You won’t be surprised.” She was going to ask him inside for a drink, then he said, “Do you want to go for a swim?” She looked at him blankly. “In the Hudson?” “In the swimming lake. I’ve wanted to ask, and this might be my last chance.” He shrugged. “Plus, you know, we’re already wet.” Maud laughed, feeling giddy. “Why not?” she said. Gabriel headed toward the cottage. “See you in five minutes, boring, grouchy, distracted mother.” “See you in five minutes, lone wolf.” _____ They met in bathing suits, towels around their waists, and walked through the woods, flashlights swishing. The rain pattered on the oak leaves, then dwindled. Side by side, they moved deeper into a cool, shadowy world that croaked with frogs and chirped with crickets. The lake, pictured in an archival sketch with a gazebo and two bonneted women rowing a boat, was now hemmed in by weeds, but the surface was silky and inviting. Maud slipped off her towel, adjusted her suit, and lowered herself into the water. Wincing at the cold, she wondered if Gabriel noticed her body the way she’d noticed his. His chest, as she’d imagined, was muscled and sculpted, but his body wasn’t perfect. She liked that he had a slight belly. “Race you to the other side,” he said once he was in the water. “I thought this was supposed to be a relaxing dip.” “It’ll be a relaxing race. And this water is freezing. I need to move.” He dove and started to butterfly toward the opposite shore. “You’re cheating,” Maud yelled at him, laughing. “I refuse to participate.” “Fine,” he called back. “I’ll race myself.” She twisted onto her back and floated. Eventually Gabriel returned and floated too. Together, they looked up at the moon, blooming in its bed of sky. Everything would change tomorrow, Maud thought, but maybe not too much. On the drive from the airport the next morning, she stopped with the girls in Tarrytown for lunch at a tavern with time-clouded windows and a boot scraper by the door. A woman in colonial petticoats and Birkenstocks led them to a table. “Go see if you can find the mermaid,” Maud told Ella and Louise, pointing to a hearth covered in cornflower-blue-and-white Delft tile. She’d read about the building the night before to collect details that might intrigue them. In the car, she’d spilled out a history lesson about the people who first had lived by the river, the arrival of the Dutch, the Hudson River School of painting, realizing too late that Ella was wearing earbuds and hadn’t heard a thing. “What do I win?” Ella said. She’d spotted the mermaid languishing on a bed of kelp and tulips. “Lunch?” Maud said. She was so happy to be with them. She’d almost started crying when she saw them walk off the plane. Louise wore her fluorescent-orange backpack on her chest, a stuffed turtle peering its head out of the front pocket. Ella was chewing gum for her stopped-up ears, but her jaw stilled and she


wallpaper a distracting tessellation of a set of pastel squares, the lights deafeningly bright, her slow-blinking secretary sheltered from us patients by a sheet of fiberglass. The clock on the wall behind me was loud, and I tapped my foot as fast as the second hand moved, scrolling through NuLife’s social media aimlessly, not to digest anything of value so much as prove to myself that I could still see my phone’s screen. I had an unread text from my mom asking how I was—it seemed impossible to respond truthfully given where I was and what I was there for. The people waiting with me had bandaged eyes or eyepatches or wore wraparound sunglasses, their heads inclined in the direction of the ticking clock. I could tell from a quick survey of the room that these people didn’t dwell in my underworld: they were all bewildered, newly blinded, unaccustomed to the dark. The mole rat doesn’t acquire its defects, it’s born with them. That made me different from them. The secretary called my name and led me back into the exam room, where I sat in the intimidating chair until Mengetsu came in, her face stern as always, my chart in her hands. “You’re back,” she said. “For a checkup,” I said. She closed my chart and sat down across from me. “Did you try the screen reader?” “Works great,” I lied. “What about the mobility aids?” I tilted my head from side to side. “Some of them.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “What’s wrong, then?” “Headaches. Sometimes my vision gets blurry. I don’t know what it is.” She crossed her legs. I felt immediately as though I’d said the wrong thing. “Headaches?” “Like a pressure behind my eyes. Or in them.” “Has anyone ever taken a look at your eyes with a tonometer?” “I don’t know what that is.” She looked momentarily at the floor, then back up at me. “Come with me into the next room.” We walked to a room that contained a machine that looked like a sophisticated device for the gouging of eyes. I was supposed to sit in the chair and slide my face into a kind of brace directly in front of what looked like the lens of a miniature microscope. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “Go ahead and sit down.” I did, removing my glasses, and she instructed me to keep both eyes open as wide as possible. Then she sat behind the microscope and a flash of UV-bright white passed across my left eye, then my right. She did this a second time and a third, and by the time she was done all I could see was the afterimage of the light, which dissolved to resemble blue spots in my vision. Even with my glasses on again, I couldn’t see anything. “I need to do one more thing,” she said. “We’re going to take pictures of your eyes.” Now another massive machine with a head brace, but for this one I just needed to look at a simulated wheat


if she did? Several brooding thoughts and a few pristine angles later, I switch off the engine and call Jordan back. “Hey, man,” he says, “what’s good?” Literally nothing. Except the way my mouth is still tingling with the memory of Celine’s, but even that’s bittersweet. “Just got home. You?” “Whooooa. What is that?” I frown at my house. Lights are on. Everyone’s home. “What’s what?” “That voice, bruh. Who killed your cat?” “I don’t have a cat.” They play with dead animals, and I really don’t need that energy in my life. “Meeting didn’t go too well, huh?” Actually, I didn’t mention this to Cel, but my meeting did go well. It went very well. My score for the practice expedition was 4.79. If I work as hard in Glen Finglas, and take my weakest trait into account—commitment, apparently, probably because I couldn’t stop messing about with Raj or staring at Celine—I could be one of the top three Explorers. I could win. “I think…I have a real chance at the scholarship,” I admit, the words rushing out on a sigh. “Uh. Did I miss something? Is that…bad?” “No. No, it’s good,” except no it’s not because oh my God, I don’t even care right now. I don’t feel the slightest spark of excitement, and it’s not only because I’m upset about Celine. When I check in with my feelings, I find a mountain of dread at the idea that I’m one step closer to making this law degree happen because— I know what it feels like to want something so badly, it eats at you. I know how greedy I really am, how much I need. And now I know how it feels to go without. I tap the handbrake, just to make sure it’s on, and say, “I don’t want to study law. It would be fine. But that’s not enough.” As soon as the words are released, it’s like a too-tight belt around my waist loosens by a single notch. I breathe a little deeper and stare at my house. I can see the back of Dad’s head through the living room window. The belt cinches tight again. “Damn,” Jordan says. “Okay.” We sit in silence for a moment. “What do you want to do instead?” “Um.” I’ve never admitted this to anyone else—but no, I told Celine, and she didn’t laugh or produce any of the other cruel and unlikely reactions my brain was convinced I would get. She just…supported me. She told me I could do anything. So before I can second-guess it, I tell Jordan, “I’ve been trying to write a book.” “With the amount you read, that makes perfect sense.” Hold on. “I spill my tortured forbidden guts and all you can say is it makes sense?” Jordan bursts out laughing. “Writing a book is your most tortured and forbidden secret? I love you, man. Don’t ever change.” “It’s ridiculous. Do you know how many copies the average book sells a year? It’s in the low hundreds, Jordan. Depressingly low.” I’m trying to avoid


if—and this likelihood was really only occurring to me now, as I sat there—without his lab coat on and out of the context of the clinic, I truly couldn’t tell him apart from anyone else? It was more than possible. How mortifying would that be? I thought about the woman on Facebook who’d called her face blindness “a superpower.” What would she be doing right now? She wouldn’t be sitting here nervously ripping up a paper napkin, her stomach cold with dread as she questioned her value as a human being. Hell, no! She would put her shoulders back, embrace the uncertainty, surf that tsunami of self-doubt like a badass, and find a way to make it fun. At the very least, she wouldn’t give up on herself before she’d even tried. You’ve got this, I pep-talked myself as I started mutilating a new napkin. You know what to do. And with that, I did know what to do: Just smile—and positively radiate warmth and availability—at every single man who walked in through the Bean Street doors as if he were my future husband. Not my usual strategy in life. But not that hard to do, either. I mean, Dr. Addison had a job to do here, too—right? He would recognize me. Sure, I looked a little different with my hair up and my passionfruit lips. But I could rely on him to know me when he saw me. Anyway, I’d just have to put my faith in destiny. What was meant to be was meant to be. Except maybe it wasn’t meant to be … because an hour—an actual hour—went by, and Dr. Addison didn’t show up. There’s a very specific slow-burn heartbreak to getting stood up as the realization slowly comes into focus: No one’s coming. In that one interminable hour of looking up each time the doors opened and watching every single one of them sweep on past me like we were total strangers—which we must have been—I felt myself wilting like a time-lapse version of a neglected houseplant. It was the lethal combination of the hope with the disappointment, I decided. I’d walked in, all fresh and bright with my green leaves lifted high toward the sun … and it took only an hour to render me flopped sideways, limp and melted over the edge of my pot. Emotionally, I mean. The point is, untold numbers of innocent napkins gave their lives during that hour of waiting. All for nothing. At the one-hour mark, with no text from him, I called it. I was done here. I stood up, feeling like the whole room of people must be watching me and shaking their heads, and started picking up all the napkin shreddings off the table—deliberately, self-consciously. Careful not to screw this up, too. But that’s when the outside door opened again, and this time a breeze burst in with it, and that breeze sent the napkin pieces scattering off the table onto the floor—all my efforts destroyed, as so often happened, by some totally unrelated outside force. And


