung his gaze back to her and, satisfied that she was obeying, looped the rosary of death over her head. As he did, she swung upward. Throwing all of her weight into her shoulder, she thrust the sharp heel of her shoe at his face, aiming for his eye. “Aaaarrrggh!” He yowled in pain. Blood spurted over the shoe and her fingers. She chopped upward again. Fast. Over and over. Bam! Bam! Bam! “Noooo!” Squealing, he tightened the grip on the rosary, twisting it and cinching it over her throat. But the choker prevented the stones from cutting into her flesh. “You little bitch!” he said through gritted teeth, blood running down his face. She raised the high heel again and he grabbed the shoe with his free hand. He ripped it from her sticky fingers, then flung the stiletto into the swamp. “You’ll pay for that!” He dragged her from her feet. Twisting. Grunting. All his muscles coiled. Her second shoe dangled, then fell off to clatter against the rotting dock. “Die,” he ordered, his breath hot. Heavy. Despite the choker, Stacy couldn’t breathe. She grasped the glittering noose with her fingers, but she couldn’t wedge them beneath the heavy wire. Her legs were moving frantically, trying to find ground, but they found only air. “That’s better,” he growled. Satisfied. Smug. Another twist. Oh, merciful God! Her lungs were tight. On fire. She tried to drag in a breath. Could only gurgle. The holy noose tightened. Her lungs would surely burst. She heard popping noises. From her ears and eyes. No, no, no! He shifted, twirling her out over the dark water, dangling her body over the surface where creatures swam and waited. Just let go. The voice in her head was so seductive. Her legs swung beneath her, again over the water. “No, no, no! Fight Stacy-girl,” another gravelly voice ordered her, and in her mind’s eye she saw her grandmother, a bit of a woman with long gray braids, weathered skin, and a voice rough from cigarettes. “Kick him where it counts. Hard. In his balls!” She tried to aim her legs, but they were weak. “For God’s sake, scratch the hell out of him!” As if the old long-dead woman were pushing her, she suddenly flailed forward, lunging for his eyes with her broken nails. She scraped his


for a few days.” He looked over at Simon once more, as if asking for backup. Simon nodded sagely. “Nothing wrong with a quick golf trip. After all, you haven’t seen your buddies all summer, right?” “He went to Europe with his buddies,” said Marion. “What are you not telling me?” Judy, who’d been silent all this time, not even offering up a word of congratulations, piped up from the corner. “You’re ruining everything, Marion. Just be quiet.” “How? I don’t understand.” The three of them were ganging up on her, gaslighting her; something was afoot and she wanted to be in on the joke. Maybe she was overreacting, but she’d just lost her job and was now being almost proposed to by her almost-fiancé, and she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Tell me.” “Nathaniel is going to see his grandmother in Florida to collect your engagement ring,” Judy said, clearly thrilled to spill the beans once again. For the second time that day, Marion had ruined the big surprise. She wanted to crawl under the rug and disappear. “I’m so sorry.” Nathaniel gave a helpless shrug. “Don’t worry. It’s not exactly the way I planned it, but the important thing is that we’re in each other’s lives again. You know how much I adore you, my beautiful girl, don’t you?” He was a good man, she was lucky to have him. Then why did Marion feel like she wanted to scream? CHAPTER THREE After Nathaniel left, Marion, her father, and Judy ate dinner and then settled in the living room. Simon eased into his leather armchair and opened a biography of Henry Ford while Judy did a crossword at the desk. For some reason this scene of domestic tranquility set Marion’s teeth on edge. It was as if they were an old married couple and Marion the sullen teenager. She was always the third wheel. “What is it, Marion?” Simon asked. She hadn’t realized she’d let out a long sigh. “Nothing. I guess I’m a little overwhelmed.” In a few days, Marion would be getting engaged. There would be a guest list to draw up, invitations to order, meetings with florists. It was a lot of work ahead. Her heart felt heavy at the thought of it for some reason. “I remember your mother was overwhelmed at first as well,” said Simon. “That’s perfectly normal. I’ll tell you what, though, I can’t wait to walk my little girl down the aisle.” Her normally stoic father was about to cry, which, in turn, made Marion’s eyes well up. All her annoyance dissipated. She walked over to her father and gave him a peck on the cheek. “Tell us again how you and Mom met.” A soft smile crossed his face. “I’ve told you that before.” Judy piped up. “She was reading a play, right?” The two sisters shared a quiet glance, united in their thirst for details about their lost parent. “That’s right. I was still getting used to working in an office, after years of running around town. Around


