“What if I wish for impossible things?” “Then you’re doing it right. It always seems impossible when you first start.” Dad cocked his head. “You are very smart.” Vic sighed. “For a human?” “No. There is no qualifier. You are very smart.” He didn’t move when Vic threw himself at him, hugging him as hard as he could. Dad’s arms stayed at his sides. That was fine. That was okay. It was enough, Vic told himself as he buried his face in his father’s beard. He held on for dear life. A beat. Two. Three. And then Dad hugged him back. “I like this,” he said quietly. “I like this quite a lot. Can we do it again?” Vic trembled. “Anytime you want.” One night, as the first blossoms were beginning to peek through the crusts of snow, Vic went to a room on the Terrible Dogfish. He kept the lights off as he pulled the sheet covering Hap, tugging it down to his chest. It was the first thing he’d fixed, knowing it was easier than a heart. The skin that had torn when Hap’s heart exploded had been too shredded to repair, the panel covering his power cavity broken. He’d replaced them with wood, knowing Hap would like it when he awoke. If he awoke. He climbed onto the table next to Hap, curling against him, making himself as small as he could. Hap was cold, skin like ice, but Vic didn’t mind. He pulled the sheet back over them and lay his head on Hap’s shoulder. “I walked through the woods today,” he whispered. “And I turned to point out a bird in the trees, but you weren’t there.” Hap didn’t reply. Vic stayed there until morning when the winter sun began rising as it always did. The snows were mostly gone when he finished the first heart. Born of desperation and rage, it was harsher than the previous heart, the lines sharper, more angled, the base a pointed tip capable of slicing skin. But that made sense: its creator was not the same as he’d been before. He was angrier. Sadder. Braver. Five gears: two bigger, three smaller. One for Dad. One for Vic. And Nurse Ratched and Rambo and Hap. And at its center, a tiny wooden hatch that opened to reveal a smooth white strip that waited for a drop of life. He did not tell the others right away, wanting to be sure before he let himself hope. As Vic returned from the forest on a cool spring afternoon two days after he finished the heart, he came across a sight he’d never seen before. A tree—an old, tall oak—stood in the woods, limbs shaggy with burgeoning leaves. But it was the moving colorful trunk that caught Vic’s gaze. It took him a moment to realize it wasn’t the trunk that was moving, but the dozens of butterflies upon it. Monarchs, gold and orange and black, their wings shivering. He showed them the heart. Nurse Ratched said, “I knew you could do it.” “Will it


nearly as bad as it could have been - the king of hearts and an ace, the ace of spades. It squinted up at him like a black widow spider. 'A card.' He still kept all emotion out of his voice. Le Chiffre faced his own two cards. He had a queen and a black five. He looked at Bond and pressed out another card with a wide forefinger. The table was absolutely silent. He faced it and flicked it away. The croupier lifted it delicately with his spatula and slipped it over to Bond. It was a good card, the five of hearts, but to Bond it was a difficult fingerprint in dried blood. He now had a count of six and Le Chiffre a count of five, but the banker having a five and giving a five, would and must draw another card and try and improve with a one, two, three or four. Drawing any other card he would be defeated. The odds were on Bond's side, but now it was Le Chiffre who looked across into Bond's eyes and hardly glanced at the card as he flicked it face upwards on the table. It was, unnecessarily, the best, a four, giving the bank a count of nine. He had won, almost slowing up. Bond was beaten and cleaned out. CHAPTER 12 - THE DEADLY TUBE Bond sat silent, frozen with defeat. He opened his wide black case and took out a cigarette. He snapped open the tiny jaws of the Ronson and lit the cigarette and put the lighter back on the table. He took a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it between his teeth with a faint hiss. What now? Back to the hotel and bed, avoiding the commiserating eyes of Mathis and Leiter and Vesper. Back to the telephone call to London, and then tomorrow the plane home, the taxi up to Regent's Park, the walk up the stairs and along the corridor, and M's cold face across the table, his forced sympathy, his 'better luck next time' and, of course, there couldn't be one, not another chance like this. He looked round the table and up at the spectators. Few were looking at him. They were waiting while the croupier counted the money and piled up the chips in a neat stack in front of the banker, waiting to see if anyone would conceivably challenge this huge bank of thirty-two million Francs, this wonderful run of banker's luck. Leiter had vanished, not wishing to look Bond in the eye after the knock-out, he supposed. Yet Vesper looked curiously unmoved, she gave him a smile of encouragement. But then, Bond reflected, she knew nothing of the game. Had no notion, probably, of the bitterness of his defeat. The huissier was coming towards Bond inside the rail. He stopped beside him. Bent over him. Placed a squat envelope beside Bond on the table. It was as thick as a dictionary. Said something about the caisse. Moved away again. Bond's heart thumped. He took the heavy anonymous


me, in the beginning to confuse, and in the end to augment, my affliction, it is possible (though I think not probable), that I might have fallen at once into this condition. As it was, an interval occurred before I fully knew my own distress; an interval, in which I even supposed that its sharpest pangs were past; and when my mind could soothe itself by resting on all that was most innocent and beautiful, in the tender story that was closed for ever. When it was first proposed that I should go abroad, or how it came to be agreed among us that I was to seek the restoration of my peace in change and travel, I do not, even now, distinctly know. The spirit of Agnes so pervaded all we thought, and said, and did, in that time of sorrow, that I assume I may refer the project to her influence. But her influence was so quiet that I know no more. And now, indeed, I began to think that in my old association of her with the stained-glass window in the church, a prophetic foreshadowing of what she would be to me, in the calamity that was to happen in the fullness of time, had found a way into my mind. In all that sorrow, from the moment, never to be forgotten, when she stood before me with her upraised hand, she was like a sacred presence in my lonely house. When the Angel of Death alighted there, my child-wife fell asleep - they told me so when I could bear to hear it - on her bosom, with a smile. From my swoon, I first awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate tears, her words of hope and peace, her gentle face bending down as from a purer region nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart, and softening its pain. Let me go on. I was to go abroad. That seemed to have been determined among us from the first. The ground now covering all that could perish of my departed wife, I waited only for what Mr. Micawber called the 'final pulverization of Heep'; and for the departure of the emigrants. At the request of Traddles, most affectionate and devoted of friends in my trouble, we returned to Canterbury: I mean my aunt, Agnes, and I. We proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber's house; where, and at Mr. Wickfield's, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive meeting. When poor Mrs. Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes, she was sensibly affected. There was a great deal of good in Mrs. Micawber's heart, which had not been dunned out of it in all those many years. 'Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber,' was my aunt's first salutation after we were seated. 'Pray, have you thought about that emigration proposal of mine?' 'My dear madam,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'perhaps I cannot better express the conclusion at which Mrs. Micawber, your humble servant, and I may add our children, have jointly and severally arrived, than by borrowing