later, when the winds had calmed down, they’d departed, leaving behind the rotten husk of an airplane which no person could tolerate for another minute. Roped together in a procession, stumbling through the darkness, guided by the stars, they’d set up temporary camps, about to embark on one of the most famous expeditions in human history – the walk to the South Pole. The South Pole Station was the nearest base on the East Antarctica Ice Sheet, the largest ice sheet on the planet, three thousand metres thick, two thousand eight hundred metres above sea level – a once pristine desert plain now scorched, scratched and scarred by the Exodus. It was by far the smallest of the Antarctica bases, housing only one hundred and fifty scientists during the summer and fifty during the winter, nowhere near the scale of McMurdo Station over eight hundred miles away. People had continuously occupied the geographic South Pole since November 1956, and during those decades the base had evolved from a small science station to a geodesic dome fifty metres wide, with supply depots and fuel tanks. Separate from the main base building were remote science facilities including the Atmospheric Research Observatory and an observatory for astrophysics. Even with this expansion it was fanciful that such a small scientific base could form any kind of meaningful refugee settlement for the world’s population, even with the supply drops, including emergency shelters, prefabricated laboratories, crates of dried food, bundles of clothes, millions of vitamin pills and thermal sleeping bags. The flat ice around the station had been transformed by these drops into an expressway of sliding steel freight containers, thousands of them with parachutes still attached, dragged across the ice by the powerful winds. Yotam’s group had slowly journeyed through this kinetic landscape of sliding crates and billowing parachutes, some of the procession crushed by crates coming out of nowhere, racing through the night like runaway trains. A sense of futility might have overcome his expedition had it not been for the aurora australis, green swirling vapour trails of lights across the sky so extraordinary everyone had presumed they were alien in origin. Under these swirls of light, they saw, framed against the witch-green sky, the modular outline of the South Pole Station. A base designed and intended to house no more than a hundred and fifty people was now the only habitable space for hundreds of miles. Even with people sleeping in the observatory, the laboratories, under the tables, on the floor, the base could provide for only ten thousand. Everyone else had been told to find their own emergency shelters from the supply drops. Controlled by the American and Chinese military, the two superpowers had agreed to work together during the Exodus, surprising many by accepting that the only chance of survival was one of co-operation and co-ordination rather than combat. The American–Chinese alliance, the forefather to the Antarctic Alliance, had scrambled to expand the base and new structures had been hastily added, temporary shelters and emergency installations. Even so, there was nowhere near the


he wets a cloth and begins gently dabbing at the worst of the cuts. “Why’d he do it?” Andy knows as soon as he’s spoken that it’s the wrong question. There’s no good answer, and it sounds like he’s asking the kid what he did to deserve a beating. Sal snatches the cloth from Andy’s hand and begins wiping his face himself. “Oh, the usual. I’m a f—” He breaks off. “The usual things. Don’t tell Uncle Nick.” Andy can fill in the blank perfectly well. “Nick can keep a secret.” Sal scowls. “I mean don’t tell him that anyone calls me that. I’m not—Jesus. People just say those things when they don’t like you. What are you, new?” Obviously, Andy knows all this. He’s heard that word and all the rest of them. But this is the first time since he could reasonably apply them to himself that he’s thought about them as generic insults. He tries not to look like he’s reeling. “Do your parents know where you are?” “I ran away, genius. No, they don’t know.” Andy is in over his head. “I’m going to call Nick.” He goes over to the phone and dials the Chronicle switchboard and a minute later learns that Nick isn’t in the office anymore. He isn’t surprised—Nick had planned to go to City Hall. “Right,” Andy said. “We need to call your parents.” Sal gets to his feet and heads for the door. “Hear me out,” Andy says. “I’m afraid that your father is going to send some of his cop buddies over here and get your uncle in trouble for, I don’t know, kidnapping you or something.” “And telling my dad exactly where I am will prevent that how?” He sounds ticked off, but his eyes are suspiciously shiny. Andy has the sense that one wrong word will send him either into tears or back out onto the street. Andy has no answer for Sal, though. All he knows is that under no circumstances should any cop enter this apartment. The sheets alone would get them arrested. Andy’s things are scattered all over Nick’s bedroom. Jesus. Okay. He has to think. “We’re going to go next door and say hi to my girlfriend and then all three of us are going out to get pizza.” He figures Linda ought to at least get a slice or two out of this. “Why don’t you wash your face and take a couple of aspirin while I see if she’s home.” He knocks on Linda’s door, sending up a silent prayer to any nearby deities that she’s home. She answers the door in her usual state: hair piled on top of her head, overalls paint-spattered. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he gushes. “Which is great because you’re my girlfriend now.” “Oh boy. This’ll be good.” Inside, he explains. “But what I need now,” he concludes, “is for you to have Sal over for ten minutes while I clear Nick’s apartment of, uh, incriminating evidence.” Linda blinks, apparently unfazed. “Send him over.” Sal grudgingly goes


of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two black- clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit sub- dued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette. "My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early to-night, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning." I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest. And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall. Chapter 7 The Stapletons of Merripit House The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before. "I guess it is ourselves


debris. I wondered what it looked like. I wondered why in a world ripe with monsters and magic, only he could see me so clearly. “Good night, Suraira.” They summoned the Champions at midday. We had two hours from then to reach the cliffside on the other end of the forest. The first three Champions to cross Ayume Forest and climb to the top of the bluff would move to the second trial. I followed the rest of the Champions down the damp, winding tunnel. Each step added a fresh wave of anxiety. The tunnel would take us to the edge of Ayume. Slightly ahead, Diya walked with her shoulders pulled back. Water droplets clung to her shorn hair. Timur and Mehti spoke in low tones, and I stared at the back of Timur’s head until he glanced over. He waved, pointing at Mehti with a coconspiratorial eye roll. I smiled back. The Lukub Champion would die today. Someone cleared their throat pointedly. Diya slowed to match my pace. “Do you think they have an alliance?” She nodded at Timur and Mehti. It seemed more likely Mehti had trapped Timur in conversation, and the Lukub Champion’s politeness kept him captive. “Why? Are you suggesting you and I form one?” Diya scoffed. “What value could an alliance with you provide?” “Now, Diya. How did you know insults were the way to my heart?” Instead of a snide retort, Diya pinched her nose. “Do you smell that?” She glared at Timur. “It’s coming from the Lukubi.” I snorted. Her antipathy for everything Lukub had no bounds. From the gloom ahead, five narrow sets of steps ended the tunnel. Five steps for five Champions. Everywhere we went, Jasad followed. Diya took the steps to my right, Mehti to my left. “May we share the Awaleen’s fortitude and see each other again in joy,” Timur said. I prodded around the thin canvas covering the opening, rising to the top step. The other Champions copied my position, palms pressed to the canvas. “For Baira!” Timur bellowed, and leapt through the canvas. A beam of sunlight poured into the tunnel from the new opening. “For Kapastra!” Mehti shouted, vanishing after him. Dania and I glanced at each other in silent understanding. I peeled a corner of the canvas back and peeked around. When I couldn’t find any animals or waiting threats, I nodded at Diya. “Would you like to dramatically fling yourself first, or shall I?” “I hope Ayume has a taste for empty air,” she said. “It will find plenty between their ears.” Diya pulled her knees to her chest and drew herself through the opening. I tightened my stomach and vaulted up. The sun blazed overhead, stinging my cheeks. The cheerful conditions clashed with the smell assaulting my nose. Sweet decay with a rotten edge. I had doused many a cloth with an identical-smelling substance during my route, including the one I used to put Zeinab’s mother to sleep. Ayume’s assault began with its very air. We were permitted to bring only a small dagger with


buffer I had between myself and the satanic churning and howling in the adjoining room was the sound of a simulated box fan whirring inside my phone. I follow a bunch of Instagram accounts that are just pictures and the occasional close-up video of whales doing whale shit, like drifting or feeding or surfacing or playing. And because I try to stay off the bad places on the internet, I spend a lot of time watching people argue about sports or clips of whales on BBC Earth, weeping because I get to be on the same planet as both wide receivers who can run twenty-three miles per hour and also seventy-year-old humpback whales. This is some stoner shit, for real, but have you ever just sat and thought about how there is an animal as big as a city bus and we’re alive at the same time as them, and we can look at videos of them doing things? Yes, I am absolutely out of my fucking mind, but also, while you’re on land reading this, there’s a hundred-foot-long, 400,000-pound blue whale in the ocean right now about to eat forty million krill and migrate from Antarctica to the tropics probably! Isn’t that amazing? I like to take a couple gummies and, while they kick in, lie on my back in the dark with a fan blowing on my face, window open even in the winter, and remain very still with some gentle water sounds going in my headphones and imagine myself lying on a raft in the middle of the pitch-black ocean, feeling the waves created by a whale swimming six thousand feet below me. Then I imagine her swimming up and up and up until she’s porpoising right alongside me. It sends a shiver up my spine and chills through my whole body because, yo, what would you freaking do if a whale was just cruising next to your soft human body? It makes me want to cry in both wonder and terror, eyes squeezed shut picturing a clear sky full of twinkling stars, lapping waves surrounding my body as the THC surfs my bloodstream. It’s literally the scariest but also a kind of sexual (?) feeling, imagining being eye to eye with the largest creature on the planet and being completely at its mercy and it just smoothly circles your flimsy little raft. This is my favorite way to drift off to sleep. I YEARN FOR THE CHILLNESS OF WHALES. oh, so you actually don’t wanna make a show about a horny fat bitch with diarrhea? okay! A popular basic-cable network optioned my first book, and I almost got to make it into a real TV show. ALMOST. ACT 1 EXT. EVANSTON STREET—DAY We open on a wide shot of a street in Evanston, Illinois, the motherland, the place of my birth, the place where I’d wait in line for a gyro from Cross-Rhodes right now if it weren’t cold-ass winter. I don’t know if we could’ve actually shot this pilot in Evanston for real because I learned from


