out of the book. Come, Almanack! To begin: there's Aries, or the Ram --lecherous dog, he begets us; then, Taurus, or the Bull --he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini, or the Twins -- that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo! comes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue, Leo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path --he gives a few fierce bites and surly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that's our first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes Libra, or the Scales --happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we are very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the Scorpion, stings us in rear; we are curing the wound, when whang come the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing himself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside; here's the battering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing, and headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours out his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the Fishes, we sleep. There's a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the sun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and hearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and so, alow here, does jolly Stubb. Oh, jolly's the word for aye! Adieu, Doubloon! But stop; here comes little King-Post; dodge round the try-works, now, and let's hear what he'll have to say. There; he's before it; he'll out with something presently. So, so; he's beginning. I see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises a certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what's all this staring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that's true; and at two cents the cigar, that's nine hundred and .. <p 431 > sixty cigars. I wont smoke dirty pipes like Stubb, but I like cigars, and here's nine hundred and sixty of them; so here goes Flask aloft to spy 'em out. Shall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a foolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of wiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman --the old hearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea. He luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the other side of the mast; why, there's a horse-shoe nailed on that side; and now he's back again; what does that mean? Hark! he's muttering --voice like an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen! If the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when the sun stands in some one of these signs. I've studied signs, and know their marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by the


the air -- the peril was desperate -- "My! Look behind you, aunt!" The old lady whirled round, and snatched her skirts out of danger. The lad fled on the instant, scrambled up the high board-fence, and disappeared over it. His aunt Polly stood surprised a moment, and then broke into a gentle laugh. "Hang the boy, can't I never learn anything? Ain't he played me tricks enough like that for me to be looking out for him by this time? But old fools ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------- -17- is the biggest fools there is. Can't learn an old dog new tricks, as the saying is. But my goodness, he never plays them alike, two days, and how is a body to know what's coming? He 'pears to know just how long he can torment me before I get my dander up, and he knows if he can make out to put me off for a minute or make me laugh, it's all down again and I can't hit him a lick. I ain't doing my duty by that boy, and that's the Lord's truth, goodness knows. Spare the rod and spile the child, as the Good Book says. I'm a laying up sin and suffering for us both, I know. He's full of the Old Scratch, but laws-a-me! he's my own dead sister's boy, poor thing, and I ain't got the heart to lash him, somehow. Every time I let him off, my conscience does hurt me so, and every time I hit him my old heart most breaks. Well-a-well, man that is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble, as the Scripture says, and I reckon it's so. He'll play hookey this evening, * and [* Southwestern for "afternoon"] I'll just be obleeged to make him work, to-morrow, to punish him. It's mighty hard to make him work Saturdays, when all the boys is having holiday, but he hates work more than he hates anything else, and I've got to do some of my duty by him, or I'll be the ruination of the child." Tom did play hookey, and he had a very good time. He got back home barely in season to help Jim, the small colored boy, saw next-day's wood --------------------------------------------------------- -18- and split the kindlings before supper -- at least he was there in time to tell his adventures to Jim while Jim did three-fourths of the work. Tom's younger brother (or rather half-brother) Sid was already through with his part of the work (picking up chips), for he was a quiet boy, and had no adventurous, troublesome ways. While Tom was eating his supper, and stealing sugar as opportunity offered, Aunt Polly asked him questions that were full of guile, and very deep -- for she wanted to trap him into damaging revealments. Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said she: "Tom,


sprint to the ocean and dive in, go under. It is all too much. Too sick. Too humiliating. “Keep going,” I say, my voice hoarse, barely audible. “It’s going to get worse,” Rachelle warns. But I nod my acquiescence. With my hand held in her tight grip, it continues. “I’m not killing a woman for nothing,” Carter Sumner says. “I’m not going to risk going back inside.” “Twenty-five grand now. Twenty-five when she’s dead.” Fifty thousand dollars. My husband is wealthy beyond belief, but that is all my life is worth to him. “Okay.” Carter is clearly pleased with the figure. “How do you want me to do it?” “It needs to look like an accident.” “That’s gonna take time,” my former lover advises. “I could shoot her tomorrow. A break-in gone wrong.” “Far too suspicious, I’m afraid.” Benjamin is cool, composed. There is nothing but a faint rustling for a moment, and then I hear a low whistle. “She’s hot,” Carter says, and I realize my husband has shown him my picture. “She’s a beautiful woman on the outside. But inside… she’s dead. Empty. Totally vacuous.” Carter smirks. “Dumb girls are not a problem for me.” Fuck you both. “Good.” There is a smile in my husband’s voice. “Because I want you to seduce her.” “For real?” “It’s the best way to get close to her. She’s lonely. Weak and needy,” my husband explains. “You’ll have her under your thumb in no time.” “So, what, do I just walk up to her and ask her out?” Carter queries. “I mean, where would I even meet a woman like Hazel?” “I’ll get you a job at her gym,” Benjamin offers. “I know the owner. And clearly you know a thing or two about working out.” “Thanks.” Carter takes it as a compliment. “Not much else to do inside.” “Hazel will fall for you,” my husband assures him. “You’re strong, good-looking, and you’ll pay attention to her. That’s all she wants. And if you’re dating her, it’ll be easier to get her out on the water.” “You want me to drown her?” Carter sounds oddly pleased with the suggestion. “I’ll provide a boat. And these…” I hear the crinkling of a plastic bag. “I took a couple of her prescription pills. You can crush them up in her drink.” “Two Xanax and two sleeping pills?” The sound of the plastic is louder in Carter’s hand. “Is that enough?” “I don’t want this to look like an intentional overdose. And this is more than enough to make her weak and groggy,” Benjamin assures him. “When she’s starting to nod off, toss her in. The water’s cold.” I hear the smile in his voice. “Hazel will never wake up.” I reach for the wastepaper basket and vomit into it. Lee saved my life that day. I thought she’d disrupted my plan, destroyed my future, but if I had gotten into that boat with Jesse, I’d be dead. I am only alive because of her. Rachelle Graham gets up, retrieves a tissue box from a credenza.


the kind. Such relief, however, as it was in her power to afford, by the practice of what might be called economy in her own private expences, she frequently sent them. It had always been evident to her that such an income as theirs, under the direction of two persons so extravagant in their wants, and heedless of the future, must be very insufficient to their support; and whenever they changed their quarters, either Jane or herself were sure of being applied to for some little assistance towards discharging their bills. Their manner of living, even when the restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in the extreme. They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap situation, and always spending more than they ought. His affection for her soon sunk into indifference; her's lasted a little longer; and in spite of her youth and her manners, she retained all the claims to reputation which her marriage had given her. Though Darcy could never receive _him_ at Pemberley, yet, for Elizabeth's sake, he assisted him farther in his profession. Lydia was occasionally a visitor there, when her husband was gone to enjoy himself in London or Bath; and with the Bingleys they both of them frequently staid so long, that even Bingley's good humour was overcome, and he proceeded so far as to _talk_ of giving them a hint to be gone. Miss Bingley was very deeply mortified by Darcy's marriage; but as she thought it advisable to retain the right of visiting at Pemberley, she dropt all her resentment; was fonder than ever of Georgiana, almost as attentive to Darcy as heretofore, and paid off every arrear of civility to Elizabeth. Pemberley was now Georgiana's home; and the attachment of the sisters was exactly what Darcy had hoped to see. They were able to love each other even as well as they intended. Georgiana had the highest opinion in the world of Elizabeth; though at first she often listened with an astonishment bordering on alarm at her lively, sportive, manner of talking to her brother. He, who had always inspired in herself a respect which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open pleasantry. Her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way. By Elizabeth's instructions, she began to comprehend that a woman may take liberties with her husband which a brother will not always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself. Lady Catherine was extremely indignant on the marriage of her nephew; and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her character in her reply to the letter which announced its arrangement, she sent him language so very abusive, especially of Elizabeth, that for some time all intercourse was at an end. But at length, by Elizabeth's persuasion, he was prevailed on to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation; and, after a little farther resistance on the part of his aunt, her resentment gave way, either to her affection


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

relief, though I heard Wendell’s voice in my head, mocking my philanthropy. And in my present situation, chilled to numbness and facing eternal imprisonment in Faerie, I found my supposed good deed hard to appreciate. The horses brought us through the tremendous white doors of the palace, into a courtyard lined with galleries of black stone. The palace was a deeply disquieting thing—I found I could see it only out of the corner of my eye; if I looked at it straight on, its lines dissolved into the mountainside’s jagged pattern of snow and rock. Fortunately, once we were inside, my vision settled somewhat. The palace itself was surprisingly simple in its architecture; I had anticipated a warren of grand staircases and corridors that I might locate once and then never again. But it was like a Ljosland winter, stark and minimally adorned, but painfully beautiful. The scale of it, though, was enormous. The courtyard, tiled in ice, could have fit all of Hrafnsvik, and the opposite gallery was so far away that its outline was softened by the ice crystals in the air. A few Folk were there to greet us, and they were like flowers floating upon a vast sea. It is at this point that my memory begins to warp. I recall the king introducing me, all smiles, while the Folk paid their respects, which they did with a brittle, obsequious politeness. But then, suddenly, I was in the rooms the king has given me, gazing out over the valley, with no memory of how I got there. The view is magnificent but terrifying, as my chamber is housed in the southern gallery, which faces the open expanse of sky and fog between the mountain and the valley floor far below. I can see the snowbound glitter of the forest, and somewhere beyond it, a grey smear that is like wet paint drawn over a canvas, which I guess to be the sea. The mountains stare back at me, grim and uncaring. 17th December (?) I am never without servants, I don’t think. It seems there is always something being pressed into my hands, be it food or drink or warming furs, though I stopped being cold the moment I stepped into the faerie palace, which is how I knew for certain that I was sealed up in the enchantments that bind their world. Naturally, I have made several attempts at escape. I try to be systematic about it, which is not easy when your mind is being constantly muddled by magic. But I cling to my coin at all times, which helps, as does writing in this journal. First I tried simply walking through the gates—not because I thought it would be so simple, but out of a desire for thoroughness, to exhaust all possibilities. As soon as I did so, I found myself in my chamber again, and not only that but seated in a hot spring bath that had not been there before, scooped out of the floor in a series of broad steps paved in