Brad’s expression is front and center in my mind, looking like someone just yanked out his guts. That someone being me. Oh, God. It was me. My hands shake. My tongue feels sharp in my mouth. I take a deep breath and squeeze my prickly eyes shut. The sky is too bright a gray today, even with all these old, thick branches obscuring my view. The forest smells like fresh, green frost and slowly rotting bark. I press my palms to my thighs and bend forward and refuse to cry. I lied to Brad’s face just to save my own feelings. I didn’t even let him speak because— Because I’m scared of everything, I’m scared of loving him, I’m scared of being hurt— And so I hurt him instead. Is that the kind of love I have to give? My chest burns. I messed up. I’m messed up. I took my worst fear and did it to him. Take it back. I run. BRAD After approximately ten seconds of self-righteous storming I realize I’m being a dick. Whatever happened to friendship first? Celine never promised to want me back. In fact, she’s always said the exact opposite, but here I am throwing a hissy fit because my stupid heart is broken. Ugh, I’m that guy, aren’t I? Still, this hurts. It hurts like there’s a hole in me. I drag my glasses off my face and swipe angrily at my cheeks. Tears feel even hotter when it’s freezing. For God’s sake, who falls in love with their best friend? Doesn’t everyone know that’s a bad idea? Especially when said best friend is still working through 27,000 issues and has goals that have nothing to do with you and— Well, I guess everyone was right: I love Celine. I love her so much, I could throw up right now. Thank God I didn’t tell her. I would’ve told her, and then what? Did I really think I could just, what, teach her to want a relationship by sticking my tongue down her throat? How arrogant is that? Later, when I’m not literally splintering in two, I’m positive my brain will present me with a sixty-five-page annotated essay on what a douche bag I am. She didn’t want to change the rules; I did. I put down her bag and grasp my forearms, let my fingers dig into my flesh, but it doesn’t stop all the pieces of me drifting apart. Shit. There’s a rapid crunch sound coming up behind me, like fast footsteps against the stone, and my stomach drops. I can’t talk to anyone right now. “Brad?” I certainly can’t talk to Celine. She looks so pretty fresh out of the shower with no makeup on, those fine folds in her eyelids like silk, the texture of her skin— Bradley Thomas Graeme, I am begging you to get a grip right now. I start to rush down the path, which is hardly my finest moment, but one thing I’m rarely accused of is maturity. Celine must round the corner fast enough to


resolved to clouds, high and dim; the gleam was such as the moon imparts to vapors she is about to sever. I watched her come watched with the strangest anticipation, as though some word of doom were to be written on her disk. She broke forth as never moon yet burst from cloud: a hand first penetrated the sable folds and waved them away; then not a moon, but a white human form, shone in the azure, inclining a glorious brow earthward. It gazed and gazed on me. It spoke to my spirit; immeasurably distant was the tone, yet so near it whispered in my heart. "My daughter, flee temptation!"     "Mother, I will."     So I answered after I had waked from the trance-like dream. It was yet night, but July nights are short; soon after midnight, dawn comes. "It cannot be too early to commence the task I have to fulfill," thought I. I rose: I was dressed; for I had taken off nothing but my shoes. I knew where to find in my drawers some linen, a locket, a ring. In seeking these articles, I encountered the beads of a pearl necklace Mr. Rochester had forced me to accept a few days ago. I left that; it was not mine; it was the visionary bride's, who had melted in air. The other articles I had made up in a parcel; my purse, containing twenty shillings (it was all I had), I put in my pocket. I tied on my straw bonnet, pinned my shawl, took the parcel and my slippers, which I would not put on yet, and stole from my room.     "Farewell, kind Mrs. Fairfax!" I whispered, as I glided past her door. "Farewell, my darling Adle!" I said, as I glanced toward the nursery. No thought could be admitted of entering to embrace her. I had to deceive a fine ear; for aught I knew, it might now be listening.     I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without a pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there; the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven a temporary heaven in this room for me, if I chose. I had but to go in and to say, "Mr. Rochester, I will love you and live with you through life till death," and a fount of rapture would spring to my lips. I thought of this.     That kind master, who could not sleep now, was waiting with impatience for day. He would send for me in the morning; I should be gone. He would have me sought for vainly. He would feel himself forsaken; his love rejected. He would suffer; perhaps grow desperate. I thought of this too. My hand moved toward the lock: I caught it back, and glided on.


avoiding the Robesons. Sophomore year I’d stayed in the dorms and hung out with Fran, and that was our plan again junior year. Just us and a handful of international kids. Even the financial aid students, even the ones who’d never skied, would, if popular enough, tag along to someone’s place in Vermont just for the hot tubs and drinking and sex. (At least, this was the picture painted by stories I heard; in retrospect I imagine it was mostly hungover cartoon watching, juvenile conversation and heartbreak, logistics around the ordering of pizza.) That week in 1994, Fran and I were thrilled to have the dorm VCR essentially to ourselves. We watched The Shining and Wait Until Dark and part of the box set of Twin Peaks—anything to help us channel the vibe of the nearly empty campus. I’d just started to appreciate film, and the Hoffnungs’ movie collection was a treasure trove. One night, we broke the horror-and-suspense streak to watch the Disney Robin Hood, and decided, halfway through, to paint our nails. I went back to my room for polish and when I opened the door, Thalia was on her bed, arm flung over her eyes, Granby duffel on the floor spilling clothes. She sat up quickly and said, “That’s why the door was unlocked. I forgot you were here.” Her eyes were ringed with pink; her nose was red. I said, “Are you sick?” It was only Thursday, an illogical time to return. School didn’t start till Tuesday. She stood, started tossing clothes from her bag into her dresser. “Let’s just say that Robbie Serenho is a little bitch.” She and Robbie had been dating since November—happily, I thought. She pointed at me and squinted. “Don’t ever date Robbie Serenho. He’s an angry little sexist bitch.” She chucked Hamlet from the bag to her desk. As I said, I’d rarely heard Thalia swear, which is why I remember her words so clearly. That and the absurdity of the idea that I’d ever date Robbie, or he’d ever date me. I knew better than to ask what he’d done. I wasn’t a confidante, wasn’t privy to this group’s drama. But my silence kept her talking. She said, “He can flirt with whoever he wants, apparently. I go on a walk with one person and it’s, like, nuclear war. He’s an alcoholic, I swear to God. He passes out at nine p.m., and I’m not allowed to talk to anyone else? I’m supposed to, what, hang out with his sleeping body? Clean up his barf?” “Wow,” I said. I was still near the doorway. “That sucks.” She stopped unpacking, stared as if she’d just noticed me. “What do you mean, that sucks?” “I mean—it sounds bad.” She said, “Oh, thanks a lot. Thanks for your vote of confidence.” I told her I’d see her later—maybe I apologized, too—grabbed a handful of nail polishes from my dresser, ran back to the common room. I told Fran what had happened and asked if I’d done something wrong. She agreed I hadn’t. When I