her. Okonkwo ate the food absent-mindedly. 'She should have been a boy,' he thought as he looked at his ten-year-old daughter. He passed her a piece of fish. "Go and bring me some cold water," he said. Ezinma rushed out of the hut, chewing the fish, and soon returned with a bowl of cool water from the earthen pot in her mother's hut. Okonkwo took the bowl from her and gulped the water down. He ate a few more pieces of plantain and pushed the dish aside. "Bring me my bag," he asked, and Ezinma brought his goatskin bag from the far end of the hut. He searched in it for his snuff-bottle. It was a deep bag and took almost the whole length of his arm. It contained other things apart from his snuff-bottle. There was a drinking horn in it, and also a drinking gourd, and they knocked against each other as he searched. When he brought out the snuff-bottle he tapped it a few times against his knee-cap before taking out some snuff on the palm of his left hand. Then he remembered that he had not taken out his snuff-spoon. He searched his bag again and brought out a small, flat, ivory spoon, with which he carried the brown snuff to his nostrils. Ezinma took the dish in one hand and the empty water bowl in the other and went back to her mother's hut. "She should have been a boy," Okonkwo said to himself again. His mind went back to Ikemefuna and he shivered. If only he could find some work to do he would be able to forget. But it was the season of rest between the harvest and the next planting season. The only work that men did at this time was covering the walls of their compound with new palm fronds. And Okonkwo had already done that. He had finished it on the very day the locusts came, when he had worked on one side of the wall and Ikemefuna and Nwoye on the other. "When did you become a shivering old woman," Okonkwo asked himself, "you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valour in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed." He sprang to his feet, hung his goatskin bag on his shoulder and went to visit his friend, Obierika. Obierika was sitting outside under the shade of an orange tree making thatches from leaves of the raffia-palm. He exchanged greetings with Okonkwo and led the way into his obi. "I was coming over to see you as soon as I finished that thatch," he said, rubbing off the grains of sand that clung to his thighs. "Is it well?" Okonkwo asked. "Yes," replied Obierika. "My daughter's suitor is coming today and I hope we will clinch the matter of the bride-price. I want you to be there." Just then Obierika's son, Maduka, came into


darkening atrium. One of the monks struck out with a dagger; the sharp edge sliced through Bastian’s eyebrow, sheeting blood and shocking him into enough stillness to be subdued, arms twisted behind his back. The shadow of the moon moved closer to the low-hanging sun. The Presque Mort who held Lore steered her toward August’s throne. The Sainted King stood motionless and aloof, hands behind his back. Another Presque Mort—the one from the leak, walking almost normally on a prosthetic foot—approached the dais and handed the King a dagger, cast in silver and scrolled over with gold. It matched his throne, a marriage of night and day, sun and moon. “It was always meant to be this way,” he said quietly, pitched so only Lore and Bastian could hear. “Mortem and Spiritum, bound together, held by the same person. The age of many gods is past; now, there’s only room for one.” “So you decided it should be you?” Lore’s voice was harsh, made hoarse by the way the Presque Mort held on to her hair, her neck stretched forward like an offering. She had to strain to see August, fingering his fine knife. “Apollius decided it should be someone in our family.” August shrugged. “He chose incorrectly, when deciding on the specific person, but that can be easily remedied. When we are one—when I become His avatar, His vessel— He will understand.” The Presque Mort hauled Bastian up on the platform as he spat and cursed, twisting in their grip like a cat. His flailing fists had connected with more than one of them—the Mort who held his arms had a rapidly blackening eye, and a bruise bloomed on another’s cheek as his hand tangled in Bastian’s hair and wrenched his head back, just like Lore’s. Bastian squinted through the blood from his head wound, chest heaving, teeth bared. August sighed as he looked at his son, always the disappointed father. In return, Bastian laughed, quick and sharp. “How fitting,” he snarled. “You always did have to do things as ostentatiously as possible.” The King shook his head. A streak of sorrow crossed his face, quick and bright as a passing comment, made more terrible for how genuine it was. “It never could’ve been you,” he murmured. “No matter what Anton’s vision said.” “Because I’m not pious enough?” There was no chance of escape; still, Bastian fought against the Mort holding him, muscles straining. “Would it be me if I’d killed my own people and farmed their bodies for an army?” “I didn’t kill them, Bastian.” The sorrow on August’s face turned cold. “That’s one sin you can’t lay at my feet.” His eyes turned to Lore, slow and deliberate. Her throat closed. Her mind did, too, shuttering itself against some impossible realization. Mortem couldn’t do something like that. Mortem couldn’t kill an entire village and leave the bodies perfectly intact. No mere channeler could do such a thing. No mere channeler. “Now.” August raised his knife as the room slid closer and closer to darkness, closer and closer to the


or the far away King's Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about. For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all this will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other's track on the cruising-ground itself, even though they are equally long absent from home. for one of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the people of the ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and have an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils. Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference; that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case with Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them; for your Englishman is rather .. <p 238 > reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority in the English whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles himself. So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable --and they are so. Whereas, some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic, will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in Broadway; and all the


the heavier when it arrives: I will endeavour to teach them resignation by my example.' The physician was affected; he promised to obey her, and told St. Aubert, somewhat abruptly, that there was nothing to expect. The latter was not philosopher enough to restrain his feelings when he received this information; but a consideration of the increased affliction which the observance of his grief would occasion his wife, enabled him, after some time, to command himself in her presence. Emily was at first overwhelmed with the intelligence; then, deluded by the strength of her wishes, a hope sprung up in her mind that her mother would yet recover, and to this she pertinaciously adhered almost to the last hour. The progress of this disorder was marked, on the side of Madame St. Aubert, by patient suffering, and subjected wishes. The composure, with which she awaited her death, could be derived only from the retrospect of a life governed, as far as human frailty permits, by a consciousness of being always in the presence of the Deity, and by the hope of a higher world. But her piety could not entirely subdue the grief of parting from those whom she so dearly loved. During these her last hours, she conversed much with St. Aubert and Emily, on the prospect of futurity, and on other religious topics. The resignation she expressed, with the firm hope of meeting in a future world the friends she left in this, and the effort which sometimes appeared to conceal her sorrow at this temporary separation, frequently affected St. Aubert so much as to oblige him to leave the room. Having indulged his tears awhile, he would dry them and return to the chamber with a countenance composed by an endeavour which did but increase his grief. Never had Emily felt the importance of the lessons, which had taught her to restrain her sensibility, so much as in these moments, and never had she practised them with a triumph so complete. But when the last was over, she sunk at once under the pressure of her sorrow, and then perceived that it was hope, as well as fortitude, which had hitherto supported her. St. Aubert was for a time too devoid of comfort himself to bestow any on his daughter. CHAPTER II I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul. SHAKESPEARE Madame St. Aubert was interred in the neighbouring village church; her husband and daughter attended her to the grave, followed by a long train of the peasantry, who were sincere mourners of this excellent woman. On his return from the funeral, St. Aubert shut himself in his chamber. When he came forth, it was with a serene countenance, though pale in sorrow. He gave orders that his family should attend him. Emily only was absent; who, overcome with the scene she had just witnessed, had retired to her closet to weep alone. St. Aubert followed her thither: he took her hand in silence, while she continued to weep; and it was some moments