you were always enough, Martha. It’s just the people around you were too wrapped up in their own pain to see it.’ We hugged tightly, right by the bannister where Shane had fallen. I began to cry. I didn’t just cry, I sobbed in her arms. She held me and shushed away the bad memories, rocking me from side to side. The wooden staircase creaked like the bough of a tree beside us and I could hear a soft rustling. ‘It sounds like this old house is trying to tell us something,’ she said in a playful voice, as though she were telling a fairy tale to a child. ‘It does, doesn’t it?’ I smiled, wiping my eyes with my sleeves. ‘I think that too sometimes. Maybe next time you can stay for longer?’ ‘I’d like that,’ she said, then turned to step down on to the pavement. She turned and waved again and called up to me. ‘I’m looking forward to meeting Madame Bowden too!’ I waved and then registered the strangeness of what she had just said. She had already met Madame Bowden. Chapter Forty-Eight HENRY ‘Are you aware that you have a great big bloody tree root growing out of your ceiling?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And the branch sticking out of the gable?’ ‘That too.’ ‘Oh good. Not just me then.’ I’d decided to visit 12 Ha'penny Lane by my old entrance, the basement window, but found a very large branch growing out through one of the broken panes. We decided I should probably come through the front door instead. I held the folder with Opaline’s papers aloft, theatrically making it clear that I had a proper reason for visiting. ‘The lady of the residence is out having her hair set,’ Martha said and I was relieved to hear it. She could be a bit overpowering, even if she was technically rooting for me. ‘I think it’s trying to tell me something,’ she said, plucking one of the leaves from the branches that formed an arc over her bed. She seemed bizarrely unfazed by it. ‘Yes, I think it is trying to tell you something very important about the unsound foundations of the house. You really need to have this looked at.’ She batted my concerns aside and put on the kettle for tea. I moved in for a closer look at the tree. ‘Did you do this?’ ‘What?’ ‘What you seek is seeking you.’ It was carved on to the bark of the tree. She stepped behind me and leaned over my shoulder. ‘No?’ I turned around to see her face. She looked different, somehow. As though the shadows she carried inside of her had been replaced by an iridescent light. She looked happy. Despite the tree. Or perhaps because of it. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Nothing. You look well, that’s all.’ She smiled and tilted her head to the side. It felt like a moment where one of us should say something, but neither of us could even begin putting our feelings into words. ‘Tea?’ I nodded. She


the Rings), and throughout my father's long life he never abandoned it, nor ceased even in his last years to work on it. In all that time The Silmarillion, considered simply as a large narrative structure, underwent relatively little radical change; it became long ago a fixed tradition, and background to later writings. But it was far indeed from being a fixed text, and did not remain unchanged even in certain fundamental ideas concerning the nature of the world it portrays; while the same legends came to be retold in longer and shorter forms, and in different styles. As the years passed the changes and variants, both in detail and in larger perspectives, became so complex, so pervasive, and so many-layered that a final and definitive version seemed unattainable. Moreover the old legends ('old' now not only in their derivation from the remote First Age, but also in terms of my father's life) became the vehicle and depository of his profoundest reflections. In his later writing mythology and poetry sank down behind his theological and philosophical preoccupations: from which arose incompatibilities of tone. On my father's death it fell to me to try to bring the work into publishable form. It became clear to me that to attempt to present, within the covers of a single book the diversity of the materials - to show The Silmarillion as in truth a continuing and evolving creation extending over more than half a century - would in fact lead only to confusion and the submerging of what is essential I set myself therefore to work out a single text selecting and arranging in such a way as seemed to me to produce the most coherent and internally self-consistent narrative. In this work the concluding chapters (from the death of Trin Turambar) introduced peculiar difficulties, in that they had remained unchanged for many years, and were in some respects in serious disharmony with more developed conceptions in other parts of the book. A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father's) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all at heavy and needless cost. Moreover, my father came to conceive The Silmarillion as a compilation, a compendious narrative, made long afterwards from sources of great diversity (poems, and annals, and oral tales) that had survived in agelong tradition; and this conception has indeed its parallel in the actual history of the book, for a great deal of earlier prose and poetry does underlie it, and it is to some extent a compendium in fact and not only in theory. To this may be ascribed the varying speed of the narrative and fullness of detail in different parts, the contrast (for example) of the precise recollections of place and motive in the legend of Trin Turambar beside the high and remote account of the end of the First Age, when Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown; and also some differences of tone and portrayal, some obscurities, and,


with the highest rank in the kingdom -- provided that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time maintained. You must therefore allow me to follow the dictates of my conscience on this occasion, which leads me to perform what I look on as a point of duty. Pardon me for neglecting to profit by your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted by education and habitual study to decide on what is right than a young lady like yourself.'' And with a low bow he left her to attack Mr. Darcy, whose reception of his advances she eagerly watched, and whose astonishment at being so addressed was very evident. Her cousin prefaced his speech with a solemn bow, and though she could not hear a word of it, she felt as if hearing it all, and saw in the motion of his lips the words ``apology,'' ``Hunsford,'' and ``Lady Catherine de Bourgh.'' -- It vexed her to see him expose himself to such a man. Mr. Darcy was eyeing him with unrestrained wonder, and when at last Mr. Collins allowed him time to speak, replied with an air of distant civility. Mr. Collins, however, was not discouraged from speaking again, and Mr. Darcy's contempt seemed abundantly increasing with the length of his second speech, and at the end of it he only made him a slight bow, and moved another way. Mr. Collins then returned to Elizabeth. ``I have no reason, I assure you,'' said he, ``to be dissatisfied with my reception. Mr. Darcy seemed much pleased with the attention. He answered me with the utmost civility, and even paid me the compliment of saying that he was so well convinced of Lady Catherine's discernment as to be certain she could never bestow a favour unworthily. It was really a very handsome thought. Upon the whole, I am much pleased with him.'' As Elizabeth had no longer any interest of her own to pursue, she turned her attention almost entirely on her sister and Mr. Bingley, and the train of agreeable reflections which her observations gave birth to, made her perhaps almost as happy as Jane. She saw her, in idea, settled in that very house, in all the felicity which a marriage of true affection could bestow; and she felt capable, under such circumstances, of endeavouring even to like Bingley's two sisters. Her mother's thoughts she plainly saw were bent the same way, and she determined not to venture near her, lest she might hear too much. When they sat down to supper, therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness which placed them within one of each other; and deeply was she vexed to find that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady Lucas) freely, openly, and of nothing else but of her expectation that Jane would be soon married to Mr. Bingley. -- It was an animating subject, and Mrs. Bennet seemed incapable of fatigue while enumerating the advantages


narrative shape her and make her more ruthless and vengeful. To me, the most important thing when portraying her was writing a heroine who took part in the action, who dominated every exchange and dynamic. A woman who, despite doing plenty of right and wrong, readers can root for right until the very end. There are many hard topics in this novel, specifically violence against women and the need for revenge. How difficult was it to write about these themes? What about having to write characters that were morally corrupt? Clytemnestra’s tale is extremely brutal—a child sacrificed to the gods, a husband and baby murdered—so I needed to write scenes that reflected that brutality. I believe that if you include violent scenes in a book, it needs to be for a reason, and those scenes were purposeful for the narrative: the tragedies that happen to Clytemnestra make her the queen she eventually becomes. This is also a world that lauded violence: fights and wars are how heroes are made, so I couldn’t shy away from it. It was essential for me that these scenes were raw and brutal but also showed a perspective that we don’t see often: fights from a woman’s eyes. As for writing characters that are morally corrupt, I love novels that bring to the fore people who are capable of both generous, heroic acts but also horrible things. Every character has its wounds and secrets, its motivations for doing the things they do, and I love exploring that. That is the beauty of the myth too: it offers heroines who are morally ambiguous—see Phaedra or Medea, for example—but still unforgettable. You retell a famous Greek character through a feminist perspective. Why do you believe this new lens is important? Having a woman at the center of the narrative and at the center of the action—a woman who has been hated and vilified for centuries—is incredibly important because it proves that women’s stories can be as epic as the ones of the men. In the ancient texts, from epic poems like The Iliad and The Odyssey to plays like Agamemnon, there are incredibly intriguing heroines, but most of the time, they are not given the space and love they deserve. They are either relegated to the margins, see Circe in The Odyssey or Helen in The Iliad, or seen as misogynist archetypes: ruthless schemers, scandalous adulteresses, vengeful murderesses. Retelling their stories through this new lens allows us to go back to these myths with a fresh perspective and show that women can be as powerful, as complex, as layered as the men. Ancient myths are often resonant to every society throughout history. Did you find any connections between the Greek myths you were rewriting and our current world now? Absolutely. Clytemnestra to me has always been a very modern character, a woman who refuses to know her place and, because of that, is hated and vilified by the men around her. Clytemnestra, like Helen and other women from my novel, has always been the embodiment of men’s fears around