their present hardships. September 7th The die is cast; I have consented to return if we are not destroyed. Thus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back ignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess to bear this injustice with patience. September 12th It is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility and glory; I have lost my friend. But I will endeavour to detail these bitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and while I am wafted towards England and towards you, I will not despond. September 9th, The ice began to move, and roarings like thunder were heard at a distance as the islands split and cracked in every direction. We were in the most imminent peril, but as we could only remain passive, my chief attention was occupied by my unfortunate guest whose illness increased in such a degree that he was entirely confined to his bed. The ice cracked behind us and was driven with force towards the north; a breeze sprang from the west, and on the 11th the passage towards the south became perfectly free. When the sailors saw this and that their return to their native country was apparently assured, a shout of tumultuous joy broke from them, loud and long-continued. Frankenstein, who was dozing, awoke and asked the cause of the tumult. "They shout," I said, "because they will soon return to England." "Do you, then, really return?" "Alas! Yes; I cannot withstand their demands. I cannot lead them unwillingly to danger, and I must return." "Do so, if you will; but I will not. You may give up your purpose, but mine is assigned to me by heaven, and I dare not. I am weak, but surely the spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with sufficient strength." Saying this, he endeavoured to spring from the bed, but the exertion was too great for him; he fell back and fainted. It was long before he was restored, and I often thought that life was entirely extinct. At length he opened his eyes; he breathed with difficulty and was unable to speak. The surgeon gave him a composing draught and ordered us to leave him undisturbed. In the meantime he told me that my friend had certainly not many hours to live. His sentence was pronounced, and I could only grieve and be patient. I sat by his bed, watching him; his eyes were closed, and I thought he slept; but presently he called to me in a feeble voice, and bidding me come near, said, "Alas! The strength I relied on is gone; I feel that I shall soon die, and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in being. Think not, Walton, that in the last moments of my existence I feel that burning hatred and ardent desire of revenge I once expressed; but I feel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary. During these last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct;


little thing, isn't it? I can't believe it's mine." It was red and wrinkled and odd. Philip smiled when he looked at it. He did not quite know what to say; and it embarrassed him because the nurse who owned the house was standing by his side; and he felt by the way she was looking at him that, disbelieving Mildred's complicated story, she thought he was the father. "What are you going to call her?" asked Philip. "I can't make up my mind if I shall call her Madeleine or Cecilia." The nurse left them alone for a few minutes, and Philip bent down and kissed Mildred on the mouth. "I'm so glad it's all over happily, darling." She put her thin arms round his neck. "You have been a brick to me, Phil dear." "Now I feel that you're mine at last. I've waited so long for you, my dear." They heard the nurse at the door, and Philip hurriedly got up. The nurse entered. There was a slight smile on her lips. CHAPTER LXXIII THREE weeks later Philip saw Mildred and her baby off to Brighton. She had made a quick recovery and looked better than he had ever seen her. She was going to a boarding-house where she had spent a couple of weekends with Emil Miller, and had written to say that her husband was obliged to go to Germany on business and she was coming down with her baby. She got pleasure out of the stories she invented, and she showed a certain fertility of invention in the working out of the details. Mildred proposed to find in Brighton some woman who would be willing to take charge of the baby. Philip was startled at the callousness with which she insisted on getting rid of it so soon, but she argued with common sense that the poor child had much better be put somewhere before it grew used to her. Philip had expected the maternal instinct to make itself felt when she had had the baby two or three weeks and had counted on this to help him persuade her to keep it; but nothing of the sort occurred. Mildred was not unkind to her baby; she did all that was necessary; it amused her sometimes, and she talked about it a good deal; but at heart she was indifferent to it. She could not look upon it as part of herself. She fancied it resembled its father already. She was continually wondering how she would manage when it grew older; and she was exasperated with herself for being such a fool as to have it at all. "If I'd only known then all I do now," she said. She laughed at Philip, because he was anxious about its welfare. "You couldn't make more fuss if you was the father," she said. "I'd like to see Emil getting into such a stew about it." Philip's mind was full of the stories he had heard of baby-farming and the ghouls who ill-treat the wretched children that selfish,


