your lap in the car. He’s always trembling, even when it’s hot. He’s so fucking bossy! If you’re chopping vegetables on a cutting board, he thinks someone is knocking on the door and loses his mind. He’ll bark his head off at a precious blade of spring grass if it is ruffled by a gentle breeze. He is not cuddly. He’s always aggressively cutting his eyes at me. He is rude to guests. He won’t take his various medicines without making it into a whole production. He is impervious to calming measures. If he slips out the door, he will run so far and fast that you have to get in the car to hunt him down and bring him back. HE BARKS AT EVERYTHING, CONSTANTLY. * * * — Our vet told us that it would take a year to potty train Abe because his smooth walnut brain is too small to learn things fast, and I am proud to say that it’s been almost three years, and I just found a lake of urine with two turds bobbing on its surface in the basement this morning, literal minutes after he’d enjoyed a luxurious twenty-minute walk through the nearby forest preserve. We took him to a puppy-training class at PetSmart, where a young, half-asleep stoner kid taught us how to teach him his name and to come to us from the other side of a training pen in exchange for a delicious Rachael Ray treat, which we could conveniently locate in aisle seven for purchase. Unfortunately we got kicked out of class before we could make much progress because Abe could hear other dogs as they calmly shopped alongside their owners and devolved to the point where he stood there yapping at the ceiling, hoping all the dogs he couldn’t see over the side of the barrier would quake at his high-pitched shrieking. The first daycare I called had a waitlist several months long, and the second one didn’t even answer the phone, which is a business model I honestly respect. The third one said they’d be happy to have him, on a trial basis, which they could revoke at any time. The morning of his first day I woke up filled with dread, worried that this creature whom I was responsible for and was also a reflection of me was going to show his fool ass and humiliate me in front of a bunch of strangers who would be right to judge me. I loaded him into the car and drove to daycare, scolding him the entire way: “Don’t bark too much. Don’t play too rough. Don’t eat anyone else’s lunch. Don’t pee where you’re not supposed to. Don’t talk back. Don’t bite anyone. Don’t get up during naptime.” This is exactly like parenting a child, right? Threatening a small creature with limited cognition into doing what you want, ostensibly for their own good? I deposited him into the arms of a very nice and unsuspecting stranger, and then I peeled out of the parking lot before she could change


A CHANGE The carrier's horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep people waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough. The carrier had a way of keeping his head down, like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say 'drove', but it struck me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him, for the horse did all that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it but whistling. Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would have lasted us out handsomely, if we had been going to London by the same conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the basket, her hold of which never relaxed; and I could not have believed unless I had heard her do it, that one defenceless woman could have snored so much. We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long time delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other places, that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw Yarmouth. It looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles; which would account for it. As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it; and also that if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer. But Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than usual, that we must take things as we found them, and that, for her part, she was proud to call herself a Yarmouth Bloater. When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me) and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place an injustice; and said as much to Peggotty, who heard my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told me it was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the universe.


in dread that if he persisted in his disagreement O'Brien would twist the dial again. And yet he could not keep silent. Feebly, without arguments, with nothing to support him except his inarticulate horror of what O'Brien had said, he returned to the attack. 'I don't know--I don't care. Somehow you will fail. Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you.' 'We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable. Or perhaps you have returned to your old idea that the proletarians or the slaves will arise and overthrow us. Put it out of your mind. They are helpless, like the animals. Humanity is the Party. The others are outside--irrelevant.' 'I don't care. In the end they will beat you. Sooner or later they will file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (147 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:52 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt see you for what you are, and then they will tear you to pieces.' 'Do you see any evidence that that is happening? Or any reason why it should?' 'No. I believe it. I KNOW that you will fail. There is something in the universe--I don't know, some spirit, some principle--that you will never overcome.' 'Do you believe in God, Winston?' 'No.' 'Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?' 'I don't know. The spirit of Man.' 'And do you consider yourself a man?' 'Yes.' 'If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are ALONE? You are outside history, you are non-existent.' His manner changed and he said more harshly: 'And you consider yourself morally superior to us, with our lies and our cruelty?' 'Yes, I consider myself superior.' O'Brien did not speak. Two other voices were speaking. After a moment Winston recognized one of them as his own. It was a sound-track of the conversation he had had with O'Brien, on the night when he had enrolled himself in the Brotherhood. He heard himself promising to lie, to steal, to forge, to murder, to encourage drug-taking and prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases, to throw vitriol in a child's face. O'Brien made a small impatient gesture, as though to say that the demonstration was hardly worth making. Then he turned a switch and the voices stopped. 'Get up from that bed,' he said. The bonds had loosened themselves. Winston lowered himself to the floor and stood up unsteadily. 'You are the last man,' said O'Brien. 'You are the guardian of the human spirit. You shall see yourself as you are. Take off your clothes.' Winston undid the bit of string that held his overalls together. The zip fastener had long since been wrenched out of them. He could not remember whether at any time since his arrest he had taken off all his clothes at one time. Beneath the overalls his body was looped with filthy yellowish rags, just recognizable


over me—you, that sank the waste a hostage? No, not us; he might be our last chance, and lot of us! By the powers! But this tops the stiffest yarn to I shouldn’t wonder. Kill that boy? Not me, mates! And nothing.” number three? Ah, well, there’s a deal to say to number three. Silver paused, and I could see by the faces of George and Maybe you don’t count it nothing to have a real college doc- his late comrades that these words had not been said in vain. tor to see you every day—you, John, with your head broke— “That’s for number one,” cried the accused, wiping the or you, George Merry, that had the ague shakes upon you not sweat from his brow, for he had been talking with a vehe- six hours agone, and has your eyes the colour of lemon peel to mence that shook the house. “Why, I give you my word, I’m this same moment on the clock? And maybe, perhaps, you sick to speak to you. You’ve neither sense nor memory, and I didn’t know there was a consort coming either? But there is, leave it to fancy where your mothers was that let you come to and not so long till then; and we’ll see who’ll be glad to have sea. Sea! Gentlemen o’ fortune! I reckon tailors is your a hostage when it comes to that. And as for number two, and trade.” why I made a bargain—well, you came crawling on your knees “Go on, John,” said Morgan. “Speak up to the others.” to me to make it—on your knees you came, you was that “Ah, the others!” returned John. “They’re a nice lot, ain’t downhearted—and you’d have starved too if I hadn’t—but they? You say this cruise is bungled. Ah! By gum, if you that’s a trifle! You look there—that’s why!” could understand how bad it’s bungled, you would see! We’re And he cast down upon the floor a paper that I instantly that near the gibbet that my neck’s stiff with thinking on it. recognized—none other than the chart on yellow paper, with Contents You’ve seen ‘em, maybe, hanged in chains, birds about ‘em, the three red crosses, that I had found in the oilcloth at the seamen p’inting ‘em out as they go down with the tide. ‘Who’s bottom of the captain’s chest. Why the doctor had given it to Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 244 245 him was more than I could fancy. “Silver!” they cried. “Barbecue forever! Barbecue for cap’n!” But if it were inexplicable to me, the appearance of the “So that’s the toon, is it?” cried the cook. “George, I reckon chart was incredible to the surviving mutineers. They leaped you’ll have to wait another turn, friend; and lucky for you as upon it like cats upon a mouse. It went from hand to hand, I’m not a revengeful man. But that was never my way. And one tearing it from another; and by the oaths and the cries now, shipmates, this black spot?


life disclosed to them its secrets, but to the few, to the elect, the mysteries of life were revealed before the veil was drawn away. Sometimes this was the effect of art, and chiefly of the art of literature, which dealt immediately with the passions and the intellect. But now and then a complex personality took the place and assumed the office of art, was indeed, in its [31] way, a real work of art, Life having its elaborate masterpieces, just as poetry has, or sculpture, or painting. Yes, the lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it was yet spring. The pulse and passion of youth were in him, but he was becoming self-conscious. It was delightful to watch him. With his beautiful face, and his beautiful soul, he was a thing to wonder at. It was no matter how it all ended, or was destined to end. He was like one of those gracious figures in a pageant or a play, whose joys seem to be remote from one, but whose sorrows stir one's sense of beauty, and whose wounds are like red roses. Soul and body, body and soul--how mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also. He began to wonder whether we should ever make psychology so absolute a science that each little spring of life would be revealed to us. As it was, we always misunderstood ourselves, and rarely understood others. Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name we gave to our mistakes. Men had, as a rule, regarded it as a mode of warning, had claimed for it a certain moral efficacy in the formation of character, had praised it as something that taught us what to follow and showed us what to avoid. But there was no motive power in experience. It was as little of an active cause as conscience itself. All that it really demonstrated was that our future would be the same as our past, and that the sin we had done once, and with loathing, we would do many times, and with joy. It was clear to him that the experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had