and starved at that, by the powers!” “Why, where might you suppose it was?” asked Silver de- “Well, it ain’t much use, after all,” said the young seaman. risively. “‘Tain’t much use for fools, you may lay to it—that, nor “At Bristol, in banks and places,” answered his compan- nothing,” cried Silver. “But now, you look here: you’re young, ion. you are, but you’re as smart as paint. I see that when I set my “It were,” said the cook; “it were when we weighed anchor. eyes on you, and I’ll talk to you like a man.” But my old missis has it all by now. And the Spy-glass is You may imagine how I felt when I heard this abominable sold, lease and goodwill and rigging; and the old girl’s off to Contents old rogue addressing another in the very same words of flat- meet me. I would tell you where, for I trust you, but it’d tery as he had used to myself. I think, if I had been able, that make jealousy among the mates.” Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 90 91 “And can you trust your missis?” asked the other. But on this point I was soon to be relieved, for Silver giving a “Gentlemen of fortune,” returned the cook, “usually trusts little whistle, a third man strolled up and sat down by the little among themselves, and right they are, you may lay to it. party. But I have a way with me, I have. When a mate brings a slip “Dick’s square,” said Silver. on his cable—one as knows me, I mean—it won’t be in the “Oh, I know’d Dick was square,” returned the voice of the same world with old John. There was some that was feared of coxswain, Israel Hands. “He’s no fool, is Dick.” And he turned Pew, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own self his quid and spat. “But look here,” he went on, “here’s what I was feared of me. Feared he was, and proud. They was the want to know, Barbecue: how long are we a-going to stand off roughest crew afloat, was Flint’s; the devil himself would have and on like a blessed bumboat? I’ve had a’most enough o’ been feared to go to sea with them. Well now, I tell you, I’m Cap’n Smollett; he’s hazed me long enough, by thunder! I not a boasting man, and you seen yourself how easy I keep want to go into that cabin, I do. I want their pickles and company, but when I was quartermaster, LAMBS wasn’t the wines, and that.” word for Flint’s old buccaneers. Ah, you may be sure of your- “Israel,” said Silver, “your head ain’t much account, nor self in old John’s ship.” ever was. But you’re able to hear, I reckon; leastways, your “Well, I tell you now,” replied the lad, “I didn’t half a ears is big enough. Now, here’s what I say: you’ll berth for- quarter like the job till I had this talk with you, John; but


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

fortune belonging to him, buried deep under London. Hagrid helped Harry pile some of it into a bag. "The gold ones are Galleons," he explained. "Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon and twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it's easy enough. Right, that should be enough fer a couple o' terms, we'll keep the rest safe for yeh." He turned to Griphook. "Vault seven hundred and thirteen now, please, and can we go more slowly?" "One speed only," said Griphook. They were going even deeper now and gathering speed. The air became colder and colder as they hurtled round tight corners. They went rattling over an underground ravine, and Harry leaned over the side to try to see what was down at the dark bottom, but Hagrid groaned and pulled him back by the scruff of his neck. Vault seven hundred and thirteen had no keyhole. "Stand back," said Griphook importantly. He stroked the door gently with one of his long fingers and it simply melted away. "If anyone but a Gringotts goblin tried that, they'd be sucked through the door and trapped in there," said Griphook. "How often do you check to see if anyone's inside?" Harry asked. "About once every ten years," said Griphook with a rather nasty grin. Something really extraordinary had to be inside this top security vault, Harry was sure, and he leaned forward eagerly, expecting to see fabulous jewels at the very least -- but at first he thought it was empty. Then he noticed a grubby little package wrapped up in brown paper lying on the floor. Hagrid picked it up and tucked it deep inside his coat. Harry longed to know what it was, but knew better than to ask. "Come on, back in this infernal cart, and don't talk to me on the way back, it's best if I keep me mouth shut," said Hagrid. *** One wild cart ride later they stood blinking in the sunlight outside Gringotts. Harry didn't know where to run first now that he had a bag full of money. He didn't have to know how many Galleons there were to a pound to know that he was holding more money than he'd had in his whole life -- more money than even Dudley had ever had. "Might as well get yer uniform," said Hagrid, nodding toward Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions. "Listen, Harry, would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts." He did still look a bit sick, so Harry entered Madam Malkin's shop alone, feeling nervous. Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling witch dressed all in mauve. "Hogwarts, clear?" she said, when Harry started to speak. "Got the lot here -- another young man being fitted up just now, in fact." In the back of the shop, a boy with a pale, pointed face was standing on a footstool while a second witch pinned up his long black robes. Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool next to him, slipped a long robe over his


yard, came up and told me there were two convicts going down with me. But I had a reason that was an old reason now, for constitutionally faltering whenever I heard the word convict. "You don't mind them, Handel?" said Herbert. "Oh no!" "I thought you seemed as if you didn't like them?" "I can't pretend that I do like them, and I suppose you don't particularly. But I don't mind them." "See! There they are," said Herbert, "coming out of the Tap. What a degraded and vile sight it is!" They had been treating their guard, I suppose, for they had a gaoler with them, and all three came out wiping their mouths on their hands. The two convicts were handcuffed together, and had irons on their legs - irons of a pattern that I knew well. They wore the dress that I likewise knew well. Their keeper had a brace of pistols, and carried a thick-knobbed bludgeon under his arm; but he was on terms of good understanding with them, and stood, with them beside him, looking on at the putting-to of the horses, rather with an air as if the convicts were an interesting Exhibition not formally open at the moment, and he the Curator. One was a taller and stouter man than the other, and appeared as a matter of course, according to the mysterious ways of the world both convict and free, to have had allotted to him the smaller suit of clothes. His arms and legs were like great pincushions of those shapes, and his attire disguised him absurdly; but I knew his half-closed eye at one glance. There stood the man whom I had seen on the settle at the Three Jolly Bargemen on a Saturday night, and who had brought me down with his invisible gun! It was easy to make sure that as yet he knew me no more than if he had never seen me in his life. He looked across at me, and his eye appraised my watch-chain, and then he incidentally spat and said something to the other convict, and they laughed and slued themselves round with a clink of their coupling manacle, and looked at something else. The great numbers on their backs, as if they were street doors; their coarse mangy ungainly outer surface, as if they were lower animals; their ironed legs, apologetically garlanded with pocket-handkerchiefs; and the way in which all present looked at them and kept from them; made them (as Herbert had said) a most disagreeable and degraded spectacle. But this was not the worst of it. It came out that the whole of the back of the coach had been taken by a family removing from London, and that there were no places for the two prisoners but on the seat in front, behind the coachman. Hereupon, a choleric gentleman, who had taken the fourth place on that seat, flew into a most violent passion, and said that it was a breach of contract to mix him up with such villainous company, and


with hundreds of upvotes, that he not only killed Thalia and threw her in the pool in the TEN MINUTES between the musical and the party, but he did it BEHIND HIS OWN BACK? Ginger Rogers has nothing on this guy. This was all based on the second party photo, a candid, poorly composed group shot. Most threads were obsessed with the timing and order of the pictures. The first photo from the mattresses, stamped 9:58 p.m., is of the ground, a blurred coat, some legs. After the mud splatter one, a 10:02 shot shows Robbie with his arms around Beth and Dorian, tongue out, a mad devil grin. In that one Robbie has his hat on, but in others you can see his hair shaved up the sides, long and floppy on top, parted in the middle. (“The penis cut,” Fran had called it. But in 1995 it was on trend.) The show had ended by 8:45 at the absolute earliest. Let’s say fifteen minutes for the Camelot kids to shed their costumes; for Mike, at least, to wash the makeup off. A few minutes to gather friends who hadn’t been in the audience, for Beth to stuff a backpack with bottles from under her bed, for others to grab flashlights, cigarettes, lighters. Everything procured from the girls’ dorms, because the boys’ dorms were down on Lower Campus. The boys stood outside waiting for the girls. They headed the 1.4 miles from the theater up the Nordic trail to the mattresses no faster than Mike could hobble—about a half-hour trek. Then the first photos around ten p.m., party already in full swing. That’s where the Reddit responder got his “ten minutes” thinking. Someone might have had a few minutes to run off and do something, but not enough time to critically injure someone, change her clothes, get her into the water. According to the state, within the time of the party Thalia had headed from the theater to the gym to meet Omar, to wait for him until he got off his office phone at 10:02 p.m. They believed she was dead before curfew. And I agreed: If she wasn’t back in the dorm by eleven, something had already happened. Thalia might have broken rules, but never something she’d automatically get caught for. She wouldn’t have missed check-in. Most of the rest of the photos (twenty-one of the thirty-six shots were taken in the woods) were spread out over the next forty minutes; the last of these, at 10:39, shows Fizz downing a can of Pabst. The kids who were there said in their statements that that’s when someone noticed the time. They scrambled back down the trail, Jimmy Scalzitti falling and twisting his ankle. The girls made it back to the dorms at five after, and the boys, who had to cross to Lower Campus still, and had an injured Jimmy and a still-fragile Mike with them, were twelve minutes late. They got heat from Mr. Dar, but they all checked in together. Another Reddit theory went that Robbie killed