unmolested."     "Then I will fetch Leah, and wake John and his wife."     "Not at all: just be still. You have a shawl on? if you are not warm enough, you may take my cloak yonder: wrap it about you, and sit down in the arm-chair: there I will put it on. Now place your feet on the stool, to keep them out of the wet. I am going to leave you a few minutes. I shall take the candle. Remain where you are till I return; be as still as a mouse. I must pay a visit to the third story. Don't move, remember, or call any one."     He went: I watched the light withdraw. He passed up the gallery very softly, unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as possible, shut it after him, and the last ray vanished. I was left in total darkness. I listened for some noise, but heard nothing. A very long time elapsed. I grew weary; it was cold, in spite of the cloak; and then I did not see the use of staying, as I was not to rouse the house. I was on the point of risking Mr. Rochester's displeasure, by disobeying his orders, when the light once more gleamed dimly on the gallery-wall, and I heard his unshod feet tread the matting. "I hope it is he," thought I, "and not something worse."     He re-entered, pale and very gloomy. "I have found it all out," said he, setting his candle down on the washstand; "it is as I thought."     "How, sir?"     He made no reply, but stood with his arms folded, looking on the ground. At the end of a few minutes, he inquired in rather a peculiar tone: "I forgot whether you said you saw anything when you opened your chamber doors?"     "No, sir; only the candlestick on the ground."     "But you heard an odd laugh? You have heard that laugh before, I should think, or something like it?"     "Yes, sir; there is a woman who sews here, called Grace Poole she laughs in that way. She is a singular person."     "Just so. Grace Poole you have guessed it. She is, as you say, singular very. Well, I shall reflect on the subject. Meantime, I am glad that you are the only person besides myself acquainted with the precise details of to-night's incident. You are no talking fool: say nothing about it. I will account for this state of affairs (pointing to the bed): and now return to your own room. I shall do very well on the sofa in the library for the rest of the night. It is near four; in two hours the servants will be up."     "Good-night, then, sir," said I, departing.     He seemed surprised very inconsistently so, as


could send for Maester Colemon at once. Ser Rodrik is feverish from his wounds." More than once she had feared the gallant old knight would not survive the journey. Toward the end he could scarcely sit his horse, and Bronn had urged her to leave him to his fate, but Catelyn would not hear of it. They had tied him in the saddle instead, and she had commanded Marillion the singer to watch over him. Ser Donnel hesitated before he answered. "The Lady Lysa has commanded the maester to remain at the Eyrie at all times, to care for Lord Robert," he said. "We have a septon at the gate who tends to our wounded. He can see to your man's hurts." Catelyn had more faith in a maester's learning than a septon's prayers. She was about to say as much when she saw the battlements ahead, long parapets built into the very stone of the mountains on either side of them. Where the pass shrank to a narrow defile scarce wide enough for four men to ride abreast, twin watchtowers clung to the rocky slopes, joined by a covered bridge of weathered grey stone that arched above the road. Silent faces watched from arrow slits in tower, battlements, and bridge. When they had climbed almost to the top, a knight rode out to meet them. His horse and his armor were A GAME OF THRONES 319 grey, but his cloak was the rippling blue-and-red of Riverrun, and a shiny black fish, wrought in gold and obsidian, pinned its folds against his shoulder. "Who would pass the Bloody Gate?" he called. "Ser Donnel Waynwood, with the Lady Catelyn Stark and her companions," the young knight answered. The Knight of the Gate lifted his visor. "I thought the lady looked familiar. You are far from home, little Cat." "And you, Uncle," she said, smiling despite all she had been through. Hearing that hoarse, smoky voice again took her back twenty years, to the days of her childhood. "My home is at my back," he said gruffly. "Your home is in my heart," Catelyn told him. "Take off your helm. I would look on your face again." "The years have not improved it, I fear," Brynden Tully said, but when he lifted off the helm, Catelyn saw that he lied. His features were lined and weathered, and time had stolen the auburn from his hair and left him only grey, but the smile was the same, and the bushy eyebrows fat as caterpillars, and the laughter in his deep blue eyes. "Did Lysa know you were coming?" "There was no time to send word ahead," Catelyn told him. The others were coming up behind her. "I fear we ride before the storm, Uncle." "May we enter the Vale?" Ser Donnel asked. The Waynwoods were ever ones for ceremony. "In the name of Robert Arryn, Lord of the Eyrie, Defender of the Vale, True Warden of the East, I bid you enter freely, and charge you to keep his peace," Ser Brynden replied. "Come." And