ever had. He described the trades the soldiers needed to learn, because their duties extended beyond surveillance and fighting. The recruits rotated between the compounds, and only when they were deemed to have performed with exceptional skill in their trainings and trades were they advanced into the army. “Do you train the new recruits yourself?” “Rarely. They are too frightened of me.” He sounded unhappy about a fact most would find pleasing. “They will simply obey.” I lost track of the number of soldiers who bowed to Arin as we walked. “Is obedience not what a Commander should seek?” “Obedience should be conscious, not instinctual.” We turned around, beginning our return to my suites. Another soldier bowed, and I huffed. “Have you considered coloring your hair? You might be able to walk an entire ten feet without being recognized.” Arin raised a brow. His silver hair was luminescent, a crown in its own right. “Why would I avoid recognition? The only people who do not wish to be known are the ones with something to be ashamed of.” The Citadel’s silhouette took shape ahead. The heart and soul of Nizahl. Inside, Rawain would be toasting to his Champion’s success in the trials. Anticipating the glory I would bring to his kingdom. “Yes,” I said. “I suppose you are right.” The ride to the arena passed in tense silence. Sprawled in the center of massive brown fields, the arena loomed ahead like a blight on the land. To prevent a crush of spectators, carriages were stopped half a mile from the arena. My stomach hadn’t ceased its anxious gnawing since leaving the suites an hour ago. “I can walk the rest of the way.” “It’s raining,” Jeru said. I deliberately blinked the water from my lashes to communicate my thoughts on his astute observation. “I will go with her.” Arin stepped smoothly from the carriage. Wes and Jeru gaped. “But Your Highness, you’ll be on foot while the other royals are entering by carriage.” “The Heir is due a bit of impropriety,” I said. Jeru looked as though he could not tell whether I had gone mad, or if he had. Resignation loosened Wes’s shoulders, and the older guard even seemed a little amused. Arin adopted a brisk pace. The soldiers lined the path on either side of us, far away enough to afford us a modicum of privacy. “My soldiers are set up in every corner of the arena. They are stationed at every entry, every exit, every possible location an intruder could exploit. They are dressed in the colors of other kingdoms, and I have instructed them to carry no weapons that could identify them as Nizahl soldiers.” “I’m sure you’re ready,” I said. “I do not want you distracted by security concerns during the trial. Your only goal today is to defeat the Orban Champion, and the rest is mine.” I lifted a shoulder. “It might be better for the Mufsids or Urabi to get close. Easier for your soldiers to identify the assailants in the crowd if they’re actively


He’s now furious, the way he gets when only blood will calm him, not just because some trickster techie is screwing with them, but because the music is, of all things, “Macarena,” by Los Del Río, freakin’ dance music, maybe the longest-running song ever on the charts, nothing hard and street about it, six steps down from the Bee Gees. It’s not bad enough that the music is announcing their position, but it’s also embarrassing. Aleem zippers open his jacket and reaches inside and zippers open the pocket and extracts the phone and tries to switch it off, but he can’t. The phone won’t shut down, and it won’t let him get out of the music app. And there’s this lame video, pure punk cheese, of idiots in Spanish costumes dancing and grinning, thrashing around a ballroom as if they ought to be foaming at the mouth. He fingers the volume slide, and it moves down, but the music continues to boom into the night. Kuba is shouting obscenities, agitating his phone as if Los Del Río can be dispensed from it like salt from a shaker. Frustrated, he throws it down in the mud and raises one foot, but he can’t bring himself to stomp on it, maybe because it’s not a cheap burner, but probably also because his contacts include the numbers of ten or twenty fresh ladies, none of which he has committed to memory. Plus he’s got photos on there of some of his best moments, selfies of the part of him that he’s most proud of, taken just as it achieved liftoff, treasured mementos that he’s loath to lose. There’s no way to save the phones, but it’s a mistake to break them. By way of example, Aleem throws his down next to Kuba’s and turns and shambles away into the wind and rain, toward that section of the orchard where Nina and the kid are most likely to be found. Maybe she’ll assume their position is still defined by “Macarena,” while in fact they’re coming at her from a different direction. After a moment, Kuba catches up with him, hunched and hooded. “You see this comin’?” “See what?” “All this weird shit.” “What—I’m Nostradamus?” “How she do that?” “The phones wasn’t Nina. Neither was the Aviator.” “How you know?” “She’s an accountant is all she is, not some genius hacker.” Aleem shivers. His shirt is wet. He forgot to close his jacket after he got the phone out. He zips it up. Raising his voice to compete with the wind, Kuba says, “So it’s the boy?” “The boy don’t have gear for a trick like that.” “How you know?” “Nobody has gear for that.” “Somebody does. You see that video? Man, it sucked.” “Could make a man go deaf and blind,” Aleem agrees. They are far enough away from their phones to hear “Macarena” playing elsewhere in the orchard. “Mockin’ us,” Kuba says. “We find who, I’ll give him a livin’ autopsy.” Aleem says, “Nina’s got to know who.” “Man, that music eats your soul,” Kuba


to follow her gaze. Just be cool. She can’t see it. The sides of Evelyn’s mouth lift into a smile when she looks up. “You are pregnant, aren’t you?” Sloane swallows, feeling herself nod. “Yes. Yes, I am.” Evelyn’s eyes widen with joy. “It’s still really early, so don’t say anything to any—” “Of course, I won’t!” Evelyn pulls Sloane into a hug before she can stop her. Sloane steps back, afraid Evelyn could feel the outline of the gun behind Sloane’s hand. “Shh!” She looks around, but they’re alone in the corridor. “Sorry,” Evelyn whispers, lifting her shoulders. “Congratulations!” “Thanks.” Sloane steps to the side, giving Evelyn a wide enough berth that she doesn’t go in for another hug as Sloane moves past. “I’m actually not feeling well. Can you stitch up the patient in treatment room seven while I run to the locker room?” “You got it.” Evelyn winks. “And your secret’s safe with me.” Sloane hurries down the hall, keeping a hand against the gun. What the hell am I doing? As she strides down the hallway, her eyes rest on treatment room six, the room where Chelsea died. In that moment, she knows the answer to her own question: She’s doing what has to be done. Chapter 43 “Dr. Marks!” Sloane turns. Logan is coming toward her with swift steps. “Your husband’s here.” Sloane presses her hand against the gun in her pocket. She hasn’t talked to Ethan since his brief appearance at the restaurant last night. “He’s in the waiting room. You want me to tell him to come back?” “That’s okay. I’ll go out there. She walks down the hall toward the waiting room and tries to look relaxed while keeping a firm hand against her front pocket. Sloane steps into the waiting room and spots Ethan maneuvering through the crowded space in her direction. “Hey.” He holds out a coffee from the Evergreen Café. “I got you a latte.” Behind him, a red-faced toddler cries hysterically atop his mother’s lap as she tries unsuccessfully to console him. Sitting next to them, an elderly man cradles his head in his hands. “Thanks.” Her fingers brush his when she takes the cup. After how he acted at the restaurant, his visit has to be more than to bring her coffee. “I didn’t hear you come home last night.” His eyes are red from lack of sleep. “It was after one. You were asleep.” She takes a sip, aware of the hard gun barrel pressing against her abdomen. Fortunately, Ethan hasn’t moved his pointed stare from her face. “I need to talk you,” he says. “Alone.” Sloane glances around the overfilled waiting area. “I’m not sure where we’ll find that here.” “How about outside?” “Okay.” She follows him through the congested space. When they near the outside doors, Sloane has to practically step over a homeless man she recognizes from his frequent ER visits who is lying across the waiting room floor. “Make it stop!” the man screams, when he spots Sloane. Sitting in a chair behind the


taking it all in. “Yeah,” I said, my eyes still locked on Joe’s. “It’s like that.” “Guess you guys don’t want to stay and help clean up, then?” “Not especially,” I said. “No.” “Fine then,” Sue said. “You’re excused.” Epilogue ONE YEAR AFTER that party, Mr. and Mrs. Kim kicked me out of my hovel. They were making a rooftop garden and needed it for a potting shed. “You’re kicking me out?” I said. But Mr. Kim wasn’t having it. “Go marry Helpful. You’re practically married, anyway.” “Maybe I will,” I said, and then I held up the engagement ring on my finger. I wasn’t spending much time at my place by then, anyway—now that I’d helped Joe refurnish his apartment. I mean, that Viking stove of his was a significant draw. And so, of course, was Joe himself. Oh, and you heard that right. I’m still calling Oliver “Joe.” He just looks like a Joe to me. And we really are getting married. I admit: the idea of Joe’s wanting to be a family with me has taken the pressure off Peanut to defy all laws of nature and live for another twenty years. It’s also taken the pressure off Lucinda to be anything other than her limited self. She still defends Parker. But sometimes I can see her side. What mother could possibly go against her own child? Parker got transferred to Amsterdam for two years, anyway. So for now I have my father and Lucinda to myself, and we have dinner together from time to time. Turns out it’s easier to be less mad at people when other parts of your life are happy. Sometimes Joe and I try to place bets on Parker’s destiny. Will she always be evil, or will she grow out of it? He’s a bit more optimistic than I am, but he defers to my expertise. She might grow out of it, though. Who knows? People can definitely change. I sure did. And if Parker does, I’ll cheer for her. I’ll also lose a hundred dollars on that bet. But happily. * * * IT’S SO STRANGE to me now, looking back on that upside-down time in my life, how many good things came out of it. If you’d asked me at the time, I’d have told you everything was ruined forever. But of course the fact it was all so hard is part of what made things better. It forced me into therapy for a while, for one. It forced me to rethink what making art meant in my life. It forced me to reevaluate some ideas that I’d never questioned about who we all are and what it all means. Because things were so overwhelming, I had no choice but to accept some help. And then I found out that letting people help you isn’t so bad. It’s definitely the kind of thing you can get used to. I mean, a woman who didn’t believe in help somehow wound up madly in love with a compulsive helper. Isn’t it lucky when we’re