the centuries of her family's and England's history. But she screwed herself up to the work in hand, since she could not get out of it, and answered-- "I came to see your mother, sir." "I am afraid you cannot see her--she is an invalid," replied thepresent representative of the spurious house; for this was Mr Alec, the only son of the lately deceased gentleman. "Cannot I answer your purpose? What is the business you wish to see her about?" "It isn't business--it is--I can hardly say what!" "Pleasure?" "Oh no. Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem---" Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in her errand was now so strong that, notwithstanding her awe of him, and her general discomfort at being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile, much to the attraction of the swarthy Alexander. "It is so very foolish," she stammered; "I fear can't tell you!" "Never mind; I like foolish things. Try again, my dear," said he kindly. "Mother asked me to come," Tess continued; "and, indeed, I was in the mind to do so myself likewise. But I did not think it would be like this. I came, sir, to tell you that we are of the same family as you." "Ho! Poor relations?" "Yes." "Stokes?" "No; d'Urbervilles." "Ay, ay; I mean d'Urbervilles." "Our names are worn away to Durbeyfield; but we have several proofs that we are d'Urbervilles. Antiquarians hold we are,--and--and we have an old seal, marked with a ramping lion on a shield, and a castle over him. And we have a very old silver spoon, round in the bowl like a little ladle, and marked with the same castle. But it is so worn that mother uses it to stir the pea-soup." "A castle argent is certainly my crest," said he blandly. "And my arms a lion rampant." "And so mother said we ought to make ourselves beknown to you--as we've lost our horse by a bad accident, and are the oldest branch o' the family." "Very kind of your mother, I'm sure. And I, for one, don't regret her step." Alec looked at Tess as he spoke, in a way that made her blush a little. "And so, my pretty girl, you've come on a friendly visit to us, as relations?" "I suppose I have," faltered Tess, looking uncomfortable again. "Well--there's no harm in it. Where do you live? What are you?" She gave him brief particulars; and responding to further inquiries told him that she was intending to go back by the same carrier who had brought her. "It is a long while before he returns past Trantridge Cross. Supposing we walk round the grounds to pass the time, my pretty Coz?" Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible; but the young man was pressing, and she consented to accompany him. He conducted her about the lawns, and flower-beds, and conservatories; and thence to the fruit-garden and greenhouses, where he asked her if she liked strawberries. "Yes," said Tess, "when they come." "They are


was doing a piece about Abel’s career it might fly, but I’m looking for this one movie and this one fucked-up German who wrote it and I’m not having any luck.” “Don’t panic yet. Urueta is going to give you the interview you need sooner or later.” “He doesn’t like us.” “He got a little tense, but Urueta loves talking. He wouldn’t shut up about Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and how he had cocktails with them several times when Burton was shooting The Night of the Iguana. He’s an old soldier sharing war stories. He wants to be heard.” “Not by me anymore. Not if Enigma is involved. This is bullshit.” Editing was changing. The Moviola and the Steenbeck machines were yielding space to video monitors, tapes, and computers. Beyond the Yellow Door was an item from another era; it enchanted her with its antiquated film stock and post-synchronized sound: it was like meeting a gentleman in a tweed suit and a monocle these days. She wanted the story about its troubled production. She wanted to discover its secrets, and there was nothing to be known. In her mind, the picture she had assembled of the film was vanishing, like decomposing celluloid. “What isn’t! Listen, hang in there. I’ll soften the old man. Be ready to come over on Saturday.” “Yeah, yeah,” she muttered without enthusiasm. Friday instead of going to the Cineteca she headed to the archives at Lecumberri. She found more of the same: stubs, film capsules, a few reviews. An old issue of Cinema Reporter dated 1960 provided her with the only significant piece of material she was able to dig up: a black-and-white photo showing Ewers. The picture in fact showed four people. Two of them she identified easily. Abel Urueta had his trademark scarf, and Alma Montero, although older, was recognizable from the publicity photos from her silent era years. A pretty, young woman in a strapless dress was new to Montserrat. She had the air and smile of a socialite if not an actress. The fourth person was a man in a dark suit. They sat with Alma at the forefront, the lens more interested in her, then Abel, the girl, and finally the man at the farthest end of the table almost an afterthought. The occasion must have been a birthday celebration or a big event, for there was confetti in Alma’s hair. The caption read: “Film star Alma Montero, director Abel Urueta and his fiancée Miss Clarimonde Bauer, and Mr. Wilhelm Ewers enjoy an evening at El Retiro.” The story that accompanied the picture was a stub and useless filler, like everything else she’d found, but at least the image made a ghost tangible. Because until that moment she had begun to believe there was no Ewers. He had evaded her, but at least she was able to contemplate the reality of the man. Yet stubbornly, as if he had known he was being sought, the man in the picture appeared almost out of frame, his head inclined, so that you couldn’t get


financial aid letters arrived on the same afternoon, and I opened the envelopes with shaking hands to learn that I’d been offered what amounted to a free freshman year at three schools. I had to count the zeros several times before I could believe it. “You did it,” my mother said. She tried to smile, but we both wound up crying instead. As we celebrated, I wasn’t thinking about how lonely I might feel, or how much I would miss my family. I couldn’t comprehend what it would mean to attain that first foothold in a world they would be unable to follow me into. I didn’t know that I would spend my early months on campus feeling as though I’d wandered into another country, surrounded by students who never had to worry about buying books or finding somewhere to go when the dorms closed for a holiday. When I was informed that the terms of my scholarship required me to send regular letters to rich donors, Daddy-Long-Legs-style, and attend luncheons where scholarship recipients would meet and express gratitude to our benefactors face-to-face, I didn’t blink. As an adoptee, I had long known what it was to be considered lucky, and to be expected to be thankful for it. Years later, when I described some of these rituals to a friend who also owed her education to need-based financial aid, she said dryly, “Tell me that you’re a poor first-generation college student without telling me that you’re a poor first-generation college student.” I laughed, but my instinct was to tell her that I hadn’t been poor—it wasn’t a term I associated with my family, nor one my parents had ever used. If we were poor, wouldn’t I have struggled more? If we were poor, wouldn’t I have known? Not long after, I found my first Free Application for Federal Student Aid, carefully filled out by my mother. At seventeen, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to our annual household income, or the fact that it amounted to considerably less than what my freshman year would cost. All I would have focused on was that our expected family contribution was zero. Although many people identify as middle-of-the-road, middle-class, average Americans, there are differences between a working-class and a middle-class existence, and these differences can be far from subtle. If you grow up as I did and happen to be very fortunate, as I was, your family might sacrifice much so that you can go to college. You’ll feel grateful for every subsequent opportunity you get, for the degrees and open doors and better-paying jobs (if you can find them), even as an unexpected, sometimes painful distance yawns between you and the place you came from—and many will expect you to express that gratitude, using your story or your accomplishments to attack those who weren’t so lucky. But in this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you’d hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those


culture. They wandered up to the castle, and sat on the terrace that overlooked the town. It nestled in the valley along the pleasant Neckar with a comfortable friendliness. The smoke from the chimneys hung over it, a pale blue haze; and the tall roofs, the spires of the churches, gave it a pleasantly medieval air. There was a homeliness in it which warmed the heart. Hayward talked of _Richard Feverel_ and _Madame Bovary_, of Verlaine, Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those days Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam was known only to the elect, and Hayward repeated it to Philip. He was very fond of reciting poetry, his own and that of others, which he did in a monotonous sing-song. By the time they reached home Philip's distrust of Hayward was changed to enthusiastic admiration. They made a practice of walking together every afternoon, and Philip learned presently something of Hayward's circumstances. He was the son of a country judge, on whose death some time before he had inherited three hundred a year. His record at Charterhouse was so brilliant that when he went to Cambridge the Master of Trinity Hall went out of his way to express his satisfaction that he was going to that college. He prepared himself for a distinguished career. He moved in the most intellectual circles: he read Browning with enthusiasm and turned up his well-shaped nose at Tennyson; he knew all the details of Shelley's treatment of Harriet; he dabbled in the history of art (on the walls of his rooms were reproductions of pictures by G. F. Watts, Burne-Jones, and Botticelli); and he wrote not without distinction verses of a pessimistic character. His friends told one another that he was a man of excellent gifts, and he listened to them willingly when they prophesied his future eminence. In course of time he became an authority on art and literature. He came under the influence of Newman's _Apologia_; the picturesqueness of the Roman Catholic faith appealed to his esthetic sensibility; and it was only the feat of his father's wrath (a plain, blunt man of narrow ideas, who read Macaulay) which prevented him from 'going over.' When he only got a pass degree his friends were astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and delicately insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He made one feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. He described one of the vivas with tolerant humour; some fellow in an outrageous collar was asking him questions in logic; it was infinitely tedious, and suddenly he noticed that he wore elastic-sided boots: it was grotesque and ridiculous; so he withdrew his mind and thought of the gothic beauty of the Chapel at King's. But he had spent some delightful days at Cambridge; he had given better dinners than anyone he knew; and the conversation in his rooms had been often memorable. He quoted to Philip the exquisite epigram: "_They told me, Herakleitus, they told me you were dead_." And now, when he related again the picturesque little anecdote