could be allowed to answer exam questions with their voices and not in writing? A world where they would not be labelled stupid and taunted when they needed more time than their classmates to respond to a question that involved reading something from the blackboard, a textbook, their own notebooks? There were moments when she wondered if she should have had children. For the first few years of Ẹniọlá’s education, she made her husband read his schoolwork to him every day, sure that whether her prayers had been answered or not, her son would understand what was read to him. Most of the things her own teachers said when she was a student had been easy enough to understand and remember. Even when his report cards showed that he was getting average scores on his tests and exams, she did not believe her son was not struggling until he spent a Saturday reading The Queen Primer out loud from cover to cover. Only when her husband nodded in approval after Ẹniọlá shut the book did she believe that he had been spared. She was more relaxed with Bùsọ́lá. That one knew her ABCs by heart before she started nursery school and from her first term managed always to be among the top three in her class. In primary two, she had won prizes in social studies, mathematics and English. It used to make Ìyá Ẹniọlá smile in the middle of her chores, this gift of children who learnt without pain and would not suffer the humiliation she had experienced from her teachers and peers. That joy was long gone now. A decade before she even conceived them, she had been making decisions to protect her children from pain. And yet they still suffered. She had been whipped for her low scores. They were being whipped for her failure to pay their school fees. Her brothers insisted that this was all her husband’s failure, and she should tell him so as often as she could. She swung her legs off the bed and spoke with her back to her husband. “Bàbá Ẹniọlá, I want to visit my eldest brother this afternoon. I think we should ask him to lend us some money.” Two years ago, the same suggestion had resulted in an argument that lasted a whole week. Now she waited for the bedsprings to creak as he sat up, for his voice to rise or tremble. She wanted him to be angry, hurt. Something. She stood and grabbed a broom. She would talk to him again once she was done sweeping, drag him out of bed if that was what it took for him to answer her questions. Maybe it was time to try the methods her brothers had suggested? She had just stood up her children’s mattresses so she could sweep beneath them when Ẹniọlá came in and the room became fragrant with the smell of àkàrà. Her husband sat up in bed as Ẹniọlá took the broom from her. “Should I bring you àkàrà?” she asked her husband. He shook


so tweets. I wouldn’t be able to ignore this much longer. I texted Lance and told him I’d explain later. My stomach was a mess. It was time to get to class, time to talk to these kids like I had any idea how the world worked. 23 Since I’m relating what happened those two weeks at Granby pretty much in order, I’m going to tell you something now that I didn’t learn till much later. That morning—as close as I can tell, right around the time I was dropping my plate in the coffee shop’s dish bin—Omar Evans, fifty miles away at the New Hampshire State Prison for Men, was stabbed in the side by a fellow inmate with a four-inch shard of broken glass. It was most likely a case of mistaken identity; Omar didn’t know the man who did it. The glass entered below his right ribs, and as I walked back up the hill to campus worrying about myself and Jerome and griping about the cold, Omar was taken by prison ambulance—meaning two inmates dispatched with a gurney—to the infirmary. Around the time I opened the doors to Quincy and felt the blast of the radiator heat, they were examining him visually, probing the wound with instruments. They did no scan to check for organ laceration, no X-ray to check for remaining glass. They cleaned out the cut, sutured him, gave him a tetanus shot and a topical antibiotic and not enough gauze. They told him he’d be allowed 600 milligrams of ibuprofen every eight hours. Sometime late that morning, as we sat in class discussing him like a character in a movie, he tried to sit up in his infirmary bed and passed out from the pain. 24 In class that day, purple-haired Lola announced, “My uncle says he knows you.” “Yeah?” “He was your year. His name is Mike Stiles.” “Your uncle is Mike Stiles?” I wondered if Lola had looked through the 1995 yearbook, found the hottest guy there, and was messing with me. “He’s my mom’s little brother.” They didn’t appear to be joking. I said, “No way.” “He said you were cool but scary.” “Scary! I mean—I wore a lot of black, I guess.” “Anyways, he says hi.” I wondered what was happening to my face. It felt hot. “What’s he up to now?” I asked, although I already knew from the internet—the same google spree that had led me to your Providence school that first time—that he was a professor at the University of Connecticut, specializing in US foreign relations, and that he hadn’t even had the courtesy to grow a dad bod. Mike hadn’t stood out academically at Granby; either he’d been hiding it, or something clicked in college. Until he joined Camelot, we’d all assumed his brain was made of snow. He came back from senior Thanksgiving in a full-leg cast, femur shattered in a bike accident, and chose to do the winter musical rather than endure the indignity of PE. It turned out he could sing and act; he


a grandmother of seven. Whenever she comes to town we meet and laugh about old times. We don’t talk about the bad ones. We don’t talk about my sister. Yet, for me, Judy’s ghost is everywhere. After all, I live in the house where we grew up together. I keep her photo on my mantel. She would be fifty-eight years old, and right here by my side, if she were still alive. The theater is filled with former Rockettes. You can spot them by their regal bearing and loose-limbed walks. Bunny looks vibrant in a slinky, sparkly gown. “Can you believe it?” says Bunny. “It’s amazing what a sisterhood this is.” “We share an experience that no one else will understand.” “Do you know I still dream about being in a kick line? Every so often, there I am, onstage, as if it was yesterday. Then I wake up with creaky joints.” “As long as you don’t kick out in your dreams, you might as well enjoy them,” I assure her. The lights go down and we take our seats. The organists stop playing, take their bows, and the orchestra rises from below the stage. As the show begins, all focus turns to the marvelous, leggy dancers onstage, who are even better than we were. The choreography is sharper, tighter, and more efficient. I straighten up in my seat, watching them. Shoulders back, chin slightly lifted. I remember it well. What happened in the fall and winter of 1956 was just one story, part of the rough-and-tumble city of New York, crammed with both love and cruelty. And quite a few gray areas, where people made terrible decisions that aren’t easily summed up in a historical account of the times. People like my father. The events coordinator for the Rockettes organization, the same Ms. Burris who’d hounded me to attend, emerges from the wings as a podium is wheeled out. She makes a lovely speech about Bunny’s role in keeping all the Rockettes connected with each other, long after they’ve left Radio City, and when Bunny is called to the stage, she practically floats up the steps, gliding across the floor like we did in the old days and smiling just as Russell told us to. I clap hard and long, happy for my friend. After, Ms. Burris talks about Russell, who died two years ago, and his legacy. I brace myself as she segues into the “dark times” of Radio City’s history, when a madman planted bombs in this very theater. But Piper was right—she names Judy as well as the others who were injured—before asking for a moment of silence. Nothing tawdry. I needn’t have worried. When it’s over, she lifts her head and says she also wants to present an award to “a special Rockette, one who helped catch the Big Apple Bomber back in 1956.” I look around, wondering what on earth she’s talking about. This isn’t in the program. She speaks about the night of the madman’s capture, when one Rockette sacrificed everything to bring him to