and that dreadful Clifford? That's it, you may be sure." Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over with hot wrath against the absent Hepzibah. For another half-hour, or, perhaps, considerably more, there was almost as much quiet on the outside of the house as within. The elm, however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny sigh, responsive to the breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible; a swarm of insects buzzed merrily under its drooping shadow, and became specks of light whenever they darted into the sunshine; a locust sang, once or twice, in some inscrutable seclusion of the tree; and a solitary little bird, with plumage of pale gold, came and hovered about Alice's Posies. At last our small acquaintance, Ned Higgins, trudged up the street, on his way to school; and happening, for the first time in a fortnight, to be the possessor of a cent, he could by no means get past the shop-door of the Seven Gables. But it would not open. Again and again, however, and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important to itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance. He had, doubtless, set his heart upon an elephant; or, possibly, with Hamlet, he meant to eat a crocodile. In response to his more violent attacks, the bell gave, now and then, a moderate tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamor by any exertion of the little fellow's childish and tiptoe strength. Holding by the door-handle, he peeped through a crevice of the curtain, and saw that the inner door, communicating with the passage towards the parlor, was closed. "Miss Pyncheon!" screamed the child, rapping on the window-pane, "I want an elephant!" There being no answer to several repetitions of the summons, Ned began to grow impatient; and his little pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a stone, with a naughty purpose to fling it through the window; at the same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath. A man--one of two who happened to be passing by--caught the urchin's arm. "What's the trouble, old gentleman?" he asked. "I want old Hepzibah, or Phoebe, or any of them!" answered Ned, sobbing. "They won't open the door; and I can't get my elephant!" "Go to school, you little scamp!" said the man. "There's another cent-shop round the corner. 'T is very strange, Dixey," added he to his companion, "what's become of all these Pyncheon's! Smith, the livery-stable keeper, tells me Judge Pyncheon put his horse up yesterday, to stand till after dinner, and has not taken him away yet. And one of the Judge's hired men has been in, this morning, to make inquiry about him. He's a kind of person, they say, that seldom breaks his habits, or stays out o' nights." "Oh, he'll turn up safe enough!" said Dixey. "And as for Old Maid Pyncheon, take my word for it, she has run in debt, and gone off from her creditors. I foretold, you remember, the first morning she set up shop, that her


their place on campus the next night, Friday—a celebration of the fact that people could gather, however short this window in the pandemic might prove. It sounded like something the attorneys would object to, but I couldn’t think why. It was just a party, albeit one remarkably close to the scene of the crime. Three other kids had joined Fran’s boys—two boys and a girl—and their mother jumped gracefully in to swim a couple of laps. She was our age, irritatingly cellulite-free. Fran cleared her throat, looked meaningfully over my shoulder. I turned to see, across the pool, a man in blue swim trunks, his belly soft but his arms and legs muscled. I took in his face: This was Robbie Serenho. This was his lovely wife. These were his kids. He was blowing up a floatie. The wife emerged from the water, wrapped herself in a towel, grabbed a key card from him, and left. I spent a panicked moment wondering what to do—diving under the water and staying there seemed out of the question—before I remembered the choice had already been made for me. I wasn’t allowed to talk to him. At least not about the hearing, but that was excuse enough to stay planted. I raised a tentative palm from my leg as offering. He squinted, confused, at both of us. His hairline had receded dramatically. “I’ll go say hi,” Fran said, before I could even ask her to. She rounded the pool, pausing to tell Jacob not to splash water in Max’s eyes. Had I built Robbie up in the past few years into some towering, symbolic figure? Or had he lurked like that in my imagination since high school? Or was my blood pressure rocketing for other reasons: my guilt at upending his life, my fear that he hated me? There seemed to be no oxygen in the room, only gaseous chlorine. Fran was beside him now, her hands moving as she spoke. I couldn’t make out her words through the thick air. Robbie laughed at something, she laughed at something. One of Robbie’s boys clambered out of the water, dripping, stood whining. Robbie put a hand on the boy’s head, made him wait while he talked to Fran. I remembered that I could pretend to look at my phone, so I did that until Max, clinging to the gutter, lost his kickboard; I knelt and reached over the water and sent it sailing to him, then tossed him rings to dive for. Robbie’s voice grew loud, traveled across the pool. He’d turned in my direction. “I know I can’t talk to Bodie,” he half shouted, “but I hope you’ll tell her it’s good to see her.” Thank God. I laughed, shrugged, waved again. He said, to the middle of the room, “Please tell her I think she turned out pretty cool. No hard feelings. Tell her my wife’s a big fan!” He turned his attention to the younger boy, who looked about seven. As Fran walked back to me, he picked the boy up and swung


comes over the sun. Latterly, since I have begun to know him better, I feel it to be not quite right to look closely into his moods. He has had such a great sorrow, that his heart is made all solemn and sacred by it. When he is cheerful,--when the sun shines into his mind, --then I venture to peep in, just as far as the light reaches, but no further. It is holy ground where the shadow falls!" "How prettily you express this sentiment!" said the artist. "I can understand the feeling, without possessing it. Had I your opportunities, no scruples would prevent me from fathoming Clifford to the full depth of my plummet-line!" "How strange that you should wish it!" remarked Phoebe involuntarily. "What is Cousin Clifford to you?" "Oh, nothing,--of course, nothing!" answered Holgrave with a smile. "Only this is such an odd and incomprehensible world! The more I look at it, the more it puzzles me, and I begin to suspect that a man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom. Men and women, and children, too, are such strange creatures, that one never can be certain that he really knows them; nor ever guess what they have been from what he sees them to be now. Judge Pyncheon! Clifford! What a complex riddle --a complexity of complexities--do they present! It requires intuitiv e sympathy, like a young girl's, to solve it. A mere observer, like myself (who never have any intuitions, and am, at best, only subtile and acute), is pretty certain to go astray." The artist now turned the conversation to themes less dark than that which they had touched upon. Phoebe and he were young together; nor had Holgrave, in his premature experience of life, wasted entirely that beautiful spirit of youth, which, gushing forth from one small heart and fancy, may diffuse itself over the universe, making it all as bright as on the first day of creation. Man's own youth is the world's youth; at least, he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth's granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes. So it was with Holgrave. He could talk sagely about the world's old age, but never actually believed what he said; he was a young man still, and therefore looked upon the world--that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable--as a tender stripling, capable of being improved into all that it ought to be, but scarcely yet had shown the remotest promise of becoming. He had that sense, or inward prophecy, --which a young man had better never have been born than not to have, and a mature man had better die at once than utterly to relinquish,--that we are not doomed to creep on forever in the old bad way, but that, this very now, there are the harbingers abroad of a golden era, to be accomplished in his own lifetime. It seemed to Holgrave,--as doubtless it has seemed to the hopeful of every century since the


about his toes?' the Mock Turtle persisted. `How COULD he turn them out with his nose, you know?' `It's the first position in dancing.' Alice said; but was dreadfully puzzled by the whole thing, and longed to change the subject. `Go on with the next verse,' the Gryphon repeated impatiently: `it begins "I passed by his garden."' Alice did not dare to disobey, though she felt sure it would all come wrong, and she went on in a trembling voice:-- `I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye, How the Owl and the Panther were sharing a pie--' [later editions continued as follows The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat, While the Owl had the dish as its share of the treat. When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon, Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon: While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl, And concluded the banquet--] `What IS the use of repeating all that stuff,' the Mock Turtle interrupted, `if you don't explain it as you go on? It's by far the most confusing thing I ever heard!' `Yes, I think you'd better leave off,' said the Gryphon: and Alice was only too glad to do so. `Shall we try another figure of the Lobster Quadrille?' the Gryphon went on. `Or would you like the Mock Turtle to sing you a song?' `Oh, a song, please, if the Mock Turtle would be so kind,' Alice replied, so eagerly that the Gryphon said, in a rather offended tone, `Hm! No accounting for tastes! Sing her "Turtle Soup," will you, old fellow?' The Mock Turtle sighed deeply, and began, in a voice sometimes choked with sobs, to sing this:-- `Beautiful Soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a hot tureen! Who for such dainties would not stoop? Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup! Soup of the evening, beautiful Soup! Beau--ootiful Soo--oop! Beau--ootiful Soo--oop! Soo--oop of the e--e--evening, Beautiful, beautiful Soup! `Beautiful Soup! Who cares for fish, Game, or any other dish? Who would not give all else for two p ennyworth only of beautiful Soup? Pennyworth only of beautiful Soup? Beau--ootiful Soo--oop! Beau--ootiful Soo--oop! Soo--oop of the e--e--evening, Beautiful, beauti--FUL SOUP!' `Chorus again!' cried the Gryphon, and the Mock Turtle had just begun to repeat it, when a cry of `The trial's beginning!' was heard in the distance. `Come on!' cried the Gryphon, and, taking Alice by the hand, it hurried off, without waiting for the end of the song. `What trial is it?' Alice panted as she ran; but the Gryphon only answered `Come on!' and ran the faster, while more and more faintly came, carried on the breeze that followed them, the melancholy words:-- `Soo--oop of the e--e--evening, Beautiful, beautiful Soup!' CHAPTER XI Who Stole the Tarts? The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them--all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was standing before them, in chains, with


the Park," he explained, as she looked puzzled. "At half-past two. I shall be at the door . . ." She turned away without answering and got quickly into the carriage. As it drove off she leaned forward, and he thought she waved her hand in the obscurity. He stared after her in a turmoil of contradictory feelings. It seemed to him that he had been speaking not to the woman he loved but to another, a woman he was indebted to for pleasures already wearied of: it was hateful to find himself the prisoner of this hackneyed vocabulary. "She'll come!" he said to himself, almost contemptuously. Avoiding the popular "Wolfe collection," whose anecdotic canvases filled one of the main galleries of the queer wilderness of cast-iron and encaustic tiles known as the Metropolitan Museum, they had wandered down a passage to the room where the "Cesnola antiquities" mouldered in unvisited loneliness. They had this melancholy retreat to themselves, and seated on the divan enclosing the central steam-radiator, they were staring silently at the glass cabinets mounted in ebonised wood which contained the recovered fragments of Ilium. "It's odd," Madame Olenska said, "I never came here before." "Ah, well--. Some day, I suppose, it will be a great Museum." "Yes," she assented absently. She stood up and wandered across the room. Archer, remaining seated, watched the light movements of her figure, so girlish even under its heavy furs, the cleverly planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the way a dark curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above the ear. His mind, as always when they first met, was wholly absorbed in the delicious details that made her herself and no other. Presently he rose and approached the case before which she stood. Its glass shelves were crowded with small broken objects--hardly recognisable domestic utensils, ornaments and personal trifles--made of glass, of clay, of discoloured bronze and other time- blurred substances. "It seems cruel," she said, "that after a while nothing matters . . . any more than these little things, that used to be necessary and important to forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying glass and labelled: `Use unknown.'" "Yes; but meanwhile--" "Ah, meanwhile--" As she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her hands thrust in a small round muff, her veil drawn down like a transparent mask to the tip of her nose, and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirring with her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that this pure harmony of line and colour should ever suffer the stupid law of change. "Meanwhile everything matters--that concerns you," he said. She looked at him thoughtfully, and turned back to the divan. He sat down beside her and waited; but suddenly he heard a step echoing far off down the empty rooms, and felt the pressure of the minutes. "What is it you wanted to tell me?" she asked, as if she had received the same warning. "What I wanted to tell you?" he rejoined. "Why,