I was consumed with rage? Or maybe getting consumed with rage was part of getting over it … Fine then. No more moping, no more weeping, no more pining for the future I’d lost hold of. It was time to be okay. For real. The anger was very healing—burning through me with a purifying fire. Sue approved. When she returned from her kidnapping elopement a few days later, we gave the Joe debacle one last, long hearty evening of processing, decided it was a lucky near miss for me, made a list of guys Witt could set me up with, and spent the rest of the night brainstorming what the hell, now, I should do with my career. Sue voted for “textile designer” because she thought I had a way with color. But we also considered interior designer, knitting-store owner, and boutique hotelier in the Swiss Alps. The other big news was that Sue’s parents were throwing her an elopement party. “They’re not mad that you got married without them?” “Nope,” Sue said, like that question had been bananas. “They love him. My mom knitted him a sweater with a heart on it.” Apparently, Sue’s mom thought the kidnapping elopement was very romantic. And she thought Witt was a sweet boy and a good provider. And she was a huge fan of Canada. Turned out, Mrs. Kim and Sue had been planning a little welcome-home wedding celebration during Sue’s entire cross-Canada train ride—texting pictures of flower arrangements and table settings back and forth—and her mom already had everything worked out for the Friday night after the newlyweds returned. “Wow,” I said. “Between me and your mom, you barely had time to enjoy your kidnapping.” “I managed,” Sue said. “Witt’s just lucky to get any time with you at all,” I said. Sue agreed. “By the way,” she said. “My mom wants to know if we can borrow your rooftop.” “It’s not my rooftop,” I said. “It’s her rooftop.” “So it’s okay?” “Of course it’s okay.” “Good,” Sue said. “Because it’s all already arranged.” * * * ON THE FRIDAY of the Kims’ party, three astonishing things happened all at once. One: I got a letter from the North American Portrait Society letting me know that even though my portrait had not won the competition on the night of the show, it had drawn the highest bid of the night in the auction—raising over a thousand dollars for their scholarship program. The email listed the winning bidder as one Mr. Young Kim. Who just happened to be out on my rooftop as I was reading the email, helping his wife arrange banquet tables for the party. I walked out to confront him, Peanut trailing after me. “Mr. Kim,” I called out, my voice full of both scolding and affection. “What were you thinking, bidding on my portrait?” He and Mrs. Kim were unfolding a tablecloth together, and it fluttered in the breeze before they smoothed it down and turned to me. They made their faces very innocent. “We like it,” Mr. Kim said.


when my companion answered in a gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly fell from her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered something in her ear, and then, pushing her back into the room from whence she had come, he walked towards me again with the lamp in his hand. "'Perhaps you will have the kindness to wait in this room for a few minutes,' said he, throwing open another door. It was a quiet, little, plainly furnished room, with a round table in the centre, on which several German books were scattered. Colonel Stark laid down the lamp on the top of a harmonium beside the door. 'I shall not keep you waiting an instant,' said he, and vanished into the darkness. "I glanced at the books upon the table, and in spite of my ignorance of German I could see that two of them were treatises on science, the others being volumes of poetry. Then I walked across to the window, hoping that I might catch some glimpse of the country-side, but an oak shutter, heavily barred, was folded across it. It was a wonderfully silent house. There was an old clock ticking loudly somewhere in the passage, but otherwise everything was deadly still. A vague feeling of uneasiness began to steal over me. Who were these German people, and what were they doing living in this strange, out-of-the-way place? And where was the place? I was ten miles or so from Eyford, that was all I knew, but whether north, south, east, or west I had no idea. For that matter, Reading, and possibly other large towns, were within that radius, so the place might not be so secluded, after all. Yet it was quite certain, from the absolute stillness, that we were in the country. I paced up and down the room, humming a tune under my breath to keep up my spirits and feeling that I was thoroughly earning my fifty-guinea fee. "Suddenly, without any preliminary sound in the midst of the utter stillness, the door of my room swung slowly open. The woman was standing in the aperture, the darkness of the hall behind her, the yellow light from my lamp beating upon her eager and beautiful face. I could see at a glance that she was sick with fear, and the sight sent a chill to my own heart. She held up one shaking finger to warn me to be silent, and she shot a few whispered words of broken English at me, her eyes glancing back, like those of a frightened horse, into the gloom behind her. "'I would go,' said she, trying hard, as it seemed to me, to speak calmly; 'I would go. I should not stay here. There is no good for you to do.' "'But, madam,' said I, 'I have not yet done what I came for. I cannot possibly leave until I have seen the machine.' "'It is not worth your while to wait,' she went on. 'You can pass through the door;


of things. Van Helsing had been silent all dinner time, but when we had lit our cigars he said, "Lord. . ., but Arthur interrupted him. "No, no, not that, for God's sake! Not yet at any rate. Forgive me, sir. I did not mean to speak offensively. It is only because my loss is so recent." The Professor answered very sweetly, "I only used that name because I was in doubt. I must not call you `Mr.' and I have grown to love you, yes, my dear boy, to love you, as Arthur." Arthur held out his hand, and took the old man's warmly. "Call me what you will," he said. "I hope I may always have the title of a friend. And let me say that I am at a loss for words to thank you for your goodness to my poor dear." He paused a moment, and went on, "I know that she understood your goodness even better than I do. And if I was rude or in any way wanting at that time you acted so, you remember,"-- the Professor nodded--"You must forgive me." He answered with a grave kindness, "I know it was hard for you to quite trust me then, for to trust such violence needs to understand, and I take it that you do not, that you cannot, trust me now, for you do not yet understand. And there may be more times when I shall want you to trust when you cannot, and may not, and must not yet understand. But the time will come when your trust shall be whole and complete in me, and when you shall understand as though the sunlight himself shone through. Then you shall bless me from first to last for your own sake, and for the sake of others, and for her dear sake to whom I swore to protect." "And indeed, indeed, sir," said Arthur warmly. "I shall in all ways trust you. I know and believe you have a very noble heart, and you are Jack's friend, and you were hers. You shall do what you like." The Professor cleared his throat a couple of times, as though about to speak, and finally said, "May I ask you something now?" "Certainly." "You know that Mrs. Westenra left you all her property?" "No, poor dear. I never thought of it." "And as it is all yours, you have a right to deal with it as you will. I want you to give me permission to read all Miss Lucy's papers and letters. Believe me, it is no idle curiosity. I have a motive of which, be sure, she would have approved. I have them all here. I took them before we knew that all was yours, so that no strange hand might touch them, no strange eye look through words into her soul. I shall keep them, if I may. Even you may not see them yet, but I shall keep them safe. No word shall be lost, and in the good time I shall give


twisted, his daggers abandoned in the dust. He retrieves his sword carefully, cleaning it on his tunic. She wonders if it was his father’s but doesn’t ask. Instead, she picks up her own knife and says, “You look different when you fight.” “So do you.” His head is bent, and his profile is handsome in the golden light of the torch. How do I look different? she wants to ask, but he is quicker. “Who gave you that knife?” “My mother,” she says. “It is the sharpest blade I’ve ever touched.” She holds it out for him to see. As he caresses the blade with his finger, she adds, “But you are not afraid of a little sharpness, are you?” He looks up at her, and she holds his gaze. Leon was right. He is like a wounded animal, ready to bite at the first provocation. But he is no rabid dog—rabid dogs are weak because they are mad. Aegisthus isn’t mad. He is strong and manipulative, his rage boiling inside him but always kept at bay. He is more like a wolf, showing his teeth to those who come too close. He smiles. “Sometimes it is better to bleed than to feel nothing at all.” * * * She avoids dinner and goes to the bathhouse to clean herself. Her tunic is dusty, her hair messy and tangled. The lamps are already lit, streams of light in the quiet darkness. She takes off her chiton, brushing her fingers against her stomach, the fading cuts on her arms. There is an edge to her. The water of the bath is cold, and she shivers. “My queen.” A voice chirping in the darkness, like a bird at sunrise. Aileen. Her steps come closer, soft as raindrops. “Lord Aegisthus came to eat and you weren’t there,” she says, “so I thought I would find you here.” “Warm the water, Aileen,” Clytemnestra orders. Aileen hurries to light the fire, her shadow on the wall small and sharp. The water grows warmer, wrapping Clytemnestra like a sheepskin. Aileen starts scrubbing her with soap. Clytemnestra offers her hands and arms, and Aileen touches the soap to the soft inside of her elbow. “Chrysothemis couldn’t sleep last night,” she says. “She has been having bad dreams again.” Clytemnestra looks at her face in the shadows. Aileen never had children of her own, but maybe she should have. Once, Leon suggested she was pretty, his tone casual as if to test how Clytemnestra would feel about it. She discouraged it. Two loyal servants together can’t be easily controlled. It is much more useful to pair a loyal dog with a more difficult subject to keep him under control. “Perhaps she should sleep with you tonight,” Aileen continues. “She is fourteen years old. She is a woman now, not a child, and she needs to behave like one.” Aileen doesn’t speak, but her eyes are sad. Clytemnestra knows she disapproves. One night, a year or so after Iphigenia’s murder, she had the gall to tell her that she was too


couldn’t be real with her. It was only real with me. “Oh my god!” Jamie called me the next morning. “Thornton!” “Quieter,” I said, cotton mouthed. “Sorry, oh my god, sorry,” she laughed. “You must be so hungover.” “Yep, I really am. What’s up?” “Troy and I hooked up last night. It was fucking incredible.” I had to muster enthusiasm. That was key. “Oh my god, girl!” She laughed too loudly and for too long. “I think I am literally in heaven right now. How did you find this Adonis?” Fuck you, I thought. “I swear I just attract beautiful men,” I said. She laughed again. “You really do, honey! Like, wow!” Orson spent every night at Jamie’s and she paid for everything: new clothes, new shoes, dinners out. I missed him, but I liked seeing him in brand-name clothes when he got home every morning. And I knew he was mine during the day. I knew that Jamie would never know him like I did. How could she? To her, he was Troy, a fictional once-homeless busker who wanted to become a professional musician. Troy told Jamie that he would love to get just ten minutes in a recording studio. He could really show those producers who he was. Jamie listened to his album-in-progress, which just happened to be about a “wake-up-to-you girl” with “sun-shocked curls.” She cried a little as he played. Was it about her, she wanted to know? Yes, of course it was. He was in love with her. A few months in, he sheepishly admitted that he wanted to record in private before taking anything to a professional studio. But, unfortunately, that would require his own space and his own equipment, which he just didn’t have. Jamie flashed a bleached smile and wagged her sun-shocked curls and told him it was no problem, she actually knew a place in her same neighborhood that she was considering buying anyway. Her dad wanted her to invest because renting was just throwing money away. Would Troy like to live there? She would buy it and he could stay there. She just wanted him to be happy. Troy cried. This was the first time anyone had really seen him. This was the first time he’d really been taken care of. He promised to love Jamie for the rest of her life. She bought the condo, which was worth close to a million dollars, and filled it with recording equipment. He recorded a demo of his album, Love and Grace, and was all ready to show it to producers when he got cold feet. He began to have nightmares. He lost his interest in sex. He was depressed, and there was nothing Jamie could do to cheer him up. So she paid for therapy, and Troy was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, and he was placed on an SSRI that he cheeked and spit into the toilet. At therapy, Orson was a model patient in every way except when it came to telling the truth. He told the therapist Troy’s story and