induced to join her-- but it would not do;--Miss Bates came to the carriage door, all gratitude, and agreeing with her most earnestly in thinking an airing might be of the greatest service--and every thing that message could do was tried-- but all in vain. Miss Bates was obliged to return without success; Jane was quite unpersuadable; the mere proposal of going out seemed to make her worse.--Emma wished she could have seen her, and tried her own powers; but, almost before she could hint the wish, Miss Bates made it appear that she had promised her niece on no account to let Miss Woodhouse in. "Indeed, the truth was, that poor dear Jane could not bear to see any body--any body at all-- Mrs. Elton, indeed, could not be denied--and Mrs. Cole had made such a point--and Mrs. Perry had said so much--but, except them, Jane would really see nobody." Emma did not want to be classed with the Mrs. Eltons, the Mrs. Perrys, and the Mrs. Coles, who would force themselves anywhere; neither could she feel any right of preference herself-- she submitted, therefore, and only questioned Miss Bates farther as to her niece's appetite and diet, which she longed to be able to assist. On that subject poor Miss Bates was very unhappy, and very communicative; Jane would hardly eat any thing:-- Mr. Perry recommended nourishing food; but every thing they could command (and never had any body such good neighbours) was distasteful. Emma, on reaching home, called the housekeeper directly, to an examination of her stores; and some arrowroot of very superior quality was speedily despatched to Miss Bates with a most friendly note. In half an hour the arrowroot was returned, with a thousand thanks from Miss Bates, but "dear Jane would not be satisfied without its being sent back; it was a thing she could not take--and, moreover, she insisted on her saying, that she was not at all in want of any thing." When Emma afterwards heard that Jane Fairfax had been seen wandering about the meadows, at some distance from Highbury, on the afternoon of the very day on which she had, under the plea of being unequal to any exercise, so peremptorily refused to go out with her in the carriage, she could have no doubt--putting every thing together-- that Jane was resolved to receive no kindness from her. She was sorry, very sorry. Her heart was grieved for a state which seemed but the more pitiable from this sort of irritation of spirits, inconsistency of action, and inequality of powers; and it mortified her that she was given so little credit for proper feeling, or esteemed so little worthy as a friend: but she had the consolation of knowing that her intentions were good, and of being able to say to herself, that could Mr. Knightley have been privy to all her attempts of assisting Jane Fairfax, could he even have seen into her heart, he would not, on this occasion, have found any thing to reprove. CHAPTER X One morning, about


loved her, that my love hadn’t been enough to save her. But this was proof that she cherished our sisterhood just like I did. I nodded, overcome with emotion, and flipped to the article. I started reading aloud. “Two hundred forty-three Holly Springs campers from North Carolina to California, Maine to Texas, and everywhere in between hosted fundraising lemonade stands in their hometowns to help save their ailing all-girls summer camp that has been a staple in North Carolina for more than seventy-six years.” “What? How?” Mary Stuart smiled. “Well, to be honest, I didn’t think it was going to happen. But Amelia Saxton, the editor of Sea and Sky, switched out a monthly home feature for this spread literally the day the magazine went to press.” “She was always one of my favorite campers.” I smiled. “I need to write her a note.” As if that would be thank-you enough. I held the magazine to my chest for a moment. I pulled it away and flipped to the next page, which featured a photo of a letter from Daphne to Melanie that began, Mom, this is the best summer of my life. As I continued to skim, my eyes zeroed in on a number. I gasped. “What? They raised $56,842? From lemonade stands?” “That’s a lot of lemonade, Aunt June,” Henry said. There was even a little blurb at the bottom of the article instructing people on how they could donate. I threw my arms around Mary Stuart with about as much force as Henry had just thrown his arms around me. “There are no words to adequately thank you for this.” This article might not save our camp and the lemonade money might not get us to our goal, but it reminded me that what I had done all those years ago meant something to all these people supporting us, and for now, for today, that was enough. I hugged Daphne too. Just then, thunder boomed through the sky. “Oh, gosh,” I said. “I have to make sure everyone is out of the water!” I ran through the pouring rain, down to the river, barely even noticing how drenched I was because I was floating on air. I thought of the message Jillian had left on my desk earlier from David Price of Price Development asking if I’d made a decision. I couldn’t tell him to take his deal and shove it quite yet; I needed him as a safety net. But the idea I might be able to do that now felt so close I could practically taste it. I spotted Rich and Lanier running through the downpour, noting that no campers were in the water or on the dock. And with the rain pouring around me, I felt revitalized. We still had a long way to go, but I was more determined than ever to save Holly Springs. Not because, like all those years ago, it was all I had left. But because, now more than ever, it was all I had ever wanted. Lanier YOU, ME, AND