his forearms above his head. There was a roar that seemed to make the pavement heave; a shower of light objects pattered on to his back. When he stood up he found that he was covered with fragments of glass from the nearest window. He walked on. The bomb had demolished a group of houses 200 metres up the street. A black plume of smoke hung in the sky, and below it a cloud of plaster dust in which a crowd was already forming around the ruins. There was a little pile of plaster lying on the pavement ahead of him, and in the middle of it he could see a bright red streak. When he got up to it he saw that it was a human hand severed at the wrist. Apart from the bloody stump, the hand was so completely whitened as to resemble a plaster cast. He kicked the thing into the gutter, and then, to avoid the crowd, turned down a side-street to the right. Within three or four minutes he was out of the area which the bomb had affected, and the sordid swarming life of the streets was going on as though nothing had happened. It was nearly twenty hours, and the drinking-shops which the proles frequented ('pubs', they called them) were choked with customers. From their grimy swing doors, endlessly opening and shutting, there came forth a smell of urine, sawdust, and sour beer. In an angle formed by a projecting house-front three men were standing very close together, the middle one of them holding a folded-up newspaper which the other two were studying over his shoulder. file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (47 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:51 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt Even before he was near enough to make out the expression on their faces, Winston could see absorption in every line of their bodies. It was obviously some serious piece of news that they were reading. He was a few paces away from them when suddenly the group broke up and two of the men were in violent altercation. For a moment they seemed almost on the point of blows. 'Can't you bleeding well listen to what I say? I tell you no number ending in seven ain't won for over fourteen months!' 'Yes, it 'as, then!' 'No, it 'as not! Back 'ome I got the 'ole lot of 'em for over two years wrote down on a piece of paper. I takes 'em down reg'lar as the clock. An' I tell you, no number ending in seven----' 'Yes, a seven 'AS won! I could pretty near tell you the bleeding number. Four oh seven, it ended in. It were in February--second week in February.' 'February your grandmother! I got it all down in black and white. An' I tell you, no number----' 'Oh, pack it in!' said the third man. They were talking about the Lottery. Winston looked back when he had gone thirty metres. They were still arguing, with vivid, passionate faces. The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which


up at the streams of fire, close now, nearing a scarp of rock, almost on top of them. She closed her smarting eyes and clung to Ninuru, committing herself to the arms of the Mother. Lava poured over the scarp. Not a moment too late, Jeda and Ninuru flew out of its path. It washed down the steep wall of rock and bubbled across the plain in a livid river, steaming and marbled with black. Heat swept over Tunuva. She went limp as the tension slid from her muscles. It was some time before the ichneumons stopped running. By then, they were back on the high stretch of the salt road, and ash thickened the reeking air. The only light was their own flames. ‘Ninuru, stop,’ Tunuva could hardly speak. ‘Wait.’ She did, and Tunuva stepped down. ‘Tuva, we need to go,’ Esbar said, face lit by her fire. Covered in a fine coating of ash, Tunuva gazed towards the Dreadmount. Glowing streams bled down its slopes. The black smoke had risen so high and wide, she could no longer see where it ended and the sky began. Stabs of lightning lit the gnarled knots and swells in it. Again, a silence, pregnant with something unspeakable. A tremor whispered beneath her boots, up her spine, back through her blood. Then came a terrible sound, the like of which she had never heard, and hoped never to hear again. Not the crack of the eruption, or the sinister rumble that had been the herald. This sound was the grating of earth on earth, the ring of metal, the roar of a fire as it swallowed a house – a bellow of consuming rage that echoed across Mentendon. As Tunuva Melim watched, five dark shapes emerged from the mountain and disappeared into the night. Five dark shapes with ten dark wings, flocked by dark moths that all screamed the same scream, old as the world. **** In Drouthwick Castle, Glorian Berethnet woke from a strange dream. At her side, Lady Florell Glade cooled her forehead, which had been too cold a moment before. ‘Glorian?’ As Florell stroked her hair, Glorian opened her eyes. ‘It’s risen,’ she whispered. After, she would not remember saying it at all. 20 North The sunset had turned the snow to spun honey. Alone with his bow in the gathering dark, Wulf stood beneath the pines and took aim at an elk in the clearing. King Bardholt meant to have a feast to celebrate their return to Bithandun. Fresh venison would please him. The elk sniffed the air. Wulf slowly released his breath. And then he felt something he should never have felt. Not in that Northern forest on a frozen lake, the world all cast in grey and white. Heat, welling up from under the snow. Pleasure and pain, fear, and some deep recognition – all of it boiled together in his heart. His knees gave way. The arrow went thudding into a pine. As the elk fled, Wulf dropped his bow to grip his chest, as if he


to float through hospital corridors in a cloud of floral perfume. Half of Wúràọlá’s class had developed a crush on her. Wúràọlá was glad Professor Cordelia wasn’t the one who had walked into Kúnlé’s living room. Her husband would probably tell her about what he had observed, but that was better than seeing those perfect brows furrow in disappointment. They went in through the kitchen, past the maid, who was scrubbing a pot, to the dining room, where Kúnlé’s parents sat next to each other, eating a meal of boiled plantain and vegetables. “How are you, my dear?” Professor Cordelia said, waving Wúràọlá into the chair opposite her. “I’m very well ma, thank you.” “Would you like some plantain? There should be some left.” “No, thank you ma.” “Are you sure? This is fresh wọ̀rọ̀wọ́, try it with some plantain.” “I’m fine ma.” “We ate after I picked her up.” Kúnlé sat beside Wúràọlá. “Oh, you’ve been around for a while?” “Yes ma. We, uhm, I was with Kúnlé.” “Oh, I see.” “I didn’t see your car when we came back,” Kúnlé’s father said. “It’s in the hospital sir,” Kúnlé said. “You wanted to see me?” Professor Babájídé glanced back and forth between Kúnlé and Wúràọlá. “You can tell him now, she’s his…they’re together,” Kúnlé’s mother said. “Maybe I should excuse myself.” Wúràọlá stood. The maid came into the room to clear the plates. “Bring some juice for Wúrà,” Kúnlé said to her. “Sit down, Wúrà.” Kúnlé’s mother turned to her husband. “Wúràọlá, ni now, why are you acting like this? This is Ọ̀túnba Mákinwá’s daughter.” Kúnlé’s father leaned back in his chair. “Hmmm. I know your father has high hopes for you, and I do too. You are not a common girl.” Wúràọlá willed herself to hold his gaze this time. His intimation was clear: her father’s goal for her did not include having sex with her boyfriend and trying to take a nap on his sofa after like a common girl. Professor Coker was telling her this. Professor Coker, whose wedding photos featured Kúnlé as the ringbearer. “What’s this about?” Professor Cordelia asked. “Wúrà, are you struggling in the hospital? House job can be hard, àbí? One day you’re a student and the next patients expect you to have all the answers.” “She’s doing well, she’s actually one of the better ones,” Professor Babájídé Coker said. “I’m glad to hear that, Wúrà, you’ve always been bright.” The maid returned with a carton of juice. Everyone was quiet until she poured some into a glass and left the room. “Anyway, Kúnlé, what I wanted to tell you.” “Yes sir.” “The party chair came for the church service, and we had a chance to talk before he left. He thinks the next election could be our chance. Their people are happy to field me, but I need to start preparing now and I want you to be involved.” “Congratulations sir,” Kúnlé said. “Well, let’s wait until the nomination is ours—so much can change quickly in politics.” Professor Cordelia squeezed her husband’s shoulder.