It seemed to go from the silver point of the stick up the wooden handle and tickled her hands. She’d felt sick in the car, almost faint, but now she was wildly alert. The encounter with Ewers had sharpened her senses. This is how he felt, she thought, when he cast his spells and wove his complex conjurations. Air, earth, water, life, the opener. Her movements were elegant. Both prints were playing in smooth synchronized motion; the dialogue echoed around the room. She paid little heed to it, or to the cultists who chanted in unison. The runes held her attention. Then she paused, breathing in slowly. Tristán’s voice had started playing. He was reciting Ewers’s lines. She saw Ewers on the screen, with his gleaming, treacherous eyes, and turned her head, seeking Tristán. He was staring at her, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she looked at his familiar face, those mismatched eyes, one narrower, placed a fraction higher than the other, and the scar from the accident she couldn’t see in the dark but that she knew was there. The sight of his face, the sound of his voice, jolted her back to the reality of the ballroom, of the night thick with the scent of magic. She drew the sixth rune, but conjured fire instead, wishing for it, willing it forward. Ordering flames and heat to manifest. They did. Fire tore through the screen, like a mirror that cracked, tracing a spidery line of golds and reds. There was power in death, in blood, as Ewers had said. Power that lingered and could be re-formed, directed, and she took that feeling of might and hurled it at the screen. She clamped her hands tight around the stick, expecting a reprisal, and within seconds the attack came. Two men stepped forward, their hands wrapped around leashes, charging forward with their dogs. When a dog lunged at her, she hit it hard. The tip of the stick sunk into the dog’s skin as if it were made of tar, and the animal turned its head, viciously snapping at the wood. The other dog went for Montserrat’s leg, fangs sinking into her thin, atrophied ankle. The pain was tremendous; the fangs were sharp even if the dog was not a real animal, but a dreadful mix of magic and illusions. Her eyes watered, and she opened her mouth, but she recalled Clarimonde’s living room. Reflect, she thought. Not outrun. At Clarimonde’s house she’d had charcoal to draw with, and here she had nothing. No, not quite. One dog savaged the wooden stick, chomping at it, and she kicked the other dog away, though the motion ruined her balance. When she fell back on the floor she still had a free hand, and her fingers glided quickly in the air, tracing a rune. Fire, she thought again, as she’d thought about it only seconds before, setting the screen ablaze. Almost immediately the two dog handlers burst into flames, crowned in fire, and whirled around in shock. The dogs evaporated while the


by Miss Betsey, then walking to and fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before he could make his escape. That there were now occasional sounds of feet and voices overhead which he inferred the cotton did not exclude, from the circumstance of his evidently being clutched by the lady as a victim on whom to expend her superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest. That, marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him, rumpled his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if she confounded them with her own, and otherwise tousled and maltreated him. This was in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him at half past twelve o'clock, soon after his release, and affirmed that he was then as red as I was. The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a time, if at any time. He sidled into the parlour as soon as he was at liberty, and said to my aunt in his meekest manner: 'Well, ma'am, I am happy to congratulate you.' 'What upon?' said my aunt, sharply. Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my aunt's manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little smile, to mollify her. 'Mercy on the man, what's he doing!' cried my aunt, impatiently. 'Can't he speak?' 'Be calm, my dear ma'am,' said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents. 'There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma'am. Be calm.' It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn't shake him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She only shook her own head at him, but in a way that made him quail. 'Well, ma'am,' resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, 'I am happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma'am, and well over.' During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly. 'How is she?' said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still tied on one of them. 'Well, ma'am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,' returned Mr. Chillip. 'Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother to be, under these melancholy domestic circumstances. There cannot be any objection to your seeing her presently, ma'am. It may do her good.' 'And SHE. How is SHE?' said my aunt, sharply. Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at my aunt like an amiable bird. 'The baby,' said my aunt. 'How is she?' 'Ma'am,' returned Mr. Chillip, 'I apprehended you had known. It's a boy.' My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip's head with it, put it on bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented fairy; or like one


High above us were thirty-six oval colonnade domes, each handcrafted stained glass … Nineteenth-century reproductions utilizing the age-old process of heating mixed potash and sand to over one thousand six hundred and fifty degrees Celsius and then infusing it with various metallic oxide powders to create the vibrant colors above us. The hanging chandeliers were all Waterford … Each crystal had a 40 percent lead content, and there were seventy-five individual vintage incandescent lights per fixture. The vessel’s interior, with her paneled mahogany bulkheads, vintage oil portraits, and gilded age opulence, was like none other, especially since she’d been reappropriated, then recommissioned, by Empress Shawlee due to ever-increasing war demands—those brought about by strategic advances coming from both the Varapin and Grish. Now this would-be starliner was also a fierce military warship. We’d reached the bank of GravLifts. The left set of doors slid open. We both entered the lift. As with the rest of the ship, the car’s interior consisted of polished brass hardware, rich mahogany paneling, and crystal wall sconces. But it was the assigned, dedicated liftman that always made me uneasy upon entering any of the lifts. The legless hover-bot was fitted with a formal tux-with-tails attire. The bot greeted us both by name as it stood vigil over the lift’s virtual touchscreen controls like a guard at Buckingham Palace. I said, “HealthBay.” “Very good, sir … leaving Deck 13 for Deck 12.” Akari and I exchanged a look. She continued where she’d left off. “I suppose we could replicate the spikes. It’s not like there’s all that much to them.” “I’d get on that right away,” I said. “And our low stock of smart missiles?” She rubbed at the new piercing. “I think it’s infected … Does it look infected?” I just stared at her, then hitched one shoulder. “We’re headed to HealthBay. Have it looked at.” “Yeah, good point. Um, so … Maybe Boundless Wrath has an ample stock of smart missiles. They won’t be compatible, being of Varapin design, but we’ve jerry-rigged such compatibility issues before, right?” I nodded, letting her ramble. My mind was onto other things. Oddly, feeling nostalgic, I missed the way things used to be. And I missed those I’d become closest to over the years, like Stephan Derrota and Gail Pristy—both, undoubtedly, were back within the secure confines of Stratham Hold. My once-pirate hideaway was nestled there, one hundred and thirty light-years’ distance outside the Milky Way—on an M-class exoplanet called Genoma. It was a dangerous area of space where eight black holes had converged and, somehow, were keeping each other at bay. But all that was far away from here; hell, Genoma wasn’t even within this alternate universe. “Earth to Captain Distracted … Are you even listening to me?” I said, “Sorry,” but was cut off by the overly enthusiastic liftman. “Deck 12 … Please watch your step departing the lift.” We stepped out into the large, although much scaled-down version of the main Deck 13 corridor above. “Melted gun barrels … SWM would surely have metalworking facilities onboard, right?”