mouth. This too familiar intonation, less than four years earlier, had brought to her ears expressions of such divergent purpose that her heart became quite sick at the irony of the contrast. It was less a reform than a transfiguration. The former curves of sensuousness were now modulated to lines of devotional passion. The lip-shapes that had meant seductiveness were now made to express supplication; the glow on the cheek that yesterday could be translated as riotousness was evangelized today into the splendour of pious rhetoric; animalism had become fanaticism; Paganism Paulinism; the bold rolling eye that had flashed upon her form in the old time with such mastery now beamed with the rude energy of a theolatry that was almost ferocious. Those black angularities which his face had used to put on when his wishes were thwarted now did duty in picturing the incorrigible backslider who would insist upon turning again to his wallowing in the mire. The lineaments, as such, seemed to complain. They had been diverted from their hereditary connotation to signify impressions for which Nature did not intend them. Strange that their very elevation was a misapplication, that to raise seemed to falsify. Yet could it be so? She would admit the ungenerous sentiment no longer. D'Urberville was not the first wicked man who had turned away from his wickedness to save his soul alive, and why should she deem it unnatural in him? It was but the usage of thought which had been jarred in her at hearing good new words in bad old notes. The greater the sinner the greater the saint; it was not necessary to dive far into Christian history to discover that. Such impressions as these moved her vaguely, and without strict definiteness. As soon as the nerveless pause of her surprise would allow her to stir, her impulse was to pass on out of his sight. He had obviously not discerned her yet in her position against the sun. But the moment that she moved again he recognized her. The effect upon her old lover was electric, far stronger than the effect of his presence upon her. His fire, the tumultuous ring of his eloquence, seemed to go out of him. His lip struggled and trembled under the words that lay upon it; but deliver them it could not as long as she faced him. His eyes, after their first glance upon her face, hung confusedly in every other direction but hers, but came back in a desperate leap every few seconds. This paralysis lasted, however, but a short time; for Tess's energies returned with the atrophy of his, and she walked as fast as she was able past the barn and onward. As soon as she could reflect it appalled her, this change in their relative platforms. He who had wrought her undoing was now on the side of the Spirit, while she remained unregenerate. And, as in the legend, it had resulted that her Cyprian image had suddenly appeared upon his alter, whereby the fire of the priest had been


said we couldn't, therefore we could; and if Atticus ever said we couldn't, Jem had thought of a way around it: he would simply change the names of the characters and then we couldn't be accused of playing anything. Dill was in hearty agreement with this plan of action. Dill was becoming something of a trial anyway, following Jem about. He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem. They spent days together in the treehouse plotting and planning, calling me only when they needed a third party. But I kept aloof from their more foolhardy schemes for a while, and on pain of being called a girl, I spent most of the remaining twilights that summer sitting with Miss Maudie Atkinson on her front porch. Jem and I had always enjoyed the free run of Miss Maudie's yard if we kept out of her azaleas, but our contact with her was not clearly defined. Until Jem and Dill excluded me from their plans, she was only another lady in the neighborhood, but a relatively benign presence. Our tacit treaty with Miss Maudie was that we could play on her lawn, eat her scuppernongs if we didn't jump on the arbor, and explore her vast back lot, terms so generous we seldom spoke to her, so careful were we to preserve the delicate balance of our relationship, but Jem and Dill drove me closer to her with their behavior. Miss Maudie hated her house: time spent indoors was time wasted. She was a widow, a chameleon lady who worked in her flower beds in an old straw hat and men's coveralls, but after her five o'clock bath she would appear on the porch and reign over the street in magisterial beauty. She loved everything that grew in God's earth, even the weeds. With one exception. If she found a blade of nut grass in her yard it was like the Second Battle of the Marne: she swooped down upon it with a tin tub and subjected it to blasts from beneath with a poisonous substance she said was so powerful it'd kill us all if we didn't stand out of the way. "Why can't you just pull it up?" I asked, after witnessing a prolonged campaign against a blade not three inches high. "Pull it up, child, pull it up?" She picked up the limp sprout and squeezed her thumb up its tiny stalk. Microscopic grains oozed out. "Why, one sprig of nut grass can ruin a whole yard. Look here. When it comes fall this dries up and the wind blows it all over Maycomb County!" Miss Maudie's face likened such an occurrence unto an Old Testament pestilence. Her speech was crisp for a Maycomb County inhabitant. She called us by all our names, and