adorable way as we pass the more risqué products, the BDSM section, the blow-up dolls. Meanwhile, I let myself look everywhere, half keeping an eye out for anything we could use in our lessons, half because it’s just interesting. The best sex shops are open, inclusive spaces, and it took me far too long to enter one. I pluck a bottle of lube from a shelf. “Always good to have.” “Mm-hmm.” Finn nods toward another display. I can see him slowly starting to relax. “What are those for?” “Vibrating nipple clamps? It’s kind of in the name.” “Ah. I think I’ll have to work up to that.” He motions to a tube of warming lube. “I could get into something like this, though.” A jolt of sensation sparks low in my belly. “Yeah? Let’s get it.” He’s watching me, an interesting expression on his face. “You’re so comfortable with it,” he says, sounding almost impressed as he rakes a hand through his hair. “Talking about all these things. Being here.” “I guess part of it was school,” I say. “And the rest . . . I guess you could say that I practiced. I knew that if I couldn’t be comfortable with it, then there was no way I could tell someone else what I wanted.” I give him a sly smile. “It’s empowering, telling a partner what you want. And just because it’s comfortable doesn’t mean it can’t be hot, too.” “Oh, I absolutely know that now.” I had this thought yesterday, and today confirms it: we’ve become more open with each other. Against all odds, Finn and I might be turning out to be more than sexual partners or ghostwriter and author: we might be something close to friends. When we get to the shelf of vibrators, I spend a couple minutes browsing before picking up a clitoral massager not unlike one I have at home. “What about this?” “I am . . . looking respectfully.” “I was thinking we could use it together.” “And now I am looking very respectfully.” We make our way to the front with the vibrator, lube, and an array of condoms: flavored, ribbed, ultra-sensitive. The middle-aged woman at the cash register gives us a warm hello as she starts ringing things up, then drops her scanner as she makes eye contact with Finn. “Oh my god, Finn? Finn Walsh?” she asks in a lilting Southern accent. “I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me when you walked in, but it’s you, isn’t it?” Finn’s posture goes ramrod straight next to me. He glances to the door, as though debating how quickly he can make it there, then seems to realize there’s no chance at escape. He lifts a hand in a halfhearted wave. “Hi. Nice to meet you.” Her hands fly to her mouth. “Goodness, it is you! I’m Tamara—I’m the owner here, welcome! Anything I can help you find? Or”—she cranes her neck to see what I’m carrying—“looks like your girlfriend already picked out some of our bestsellers!” “Oh—she’s not—” “I’m not—”


unless he does, I can't imagine. Of course, Madame Olenska may still soften old Catherine, who's been the most inexorably opposed to her staying; and old Catherine could make her any allowance she chooses. But we all know that she hates parting with good money; and the rest of the family have no particular interest in keeping Madame Olenska here." Archer was burning with unavailing wrath: he was exactly in the state when a man is sure to do something stupid, knowing all the while that he is doing it. He saw that Mr. Jackson had been instantly struck by the fact that Madame Olenska's differences with her grandmother and her other relations were not known to him, and that the old gentleman had drawn his own conclusions as to the reasons for Archer's exclusion from the family councils. This fact warned Archer to go warily; but the insinuations about Beaufort made him reckless. He was mindful, however, if not of his own danger, at least of the fact that Mr. Jackson was under his mother's roof, and consequently his guest. Old New York scrupulously observed the etiquette of hospitality, and no discussion with a guest was ever allowed to degenerate into a disagreement. "Shall we go up and join my mother?" he suggested curtly, as Mr. Jackson's last cone of ashes dropped into the brass ashtray at his elbow. On the drive homeward May remained oddly silent; through the darkness, he still felt her enveloped in her menacing blush. What its menace meant he could not guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the fact that Madame Olenska's name had evoked it. They went upstairs, and he turned into the library. She usually followed him; but he heard her passing down the passage to her bedroom. "May!" he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a slight glance of surprise at his tone. "This lamp is smoking again; I should think the servants might see that it's kept properly trimmed," he grumbled nervously. "I'm so sorry: it shan't happen again," she answered, in the firm bright tone she had learned from her mother; and it exasperated Archer to feel that she was already beginning to humour him like a younger Mr. Welland. She bent over to lower the wick, and as the light struck up on her white shoulders and the clear curves of her face he thought: "How young she is! For what endless years this life will have to go on!" He felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding blood in his veins. "Look here," he said suddenly, "I may have to go to Washington for a few days--soon; next week perhaps." Her hand remained on the key of the lamp as she turned to him slowly. The heat from its flame had brought back a glow to her face, but it paled as she looked up. "On business?" she asked, in a tone which implied that there could be no other conceivable reason, and that she had put the question automatically,


her in these lights, a regret for his hasty judgement began to oppress him. Did he reject her eternally, or did he not? He could no longer say that he would always reject her, and not to say that was in spirit to accept her now. This growing fondness for her memory coincided in point of time with her residence at Flintcomb-Ash, but it was before she had felt herself at liberty to trouble him with a word about her circumstances or her feelings. He was greatly perplexed; and in his perplexity as to her motives in withholding intelligence he did not inquire. Thus her silence of docility was misinterpreted. How much it really said if he had understood!--that she adhered with literal exactness to orders which he had given and forgotten; that despite her natural fearlessness she asserted no rights, admitted his judgement to be in every respect the true one, and bent her head dumbly thereto. In the before-mentioned journey by mules through the interior of the country, another man rode beside him. Angel's companion was also an Englishman, bent on the same errand, though he came from another part of the island. They were both in a state of mental depression, and they spoke of home affairs. Confidence begat confidence. With that curious tendency evinced by men, more especially when in distant lands, to entrust to strangers details of their lives which they would on no account mention to friends, Angel admitted to this man as they rode along the sorrowful facts of his marriage. The stranger had sojourned in many more lands and among many more peoples than Angel; to his cosmopolitan mind such deviations from the social norm, so immense to domesticity, were no more than are the irregularities of vale and mountain-chain to the whole terrestrial curve. He viewed the matter in quite a different light from Angel; thought that what Tess had been was of no importance beside what she would be, and plainly told Clare that he was wrong in coming away from her. The next day they were drenched in a thunder-storm. Angel's companion was struck down with fever, and died by the week's end. Clare waited a few hours to bury him, and then went on his way. The cursory remarks of the large-minded stranger, of whom he knew absolutely nothing beyond a commonplace name, were sublimed by his death, and influenced Clare more than all the reasoned ethics of the philosophers. His own parochialism made him ashamed by its contrast. His inconsistencies rushed upon him in a flood. He had persistently elevated Hellenic Paganism at the expense of Christianity; yet in that civilization an illegal surrender was not certain disesteem. Surely then he might have regarded that abhorrence of the un-intact state, which he had inherited with the creed of mysticism, as at least open to correction when the result was due to treachery. A remorse struck into him. The words of Izz Huett, never quite stilled in his memory, came back to him. He had asked Izz if she loved


the end, I’m dissatisfied with everything I come up with, and think to myself that it’s just as well I won’t be invited to speak. I feel crushed beneath the weight of the knowledge that if I’d lost Mom at any other time, it would have been possible for me to be with her at the end; to attend her funeral; to witness and fully participate in all the customs we observe when someone we love dies. These rituals can still leave us feeling incomplete, of course, but they can also act as signposts, guiding us from one phase of mourning to another. When my father died, being at his funeral with my mother, seeing his casket lowered into the ground, telling stories and crying with others who loved him were all things that helped me to acknowledge the loss, talk about it with others, feel and begin to process and live with it. I had thought of these rites as universal hallmarks of grief, belonging to all who must say goodbye to loved ones. I had not realized that mourning in the known or expected way could also be a luxury, a privilege, one that might disappear in a moment. When I lose my mother, it’s without these familiar touchstones. I have to watch her funeral from my living room couch, squished between my husband and children, the same couch where we’d crowded around my phone for our last call with her. We’ve all dressed up a little, even though no one on the other end of the live feed can see us. I suppose I just cannot imagine attending my mother’s funeral, even remotely, in the same sweatpants I’ve been living in for weeks. I recognize the prayers, the songs we heard at my father’s funeral. I see some of the same faces, too, although they are harder to identify when masked. The cameras are positioned so that we always see her lying in the casket her friend Luke made for her, a twin of the one he made my father. She is nearly as pale as the white garment that drapes her from neck to toe, and there is an Orthodox cross and an icon of Saint Gabriel the Archangel in the casket with her. My twelve-year-old and I cry at the shock of seeing her face, so small and still, not my mother’s face at all. We listen as her priest speaks about what a strong, faithful, and beloved woman she was. He mentions that my mother died the day before what would have been my parents’ forty-seventh wedding anniversary—which means, he says, that they spent their anniversary together. May their memories be eternal. I look across the room, where my parents’ wedding photo sits on the piano, my young father in his powder-blue tuxedo, my younger mother with her white gown, lace cap, and an enormous bouquet of white daisies. There is a live feed from the cemetery as well, so we are able to see her burial and graveside service. But afterward there is no gathering


or high school whose records are readily available. In fact there is no evidence of his being born at all. “Well, shit,” I say, and Maryam the recorder’s clerk says: “Honey, it’s like listening at keyholes. You come down here, you’re never gonna find out anything good.” * * * — I call Musgrave. “Fuck time you think this is, Sounder?” “Sorry.” “No, you’re not.” “There’s no such person as Roddy Tebbit.” “Pretty sure he’s in a drawer in my office.” “When you get in there, run a full genetic sequence, please, and find out what his real name is.” “You rang me in the middle of the night to tell me what to do in the morning?” “Nope.” “…Jesus fuck, Sounder, you want me to do it now?” “Sorry.” “You’re not even a cop.” “Sorry.” “No, you’re not.” “No, I’m not.” “It’s a fake name?” “It’s a fake everything.” “And you want to know now?” I don’t say anything. “I’m getting dressed,” Musgrave says. “But when you die, I hope they let me cut you open.” * * * — I’m tired, the way you can only be tired if you have a hole in you that should not be there, and when the car pulls up and a voice says “at your disposal, Mr. Sounder,” I get in without really thinking about it. Then a man gets in next to me and I feel something hard and metallic dig in under my ribs, the muzzle finding an easy resting place right against the bone. The car pulls out into traffic and onto the expressway. “Ow,” I say, because the front sight is poking my putty lattice. It hurts, but it’s also amazing because it’s scratching the itch. It doesn’t count as scratching if someone puts a gun in your stomach. My torso twists before I can stop it, pressing back and forth against the barrel. “Aaaaahhhhhh thank you, that’s good.” “What the fuck is wrong with you?” the gunman says. “Are you some kind of idiot?” “Fuck you, too, buddy. You kidnap a guy, you can put the fuck up with his kinks. Otherwise go kidnap someone else and see what that gets you.” Mr. Zoegar twists briefly around in the driver’s seat. “Mr. Sounder, what are you doing?” I tell him about the putty and the itching. “There is an etiquette in this situation, Mr. Sounder. The gun is not a scratching post.” “I hear you, I really do. But did they ever use this stuff on you?” “Do you know in the first four years that it existed the makers did not trouble themselves to make any variations in colour? They just assumed everybody would be happy with the one for white people.” “So that’s a yes?” “Once. In Monrovia.” “And?” “After a week I all but ripped it out. Do not do that, by the way. It is satisfying but exquisitely painful.” “Maybe if you guys are going to torture me you could start with that? I swear to Christ I’ll tell you everything you want to