out: “Fetch aft the rum, Darby!” have run away severally had they dared; but fear kept them The buccaneers remained rooted to the ground, their eyes together, and kept them close by John, as if his daring helped Contents starting from their heads. Long after the voice had died away them. He, on his part, had pretty well fought his weakness they still stared in silence, dreadfully, before them. down. Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 270 271 “Sperrit? Well, maybe,” he said. “But there’s one thing and set forth again, Merry walking first with Silver’s compass not clear to me. There was an echo. Now, no man ever seen a to keep them on the right line with Skeleton Island. He had sperrit with a shadow; well then, what’s he doing with an said the truth: dead or alive, nobody minded Ben Gunn. echo to him, I should like to know? That ain’t in natur’, Dick alone still held his Bible, and looked around him as surely?” he went, with fearful glances; but he found no sympathy, and This argument seemed weak enough to me. But you can Silver even joked him on his precautions. never tell what will affect the superstitious, and to my won- “I told you,” said he—”I told you you had sp’iled your der, George Merry was greatly relieved. Bible. If it ain’t no good to swear by, what do you suppose a “Well, that’s so,” he said. “You’ve a head upon your shoul- sperrit would give for it? Not that!” and he snapped his big ders, John, and no mistake. ‘Bout ship, mates! This here crew fingers, halting a moment on his crutch. is on a wrong tack, I do believe. And come to think on it, it But Dick was not to be comforted; indeed, it was soon was like Flint’s voice, I grant you, but not just so clear-away plain to me that the lad was falling sick; hastened by heat, like it, after all. It was liker somebody else’s voice now—it exhaustion, and the shock of his alarm, the fever, predicted by was liker—” Dr. Livesey, was evidently growing swiftly higher. “By the powers, Ben Gunn!” roared Silver. It was fine open walking here, upon the summit; our way “Aye, and so it were,” cried Morgan, springing on his knees. lay a little downhill, for, as I have said, the plateau tilted to- “Ben Gunn it were!” wards the west. The pines, great and small, grew wide apart; “It don’t make much odds, do it, now?” asked Dick. “Ben and even between the clumps of nutmeg and azalea, wide Gunn’s not here in the body any more’n Flint.” open spaces baked in the hot sunshine. Striking, as we did, But the older hands greeted this remark with scorn. pretty near north-west across the island, we drew, on the one “Why, nobody minds Ben Gunn,” cried Merry; “dead or hand, ever nearer under the shoulders of the Spy-glass, and alive, nobody minds him.” on the other, looked ever wider over that western bay where I


of settling down, and after enough time passed people would forget that Tom Robinson's existence was ever brought to their attention. Perhaps Atticus was right, but the events of the summer hung over us like smoke in a closed room. The adults in Maycomb never discussed the case with Jem and me; it seemed that they discussed it with their children, and their attitude must have been that neither of us could help having Atticus for a parent, so their children must be nice to us in spite of him. The children would never have thought that up for themselves: had our classmates been left to their own devices, Jem and I would have had several swift, satisfying fist-fights apiece and ended the matter for good. As it was, we were compelled to hold our heads high and be, respectively, a gentleman and a lady. In a way, it was like the era of Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, without all her yelling. There was one odd thing, though, that I never understood: in spite of Atticus's shortcomings as a parent, people were content to re-elect him to the state legislature that year, as usual, without opposition. I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, I withdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forced to. I was forced to one day in school. Once a week, we had a Current Events period. Each child was supposed to clip an item from a newspaper, absorb its contents, and reveal them to the class. This practice allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing in front of his fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; delivering a short talk made him word-conscious; learning his current event strengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than ever anxious to return to the Group. The idea was profound, but as usual, in Maycomb it didn't work very well. In the first place, few rural children had access to newspapers, so the burden of Current Events was borne by the town children, convincing the bus children more deeply that the town children got all the attention anyway. The rural children who could, usually brought clippings from what they called The Grit Paper, a publication spurious in the eyes of Miss Gates, our teacher. Why she frowned when a child recited from The Grit Paper I never knew, but in some way it was associated with liking fiddling, eating syrupy biscuits for lunch, being a holy-roller, singing Sweetly Sings the Donkey and pronouncing it dunkey, all of which the state paid teachers to discourage. Even so, not many of the children knew what a Current Event was. Little Chuck Little, a hundred years old in his knowledge of cows and their habits, was halfway through an Uncle Natchell story when Miss Gates stopped him: "Charles, that is not a current event. That is an advertisement." Cecil Jacobs knew what one was, though. When his turn came, he went to the front of the room and began, "Old Hitler-" "Adolf Hitler, Cecil,"


The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Yes.” She mouths the word. This is not news to me. When she lifts her brown eyes to mine, they are wide with conflicting emotions, and the overriding one seems to be apprehension . . . of my reaction, perhaps? But my overwhelming response to this poor young woman is compassion. Mentally I run through all the classical literature I can think of that deals with unrequited love. Swallowing hard, I clutch the moral high ground. “I know. He’s very easy to love,” I whisper. 325/551 Her wide eyes widen further in surprise, and she smiles. “Yes. He is—was.” She corrects herself quickly and blushes. Then she giggles so sweetly that I can’t help myself. I giggle, too. Yes, Christian Grey makes us giggly. My subconscious rolls her eyes at me in despair and goes back to reading her dog-eared copy of Jane Eyre. I glance at my watch. Deep down I know Christian will be here soon. “You’ll get your chance to see Christian.” “I thought I would. I know how protective he can be.” She smiles. So this is her scheme. She’s very shrewd. Or manipulative, whispers my sub- conscious. “This is why you’re here to see me?” “Yes.” “I see.” And Christian is playing right into her hands. Reluctantly, I have to acknowledge that she knows him well. “He seemed very happy. With you,” she says. What? “How would you know?” “From when I was in the apartment.” She adds cautiously. Oh hell . . . how could I forget that? “Were you there often?” “No. But he was very different with you.” Do I want to hear this? A shudder runs through me. My scalp prickles as I re- call my fear when she was the unseen shadow in our apartment. “You know it’s against the law. Trespassing.” She nods, gazing down at the table. She runs a fingernail along the edge. “It was only a few times, and I was lucky not to get caught. Again, I need to thank Mr. Grey for that. He could have had me thrown in jail.” “I don’t think he’d do that,” I murmur. Suddenly there is a flurry of activity outside the meeting room, and instinct- ively I know that Christian is in the building. A moment later he bursts through the door, and before he closes it, I catch Taylor’s eye as he stands patiently out- side. Taylor’s mouth is set in a grim line, and he doesn’t return my tight smile. Oh hell, even he’s mad at me. Christian’s burning gray gaze pins first me then Leila to our chairs. His de- meanor is quietly determined, but I know better, and I suspect Leila does, too. The menacing cool glint in his eyes reveals the truth—he’s emanating rage, though he hides it well. In his gray suit, with his dark tie loosened and the top button of his white shirt undone, he looks at once businesslike and casual . . . and hot. His hair 326/551


food well done.’ Neil hugged her. ‘I’ll just go grab a jacket and I’ll be off, love.’ He wandered inside, and Lin turned to Josie. ‘He deserves a pint with the boys.’ ‘Of course. The boys from primary school are still thick as thieves.’ Josie inhaled the spring air. ‘It’s lovely out here.’ Her phone pinged and she tugged it from her pocket. ‘Oh, it’s Minnie – she’s confirming lunch next Saturday at Odile’s.’ ‘I must have left my phone inside…’ Lin checked her pockets. ‘It’ll be good to see her. I expect she’ll pop in and see Tina first. Maybe she’ll bring her along.’ ‘Tina’s always busy with her allotment. I don’t know how she manages that big piece of land by herself,’ Josie observed, then she paused as music wafted from the upstairs bedroom in the house next door. It was an acoustic guitar, then a plaintive male voice began to sing. ‘Jack’s awake then…’ Lin grinned. ‘What’s he got for us today?’ She listened hard. ‘It’s a Leonard Cohen song. He must be feeling a bit moody…’ ‘He’s very talented,’ Josie observed. ‘Lovely voice.’ ‘Oh, I hope Jack’s not disturbing you.’ A head popped over the fence, a dark-haired woman with coral lipstick. ‘Hello, Josie. How are you?’ That question again. Josie smiled. ‘Fine thanks, Janice. How are you and Geoff?’ ‘All fine, touch wood,’ Janice Lovejoy said, patting the top of her head. ‘I brought you some fresh eggs, Lin.’ She handed a box across the fence. ‘Susan is laying like there’s no tomorrow. Jane is still chucking them out despite her age and Mrs B’Gurk, our newest addition, is a regular little egg factory, so there will be plenty more where they came from.’ Lin accepted the box gratefully. ‘That’s so kind.’ ‘Would you like a few eggs, Josie?’ Janice offered. Josie heard the pity in her tone. ‘Only if you have some to spare…’ ‘I’ll go and get some directly. Oh, I could make meringues every night for Geoff and still have lots of eggs left over.’ Janice waved an arm to show how many eggs she had. ‘Do you make meringues for your Neil?’ she asked Lin. ‘All the time,’ Lin lied, with a wink to Josie. Jack’s voice drifted from his room again. This time he was singing ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’. ‘He’s cheered up a bit,’ Lin noted. ‘He still hasn’t found any proper work.’ Janice pushed her hands deep into her jacket pockets. ‘He thinks he can make it as a musician. He goes busking in Tadderly or Charlbury most days in that old banger of his. Geoff keeps nagging him to get a nine-to-five job but he’s only twenty-two. I think he should follow his dreams for a while. It’s not as if he has any responsibilities.’ ‘Absolutely,’ Josie agreed. ‘He’s still young.’ ‘That’s what I keep telling Geoff.’ Janice was about to go, then she remembered something. ‘Oh, Lin – have you met Nadine yet?’ ‘Nadine?’ Lin was puzzled, racking her brain. ‘I don’t think so…’ ‘George Ledbury has