horror of it. We had to defend King and country. So I did what I had to do.’ ‘What? Killing your own soldiers before the enemy could?’ ‘By making an example of their cowardice. Armies are ruled by fear. Do you think those men that volunteered understood the carnage that lay ahead of them? Don’t you think that every man out there wished with every fibre of their being that they could leave that hellish place? What do you think keeps men marching forward to their death?’ I didn’t know. ‘Duty. Honour. Those weasels that you now seem so bent on protecting had neither of those things. They were out-and-out cowards.’ ‘If you truly believe in honour, then you will know, somewhere in your heart, or if you do not possess one, which I doubt you do, then in your conscience, that you were wrong. The families of those men have carried the shame for too long and for what? Even if those men felt fear in the face of a formidable enemy, is it a crime punishable by death? You could have pardoned them. Most Commanding Officers did. But not you. Why must you crush anyone who does not meet your exacting standards? Why must you humiliate and torment—’ ‘Enough!’ He walked away from me and poured himself a drink from the crystal decanter. I tried to steady myself, although my legs were shaking and I longed for a drink also. ‘It’s always your pain, your suffering. You never think about anyone else.’ I didn’t even bother replying. There was little point. ‘Can’t you imagine for a moment the suffering I have endured from this?’ He pointed to the side of his body that was burned. He took various bottles of pills from his pockets and threw them on the table. ‘They barely touch the surface,’ he said, calmly now. ‘I did my duty out there. I put my body on the line and what did I get in return?’ ‘They gave you medals, didn’t they?’ ‘Hah! Medals. I wanted respect. I wanted a future. A family. No woman would come near me when she saw this. I could no longer provide a wife with children, in any case. A useless specimen. I had to beg for a job. Do you know how humiliating that was? The one thing I asked you to do.’ ‘Marry Bingley?’ I asked. ‘And there you were, flaunting your freedom in front of me. The freedom I paid for!’ ‘Lyndon, if only you had spoken of this before, I could have helped.’ ‘What could you have done? You were only good for one thing and you wouldn’t even obey me in that.’ ‘Obey you?’ I almost laughed at the thought. What right did he have? He always acted like he had authority over me and I suppose our age difference normalised his behaviour. Not any more. ‘You make it sound as though I owe you something and believe me, Brother, I owe you nothing.’ ‘You owe me everything! You would be dead if it weren’t for


your email. How many planned something bigger than that. With a chill down my neck, down my arms, I remembered the guy who’d gone into a pizza place with a gun, looking for the nonexistent pedophile ring in the basement. I remembered how many people in America had guns. I was shocked to discover a very, very small part of me still loyal to you, a part that wanted to send you a message: Get in your car and drive. Change your last name, too. Don’t look back. 21 I tried to distract myself with a movie, but since the Calvin Inn wi-fi was too fatigued to continue the day, I was beholden to the offerings on my room’s bulky Panasonic. Here was Bus Stop, a movie I hated. Bus Stop is what happens when no women were involved in the writing process. We get, for instance, a woman who, when Marilyn Monroe sidles up to her on the bus and says she’s been kidnapped, replies: “It wouldn’t be so bad if you were in love with him.” I turned the TV off and checked email. Someone I didn’t know had sent a clip from a Boston station—part of an interview with Brad Keith, Thalia’s half brother. He’d gone gray in a thick-haired, dignified way. He wore a powder blue sweater. Last I knew, Brad Keith was a commodities trader. “But in the interest of justice—” the reporter across from him said. “Justice was served. He got his day in court, he got it again on appeal. I understand the right to a fair trial, but three trials? Four? Five? Where does it end? You can’t just keep rolling the dice till you get what you want.” The reporter didn’t point out the difference between a hearing and a trial. She said, “There’s been new evidence. We know now th—” “Nothing’s new. We have her old roommate with some baloney about dots. We have blood evidence that just moves the assault a few feet to the left. Omar Evans ruined all our lives, not just Thalia’s. And every time we get dragged back, he destroys us again. We’ve been through enough.” “Your sister Vanessa disagrees.” He shook his head, resigned. “She was so young when this happened.” Below the video link, the email read: Look what you’re doing you unconscionable bitch. 22 Geoff had ordered pizza for dinner, and we ate at the little table in his room. Geoff, who used to accept dares to mix chocolate milk, hot sauce, ranch dressing, and orange juice in a dining hall cup and drink it down, had ended up with sophisticated taste. He’d managed to order a very specific herb pizza via Grubhub from Hanover and get it delivered still hot, along with a bottle of excellent Syrah from a completely different place. We were planning to go through the hoarded Granby junk he’d brought for Britt and Alder. But first, carbs and cheese and wine. I decided to let myself eat as much as I wanted. He said something I didn’t get about


lower tooth that the orthodontist never could manhandle into place. Those ears that stick out a little too far. Those lines on either side of your smile that always look like parentheses. That slight dimple at your chin that’s just like your mom’s. Of course those aren’t the only things that make you you. You are also your whole life story. And your sense of humor. And your homemade doughnut recipe. And your love for ghost stories. And the way you savor ocean breezes. And the appreciation you have for how the colors pink and orange go together. You’re not just your face, is what I mean. But man, it sure is a big part of you. Like your shadow. So faithfully and constantly with you, you don’t even notice it. It’s just always there. But then one day it’s gone. Except it’s not just the shadow that’s gone. It’s the person making the shadow. You. You’re gone. And the idea that anything could just disappear at any moment is something you suddenly understand in a whole new way. The way I did for a long while after my mother died. “It’s like I’m not here,” I said to Dr. Nicole, my throat getting thick. “It’s like I disappeared.” “You’re right here,” she said, taking my hands and squeezing them before holding them up to show me. “You know these hands, right?” I nodded. “Here you are,” she said. “You haven’t gone anywhere.” Then she gave me a hug and said, “But let’s not look in the mirror again for a while.” She wanted to get down to business. She was organizing some tests for me to take on her laptop. While I waited, a random thought occurred to me: Peanut. “This doesn’t apply to animals, right?” I asked. “What?” Dr. Nicole asked. “I’m suddenly worried that when I get home, I won’t be able to see my dog.” “You’ll definitely be able to see your dog.” “His face, I mean,” I said. “I need that face. It’s my primary mood-lifter.” “I understand,” Dr. Nicole said, attention still mostly on her work. “This face thingy’s only for human faces, right?” At that, she paused. “Mostly,” she said, “yes.” “Mostly?” I asked. “What does mostly mean?” “There’s not a lot of research on animal faces. There has been some research on cars, though.” “Cars?” “Some people with this condition have trouble recognizing their cars. They can also have trouble with direction. But it hasn’t been studied enough to understand why or how.” “So…” Somehow this felt like the worst news of all. “You can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to see my dog’s face?” But she wasn’t going to let me descend into self-pity. “Guarantees are overrated.” I must have been spoiling for a fight. “Guarantees are underrated.” But she didn’t take the bait. “Let’s just take one question at a time.” * * * DR. NICOLE HAD queued up some facial recognition tests for me to take to see how bad it was. “This’ll give us a baseline,” she said. The tests—the