Notes on a Silencing (please read it!) shed light for me on institutional collusion. As I wrote, my student Rosemary Harp was also working on a boarding school novel (a brilliant one) that reminded me of the magic of a beloved space in the woods. The poet Kaveh Akbar gave a craft lecture that indirectly led me to the book’s closing images. The writer Omer Friedlander solved a Hebrew emergency. I’m grateful to the two dozen people who gave their names to characters in this book—something I offered in exchange for supporting an indie bookstore a few years back. They were all meant to be peripheral characters, but some of them came to life in unexpected ways, and I hope no one is horrified by the result. Names hold magic for me, and these ones inspired me in unexpected ways. This book was started at the Ragdale Foundation—and later, when COVID canceled further residencies, I was grateful for the generosity of Barbara Nagel, Catherine Cooper and Marshall Greenwald, Catherine Merritt and Jack Wuest, and Lika Lopez de Victoria for letting me house-sit and make my own retreats. Rachel DeWoskin, Gina Frangello, Thea Goodman, Dika Lam, Emily Grey Tedrowe, Zoe Zolbrod, Charles Finch, and Eli Finkel were fantastic early readers. Jon Freeman is no longer my first reader but he’s still my last, and also my emotional support human. My students and colleagues at StoryStudio Chicago, Northwestern University, and Sierra Nevada University have provided support and inspiration, especially as the world fell apart. An Illinois Artists Fund grant helped support me in the last year of writing. The hugest of thanks to my two editors on this book, Lindsey Schwoeri and Andrea Schultz, for a double ass-kicking and double support, and for editing under unusual circumstances—and to the whole ship full of Vikings: Brian Tart, Rebecca Marsh, Lindsay Prevette, Kate Stark, Allie Merola, Sheila Moody, Katie Hurley, Maddie Rohlin, Lucia Bernard, Elizabeth Yaffe, Christine Choi, Mary Stone, Rebecca Marsh, and Sara Leonard. Clarence Haynes gave the book a fantastically helpful authenticity read. Truckloads of gratitude to Nicole Aragi, Maya Solovej, and Kelsey Day. My assistant, Keaton Kustler, has kept my head screwed on. Over the past couple of strange years, I’ve felt the support of independent bookstores more than ever. If you’re reading this, please go buy yourself a present from one. You deserve it. About the Author Rebecca Makkai’s last novel, The Great Believers, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award; it was the winner of the ALA Carnegie Medal, the Stonewall Book Award, the Clark Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and it was chosen as one of the Ten Best Books of 2018 by The New York Times. Her other books are the novels The Borrower and The Hundred-Year House, and the collection Music for Wartime—four stories from which appeared in The Best American Short Stories. A 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, Rebecca is on the MFA faculties of the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe and Northwestern University, and is Artistic Director


tell, will you? It will be very heartless if you do." "I'll make up my mind on that point by to-morrow, Miss Catherine," I replied. "It requires some study; and so I'll leave you to your rest, and go think it over." I thought it over aloud, in my master's presence, walking straight from her room to his, and relating the whole story, with the exception of her conversations with her cousin, and any mention of Hareton. Mr. Lin- ton was alarmed and distressed, more than he would acknowledge to me. In the morning Catherine learned my betrayal of her confidence, and she learned also that her secret visits were to end. In vain she wept and writhed against the interdict, and implored her father to have pity on Linton. All she got to comfort her was a promise that he would write and give him leave to come to the Grange when he pleased, but explaining that he must no longer expect to see Catherine at Wuthering Heights. Perhaps, had he been aware of his nephew's disposition and state of health, he would have seen fit to withhold even that slight consolation. CHAPTER XXV. These things happened last winter, sir," said Mrs. Dean---"hardly more than a year ago. Last winter I did not think, at another twelve months' end, I should be amusing a stranger to the family with relating them! Yet who knows how long you'll be a stranger? You're too young to rest always contented, living by yourself, and I some way fancy no one could see Catherine Lin- ton and not love her. You smile; but why do you look so lively and interested when I talk about her? and why have you asked me to hang her picture over your fire- place? and why------" "Stop, my good friend!" I cried. "It may be very possible that I should love her, but would she love me? I doubt it too much to venture my tranquillity by run- ning into temptation. And then my home is not here. I'm of the busy world, and to its arms I must return. Go on. Was Catherine obedient to her father's com- mands?" "She was," continued the housekeeper. "Her affec- tion for him was still the chief sentiment in her heart; and he spoke without anger---he spoke in the deep ten- derness of one about to leave his treasure amid perils and foes, where his remembered words would be the only aid that he could bequeath to guide her. He said to me a few days afterwards,--- " 'I wish my nephew would write, Ellen, or call. Tell me sincerely what you think of him. Is he changed for the better, or is there a prospect of improvement as he grows a man?' " 'He's very delicate, sir,' I replied, 'and scarcely likely to reach manhood; but this I can say, he does not resemble his father. And if Miss Catherine had the mis- fortune to marry him, he would not be beyond her con- trol, unless she were extremely and foolishly


night only with the help of a can of energy drink that another house officer had given her. Kúnlé tapped the glass and motioned for her to open the door. She wound down the glass just enough for him to stick a finger inside the car. “You need to apologise for shouting,” she said. He grimaced. “Have you said you’re sorry for ignoring my calls?” “I was working when you called.” “You could have texted?” “Do you really know what doctors do when they’re on call?” “You’re so full of yourself.” “Okay. Please, remove your finger, let me wind up well.” “Wúrà, just open this door, abeg.” “Abeg” was not an apology. At least not in that tone, but it would have to do. She was too tired and hungry for drama. If they got over this and set out, she could eat soon. She let him in and braced herself, ready for an extended rant. Kúnlé said nothing before reversing in a swift motion that jolted her. “I thought we were taking your car.” She sat her chair up and fixed the seat belt. “Can we buy food? I’m hungry.” Kúnlé did not respond. “Can we stop at Captain Cook before going to your place? We could just get meat pie to start with? What do you think? Okay, play dumb. Just don’t ever talk to me like that again. I’m warning you now. Why were you shouting in front of everybody, because of what?” He slowed down as they approached the hospital gate. Somewhere between secondary school and university, whiny, sulky Kúnlé had become the sort of person who now wound down his window to greet the security guards, with such an abundance of Ẹ kú iṣẹ́, Major, and Well done, Officers, that he was passed through without being asked to open the boot for inspection. His manoeuvre collapsed the gap between aspirations and reality with two words, “Major,” “Officers.” The men and woman he had greeted had no title beyond security guard. They could not be further away from the military cadres that their beaming responses to Kúnlé’s flattery suggested they had once aspired to. Although they were employees of the hospital, there were rumours that their roles would soon be outsourced to private firms. She wasn’t sure if Kúnlé’s practice of endearing himself to strangers in this way was exploitative or benevolent. Perhaps as with many acts of generosity, it was both. Once they drove out of the hospital, she turned to stare at the stalls and houses that whizzed by until they all blurred into a dream. It was raining. She was in the middle of a highway, kneeling over a baby whose wails rose above the claps of thunder, listening for his heartbeat. Somewhere a grandfather clock was striking midnight. She could hear the roar of speeding trucks and tankers, the screech of tires on wet tarmac, the screams of a vulture that had perched on her left shoulder. She could not hear the baby’s heartbeat. Even when the highway emptied out and the rain stopped


full of plumbing that rattled and belched, noisier than the quiet upper floors, where the exhibits had been packed up and stored in preparation for the upcoming renovation. Their flashlight beams floated over exposed pipes and boxes stacked to the ceiling, odd bits and pieces of scaffolding leaning crookedly against them. At last Dawes led them into a room with a strange, musty smell. “What is all this?” Alex asked as Dawes ran her flashlight over shelves of jars full of cloudy liquid. “Pond water, hundreds of jars of it, from all over Connecticut, all from different years.” “What is the point of this exactly?” asked Turner. “I suppose … if you want to know exactly what was in the pond water in 1876, this is the place for you. The basements are full of stuff like this.” Dawes consulted a plan and then walked to a shelf on the left-hand side of the room. She counted up the rows from the bottom, then counted across the dusty jars themselves. She reached between them and rooted around in back. “If you try to make me drink that, I’m leaving,” Turner muttered. There was a loud clink. The shelf swung out and there, behind the dirty rows of jars, was a huge room with nothing in it but a massive rectangular table covered in multiple dust cloths. “It worked,” Dawes said with pleased surprise. She flicked a switch on the wall, but nothing happened. “I don’t think anyone’s been down here in a while.” “How did you even know this place existed?” Turner asked. “I’m responsible for maintaining the armory archive.” “And a room in the Peabody basement is part of the Lethe armory?” “Not exactly,” said Dawes, and even in the shadows, Alex could tell she was uncomfortable. “No one wants to claim this. We’re not even sure which society made it or if it’s the work of someone else entirely. There’s just an entry in the book for when it arrived and … its purpose.” Alex felt a chill settle into her. What were they about to see? She sent her mind searching for Grays in case something awful was about to happen, and braced herself as Dawes grabbed hold of one of the cloths. She gave a sharp pull, releasing a cloud of dust. “A model?” Turner asked, sounding almost disappointed. A model of New Haven. Alex recognized the shape of the green with its bisecting lines of protection and three pretty churches immediately. The rest was less familiar. She could identify some of the buildings, the general plan of the streets, but so much was missing. “It’s made out of stone,” Alex realized, running a finger over one of the street names, Chapel, engraved directly into the pavement. “Amethyst,” said Dawes, though it looked more white than purple to Alex’s eye. “That can’t be,” said Turner. “It’s one big slab, no lines, no cracks. You’re telling me this was carved from one piece of stone?” Dawes nodded, and Turner’s frown deepened. “That’s not possible. Let’s say someone could find