is out, before early versions of it are off to reviewers and book bloggers. I’ve never made a secret of my relationship to Athena, and I’m even less subtle about it now. I am, after all, currently best known as the person who was at her side when she died. So I play up our connection. I mention her name in every interview. My grief over her death becomes a cornerstone of my origin story. All right, maybe I exaggerate the details a bit. Quarterly drinks become monthly, sometimes weekly drinks. I only have two selfies of us saved on my phone, which I never meant to share because I hate how frumpy I look beside her, but I upload them on my Instagram under a black-and-white filter and pen a touching tribute poem to accompany it. I’ve read all her work, and she mine. Often we traded ideas. I saw her as my greatest inspiration, and her feedback on my drafts was foundational to my growth as a writer. This is what I tell the public. See, the closer we seem, the less mysterious that resemblances to her work will appear. Athena’s fingerprints are all over this project. I don’t wipe them off. I just provide an alternative explanation for why they’re there. “I was in a really difficult place with my writing after my debut flopped,” I tell Book Riot. “I didn’t know if I even wanted to keep going. Athena’s the one who convinced me to give the manuscript another try. And she helped me with all my research—she navigated the Chinese primary sources, and she helped me hunt down texts at the Library of Congress.” It’s not lying. I swear, it was never as psychopathic as it sounds. It’s all just stretching reality a bit, putting the right spin on the picture so that the lurking social media outrage mob doesn’t get the wrong idea. Besides, the train has left the station—coming clean at this point would tank the book, and I couldn’t do that to Athena’s legacy. No one is suspicious. Athena’s aloofness helps me out here. She did have other friends, according to all the Twitter eulogies I read after her funeral, but they’re all spread out across different states and continents. There’s no one else she was regularly hanging out with in DC. There’s no one who can contradict my account of our relationship. The whole world seems ready to believe that I was Athena Liu’s closest friend. And who knows? Maybe I was. And yes—this is incredibly cynical, but the fact of our friendship casts an awful light on any future detractors. If anyone criticizes me for imitating her work, they’re coming after a friend who’s still in mourning, which makes them a monster. Athena, the dead muse. And I, the grieving friend, haunted by her spirit, unable to write without invoking her voice. See, who ever said I wasn’t a good storyteller? I set up a scholarship in Athena’s name at the Asian American Writers’ Collective’s annual workshop, where Athena had spent one


lot at school. I didn’t take it further because Mum said a creative writing degree wouldn’t give me as many options as an English literature one (and was I sure I didn’t want to be sensible and study law instead?), so I left it alone. Now I have free time to fill. Besides, signing up to all the publishing newsletters for job opportunities means I also hear of any writing events they’re doing. Carrow Books is offering a fiction development program for underrepresented writers with a deadline weeks away. Samples will be read by associated literary agents and five selected writers will be offered the opportunity to develop their manuscript through assignments and workshops led by industry professionals. Each writer will also be offered one-on-one mentorship with a literary agent for up to six months. All I need is a one-thousand word sample of a work in progress. A thousand words is doable and it’s not like I haven’t got any book ideas. The life and lies of Sherlock Holmes’s wife An adult romance—England’s first Black queen University murder mystery 1960s female gang taking over London See? I just haven’t written anything substantial yet. I’ve got bullet points and notes and even a spider diagram for the murder mystery, but that’s about it. It’s like I get two hundred words in and don’t know where to go from there. What’s an easy thing to write about? I open a blank document and write about leaving Dad. How I feel guilty and sad but excited to start living my own life, to find out who I am and maybe even someone to be with. I write about my life finally starting at age twenty-five, when my peers already have partners they want to marry and stable jobs with a clear trajectory. It reads like a diary entry and I hit a block after nine hundred and seventy-one words. I won’t send this one in; it’s too stream-of-consciousness-heavy and probably doesn’t make sense to anyone but me. I’m saving it on my laptop with my other incomplete works when an email pops up in the corner of my screen. From: Maisie.Foster@orangetreepublishing.com To: Mad.Wright@gmail.com Subject: PA & Editorial Assistant Nonfiction Books Dear Maddie, Thank you for your application for the role of PA to the Publishing Director and Editorial Assistant, Nonfiction Books. We were delighted to receive it and would like to invite you for an interview. Yes! Finally. An interview, and for a job where I’ll get to read all day! But Orange Tree Publishing? I’ve not heard of them; my desperation led me to apply for any and all publishing jobs available. A quick Google search tells me they’re a small press that doesn’t print as many books a year as their giant brothers and sisters. They’ve lost out on a lot of bidding wars, unable to compete with bigger purses, and a year ago an article was published stating OTP were likely to be bought by Carrow Books just to keep themselves in print. Yikes. They’re hiring though, so things must be


his other hand, explaining that Mr. Heathcliff was going to bed, and he wanted nothing to eat till morning. We heard him mount the stairs directly. He did not pro- ceed to his ordinary chamber, but turned into that with the panelled bed. Its window, as I mentioned before, is wide enough for anybody to get through; and it struck me that he plotted another midnight excursion, of which he had rather we had no suspicion. "Is he a ghoul or a vampire?" I mused. I had read of such hideous incarnate demons. And then I set my- self to reflect how I had tended him in infancy, and watched him grow to youth, and followed him almost through his whole course, and what absurd nonsense it was to yield to that sense of horror. "But where did he come from, the little dark thing, harboured by a good man to his bane?" muttered Superstition, as I dozed into unconsciousness. And I began, half dreaming, to weary myself with imagining some fit parentage for him; and repeating my waking meditations, I tracked his existence over again, with grim variations, at last picturing his death and funeral, of which all I can re- member is being exceedingly vexed at having the task of dictating an inscription for his monument, and con- sulting the sexton about it; and as he had no surname, and we could not tell his age, we were obliged to con- tent ourselves with the single word, "Heathcliff." That came true; we were. If you enter the kirkyard you'll read on his headstone only that, and the date of his death. Dawn restored me to common-sense. I rose and went into the garden as soon as I could see, to ascertain if there were any footmarks under his window. There were none. "He has stayed at home," I thought, "and he'll be all right to-day." I prepared breakfast for the household, as was my usual custom, but told Hareton and Catherine to get theirs ere the master came down, for he lay late. They preferred taking it out of doors, under the trees, and I set a little table to accommodate them. On my re-entrance I found Mr. Heathcliff below. He and Joseph were conversing about some farming busi- ness. He gave clear, minute directions concerning the matter discussed, but he spoke rapidly, and turned his head continually aside, and had the same excited ex- pression, even more exaggerated. When Joseph quitted the room he took his seat in the place he generally chose, and I put a basin of coffee before him. He drew it nearer, and then rested his arms on the table and looked at the opposite wall, as I supposed, surveying one particular portion, up and down, with glittering, restless eyes, and with such eager interest that he stopped breathing during half a minute together. "Come now," I exclaimed, pushing some bread against his hand, "eat and drink that while it is hot; it has been waiting near an hour." He didn't notice me, and yet


wallah is a reflexive terminal exclamation. In this traditional opening for a Fremen curse against an enemy, Wallah turns the emphasis back upon the words Mu zein, producing the meaning: "Nothing good, never good, good for nothing." Na-: a prefix meaning "nominated" or "next in line." Thus: na-Baron means heir apparent to a barony. NAIB: one who has sworn never to be taken alive by the enemy; traditional oath of a Fremen leader. NEZHONI SCARF: the scarf-pad worn at the forehead beneath the stillsuit hood by married or "associated" Fremen women after birth of a son. NOUKKERS: officers of the Imperial bodyguard who are related to the Emperor by blood. Traditional rank for sons of royal concubines. OIL LENS: hufuf oil held in static tension by an enclosing force field within a viewing tube as part of a magnifying or other light-manipulation system. Because each lens element can be adjusted individually one micron at a time, the oil lens is considered the ultimate in accuracy for manipulating visible light. OPAFIRE: one of the rare opaline jewels of Hagal. ORANGE CATHOLIC BIBLE: the "Accumulated Book," the religious text produced by the Commission of Ecumenical Translators. It contains elements of most ancient religions, including the Maometh Saari, Mahayana Christianity, Zensunni Catholicism and Buddislamic traditions. Its supreme commandment is considered to be: "Thou shall not disfigure the soul." ORNITHOPTER (commonly: 'thopter): any aircraft capable of sustained wing-beat flight in the manner of birds. OUT-FREYN: Galach for "immediately foreign," that is: not of your immediate community, not of the select. PALM LOCK: any lock or seal which may be opened on contact with the palm of the human hand to which it has been keyed. PAN: on Arrakis, any low-lying region or depression created by the subsiding of the underlying basement complex. (On planets with sufficient water, a pan indicates a region once covered by open water. Arrakis is believed to have at least one such area, although this remains open to argument.) PANOPLIA PROPHETICUS: term covering the infectious superstitions used by the Bene Gesserit to exploit primitive regions. (See Missionaria Protectiva.) PARACOMPASS: any compass that determines direction by local magnetic anomaly; used where relevant charts are available and where a planet's total magnetic field is unstable or subject to masking by severe magnetic storms. PENTASHIELD: a five-layer shield-generator field suitable for small areas such as doorways or passages (large reinforcing shields become increasingly unstable with each successive layer) and virtually impassable to anyone not wearing a dissembler tuned to the shield codes. (See Prudence Door.) PLASTEEL: steel which has been stabilized with stravidium fibers grown into its crystal structure. PLENISCENTA: an exotic green bloom of Ecaz noted for its sweet aroma. POLING THE SAND: the art of placing plastic and fiber poles in the open desert wastes of Arrakis and reading the patterns etched on the poles by sandstorms as a clue to weather prediction. PORITRIN: third planet of Epsilon Alangue, considered by many Zensunni Wanderers as their planet of origin, although clues in their language and mythology show far more ancient planetary roots. PORTYGULS:


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make sure I had the right stuff. For several weeks they poked my body,

probed my mind.

Drug-free, they concluded. They seemed surprised.

Also, videos to the contrary notwithstanding, not a total thicko.

So...proceed.

My first aircraft would be a Firefly, they said. Bright yellow, fixed wing,

single prop.

Simple machine, according to my first flight instructor, Sergeant Major

Booley.

I got in and thought: Really? Didn’t look simple to me.

I turned to Booley, studied him. He wasn’t simple either. Short, solid,

tough, he’d fought in Iraq and the Balkans and should’ve been a hard case,

given all he’d seen and been through, but in fact he seemed to suffer no ill-

effects from his tours of combat. On the contrary, he was all gentleness.