the reach of Lady Catherine's curiosity. In this quiet way, the first fortnight of her visit soon passed away. Easter was approaching, and the week preceding it was to bring an addition to the family at Rosings, which in so small a circle must be important. Elizabeth had heard, soon after her arrival, that Mr. Darcy was expected there in the course of a few weeks, and though there were not many of her acquaintance whom she did not prefer, his coming would furnish one comparatively new to look at in their Rosings parties, and she might be amused in seeing how hopeless Miss Bingley's designs on him were, by his behaviour to his cousin, for whom he was evidently destined by Lady Catherine; who talked of his coming with the greatest satisfaction, spoke of him in terms of the highest admiration, and seemed almost angry to find that he had already been frequently seen by Miss Lucas and herself. His arrival was soon known at the Parsonage, for Mr. Collins was walking the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into Hunsford Lane, in order to have the earliest assurance of it; and after making his bow as the carriage turned into the park, hurried home with the great intelligence. On the following morning he hastened to Rosings to pay his respects. There were two nephews of Lady Catherine to require them, for Mr. Darcy had brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, the younger son of his uncle, Lord ----; and to the great surprise of all the party, when Mr. Collins returned, the gentlemen accompanied him. Charlotte had seen them, from her husband's room, crossing the road, and immediately running into the other, told the girls what an honour they might expect, adding, ``I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy would never have come so soon to wait upon me.'' Elizabeth had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the compliment, before their approach was announced by the door-bell, and shortly afterwards the three gentlemen entered the room. Colonel Fitzwilliam, who led the way, was about thirty, not handsome, but in person and address most truly the gentleman. Mr. Darcy looked just as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire, paid his compliments, with his usual reserve, to Mrs. Collins; and whatever might be his feelings towards her friend, met her with every appearance of composure. Elizabeth merely curtseyed to him, without saying a word. Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly; but his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time without speaking to any body. At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to enquire of Elizabeth after the health of her family. She answered him in the usual way, and after a moment's pause, added, ``My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never happened to see her there?'' She was


didn’t start until after he passed away. But everything else occurred before. That’s only because I was unhappy at work—another hard time. Comments: Dinah: It’s scary how many of these symptoms I’ve been displaying lately. Joel: This wasn’t helpful. Everyone feels all of these things some time or other. Frances: I have to say these symptoms are all very vague and the last note misleading and detrimental. To attribute the symptoms of depression solely to “hard times” may have you feeling like you should wait it out instead of seeking professional help. What if you’re going through a series of “hard times”? You’ll be waiting for the storm to pass until you’re dead. Depression varies from person to person. For example, I had extreme mood swings, which isn’t mentioned above and is rarely talked about regarding depression. I was on cloud nine one day and being tormented in hell the next, and things did not change until I got help. So you need to ask yourself (and answer truthfully): do you think you’re depressed? The answer is obviously yes, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this page. Do yourself a favor and seek help. Chapter Thirty-three On Wednesday, I join Penny in her office. She looks at me and smiles. She has on the same blue eye shadow she wore during my interview. Her blond hair is even shorter now and it sticks up in corners she maybe can’t see. “Maddie,” she says. “I don’t know if you’re aware, but we have a counselor who comes into the building twice a month. I’d like you to see her, just to keep on top of things.” I frown. “Am I doing something wrong?” “Not at all,” she says. “You’re flying through your admin; I’ve just noticed you’ve been arriving early and staying late since your return. Allan in Facilities said he saw you leave at 9:30 Monday night. You’re very quiet in the office and sometimes, well, morose may be a little too far, but you’re certainly not yourself—understandably. You did seem perkier this morning, but I imagine your feelings during a time like this alternate in waves.” I’m burning with embarrassment at the idea of being the Girl Who Clearly Can’t Cope. I briefly put myself in Penny’s shoes. She must hate having this conversation as much as I hate hearing it. She shouldn’t have to deal with secondhand grief. I already know Kris and Eliza have lost someone and they didn’t mention needing a counselor brought in. “I’m fine,” I insist. “I can get my work done, same as every—” I cut myself off thinking of Katherine, crying in the toilets, working when her mental health was at risk, pretending everything was okay. I asked Claire if it mattered people thought her weak, so long as she got help. I’d no idea I’d struggle to take my own advice. Depression can do that to a person. I shake my head and say nothing. “We want to help you, Maddie,” Penny says. “Career longevity is our goal with you here at OTP—hence our


to the cold. And you keep it locked up under the ice as though it was a monster.’ ‘Perhaps it is a monster.’ ‘What is monstrous about it?’ ‘Do you imagine, Yotam, that the creature you have named Eitan loves you?’ ‘I doubt it feels love the way we do.’ ‘Why do you doubt that?’ ‘Because we built it to be tougher than us.’ ‘Is it manipulating you?’ ‘I don’t know. Zariffa believed so. She might be right.’ ‘In order that you might free it, by acting impetuously? I’m not trying to embarrass you. When I was a young woman, a long time ago, I fell in love with a handsome young man. We lived together while we were students. He was abusive. He stole from me. I couldn’t see past my infatuation. Love is very powerful.’ ‘What do you think that I’m blind to?’ ‘Song Fu wanted blind love to protect her creation. Because, it is my contention, she believed that was the only chance such a creature had of being released. On the sly, by a hopeless romantic.’ ‘Maybe you should ask a different question.’ ‘What would that be?’ ‘Why did she believe that ordinary people would be so narrow-minded they wouldn’t set them free?’ ‘Is this your view?’ ‘You’re nervous of admitting that we’ve created a superior race. But the whole purpose of the Cold People Project is to create a superior race. Because we’re dying. And that is exactly what we’ve done. Song Fu was unapologetic about it.’ ‘Is it superior to us?’ ‘On this continent, yes, and this continent is all we have.’ President Mues took a sip of water, uneasy with these answers. ‘Do you believe, if this species were released, they would live in harmony with us?’ ‘I see no reason why they wouldn’t.’ ‘The purpose of the Cold People Project is to create a species that can work with us, assist us, be our friends, our allies, our saviours.’ ‘With respect, Madame President, that is not the purpose of the Cold People Project.’ There was a reaction in the chapel audience and it took several moments for the assembly to settle down. ‘Your statement surprises us.’ ‘I’m not saying that such an outcome isn’t possible. I’m not saying that such an outcome wouldn’t be desirable.’ ‘The purpose of the project has always been to create a species that will help us survive. What other purpose could the project have?’ ‘The purpose of the project is that humankind will survive in some form.’ ‘In some form?’ ‘Ideally, we’d survive alongside them, as their friends, their allies, their partners, as you say. I believe that is possible.’ ‘What other possibilities are there?’ ‘That we can’t survive. That we won’t survive. That we will die out, even with their help. But some part of us will survive within the creatures we’ve created.’ ‘You’re saying that we’ll live on, not in any real sense, but inside the genetic make-up of this new species.’ ‘To Song Fu, that was always the most probable outcome.’ ‘That our time is over?