Mr. Shepherd’s armchair, the under-footmen guarding the door, face flushed, eyes defiant. He looked puzzled, wrong-footed entirely. It’s beginning, Alice thought, skin tingling. The petticoats were stashed in her wardrobe, the labels ironed beautifully into the hems. Things in the household began to fall apart the moment Mrs. King left. The breakfast service ran late, the fresh flowers were abandoned in the front hall, one of the still-room shelves collapsed, the electrolier in the front hall started spitting and blinking, and someone saw a pair of rats entering the cellar. One of the house-parlormaids ran downstairs, out of breath, red in the face. “Didn’t you hear the bell? Madam’s asking for the sewing maid. At once.” Alice glanced up. “Me?” she said. * * * Alice took the electric lift. It was in an iron cage, and the other servants always struggled to close the gate, but she never did. Some people just couldn’t work their way around machines. Alice punched a glass button and the cage jerked violently. She felt its teeth clenching, locking, and then it rose slowly through the house. It hummed as it went, an uneasy sound. The hall expanded and then disappeared beneath her. The air changed, grew sweeter, and Alice glided upward to a different realm altogether, one blanketed in a cream-and-gold hush. The bedroom floor. Alice had never felt carpets like this before entering Park Lane. They were so rich, so new. They seemed to suck at her feet. The doors were mirrored and looked as if they’d been glazed with syrup. She adored the bedroom floor. It made her teeth tingle, as if her mouth were filled with sugar. It was heavenly, the home of angels. She waited at the end of the passage, smoothing her apron, listening to the clocks. Straightened her cap. The household machinery tensed, every clock hand poised, straining, ready. “Wait for Madam in the passage,” the house-parlormaid had warned her. “Don’t go and knock. She hates that.” Until now, Miss de Vries had been an entirely remote figure. Nearby, certainly: really only a few feet away if Madam was in the bedroom and Alice was in the dressing room. But she was attended by other servants. Alice observed her, studied her daily movements. She didn’t talk to her at all. The Bond Street seamstresses managed all the fittings for Madam’s ball dress. Alice despised it. It was black, per instruction, suitable for mourning. But the sleeves were fussy, heavy, and the lace looked almost antique in its design. The seamstresses worked section by section, sending parts up to Park Lane for Alice to finish. Hackwork, really, the kind of thing she could do with her eyes closed. Yet she found herself unpicking their stitches, remaking the lines, softening the gown’s edges. Trying to make it elegant. Sometimes, when she was hanging about for the latest delivery, Alice would make sketches of the gown that she’d design for Madam. Something with a little pep to it, something with a little go. Something to make people stare. Thunk. The clocks marked


man unbolted the door at top and bottom. Dick was glad that he had slipped along to bolt the door, for if he hadn't done that before the men had come they would have known that Julian and George had escaped, and would have been on their guard. The man opened the door and stepped inside. The second man followed him. Dick crept as close as he dared, waiting for the third man to go in too. Then he meant to slam the door and bolt it! The first man swung his torch round and gave a loud exclamation. "The children are gone! How strange! Where are they?" Two of the men were now in the cave- and the third stepped in at that moment. Dick darted forward and slammed the door. It made a crash that went echoing round and round the caves and passages. Dick fumbled with the bolts, his hand trembling. They were stiff and rusty. The boy found it hard to shoot them home in their sockets. And meanwhile the men were not idle! As soon as they heard the door slam they spun round. The third man put his shoulder to the door at once and heaved hard. Dick had just got one of the bolts almost into its socket. Then all three men forced their strength against the door, and the bolt gave way! Dick stared in horror. The door was opening! He turned and fled down the dark passage. The men flashed their torches on and saw him. They went after the boy at top speed. Dick fled to the well-shaft. Fortunately the opening was on the opposite side, and he could clamber into it without being seen in the light of the torches. The boy only just had time to squeeze through into the shaft before the three men came running by. Not one of them guessed that the runaway was squeezed into the well-shaft they passed! Indeed, the men did not even know that there was a well there. Trembling from head to foot, Dick began to climb the rope he had left dangling from the rungs of the iron ladder. He undid it when he reached the ladder itself, for he thought that perhaps the men might discover the old well and try to climb up later. They would not be able to do that if there was no rope dangling down. The boy climbed up the ladder quickly, and squeezed round the stone slab near the top. The other children were there, waiting for him. They knew at once by the look on Dick's face that he had failed in what he had tried to do. They pulled him out quickly. "It was no good," said Dick, panting with his climb. "I couldn't do it. They burst the door open just as I was bolting it, and chased me. I got into the shaft just in time." "They're trying to get out of the entrance now!" cried Anne, suddenly. "Quick! What shall we do? They'll catch us all!" "To the boat!"


Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. (HE SNEEZES) Amen! BLOOM: (ABSENTLY) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis. VIRAG: (HIS MOUTH PROJECTED IN HARD WRINKLES, EYES STONILY FORLORNLY CLOSED, PSALMS IN OUTLANDISH MONOTONE) That the cows with their those distended udders that they have been the the known ... BLOOM: I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (HE REPEATS) Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (PROFOUNDLY) Instinct rules the world. In life. In death. VIRAG: (HEAD ASKEW, ARCHES HIS BACK AND HUNCHED WINGSHOULDERS, PEERS AT THE MOTH OUT OF BLEAR BULGED EYES, POINTS A HORNING CLAW AND CRIES) Who's moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? (HE MEWS) Puss puss puss puss! (HE SIGHS, DRAWS BACK AND STARES SIDEWAYS DOWN WITH DROPPING UNDERJAW) Well, well. He doth rest anon. (he snaps his jaws suddenly on the air) THE MOTH: I'm a tiny tiny thing Ever flying in the spring Round and round a ringaring. Long ago I was a king Now I do this kind of thing On the wing, on the wing! Bing! (HE RUSHES AGAINST THE MAUVE SHADE, FLAPPING NOISILY) Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats. (FROM LEFT UPPER ENTRANCE WITH TWO GLIDING STEPS HENRY FLOWER COMES FORWARD TO LEFT FRONT CENTRE. HE WEARS A DARK MANTLE AND DROOPING PLUMED SOMBRERO. HE CARRIES A SILVERSTRINGED INLAID DULCIMER AND A LONGSTEMMED BAMBOO JACOB'S PIPE, ITS CLAY BOWL FASHIONED AS A FEMALE HEAD. HE WEARS DARK VELVET HOSE AND SILVERBUCKLED PUMPS. HE HAS THE ROMANTIC SAVIOUR'S FACE WITH FLOWING LOCKS, THIN BEARD AND MOUSTACHE. HIS SPINDLELEGS AND SPARROW FEET ARE THOSE OF THE TENOR MARIO, PRINCE OF CANDIA. HE SETTLES DOWN HIS GOFFERED RUFFS AND MOISTENS HIS LIPS WITH A PASSAGE OF HIS AMOROUS TONGUE.) HENRY: (IN A LOW DULCET VOICE, TOUCHING THE STRINGS OF HIS GUITAR) There is a flower that bloometh. (VIRAG TRUCULENT, HIS JOWL SET, STARES AT THE LAMP. GRAVE BLOOM REGARDS ZOE'S NECK. HENRY GALLANT TURNS WITH PENDANT DEWLAP TO THE PIANO.) STEPHEN: (TO HIMSELF) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (HE TOUCHES THE KEYS AGAIN) Minor chord comes now.