He needed to be. With so much on my mind, I entered our sessions wildly

distracted, and it showed. I kept expecting Booley to lose patience, to begin

shouting at me, but he never did. In fact, after one session, he invited me for

a motorbike ride in the country. Lets go and clear our heads, Lieutenant

Wales.

174

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

It worked. Like a charm. And the motorbike, a gorgeous Triumph 675,

was a timely reminder of what I was after in these flight lessons. Speed and

power.

And freedom.

Then we discovered we weren’t free: the press had followed us the whole

way and papped us outside Booley’s house.

After a period of acclimatizing to the Firefly’s cockpit, becoming familiar

with the control panel, we finally took her up. On one of our first flights

together, with no warning, Booley threw the aircraft into a stall. I felt the left

wing dip, a sickening feeling of disorder, of entropy, and then, after several

seconds that felt like decades, he recovered the aircraft and leveled the

wings.

I stared at him. What in the absolute—?

Was this


the room is gray and drab. No! My head whips back to his face, to find his smile is sad and wistful. He tucks my hair behind my ear. Then he turns wordlessly and walks away slowly, the sound of his footsteps echoing off the mirrors as he paces the enormous room to the ornate double doors at the end . . . a man on his own, a man with no reflec- tion . . . and I wake, gasping for air, as panic seizes me. “Hey,” he whispers from beside me in the darkness, his voice filled with concern. Oh, he’s here. He’s safe. Relief courses through me. “Oh, Christian,” I mumble, trying to bring my pounding heartbeat under con- trol. He wraps me in his arms, and it’s only then that I realize I have tears stream- ing down my face. “Ana, what is it?” He strokes my cheek, wiping away my tears, and I can hear his anguish. 84/551 “Nothing. A silly nightmare.” He kisses my forehead and my tearstained cheeks, comforting me. “Just a bad dream, baby,” he murmurs. “I’ve got you. I’ll keep you safe.” Drinking in his scent, I curl around him, trying to ignore the loss and devasta- tion I felt in my dream, and in that moment, I know that my deepest, darkest fear would be losing him. I stir, instinctively reaching for Christian only to feel his absence. Shit! I wake instantly and look anxiously around the cabin. Christian is watching me from the small, upholstered armchair by the bed. Stooping down, he places something on the floor, then moves and stretches out on the bed beside me. He’s dressed in his cut-offs and a gray T-shirt. “Hey, don’t panic. Everything’s fine,” he says, his voice gentle and sooth- ing—like he’s talking to a cornered wild animal. Tenderly, he smooths the hair back from my face and I calm immediately. I see him trying and failing to hide his own concern. 86/551 “You’ve been so jumpy these last couple of days,” he murmurs, his eyes wide and serious. “I’m okay, Christian.” I give him my brightest smile because I don’t want him to know how worried I am about the arson incident. The painful recollection of how I felt when Charlie Tango was sabotaged and Christian went missing—the hollow emptiness, the indescribable pain—keeps resurfacing; the memory nag- ging me and gnawing at my heart. Keeping the smile fixed on my face, I try to repress it. “Were you watching me sleep?” “Yes,” he says gazing at me steadily, studying me. “You were talking.” “Oh?” Shit! What was I saying? “You’re worried,” he adds, his eyes filled with concern. Is there nothing I can keep from this man? He leans forward and kisses me between my brows. “When you frown, a little V forms just here. It’s soft to kiss. Don’t worry baby, I’ll look after you.” “It’s not me I’m worried about, it’s you,” I grumble. “Who’s looking after you?” He smiles indulgently at my tone. “I’m big enough and ugly enough


found. Elsewhere it shall go as seems good to us." But Caranthir, who loved not the sons of Finarfin, and was the harshest of the brothers and the most quick to anger, cried aloud: 'Yea more! Let not the sons of Finarfin run hither and thither with their tales to this Dark Elf in his caves! Who made them our spokesmen to deal with him? And though they be come indeed to Beleriand, let them not so swiftly forget that their father is a lord of the Noldor, though their mother be of other kin.' Then Angrod was wrathful and went forth from the council. Maedhros indeed rebuked Caranthir; but the greater part of the Noldor, of both followings, hearing his words were troubled in heart, fearing the fell spirit of the sons of Fanor that it seemed would ever be like to burst forth in rash word or violence. But Maedhros restrained his brothers, and they departed from the council, and soon afterwards they left Mithrim and went eastward beyond Aros to the wide lands about the Hill of Himring. That region was named thereafter the March of Maedhros; for northwards there was little defence of hill or river against assault from Angband. There Maedhros and his brothers kept watch, gathering all such people as would come to them, and they had few dealings with their kinsfolk westward, save at need. It is said indeed that Maedhros himself devised this plan, to lessen the chances of strife, and because he was very willing that the chief peril of assault should fall upon himself; and he remained for his part in friendship with the houses of Fingolfin and Finarfin, and would come among them at times for common counsel. Yet he also was bound by the oath, though it slept now for a time. Now the people of Caranthir dwelt furthest east beyond the upper waters of Gelion, about Lake Helevorn under Mount Rerir and to the southward; and they climbed the heights of Ered Luin and looked eastward in wonder, for wild and wide it seemed to them were the lands of Middle-earth. And thus it was that Caranthir's people came upon the Dwarves, who after the onslaught of Morgoth and the coming of the Noldor had ceased their traffic into Beleriand. But though either people loved skill and were eager to learn, no great love was there between them; for the Dwarves were secret and quick to resentment, and Caranthir was haughty and scarce concealed his scorn for the unloveliness of the Naugrim, and his people followed their lord. Nevertheless since both peoples feared and hated Morgoth they made alliance, and had of it great profit; for the Naugrim learned many secrets of craft in those days, so that the smiths and masons of Nogrod and Belegost became renowned among their kin, and when the Dwarves began again to journey into Beleriand all the traffic of the dwarf-mines passed first through the hands of Caranthir, and thus great riches came to him. When twenty years of the Sun had passed,


of revenge enkindled in my heart. Snow fell, and the waters were hardened, but I rested not. A few incidents now and then directed me, and I possessed a map of the country; but I often wandered wide from my path. The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food; but a circumstance that happened when I arrived on the confines of Switzerland, when the sun had recovered its warmth and the earth again began to look green, confirmed in an especial manner the bitterness and horror of my feelings. "I generally rested during the day and travelled only when I was secured by night from the view of man. One morning, however, finding that my path lay through a deep wood, I ventured to continue my journey after the sun had risen; the day, which was one of the first of spring, cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of the air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them, and forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. Soft tears again bedewed my cheeks, and I even raised my humid eyes with thankfulness towards the blessed sun, which bestowed such joy upon me. "I continued to wind among the paths of the wood, until I came to its boundary, which was skirted by a deep and rapid river, into which many of the trees bent their branches, now budding with the fresh spring. Here I paused, not exactly knowing what path to pursue, when I heard the sound of voices, that induced me to conceal myself under the shade of a cypress. I was scarcely hid when a young girl came running towards the spot where I was concealed, laughing, as if she ran from someone in sport. She continued her course along the precipitous sides of the river, when suddenly her foot slipped, and she fell into the rapid stream. I rushed from my hiding-place and with extreme labour, from the force of the current, saved her and dragged her to shore. She was senseless, and I endeavoured by every means in my power to restore animation, when I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a rustic, who was probably the person from whom she had playfully fled. On seeing me, he darted towards me, and tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards the deeper parts of the wood. I followed speedily, I hardly knew why; but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at my body and fired. I sank to the ground, and my injurer, with increased swiftness, escaped into the wood. "This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered


is I heard you and Annabel had broken up yesterday.” Danny and I were sitting side by side on the couch, and though he’d denied having just burped, the air was filled with the smell of a half-digested Reuben. “No, we did break up.” His tone was equanimous. “But only for half an hour.” “Have you broken up other times?” “A bunch.” “Has it been stressful?” “I wouldn’t choose it.” “Is Annabel always the one who initiates the breakups?” “Yeah, but she’s also the one who reaches out to get back together. She gets jealous, which is crazy because it’s not like I could ever do better than her. Once I told her when she wore her hair all pushed to the side, she looked like Bethany Brick, and she freaked out.” “Who’s Bethany Brick?” “That was her question, too. Tell me you don’t watch porn without telling me you don’t watch porn.” “I find it narratively unsatisfying,” I said. “Yeah, I think you might be missing the point. Anyway, another time I told her I don’t really get jealous, and it was like she got jealous about me not getting jealous. All I meant was that I know she’s out of my league. I’ve already exceeded my wildest dreams.” We both were quiet, and he said, “This must all sound so stupid.” “No, no,” I said quickly. “The sketch about The Danny Horst Rule—that’s me being pissed about the double standards of heterosexuality. It’s not a comment on your specific relationship with Annabel.” “But all me and Belly’s ups and downs—they probably seem real juvenile to you.” “Have I ever told you I was married in my early twenties?” “Seriously? Damn, Chuckles!” “I didn’t think this at the time, but both the marriage and the divorce were bloodless. My ex-husband and I were the opposite of you and Annabel. We were very calm and restrained, and look where that got us—I haven’t spoken to him for almost ten years. And it’s not like I’ve figured out much since then. I have no idea what makes any couple stay together or break up, so who am I to judge?” “What other secrets from your past have you never mentioned? Did you shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die?” “I think you have to trust your own instincts,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to ask if you’ll be my groomswoman. That’s a groomsman with a vagina.” “What, to even out the numbers with Annabel’s bridesmaids?” “Partly, but I also really want you there.” I turned my head toward him and smiled. “Then sure. I’m honored.” We were quiet again, and it was an agreeable quiet, before I said, “I need a ride to Poughkeepsie, but I can’t remember—do you have a car?” Danny laughed. “Fuck you, Chuckles,” he said warmly. Friday, 5:07 p.m. “I did exactly what you said,” Viv said. “I emailed him like, ‘I’m officially not your patient, your name will be on the VIP list, see you tomorrow.’ ” We were in her dressing room, before she