The Invisible Man- A Grotesque Romance.txt

broad, with a pink and white face and red eyes--who won the medal for chemistry." "I am confused," said Kemp. "My brain is rioting. What has this to do with Griffin?" "I am Griffin." Kempt thought. "It's horrible," he said. "But what devilry must happen to make a man invisible?" "It's no devilry. It's a process, sane and intelligible enough--" "It's horrible!" said Kemp. "How on earth--?" "It's horrible enough. But I'm wounded an in pain, and tired --Great God! Kemp, you are a man. Take it steady. Give me some food and drink, and let me sit down here." Kemp stared at the bandage as it moved across the room, then saw a basket chair dragged across the floor and come to rest near the bed. It creaked, and the seat was depressed the quarter of an inch or so. He rubbed his eyes and felt his neck again. "This beats ghosts," he said, and laughed stupidly. "That's better. Thank Heaven, you're getting sensible!" "Or silly," said Kemp, and knuckled his eyes. "Give me some whisky. I'm near dead." "It didn't feel so. Where are you? If I get up shall I run into you? There! all right. Whisky? Here. Where shall I give it you?" The chair creaked and Kemp felt the glass drawn away from him. He let go by an effort; his instinct was all against it. It came to rest poised twenty inches above the front edge of the seat of the chair. He stared at it in infinite perplexity. "This is--this must be--hypnotism. You must have suggested you are invisible." "Nonsense," said the Voice. "It's frantic." "Listen to me." "I demonstrated conclusively this morning," began Kemp, "that invisibility--" "Never mind what you've demonstrated!--I'm starving," said the Voice, "and the night is--chilly to a man without clothes." "Food!" said Kemp. The tumbler of whisky tilted itself. "Yes," said the Invisible Man, rapping it down. "Have you got a dressing gown?" Kemp made some exclamation in an undertone. He walked to a wardrobe and produced a robe of dingy scarlet. "This do?" he asked. It was taken from him. It hung limp for a moment in mid-air, fluttered weirdly, stood full and decorous buttoning itself, and sat down in his chair. "Drawers, socks, slippers would be a comfort," said the Unseen, curtly. "And food." "Anything. But this is the insanest thing I ever was in, in my life!" He turned out his drawers for the articles, and then went downstairs to ransack his larder. He came back with some cold cutlets and bread, pulled up a light table, and placed them before his guest. "Never mind knives," said his visitor, and a cutlet hung in mid-air, with a sound of gnawing. "Invisible!" said Kemp, and sat down on a bedroom chair. "I always like to get something about me before I eat," said the Invisible Man, with a full mouth, eating greedily. "Queer fancy!" "I suppose that wrist is all right," said Kemp. "Trust me," said the Invisible Man. "Of all the strange and wonderful--" "Exactly. But it's


"I am not your dear; I cannot lie down; send me to school soon, Mrs. Reed, for I hate to live here."     "I will indeed send her to school soon," murmured Mrs. Reed,sotto voce ; and gathering up her work she abruptly quitted the apartment.     I was left there alone winner of the field. It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained; I stood a while on the rug, where Mr. Brocklehurst had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror's solitude. First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses. A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done, cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterward the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction. A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Reed; the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when half an hour's silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hatred and hating position.     Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy; its after-flavor, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned. Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Reed's pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.     I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of somber indignation. I took a book some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavored to read. I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating. I opened the glass door in the breakfast-room; the shrubbery was quite still; the black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds. I covered my head and arms with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestered; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together. I leaned against a gate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where the short grass was nipped and blanched. It was a very gray day; a most opaque sky, "onding on snaw," canopied all; thence flakes fell at intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without melting. I stood, a


deep and meaningful solidarity with these people, sharing the same anti-freeze blood pumped by the same oversized heart, she also felt a bond to the three ordinary-born humans huddled in the warmth below. They’re my family, she thought, still trying to grasp the dimensions of that word. Directly below her, in the trailer cabin, Atto and Liza were seated together with Tetu. Echo’s hearing allowed her to follow their conversation over the rumble of the motorized truck. Since leaving Survivor Town Station, Tetu had hardly said a word, missing his cues when Kasim asked about his family or ambitions. Though he was eighteen years old, this was his first trip in a motorized vehicle. Echo could tell that he was struggling with motion sickness, and she wondered why his discomfort troubled her so much. Perhaps it was because the others were unaware of it, since he hadn’t complained, not wanting to make a fuss, which was typical of him, never wanting to be a burden. Or did she have deeper feelings for him, feelings ordinary-born people called affections? She had no doubt that he wanted to be on the roof, seated beside her, and she wished he could be, too, that he could enjoy the cold rather than endure it. She wished that she could love him in the same way that he loved her, except she didn’t know how. * * * After they’d travelled across a wilderness too desolate and remote to sustain any human colony, there appeared on the horizon, like an acid-trip mirage, a collection of some of humanity’s most famous historic monuments. This area was known as Landmark Plateau. At the foot of Mount Vinson the tallest mountain on the continent, sat many of the greatest landmarks ever constructed, each scooped out of their original location by the alien occupiers and floated through the sky, only to be neatly deposited on this continent like a museum collection. From Beijing, the Forbidden City had been positioned next to the Pyramids of Cairo, which was now neighbours with the Palace of Versailles. From Florence, the Duomo had been parked next to Peru’s Machu Picchu, which in turn sat beside the gleaming steel of the Frank Gehry concert hall from downtown Los Angeles. The world’s most recognizable statues had been positioned in an orderly line as if they were waiting in an immigration queue – Christ the Redeemer standing in front of the Buddhas of Bayman, in front of the Angel of Independence with the Statue of Liberty at the very front. Behind them the sacred places of worship had been grouped like a theme-park zone – Saint Basil’s Cathedral, Notre-Dame, the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia and the great Mosque of Mecca huddled around the Tibetan monastery of Paro Taktsang, including a portion of the Himalayan mountain it had been nestled upon. There was no clear purpose to this, giving the impression that the alien occupiers were complying with some cumbersome interstellar legal obligation, a subsection of the planetary conquest lawbook stating that: ‘No indigenous species shall be relocated