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

to fields. These were not the tidy hillsides I was used to, but riddled with lumps, volcanic rock in haphazard garments of moss. And if that wasn’t enough to disorient the eye, the sea kept sending waves of mist over the coastland. I reached the edge of the village and found the little footpath up to the cottage—the terrain was so steep that the path was a series of switchbacks. The cottage itself rested precariously upon a little alcove in the mountainside. It was only about ten minutes beyond the village, but that was ten minutes of sweaty inclines, and I was panting by the time I reached the door. It was not only unlocked, but contained no lock at all, and when I pushed it open, I found a sheep. It stared at me a moment, chewing at something, then sauntered off to rejoin its fellows as I politely held the door. Shadow gave a huff but was otherwise unmoved—he’s seen plenty of sheep in our rambles in the countryside around Cambridge, and looks upon them with the gentlemanly disinterest of an aging dog. Somehow the place felt even colder than the outdoors. It was as simple as I had imagined, with walls of hearteningly solid stone and the smell of something I guessed to be puffin dung, though it could also have been the sheep. A table and chairs, dusty, a little kitchen at the back with a number of pots dangling from the wall, very dusty. By the hearth with its woodstove was an ancient armchair that smelled of must. I was shivering, in spite of the uphill trunk-dragging, and I realized I had neither wood nor matches to warm that dingy place, and perhaps more alarmingly, that I might not know how to light a fire if I did—I had never done so before. Unfortunately, I happened to glance out the window at that moment and found that it had begun to snow. It was then, as I stared at the empty hearth, hungry and cold, that I began to wonder if I would die here. Lest you think me a newcomer to foreign fieldwork, let me assure you this is not the case. I spent a period of months in a part of Provence so rural that the villagers had never seen a camera, studying a river-dwelling species of Folk, les lutins des rivières. And before that there was a lengthy sojourn in the forests of the Apennines with some deer-faced fate and half a year in the Croatian wilderness as an assistant to a professor who spent his career analysing the music of mountain Folk. But in each case, I had known what I was getting into, and had a student or two to take care of logistics. And there had been no snow. Ljosland is the most isolated of the Scandinavian countries, an island situated in the wild seas off the Norwegian mainland, its northern coastline brushing the Arctic Circle. I had accounted for the awkwardness of reaching such a place—the long and uncomfortable voyage


life nor sign of life-- only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches. And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trails of men who had gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazed through the forest, an ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near. But the path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remained mystery, as the man who made it and the reason he made it remained mystery. Another time they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton found a long-barrelled flint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson Bay Company gun of the young days in the Northwest, when such a gun was worth its height in beaver skins packed flat, And that was all--no hint as to the man who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gun among the blankets. Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering they found, not the Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley where the gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing-pan. They sought no farther. Each day they worked earned them thousands of dollars in clean dust and nuggets, and they worked every day. The gold was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag, and piled like so much firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like giants they toiled, days flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they heaped the treasure up. There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat now and again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing by the fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more frequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often, blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world which he remembered. The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he watched the hairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and hands clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts and awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the darkness and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by the beach of a sea, where the hairy man gathered shell- fish and ate them as he gathered, it was with eyes that roved everywhere for hidden danger and with legs prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Through the forest they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and they were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving and nostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. The hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on the ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes a dozen feet apart, letting go and


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

match the glare he leveled at her. “Are you calling Mari a liar?” “I have no reason to believe she’s not,” Gabe said. The fight was gone from his voice now; it’d just been there to strike the flint. Now there was a blaze, and he kept himself expressionless, as if he was above it. “She’s a poison runner.” “So was I,” Lore snarled. Gabe cocked his head. “And see how loyal you’ve been to the crown that rescued you from your life of crime?” She slapped him. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, just as jarring. Gabe’s head wrenched to the side, the impression of her fingers blooming scarlet across his cheek, but he stayed silent, turning back to face her as soon as inertia allowed. Behind the couch, Bastian did nothing. His eyes stayed on Lore, narrowed and calculating. “It could be a trap.” Still in that low, expressionless voice, even as Gabe’s face burned a stinging red from the impact. “Your old friends could be trying to lure you into the catacombs.” “Why would they do that?” He didn’t know about what was down there. Who. If someone wanted her back in the catacombs, it wouldn’t be Val or Mari. “They have papers from August. They’re privateers now. Does that change your estimation? Make them seem more loyal?” “No,” Gabe said. “Just more easily bought.” “And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Duke Remaut?” His one eye blazed, as if some deep ember within him had finally sparked. Bastian spoke up, voice quiet but carrying. “I think this is about more than a desire to protect our latent necromancer, isn’t it, Gabriel?” Gabe glanced at him, and then away. It would’ve been dismissive if not for the fury clear on his face. “The Church forbids entering the catacombs without special dispensation,” Bastian continued. “Which I doubt we’re going to get. I understand, friend. You feel as though you have plenty of sins already, and don’t want to stack another on top of your hoard.” Something like contempt bled through his casual tone. “What would Anton say to that?” A muscle feathered in Gabe’s jaw. He said nothing. “Lore and I will go,” Bastian said, with the air of a conversation decidedly closed. “I know the way to the stone garden; we’re both smart enough to make it there without being caught. We’ll figure out what’s going on, and the tatters of your honor won’t be further shredded. I know how dearly you hold them.” Gabe was silent, still as the man Lore had turned to stone. He stared at the fire like it could tell him something as Bastian straightened and made to leave. “Tomorrow night,” Bastian called over his shoulder at Lore as he pulled the door open. “I’ll meet you here.” Then he was gone, slipping into the shadows of the hallway. The Bleeding God’s Heart sconce on the opposite wall had gone out completely, candle wax dripping over the golden arms like melting bone. When Bastian was gone, Gabe looked at her.


a dark red crest. Her heart started beating faster. Papa had always taught her the art of patience. Of suppressing one’s whims, curtailing one’s deepest desires. I would make a fine ascetic, she thought dryly. I would make a splendid nun. “William,” she said. “You must tell me. Was there something between you and Mrs. King?” The air tilted. His expression became guarded. People said that William was very beautiful. They praised her for it, as if she had something to do with it, as if she’d won him at an auction. Perhaps she had. But his eyes had no effect on her. “I only ask,” she said, “for the sake of the household. I am accountable for its reputation.” He stood there, trussed up in cream silk and his afternoon livery, groomed and manicured. He flushed. “Do you mind, Madam, if I keep my counsel on that matter?” “Yes,” she said lightly, “I do.” She stretched, reaching for the post tray. “You were spotted with Mrs. King in the garden the other day. Not a very sensible thing to do, given your recent indiscretions.” His voice was tight. “Spotted by whom, Madam?” She flipped the envelopes over, picked up the smallest one first, the most uninteresting. “That’s not a denial.” He said nothing. She glanced up. “By me, if you must know.” She took out the card: So pleased to accept, Yours &c, Captain and Mrs. C. Fox-Willoughby. “I’m forever looking out of the window and seeing things I oughtn’t.” His eyes became blank, indecipherable. Good, she thought. He’s rattled. “Will that be all, Madam?” “No, I don’t think so.” Next envelope. She smiled. “I have a proposition for you.” He said nothing. She approved of that, too. It was best to remain composed in the face of disagreeable things. “I may soon find myself,” she said, “in need of a new household. You take my meaning?” William’s eyes narrowed, just a fraction. “I did hear that Lord Ashley is coming tonight, Madam.” “Too clever of you. Yes, he is. And it has come to my attention that Lord Ashley does not keep a butler on Brook Street. Rather a deficiency, to my mind. One I’d take care to correct.” He didn’t say the obvious thing. He didn’t ask, What about Shepherd? He had clearly guessed the answer. Shepherd belonged to her father, and the world was ticking on. It needed new people. New energy. “I suppose I’d better think about it, Madam,” he said. She shook her head. “No, you’d better tell me this instant.” His face darkened. She saw it: his pride, wounded. It pleased her immensely. Men were like that: so easy to prick. “What’s the matter?” she said softly. “Have you made other plans?” Footsteps. The door opened. One of the under-footmen peered in. “Madam,” he said. “Lady Montagu has just arrived.” Miss de Vries felt a jolt. “So early?” “Yes’m.” “Very well.” She rose. “That’ll be all, William.” He gave her another long look, pressed his lips together, as if making up his mind about something.


would have won her. But, through all these causes combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of adoration for him before he left the house that night. He stayed there with me to dinner - if I were to say willingly, I should not half express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis's room like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even now, in the remembrance. We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs, unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth, hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case. 'Of course,' he said. 'You'll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall sleep at the hotel.' 'But to bring you so far,' I returned, 'and to separate, seems bad companionship, Steerforth.' 'Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?' he said. 'What is "seems", compared to that?' It was settled at once. He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started forth, at eight o'clock, for Mr. Peggotty's boat. Indeed, they were more and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception, and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If anyone had told me, then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was worthless to him, and next minute thrown away - I say, if anyone had told me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my indignation would have found a vent! Probably only in an increase, had that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands towards the old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully, than it had sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty's door. 'This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?' 'Dismal enough in the dark,' he said: 'and the sea roars as if it were hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?' 'That's the boat,' said I.