you manipulative asshole. The minutes ticked by. No answer. And there wouldn’t be one. The king did what the king liked. But if he wanted to kill her, he didn’t have a reason to wait for nightfall. That was almost reassuring. So what was this? Some kind of trap? An attempt to pump Alex for information on Len or his cousin’s death? Alex had to believe she could talk her way out of it. Eitan thought she was a junkie, a joke, and as long as he didn’t take her seriously, she was safe. Alex sat watching the market a while longer, then hopped a bus down Ventura Boulevard. She told herself she was just killing time, but it didn’t stop her from getting off at her old stop, or walking the old route to Ground Zero. Why? She hadn’t been back since she’d been taken away in an ambulance, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to see that ugly old apartment building with its stained stucco and its sad balconies looking out at nothing. But it was gone, not a scrap or sign of it left, just a big dirt hole and a lot of rebar going up for whatever new thing would replace it, all of it surrounded by a chain-link fence. It made sense. No one wanted to rent an apartment where a multiple murder had taken place. A crime that was still unsolved. And no one was going to put up a monument here or even one of those flimsy white crosses surrounded by cheap flowers and stuffed animals and handwritten notes. Nobody cared about the people who had died here. Criminals. Dealers. Losers. Alex wished she’d brought something pretty for Hellie, a rose or some shitty grocery store carnations or one of the cards from Hellie’s old tarot deck. The Star. The Sun. Hellie had been both of those things. Had she expected to find her here? A Gray haunting this miserable spot? No. If Hellie came back through the Veil, she would go to the ocean, to the boardwalk, drawn by the clatter of skateboards and syrupy snow cones, the sweet clouds of heat coming off those big drums of kettle corn, couples kissing at the tattoo parlor, surfers daring the water. Alex was tempted to go look for her, to spend the afternoon in Venice, heart leaping after every blond head. It would be a kind of penance. “I should have found a way to save us both,” she said to no one. She stood sweating in the sun for as long as she could bear it, and then walked back to the bus stop. This whole town felt like a graveyard. Alex spent her remaining hours up at the Getty, watching the sun set through the smog, eating a stack of chocolate chip cookies from the café. She made herself walk through the galleries because she felt she should. There was a Gérôme exhibit up. She’d never heard of him, but she read the typed descriptions beside each painting and stood for a


His speech made, he allowed Piggy to lift the conch out of his hands. Then he retired and sat as far away from the others as possible. Piggy was speaking now with more assurance and with what, if the circumstances had not been so serious, the others would have recognized as pleasure. "I said we could all do without a certain person. Now I say we got to decide on what can be done. And I think I could tell you what Ralph's going to say next. The most important thing on the island is the smoke and you can't have no smoke without a fire." Ralph made a restless movement. "No go, Piggy. We've got no fire. That thing sits up there--we'll have to stay here." Piggy lifted the conch as though to add power to his next words. "We got no fire on the mountain. But what's wrong with a fire down here? A fire could be built on them rocks. On the sand, even. We'd make smoke just the same." "That's right!" "Smoke!" "By the bathing pool!" The boys began to babble. Only Piggy could have the intellectual daring to suggest moving the fire from the mountain. "So we'll have the fire down here," said Ralph. He looked about him. "We can build it just here between the bathing pool and the platform. Of course--" He broke off, frowning, thinking the thing out, unconsciously tugging at the stub of a nail with his teeth. "Of course the smoke won't show so much, not be seen so far away. But we needn't go near, near the--" The others nodded in perfect comprehension. There would be no need to go near. "We'll build the fire now." The greatest ideas are the simplest. Now there was something to be done they worked with passion. Piggy was so full of delight and expanding liberty in Jack's departure, so full of pride in his contribution to the good of society, that he helped to fetch wood. The wood he fetched was close at hand, a fallen tree on the platform that they did not need for the assembly, yet to the others the sanctity of the platform had protected even what was useless there. Then the twins realized they would have a fire near them as a comfort in the night and this set a few littluns dancing and clapping hands. The wood was not so dry as the fuel they had used on the mountain. Much of it was damply rotten and full of insects that scurried; logs had to be lifted from the soil with care or they crumbled into sodden powder. More than this, in order to avoid going deep into the forest the boys worked near at hand on any fallen wood no matter how tangled with new growth. The skirts of the forest and the scar were familiar, near the conch and the shelters and sufficiently friendly in daylight. What they might become in darkness nobody cared to think. They worked therefore with great energy and cheerfulness, though as


and as he set out the notes of a brass band were heard from the direction of the village. "What's that?" said Durbeyfield. "Not on account o' I?" "'Tis the women's club-walking, Sir John. Why, your da'ter is one o' the members." "To be sure--I'd quite forgot it in my thoughts of greater things! Well, vamp on to Marlott, will ye, and order that carriage, and maybe I'll drive round and inspect the club." The lad departed, and Durbeyfield lay waiting on the grass and daisies in the evening sun. Not a soul passed that way for a long while, and the faint notes of the band were the only human sounds audible within the rim of blue hills. II The village of Marlott lay amid the north-eastern undulations of the beautiful Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor aforesaid, and engirdled and secluded region, for the most part untrodden as yet by tourist or landscape-painter, though within a four hours' journey from London. It is a vale whose acquaintance is best made by viewing it from the summits of the hills that surround it--except perhaps during the droughts of summer. An unguided ramble into its recesses in bad weather is apt to engender dissatisfaction with its narrow, tortuous, and miry ways. This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the springs never dry, is bounded on the south by the bold chalk ridge that embraces the prominences of Hambledon Hill, Bulbarrow, Nettlecombe-Tout, Dogbury, High Stoy, and Bubb Down. The traveller from the coast, who, after plodding northward for a score of miles over calcareous downs and corn-lands, suddenly reaches the verge of one of these escarpments, is surprised and delighted to behold, extended like a map beneath him, a country differing absolutely from that which he has passed through. Behind him the hills are open, the sun blazes down upon fields so large as to give an unenclosed character to the landscape, the lanes are white, the hedges low and plashed, the atmosphere colourless. Here, in the valley, the world seems to be constructed upon a smaller and more delicate scale; the fields are mere paddocks, so reduced that from this height their hedgerows appear a network of dark green threads overspreading the paler green of the grass. The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle distance partakes also of that hue, while the horizon beyond is of the deepest ultramarine. Arable lands are few and limited; with but slight exceptions the prospect is a broad rich mass of grass and trees, mantling minor hills and dales within the major. Such is the Vale of Blackmoor. The district is of historic, no less than of topographical interest. The Vale was known in former times as the Forest of White Hart, from a curious legend of King Henry III's reign, in which the killing by a certain Thomas de la Lynd of a beautiful white hart which the king had run down and spared, was made the occasion


sharp blade cut what it was meant to cut; a dull blade slipped and cut you instead. Liv and Cass were the only ones down here. They had hidden, and they had watched it happen. Except that wasn’t right, was it? They were the only ones down here. The only ones here at all. Seventeen times I’d been stabbed. Chest and stomach and ribs. Seventeen times, and I hadn’t died. A miracle, they always said. Had it been rage that led my attacker to plunge the knife in over and over? Or had it been because they weren’t strong enough to finish me off? If a man the size of Jim Green, of Alan Stahl, of Oscar Green—or even of Marcus Barnes—had wielded that knife, I would not have been granted the centimeter’s grace that kept my heart from being punctured. Maybe I hadn’t survived out of pure luck. Maybe I’d survived because the hand wielding the knife didn’t have the strength of those men at all. I shut my eyes and tried to remember. The blow from behind. The pale sky, my vision blurring. Liv and Cass above me. Shouting. Screaming. The knife. This knife. Coming down again and again. But the shouting and the screaming, those came after. Didn’t they? Cass, shouting. Liv, weeping. The knife, flashing. The knife coming down. The screaming and the shouting and the knife, all of it at once, and then silence. Pain and silence and the impossibility of breath. “Is she dead?” I didn’t know whose voice it had been. My fingernails dug into the flesh beside the scar on my wrist, memories writhing out of reach. They’d said they stayed quiet. They watched Stahl attack me, and they hid, because if they made a sound he’d come after them, too. So the shouting had to be after he left. After the knife. But it wasn’t. I’d heard them shouting, screaming, as the knife came down. They hadn’t been hiding. They hadn’t been hiding, and Marcus Barnes had given my father thirty thousand dollars and never looked me in the face again, and why would he do that? Who would he have done that for, except his only daughter? Seventeen blows. You had to be angry, to do a thing like that. Filled with hatred. Or fear, and the horrible grip of a delusion that felt like the most powerful truth in the world. Liv said we’d never finished. We’d done six rituals that summer. We’d never gotten around to the seventh. Cass said we had to think of something big for the final one. Something dramatic. And Liv had been consumed by the thought of it—by the game and the Goddesses. Her illness was a wildfire, and the game was the spark that set it ablaze. Liv had thought her death would complete that unfinished final ritual. What ritual could be completed by death except a sacrifice? I couldn’t breathe—didn’t want to. I didn’t want to draw breath in a world where this could be true. Not Liv. Liv was my best friend.