The gentlemen did approach; and when Mr. Wickham walked into the room, Elizabeth felt that she had neither been seeing him before, nor thinking of him since, with the smallest degree of unreasonable admiration. The officers of the ----shire were in general a very creditable, gentlemanlike set, and the best of them were of the present party; but Mr. Wickham was as far beyond them all in person, countenance, air, and walk, as _they_ were superior to the broad-faced stuffy uncle Philips, breathing port wine, who followed them into the room. Mr. Wickham was the happy man towards whom almost every female eye was turned, and Elizabeth was the happy woman by whom he finally seated himself; and the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into conversation, though it was only on its being a wet night, and on the probability of a rainy season, made her feel that the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker. With such rivals for the notice of the fair, as Mr. Wickham and the officers, Mr. Collins seemed likely to sink into insignificance; to the young ladies he certainly was nothing; but he had still at intervals a kind listener in Mrs. Philips, and was, by her watchfulness, most abundantly supplied with coffee and muffin. When the card tables were placed, he had an opportunity of obliging her in return, by sitting down to whist. ``I know little of the game, at present,'' said he, ``but I shall be glad to improve myself, for in my situation of life --'' Mrs. Philips was very thankful for his compliance, but could not wait for his reason. Mr. Wickham did not play at whist, and with ready delight was he received at the other table between Elizabeth and Lydia. At first there seemed danger of Lydia's engrossing him entirely for she was a most determined talker; but being likewise extremely fond of lottery tickets, she soon grew too much interested in the game, too eager in making bets and exclaiming after prizes, to have attention for any one in particular. Allowing for the common demands of the game, Mr. Wickham was therefore at leisure to talk to Elizabeth, and she was very willing to hear him, though what she chiefly wished to hear she could not hope to be told, the history of his acquaintance with Mr. Darcy. She dared not even mention that gentleman. Her curiosity however was unexpectedly relieved. Mr. Wickham began the subject himself. He inquired how far Netherfield was from Meryton; and, after receiving her answer, asked in an hesitating manner how long Mr. Darcy had been staying there. ``About a month,'' said Elizabeth; and then, unwilling to let the subject drop, added, ``He is a man of very large property in Derbyshire, I understand.'' ``Yes,'' replied Wickham; -- ``his estate there is a noble one. A clear ten thousand per annum. You could not have met with a person more capable of giving you certain information on that head than myself -- for


went a-slipping along, black and still, hundreds of yards out from shore. Every- thing was dead quiet, and it looked late, and SMELT late. You know what I mean -- I don't know the words to put it in. I took a good gap and a stretch, and was just going to unhitch and start when I heard a sound away over the water. I listened. Pretty soon I made it out. It was that dull kind of a regular sound that comes from oars working in rowlocks when it's a still night. I peeped out through the willow branches, and there it was -- a skiff, away across the water. I couldn't tell how many was in it. It kept a-coming, and when it was abreast of me I see there warn't but one man in it. Think's I, maybe it's pap, though I warn't expecting him. He dropped below me with the current, and by and by he came a-swinging up shore in the easy water, and he went by so close I could a reached out the gun and touched him. Well, it WAS pap, sure enough -- and sober, too, by the way he laid his oars. I didn't lose no time. The next minute I was a- spinning down stream soft but quick in the shade of the bank. I made two mile and a half, and then struck out a quarter of a mile or more towards the middle of the river, because pretty soon I would be passing the ferry landing, and people might see me and hail me. I got out amongst the driftwood, and then laid down in the bottom of the canoe and let her float. I laid there, and had a good rest and a smoke out of my pipe, looking away into the sky; not a cloud in it. The sky looks ever so deep when you lay down on your back in the moonshine; I never knowed it before. And how far a body can hear on the water such nights! I heard people talking at the ferry land- ing. I heard what they said, too -- every word of it. One man said it was getting towards the long days and the short nights now. T'other one said THIS warn't one of the short ones, he reckoned -- and then they laughed, and he said it over again, and they laughed again; then they waked up another fellow and told him, and laughed, but he didn't laugh; he ripped out something brisk, and said let him alone. The first fellow said he 'lowed to tell it to his old woman -- she would think it was pretty good; but he said that warn't nothing to some things he had said in his time. I heard one man say it was nearly three o'clock, and he hoped daylight wouldn't wait more than about a week longer. After that the talk got further and further away, and I couldn't make out the words any more; but I could hear the


keep as much together as they could;" and James was talked to, and given a charge to go very slow and wait for the other carriage. Isabella stept in after her father; John Knightley, forgetting that he did not belong to their party, stept in after his wife very naturally; so that Emma found, on being escorted and followed into the second carriage by Mr. Elton, that the door was to be lawfully shut on them, and that they were to have a tete-a-tete drive. It would not have been the awkwardness of a moment, it would have been rather a pleasure, previous to the suspicions of this very day; she could have talked to him of Harriet, and the three-quarters of a mile would have seemed but one. But now, she would rather it had not happened. She believed he had been drinking too much of Mr. Weston's good wine, and felt sure that he would want to be talking nonsense. To restrain him as much as might be, by her own manners, she was immediately preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of the weather and the night; but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they passed the sweep-gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her subject cut up--her hand seized--her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her: availing himself of the precious opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known, hoping--fearing--adoring--ready to die if she refused him; but flattering himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and unexampled passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short, very much resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible. It really was so. Without scruple--without apology-- without much apparent diffidence, Mr. Elton, the lover of Harriet, was professing himself her lover. She tried to stop him; but vainly; he would go on, and say it all. Angry as she was, the thought of the moment made her resolve to restrain herself when she did speak. She felt that half this folly must be drunkenness, and therefore could hope that it might belong only to the passing hour. Accordingly, with a mixture of the serious and the playful, which she hoped would best suit his half and half state, she replied, "I am very much astonished, Mr. Elton. This to me! you forget yourself-- you take me for my friend--any message to Miss Smith I shall be happy to deliver; but no more of this to me, if you please." "Miss Smith!--message to Miss Smith!--What could she possibly mean!"-- And he repeated her words with such assurance of accent, such boastful pretence of amazement, that she could not help replying with quickness, "Mr. Elton, this is the most extraordinary conduct! and I can account for it only in one way; you are not yourself, or you could not speak either to me, or of Harriet, in such a manner. Command yourself enough to say no more, and I will endeavour to forget it." But Mr. Elton had only drunk wine


"What do you disapprove of, Mr. Rivers?" I asked.     "You will not stay at Morton long; no, no!"     "Why? What is your reason for saying so?"     "I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises the maintenance of an even tenor in life."     "I am not ambitious."     "He started at the word "ambitious." He repeated, "No. What made you think of ambition? Who is ambitious? I know I am; but how did you find it out?"     "I was speaking of myself."     "Well, if you are not ambitious, you are " He paused.     "What?"     "I was going to say impassioned; but, perhaps, you would have misunderstood the word, and been displeased. I mean, that human affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you. I am sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labor wholly void of stimulus, any more than I can be content," he added, with emphasis, "to live here buried in morass, pent in with mountain my nature, that God gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralyzed made useless. You hear now how I contradict myself. I, who preached contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers of water in God's service I, his ordained minister, almost rave in my restlessness. Well, propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means."     He left the room. In this brief hour I had learned more of him than in the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.     Diana and Mary Rivers became more sad and silent as the day approached for leaving their brother and their home. They both tried to appear as usual, but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could not be entirely conquered or concealed. Diana intimated that this would be a different parting from any they had ever yet known. It would probably, as far as St. John was concerned, be a parting for years it might be a parting for life.     "He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves," she said; "natural affection and feelings more potent still. St. John looks quiet, Jane; but he hides a fever in his vitals. You would think him gentle, yet in some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe decision; certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it. It is right, noble, Christian, yet it breaks my heart." And the tears gushed to her fine eyes. Mary bent her head low over her work.     "We are now without father; we shall soon be without home and


throw, just here, no further light on it than may be offered by the mention of my final observation to Mrs. Grose. "His having lied and been impudent are, I confess, less engaging specimens than I had hoped to have from you of the outbreak in him of the little natural man. Still," I mused, "They must do, for they make me feel more than ever that I must watch." It made me blush, the next minute, to see in my friend's face how much more unreservedly she had forgiven him than her anecdote struck me as presenting to my own tenderness an occasion for doing. This came out when, at the schoolroom door, she quitted me. "Surely you don't accuse HIM--" "Of carrying on an intercourse that he conceals from me? Ah, remember that, until further evidence, I now accuse nobody." Then, before shutting her out to go, by another passage, to her own place, "I must just wait," I wound up. IX I waited and waited, and the days, as they elapsed, took something from my consternation. A very few of them, in fact, passing, in constant sight of my pupils, without a fresh incident, sufficed to give to grievous fancies and even to odious memories a kind of brush of the sponge. I have spoken of the surrender to their extraordinary childish grace as a thing I could actively cultivate, and it may be imagined if I neglected now to address myself to this source for whatever it would yield. Stranger than I can express, certainly, was the effort to struggle against my new lights; it would doubtless have been, however, a greater tension still had it not been so frequently successful. I used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought strange things about them; and the circumstances that these things only made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they WERE so immensely more interesting. Putting things at the worst, at all events, as in meditation I so often did, any clouding of their innocence could only be-- blameless and foredoomed as they were--a reason the more for taking risks. There were moments when, by an irresistible impulse, I found myself catching them up and pressing them to my heart. As soon as I had done so I used to say to myself: "What will they think of that? Doesn't it betray too much?" It would have been easy to get into a sad, wild tangle about how much I might betray; but the real account, I feel, of the hours of peace that I could still enjoy was that the immediate charm of my companions was a beguilement still effective even under the shadow of the possibility that it was studied. For if it occurred to me that I might occasionally excite suspicion by the little outbreaks of my sharper passion for them, so too I remember wondering if I mightn't see a queerness in the