had been thought to be, was a Moral! - that was her word. She was evidently still afraid of Miss Betsey, for she sent her grateful duty to her but timidly; and she was evidently afraid of me, too, and entertained the probability of my running away again soon: if I might judge from the repeated hints she threw out, that the coach-fare to Yarmouth was always to be had of her for the asking. She gave me one piece of intelligence which affected me very much, namely, that there had been a sale of the furniture at our old home, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were gone away, and the house was shut up, to be let or sold. God knows I had no part in it while they remained there, but it pained me to think of the dear old place as altogether abandoned; of the weeds growing tall in the garden, and the fallen leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I imagined how the winds of winter would howl round it, how the cold rain would beat upon the window-glass, how the moon would make ghosts on the walls of the empty rooms, watching their solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave in the churchyard, underneath the tree: and it seemed as if the house were dead too, now, and all connected with my father and mother were faded away. There was no other news in Peggotty's letters. Mr. Barkis was an excellent husband, she said, though still a little near; but we all had our faults, and she had plenty (though I am sure I don't know what they were); and he sent his duty, and my little bedroom was always ready for me. Mr. Peggotty was well, and Ham was well, and Mrs.. Gummidge was but poorly, and little Em'ly wouldn't send her love, but said that Peggotty might send it, if she liked. All this intelligence I dutifully imparted to my aunt, only reserving to myself the mention of little Em'ly, to whom I instinctively felt that she would not very tenderly incline. While I was yet new at Doctor Strong's, she made several excursions over to Canterbury to see me, and always at unseasonable hours: with the view, I suppose, of taking me by surprise. But, finding me well employed, and bearing a good character, and hearing on all hands that I rose fast in the school, she soon discontinued these visits. I saw her on a Saturday, every third or fourth week, when I went over to Dover for a treat; and I saw Mr. Dick every alternate Wednesday, when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to stay until next morning. On these occasions Mr. Dick never travelled without a leathern writing-desk, containing a supply of stationery and the Memorial; in relation to which document he had a notion that time was beginning to press now, and that it really must be got out of hand. Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread. To render his visits the more


night, so we drew on our ulsters and wrapped cravats about our throats. Outside, the stars were shining coldly in a cloudless sky, and the breath of the passers-by blew out into smoke like so many pistol shots. Our footfalls rang out crisply and loudly as we swung through the doctors' quarter, Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and so through Wigmore Street into Oxford Street. In a quarter of an hour we were in Bloomsbury at the Alpha Inn, which is a small public-house at the corner of one of the streets which runs down into Holborn. Holmes pushed open the door of the private bar and ordered two glasses of beer from the ruddy-faced, white-aproned landlord. "Your beer should be excellent if it is as good as your geese," said he. "My geese!" The man seemed surprised. "Yes. I was speaking only half an hour ago to Mr. Henry Baker, who was a member of your goose club." "Ah! yes, I see. But you see, sir, them's not our geese." "Indeed! Whose, then?" "Well, I got the two dozen from a salesman in Covent Garden." "Indeed? I know some of them. Which was it?" "Breckinridge is his name." "Ah! I don't know him. Well, here's your good health landlord, and prosperity to your house. Good-night. "Now for Mr. Breckinridge," he continued, buttoning up his coat as we came out into the frosty air. "Remember, Watson that though we have so homely a thing as a goose at one end of this chain, we have at the other a man who will certainly get seven years' penal servitude unless we can establish his innocence. It is possible that our inquiry may but confirm his guilt but, in any case, we have a line of investigation which has been missed by the police, and which a singular chance has placed in our hands. Let us follow it out to the bitter end. Faces to the south, then, and quick march!" We passed across Holborn, down Endell Street, and so through a zigzag of slums to Covent Garden Market. One of the largest stalls bore the name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor a horsy-looking man, with a sharp face and trim side-whiskers was helping a boy to put up the shutters. "Good-evening. It's a cold night," said Holmes. The salesman nodded and shot a questioning glance at my companion. "Sold out of geese, I see," continued Holmes, pointing at the bare slabs of marble. "Let you have five hundred to-morrow morning." "That's no good." "Well, there are some on the stall with the gas-flare." "Ah, but I was recommended to you." "Who by?" "The landlord of the Alpha." "Oh, yes; I sent him a couple of dozen." "Fine birds they were, too. Now where did you get them from?" To my surprise the question provoked a burst of anger from the salesman. "Now, then, mister," said he, with his head cocked and his arms akimbo, "what are you driving at? Let's have it straight, now." "It is straight enough. I should like to


most of the courtly fae are given to on occasion. I once met a Manx man whose daughter had taken her own life after a year and a day spent in some horrific faerie kingdom so lovely that its beauty became as addictive as opiates. Others have endured torments and returned so changed their families barely recognize them. But in Auður’s manner and expression, its scrubbed-clean quality, I found something I’d never encountered before. And for all my expertise, it sent a shiver of foreboding through me, a sense that perhaps, for the first time in my career, I was out of my depth. “Does she live alone?” I enquired. “She lives with her parents, as she always has.” I nodded. “May I call upon her?” “You are a guest here, and are welcome anywhere,” her aunt said, lightly and automatically, but there was a brittleness in her smile that even I could recognize, and so I retreated to the fireside. Auður continued to eat and drink only when instructed to, and when the meal was complete, she sat with her head slumped and her hair in her face until her aunt took her home. “Is she always like that?” I said. Thora gave me a brief, sharp look, then nodded. “That child would carve out her own heart if someone ordered her to.” There was a cold sweat upon my brow. “What did they do to her?” “What did they do?” Thora repeated. “Did you not see? She’s hollow. There’s less substance there than the shadow of a ghost. But at least she returned.” The words had an emphasis that made me swallow. “And how many others did not?” Thora did not look at me. “Your dinner is growing cold,” she said, and there was something beneath the pleasantness in her voice that I did not dare challenge. When Shadow and I returned to the cottage, we found the embers still hot in the woodstove, a fact that filled me with an ill-fated pride. I decided I would read for a time at the fireside, if only to put Auður from my mind, for she had unsettled me more than I cared to admit. Reaching into the wood box brought me swiftly down to earth, though, for I found only two logs remaining. I chewed my lip, shivering lightly. I recalled Krystjan’s reference to the woodshed, and wished, abruptly, that I had taken Finn’s advice and “settled in” instead of spending the day charging hither and thither about the countryside. There are times when my scholarly enthusiasm gets the better of me, but I have never had cause to regret this so deeply before. Well, there was nothing for it. I lit the lantern and thrust myself back out into the snow. Fortunately, the woodshed was easily located, tucked beneath the eaves. My heart sank, however, when I looked within. The wood had not been cut into logs, but piled up in huge chunks that would never fit into my humble stove. I was shivering in earnest now. Shadow, perfectly comfortable


husband was a boy, his father kept thousands of concubines. His favorite was Consort Wan. The Chunghua emperor lost all interest in his wife, Empress Wu, who had already given him a son. Meanwhile, the consort struggled to get pregnant.” Empress Zhang’s voice lowers as she reveals what few outside the palace know. “Every time Consort Wan heard that another concubine was with child, she had that woman poisoned or secretly gave her herbs so she would miscarry. Empress Wu realized she and her son could be targets of the consort as well, and they went into hiding. Eunuchs and others protected them. When the emperor died, my husband ascended the throne. Consort Wan disappeared. No one has heard of her again.” While the story is from a previous generation, it’s a reminder that Empress Zhang is attuned to palace intrigue and won’t permit it. She looks around, taking in the women in her presence. “My husband is a follower of Confucius, Buddhism, and Taoism. He believes in rectitude and obedience. To honor his mother and all she did to protect him, he sets an example for the rest of the country—not just here in the palace. This is why today you find no concubines, consorts, or secondary wives in the Great Within.” Having the opportunity to oversee the empress’s birth is without doubt a great honor, even if it doesn’t come with the same rewards Meiling will receive. (This is as it should be. Meiling will be actively involved in the delivery, while I will attend only when the empress requests my presence or if a complication should arise.) I’ll admit I wish I liked Empress Zhang more than I do. Although she can recite history and her place in it, I find her shallow. She’s tantalized by a new purchase or gift, but her enchantment is short-lived. She immediately wants something else that’s exotic or priceless—another multilayered headdress bedecked with jewels, a figurine of the Goddess Guanyin carved in ivory, a pair of life-sized marble lions. She enjoys the foods that come to the palace as tribute, but then needs my help with her resulting indigestion and sleeplessness. And yet… She is still just a woman. She’s as nervous about giving birth to her first child—who we all hope will be a son and the future emperor—as Meiling, a midwife with much experience. I’m a doctor, but I find both women look to me more for my personal experience, having gone through labor and successfully brought into the world three babies, albeit girls, than for the herbs they should take. “Doctor Tan.” I shake myself out of my thoughts. “Yes, Compassionate One?” “What ingredients does your family use for making mother’s soup?” Empress Zhang asks. She’s questioned me about this many times these past weeks, hoping, I believe, that I’ll name something that will require her to dispatch men to find a rare ingredient. She is the embodiment of One eye on the dish in front of her and one eye on the saucepan. “Everyone makes mother’s soup a little


but he hesitated and then came back. "You've been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I can for you in return. I know something, Sir Henry, and perhaps I should have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I found it out. I've never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man. It's about poor Sir Charles's death." The baronet and I were both upon our feet. "Do you know how he died?" "No, sir, I don't know that." "What then?" "I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman." "To meet a woman! He?" "Yes, sir." "And the woman's name?" "I can't give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her initials were L. L." "How do you know this, Barrymore?" "Well, Sir Henry, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had usually a great many letters, for he was a public man and well known for his kind heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to turn to him. But that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one letter, so I took the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey, and it was addressed in a woman's hand." "Well?" "Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was cleaning out Sir Charles's study -- it had never been touched since his death -- and she found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a page, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end of the letter and it said: 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o clock. Beneath it were signed the initials L. L." "Have you got that slip?" "No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it." "Had Sir Charles received any other lettefs in the same writting?" "Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone." "And you have no idea who L. L. is?" "No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands upon that lady we should know more about Sir Charles's death." "I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this important information." "Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us. And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Charles, as we well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake this up couldn't help our poor master, and it's well to go