know you do. Thank you, José. Now if you’ll please excuse me—I have a date with an old man.” He furrows his brow in confusion. 19/551 “Christian’s grandfather,” I clarify. He grins. “Good luck with that, Annie. Good luck with everything.” “Thanks, José.” After my dance with Christian’s ever-charming grandfather, I stand by the French doors, watching the sun sink slowly over Seattle, casting bright orange and aquamarine shadows across the bay. “Let’s go,” Christian urges. “I have to change.” I grasp his hand, meaning to pull him through the French windows and upstairs with me. He frowns, not understanding, and tugs gently on my hand, halting me. “I thought you wanted to be the one to take this dress off,” I explain. His eyes light up. “Correct.” He gives me a lascivious grin. “But I’m not undressing you here. We wouldn’t leave until . . . I don’t know . . .” He waves his long-fingered hand, leaving his sentence unfinished but his meaning quite clear. I flush and let go of his hand. “And don’t take your hair down either,” he murmurs darkly. “But—” “No buts, Anastasia. You look beautiful. And I want to be the one to undress you.” Oh. I frown. “Pack your going-away clothes,” he orders. “You’ll need them. Taylor has your main suitcase.” “Okay.” What has he got planned? He hasn’t told me where we’re going. In fact, I don’t think anyone knows where we’re going. Neither Mia nor Kate has managed to inveigle the information out of him. I turn to where my mother and Kate are hovering nearby. “I’m not changing.” “What?” my mother says. “Christian doesn’t want me to.” I shrug as if this should explain everything. Her brow furrows briefly. “You didn’t promise to obey,” she reminds me tactfully. Kate tries to dis- guise her snort as a cough. I narrow my eyes at her. Neither she nor my mother have any idea of the fight Christian and I had about that. I don’t want to rehash 20/551 that argument. Jeez, can my Fifty Shades sulk . . . and have nightmares. The memory is sobering. “I know, Mom, but he likes this dress, and I want to please him.” Her expression softens. Kate rolls her eyes and tactfully moves away to leave us alone. “You look so lovely, darling.” Carla gently tugs at a loose tendril of my hair and strokes my chin. “I am so proud of you, honey. You’re going to make Christi- an a very happy man.” She pulls me into a hug. Oh, Mom! “I can’t believe how grown-up you look right now. Beginning a new life . . . Just remember that men are from a different planet, and you’ll be fine.” I giggle. Christian is from a different universe, if only she knew. “Thanks, Mom.” Ray joins us, smiling sweetly at both Mom and me. “You made a beautiful baby girl, Carla,” he says, his eyes glowing with pride. He looks so dapper in his black tux and pale pink waistcoat. Tears prick the back


he replied with characteristic solipsism that if I had to ask, I would never understand the answer. “Come down to the tavern,” he said after dark had fallen. “No, thank you,” I said, glancing up from the dryadology journal I was jotting notes from—I was working on the bibliography for my encyclopaedia. “I’d like an early night.” “You don’t have to stay long. You’d rather sit here with your nose in a book?” “Vastly,” I said, and he shook his head at me, not in disgust but utter bemusement. “Very well, you strange creature,” he said, and to my astonishment he took off his cloak and settled himself in the other chair. “You don’t have to stay. I’m perfectly content by myself.” “Yes, I’ve noticed.” I shrugged. I didn’t mind him staying; I am in fact used to having him around, not only here but at Cambridge, where he is always poking his nose into my office. He took up that blasted sewing kit of his and attended to his cloak, tucking one leg boyishly beneath him and leaning into the chair. I am largely incapable of making conversation of a personal nature. I rarely have the inclination, fortunately, but I have had occasion to resent the lack of this particular human skill, as I did then. How many scholars have had the opportunity to question a ruler of the courtly fae? Not one, or none who lived to tell of it. And yet I could not make myself ask. I suspect that, if I could have convinced myself that my interest was of a purely intellectual nature, I could have managed it. But it was not. This was Bambleby, after all—my only friend. (God.) “Em,” he said without looking up from his work, after I had snuck yet another glance in his direction, “either you are plotting how best to have me murdered and stuffed for one of your exhibits, or you are still concerned that I am bewitched. You are so contrary that I would not be surprised by both concurrently. Perhaps you could set my nerves at ease.” “I am only wondering what in God’s name you are doing,” I said, taking refuge in the familiar banter. “What does it look like? You and your hairy accomplice ravaged my cloak.” He added a few more stitches and ran his hands over the fabric, folding it this way and that—I could not make out precisely what he was doing. “There.” He tried the cloak on, nodded. If anything, it looked even more magnificent than before, with an elegant billow in the hem, as if the weaver had cut the pattern from his shadow. He saw the expression on my face and raised his eyebrows. “I can do yours if you like.” He grimaced slightly. “And that—that dress.” I looked down at my woollen shift. “There’s nothing wrong with my clothing.” “It doesn’t fit you.” “Of course it does.” He lifted his eyes to the ceiling and muttered something that I couldn’t hear, apart from the distinct words paper bag. This


dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke. "Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!" A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouet- ted against the yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags. "You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?" said Dr. Mortimer. "My wife is expecting me." "Surely you will stay and have some dinner?" "No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service." The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp. "It's just as I imagined it," said Sir Henry. "Is it not the very picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me solemn to think of it." I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Barrymore had returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and pale, distinguished features. "Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?" "Is it ready?" "In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My wife and I will be happy, Sir Henry, to stay with you until you have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff." "What new conditions?" "I only meant, sir, that Sir Charles led a very retired life, and we were able to look after his


and nodded to them. The frown didn't come off his face, and they all felt a little scared, and were glad that he was to work in another part of the house. "Where's George?" he said, in a deep voice. "Gone off somewhere again," said Aunt Fanny, vexed. "I told her she was to stay here and meet her cousins." "She wants spanking," said Uncle Quentin. The children couldn't quite make out whether he was joking or not. "Well, children, I hope you have a good time here, and maybe you will knock a little common-sense into George!" There was no room at Kirrin Cottage for Mother and Daddy to stay the night, so after a hurried supper they left to stay at a hotel in the nearest town. They would drive back to London immediately after breakfast the next day. So they said goodbye to the children that night. Georgina still hadn't appeared. "I'm sorry we haven't seen Georgina," said Mother. "Just give her our love and tell her we hope she'll enjoy playing with Dick, Julian and Anne." Then Mother and Daddy went. The children felt a little bit lonely as they saw the big car disappear round the corner of the road, but Aunt Fanny took them upstairs to show them their bedrooms, and they soon forgot to be sad. The two boys were to sleep together in a room with slanting ceilings at the top of the house. It had a marvellous view of the bay. The boys were really delighted with it. Anne was to sleep with Georgina in a smaller room, whose windows looked over the moors at the back of the house. But one side-window looked over the sea, which pleased Anne very much. It was a nice room, and red roses nodded their heads in at the window. "I do wish Georgina would come," Anne said to her aunt. "I want to see what she's like." "Well, she's a funny little girl," said her aunt. "She can be very rude and haughty-but she's kind at heart, very loyal and absolutely truthful. Once she makes friends with you, she will always be your friend- but she finds it very difficult indeed to make friends, which is a great pity." Anne suddenly yawned. The boys frowned at her, because they knew what would happen next. And it did! "Poor Anne! How tired you are! You must all go to bed straight away, and have a good long night. Then you will wake up quite fresh tomorrow," said Aunt Fanny. "Anne, you are an idiot," said Dick, crossly, when his aunt had gone out of the room. "You know quite well what grown-ups think as soon as we yawn. I did want to go down on the beach for a while." "I'm so sorry," said Anne. "Somehow I couldn't help it. And anyway, you're yawning now, Dick, and Julian too!" So they were. They were as sleepy as could be with their long drive. Secretly all of them longed to cuddle down into bed and shut their


can make a person sick; the other doesn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the astringency in the leaves. I think these things as the fluid stings my hand. Then I take a breath and use my wet fingers to explore the childbirth gate. I feel something, and it’s not a head. I groan as I pull out my hand. “What is it?” the midwife asks. “The baby is coming leg first,” I answer. Midwife Lin draws the back of her fist to her mouth and sits back on her haunches. Spinster Aunt moans her distress. From the other side of the screen, my mother-in-law demands that someone inform her of what’s happening. This is followed by a similar request from the doctor. I can see in the midwife’s eyes that this situation is beyond her. I scream when the next contraction hits—from the pain as my baby’s foot exits the childbirth gate and touches air, from the knowledge that I’m going to die, and from the sadness that I doubt the midwife has the knowledge to cut the baby from my belly once I’m gone so that he or she can live. I don’t know how much time passes. The stabbing pains in my body are excruciating. Every time another contraction batters me, my mind goes white. Then, a voice… “Yunxian, we’re here.” From the chasm where my mind has been hiding, I try to swim back. “Yunxian, open your eyes. I’m here. My mother too.” “Meiling…” “Yes, it’s me. You can thank Poppy later. Now, try to relax. Let Mama and me look.” Another spasm. I drift on a black sea as the three midwives talk. “I did what I could,” Midwife Lin confesses plaintively. “I thank you for keeping her alive,” Midwife Shi says. “Now all energies must be put to getting the baby out. Extreme measures must be sought.” “Poppy, can you bring ink and a brush?” Meiling asks. Doctor Wong’s garbled shouts swirl on the sea around me. “You must listen… I am the doctor… Lady Kuo wants…” Another contraction. Will it be seconds or minutes before the next one? Meiling puts her lips to my ear. “I’m going to write a message on the sole of your baby’s foot. Just three characters. Go back home.” I have no awareness of her doing this, but I know she’s finished when she speaks loud enough for all to hear. “What Mama will do next will not hurt the baby, but you will feel it. We’re going to lift you up. Take hold of the rope. Yes, it’s hard, but you can do it.” Two pairs of hands help me back into position. I grab the rope. Spinster Aunt’s soft belly cushions my left side. Meiling’s familiar arms embrace my right side. Midwife Shi holds up a pin for me to see. “Your baby has received our message on his foot. What I do next will encourage him to obey, but it must be done with great precision or the baby will be tempted to reach up and grab