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

she felt comfortable. Lore hadn’t realized just how tightly she’d held herself until the tension bled out, a drop at a time. Despite everything, this warehouse still felt like home, and gods she missed it. Being here filled a hollow in her chest she wasn’t aware of carving out. “You can have it.” Mari glanced toward the door. “Val should be here soon.” The hollow emptied again. Lore gnawed on her lip. “Will that be a problem?” “I don’t think so, to be honest.” Mari looked her in the eye, something softening in her face. Sadness and resignation shaped her mouth. “She was between a rock and a hard place, Lore. The Priest Exalted didn’t give her any choice. It was you, or the whole crew swung.” Behind her, Gabe stiffened. “Swung?” she repeated quietly. Val said it’d been a choice between her or the crew, but Lore thought that meant prison time, fines, maybe the Burnt Isles… “Death for us all,” Mari whispered. She chewed the corner of her lip. “He wanted you, mouse. Badly.” She thought of that first day after Horse, when Anton told her the Church had been watching since she was thirteen, since she first raised Cedric from the dead. Watching, keeping tabs, letting her live a life she thought was free until the rope finally pulled taut. They’d waited until she got older. Until her power over Mortem had matured, grown. Because it had—the stone man in the cart was proof. She wouldn’t have been capable of something like this weeks ago, as if her time in the Citadel had somehow strengthened her ability. Her time in the Citadel, and the slow march toward her twenty-fourth birthday. Instinctually, her eyes darted to Bastian, seeking some kind of strength from the Sun Prince. She didn’t realize Gabe had stepped away, far enough into the warehouse to be out of earshot, until he crossed behind Bastian, pacing like a caged animal. The Presque Mort looked back once, his gaze cutting between her and the other man, before turning away again. A knock at the door. The same pattern Lore had used. Mari went to open it. Val stood on the other side. “Sorry, love, I was…” Val trailed off, mouth staying open and no words coming out, eyes round as she stared at Lore. “Mouse,” she said, and then she rushed forward. Lore didn’t know what to expect. By the wall, Bastian looked ready for a fight—shoulders loose, fists curled. But Val threw her arms around Lore and hugged her tight. Of the hugs they’d shared, it was the longest. Though there’d only been three before this, all carefully cataloged in Lore’s mind, so maybe that wasn’t a fair metric—Mari was the softer one, the mother more likely to give comfort. Still, after the initial moment of being frozen in shock, Lore returned the embrace just as tightly, her anger forgotten in the familiar scent of Val’s hair, the familiar rasp of her shirt against her cheek. “Oh, mouse.” Val’s voice was choked and hoarse. “I’m so glad


honor or pride. "Let everyone see him as he is." "No!" Viserys screamed. He turned to Ser Jorah, pleading in the Common Tongue with words the horsemen would not understand. "Hit her, Mormont. Hurt her. Your king commands it. Kill these Dothraki dogs and teach her." The exile knight looked from Dany to her brother; she barefoot, with dirt between her toes and oil in her hair, he with his silks and steel. Dany could see the decision on his face. "He shall walk, Khaleesi," he said. He took her brother's horse in hand while Dany remounted her silver. Viserys gaped at him, and sat down in the dirt. He kept his silence, but he would not move, and his eyes were full of poison as they rode away. Soon he was lost in the tall grass. When they could not see him anymore, Dany grew afraid. "Will he find his way back?" she asked Ser Jorah as they rode. "Even a man as blind as your brother should be able to follow our trail," he replied. "He is proud. He may be too shamed to come back." Jorah laughed. "Where else should he go? If he cannot find the khalasar, the khalasar will most surely find him. It is hard to drown in the Dothraki sea, child." Dany saw the truth of that. The khalasar was like a city on the march, but it did not march blindly. Always scouts ranged far ahead of the main column, alert for any sign of game or prey or enemies, while outriders guarded their flanks. They missed nothing, not here, in this land, the place where they had come from. These plains were a part of them . . . and of her, now. "I hit him," she said, wonder in her voice. Now that it was over, it seemed like some strange dream that she had dreamed. "Ser Jorah, do you think . . . he'll be so angry when he gets back She shivered. "I woke the dragon, didn't IT' 206 GEORGE R.R. MARTIN Ser Jorah snorted. "Can you wake the dead, girl? Your brother Rhaegar was the last dragon, and he died on the Trident. Viserys is less than the shadow of a snake." His blunt words startled her. It seemed as though all the things she had always believed were suddenly called into question. "You . . . you swore him your sword . . ." "That I did, girl," Ser Jorah said. "And if your brother is the shadow of a snake, what does that make his servants?" His voice was bitter. "He is still the true king. He is . . ." Jorah pulled up his horse and looked at her. "Truth now. Would you want to see Viserys sit a throne?" Dany thought about that. "He would not be a very good king, would he?" "There have been worse . . . but not many." The knight gave his heels to his mount and started off again. Dany rode close beside him. "Still," she said, "the common


called them Naugrim, the Stunted People, and Gonnhirrim, Masters of Stone. Far to the east were the most ancient dwellings of the Naugrim, but they had delved for themselves great halls and mansions, after the manner of their kind, in the eastern side of Ered Luin; and those cities were named in their own tongue Gabilgathol and Tumunzahar. To the north of the great height of Mount Dolmed was Gabilgathol, which the Elves interpreted in their tongue Belegost, that is Mickleburg; and southward was delved Tumunzahar, by the Elves named Nogrod, the Hollowbold. Greatest of all the mansions of the Dwarves was Khazd-dm, the Dwarrowdelf, Hadhodrond in the Elvish tongue, that was afterwards in the days of its darkness called Moria; but it was far off in the Mountains of Mist beyond the wide leagues of Eriador, and to the Eldar came but as a name and a rumour from the words of the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains. From Nogrod and Belegost the Naugrim came forth into Beleriand; and the Elves were filled with amazement, for they had believed themselves to be the only living things in Middle-earth that spoke with words or wrought with hands, and that all others were but birds and beasts. But they could understand no word of the tongue of the Naugrim, which to their ears was cumbrous and unlovely; and few ever of the Eldar have achieved the mastery of it But the Dwarves were swift to learn, and indeed were more willing to learn the Elventongue than to teach their own to those of alien race. Few of the Eldar went ever to Nogrod and Belegost, save El of Nan Elmoth and Maeglin his son; but the Dwarves trafficked into Beleriand, and they made a great road that passed under the shoulders of Mount Dolmed and followed the course of the River Ascar, crossing Gelion at Sarn Athrad, the Ford of Stones, where battle after befell. Ever cool was the friendship between the Naugrim and the Eldar, though much profit they had one of the other; but at that time those griefs that lay between them had not yet come to pass, and King Thingol welcomed them. But the Naugrim gave their friendship more readily to the Noldor in after days than to any others of Elves and Men, because of their love and reverence for Aul; and the gems of the Noldor they praised above all other wealth. In the darkness of Arda already the Dwarves wrought great works, for even from the first days of their Fathers they had marvellous skill with metals and with stone; but in that ancient time iron and copper they loved to work, rather than silver or gold. Now Melian had much foresight, after the manner of the Maiar; and when the second age of the captivity of Melkor had passed, she counselled Thingol that the Peace of Arda would not last for ever. He took thought therefore how he should make for himself a kingly dwelling, and a place that should be strong, if evil were


made me look up. A dog old Carlo, Mr. Rivers' pointer, as I saw in a moment was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. John himself leaned upon it with folded arms, his brow knit, his gaze, grave almost to displeasure, fixed on me. I asked him to come in.     "No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters left for you. I think it contains a color-box, pencils and paper."     I approached, to take it: a welcome gift it was. He examined my face, I thought, with austerity, as I came near; the traces of tears were doubtless very visible upon it.     "Have you found your first day's work harder than you expected?" he asked.     "Oh, no! On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my scholars very well."     "But perhaps your accommodations your cottage your furniture have disappointed your expectations? They are, in truth, scanty enough; but "     I interrupted: "My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and commodious. All I see has made me thankful, not despondent. I am not absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a carpet, a sofa and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had nothing I was an outcast, a begger, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance, a home, a business. I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of my friends; the bounty of my lot. I do not repine."     "But you feel solitude an oppression? The little house there behind you is dark and empty."     "I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much less to grow impatient under one of loneliness."     "Very well: I hope you feel the content you express; at any rate, your good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the vacillating fears of Lot's wife. What you had left before I saw you, of course, I do not know; but I counsel you to resist, firmly, every temptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present career steadily, for some months at least."     "It is what I mean to do," I answered.     St. John continued: "It is hard work to control the workings of inclination, and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done I know from experience. God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get when our will strains after a path we may not follow we need neither starve from inanition nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden fruit it longed to taste and perhaps