simple: Dad’s full name, his birth and death dates, and a line from the Paschal Troparion my mother had asked her friends to sing at his burial, though he had died in midwinter. Standing beside his grave, admiring the newly placed headstone, she told me she had chosen this plot for him because we could see the town high school across the street from where we stood. “There are always people coming and going over there, so I knew he wouldn’t be lonely,” she said, then added with a grin: “And he can hear the football games every Friday!” This was so ridiculous that I had to laugh, which of course was her intention. I liked it when she joked about him, spoke of him in the present tense. Our lives may be linear, finite, but our love for each other is not so easily confined. “Dad would have loved his headstone,” she told me. Again, I agreed. But what mattered most to me was that she liked it, that it was what she wanted for him. That, in the end, she had allowed me to do this one needful thing. 17 My mother’s living room was dark, though it was only 2:00 p.m. Storm clouds had been hanging over the valley since my arrival the night before. As I went to turn on more lights, I heard her say, “This is all happening so fast.” Her friend Paula looked up from her steno pad. Consider me your hands and feet in Oregon, she had told me. For the last two hours, she had been taking notes, creating lists of calls to make, emails to send, banks to visit, forms to have witnessed and notarized. The next day, she would type everything up in a spreadsheet and send it to me: I’ve listed all the to-do items in black and added progress notes in green. Feel free to choose a color and add your own notes. She reached over to touch my mother’s hand, offering her a reassuring smile. “We know it’s hard,” she said. “That’s why we’re here to help you.” Elizabeth, another friend from my mother’s church, nodded and leaned forward in her chair. “Remember, you’re not alone. We’re all with you.” “And think of what a good, loving daughter you have,” Paula added. I heard myself laugh, but there was little humor in it. “She’ll be ready to give me back after today,” I said. No one else chuckled. Paula and Elizabeth said, “No!” in unison. Mom only shook her head. I was joking, I wanted to say to her. Like you were when I was five or six and got so mad at you that I said I was going to find “my real mom”—remember, you pointed and said, “There’s the door”? Now that I thought about it, I wondered if she had been joking. I couldn’t believe that our Christmas visit was only a few weeks ago. Since then, the entire landscape of her illness had shifted, and the faint hope we’d once possessed seemed distant now,


up and going down again. Over and over.” She looked to the side, taking short, sharp breaths. “Then he just … stopped. He said something, I think, but I couldn’t tell what. He walked away.” I pictured the scene. The spot where I’d sat. The Grotto. I frowned. “I was pretty far from the boulder,” I said. Cass’s head tilted. “I guess.” “And he had his back to you.” Her brow furrowed. “Not completely. I could see the side of his face.” The side of his face, from what, fifty feet away? Sixty? More? “Do you remember exactly what you told the cops? The description you gave?” “Not exactly,” she said. “I would have told them he was big. Short, brown hair. White. No beard—I remember they asked about the beard, and I was sure he didn’t have one. But when Dougherty showed me the photo of Stahl, it looked just like him.” “Wait. Dougherty showed you a picture of Stahl? When, at the hospital?” I asked. She shook her head. “No, it was before the ambulance even got there.” On the side of the road. Before they even knew I was still alive. “Cass, I thought you gave the description to Chief Miller.” “I did,” Cass said slowly, a line appearing between her eyebrows in faint confusion. “He’s the one who asked me about the beard, so yeah, he’s the one I gave the description to.” “But Miller got there after the ambulance,” I said. You couldn’t live in Chester without knowing every step of that story. From Leo Cortland on down, everyone wanted you to know exactly where they’d been that day. And Miller always talked about rolling up to a scene already swarming with sirens and two little girls shivering in the back of an ambulance. “So Dougherty showed you the photo before you gave your description.” She wetted her lips. “Maybe. No. I told him—I told him there was a man, a big man. I told him about the brown hair.” “And the beard?” She shook her head. “I don’t know.” “Was it Stahl you saw?” I pressed. “How am I supposed to answer that? I told them what I saw then. Now all I see when I think about his face is Stahl in the courtroom, glaring at us like he wanted to slit our throats.” I felt numb. There’d never been any chance of a genuine identification. Cass and Olivia might have seen anyone out there, but Dougherty shoving that photo in their faces while they were traumatized and panicking? Of course they’d thought it was Stahl. His face could have imprinted itself over any genuine memories. The truth had been trampled over before I ever woke up. “What’s going on, Naomi?” Cass asked. There was an edge of fear in her voice. I sat back in my chair. I felt that sense of vertigo again—teetering on the edge of a fall. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.” She gave me a tired smile. “There’s no chance of that, Naomi. I always worry about


to the boy his coward's eloquence. Catherine was near distraught; still she persisted that she must go home, and tried entreaty in her turn, persuading him to subdue his selfish agony. While they were thus occupied, our gaoler re-entered. "Your beasts have trotted off," he said, "and----- Now, Linton! snivelling again? What has she been doing to you? Come, come; have done, and get to bed. In a month or two, my lad, you'll be able to pay her back her present tyrannies with a vigorous hand. You're pining for pure love, are you not?---nothing else in the world; and she shall have you! There, to bed! Zillah won't be here to-night. You must undress yourself. Hush! hold your noise! Once in your own room, I'll not come near you. You needn't fear. By chance you've managed tolerably. I'll look to the rest." He spoke these words, holding the door open for his son to pass; and the latter achieved his exit exactly as a spaniel might which suspected the person who attended on it of designing a spiteful squeeze. The lock was re- secured. Heathcliff approached the fire, where my mis- tress and I stood silent. Catherine looked up, and in- stinctively raised her hand to her cheek. His neighbour- hood revived a painful sensation. Anybody else would have been incapable of regarding the childish act with sternness, but he scowled on her and muttered,--- "Oh! you are not afraid of me? Your courage is well disguised; you seem damnably afraid!" "I am afraid now," she replied, "because, if I stay, papa will be miserable; and how can I endure making him miserable when he---when he------ Mr. Heathcliff, let me go home! I promise to marry Linton; papa would like me to, and I love him. Why should you wish to force me to do what I'll willingly do of myself?" "Let him dare to force you!" I cried. "There's law in the land---thank God there is!---though we be in an out-of-the-way place. I'd inform if he were my own son. And it's felony, without benefit of clergy." "Silence!" said the ruffian. "To the devil with your clamour! I don't want you to speak.---Miss Linton, I shall enjoy myself remarkably in thinking your father will be miserable; I shall not sleep for satisfaction. You could have hit on no surer way of fixing your residence under my roof for the next twenty-four hours than in- forming me that such an event would follow. As to your promise to marry Linton, I'll take care you shall keep it, for you shall not quit this place till it is fulfilled." "Send Ellen, then, to let papa know I'm safe!" ex- claimed Catherine, weeping bitterly; "or marry me now. Poor papa!---Ellen, he'll think we're lost. What shall we do?" "Not he! He'll think you are tired of waiting on him, and run off for a little amusement," answered Heath- cliff. "You cannot deny that you entered my house of your own accord, in contempt of his injunctions to the contrary. And it is quite


if you still adhered to your former determination, I pledged myself, by no word or act, to seek to change it.' 'The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me know,' said Rose firmly. 'If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to her, whose goodness saved me from a life of indigence and suffering, when should I ever feel it, as I should to-night? It is a struggle,' said Rose, 'but one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart shall bear.' 'The disclosure of to-night,'--Harry began. 'The disclosure of to-night,' replied Rose softly, 'leaves me in the same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood before.' 'You harden your heart against me, Rose,' urged her lover. 'Oh Harry, Harry,' said the young lady, bursting into tears; 'I wish I could, and spare myself this pain.' 'Then why inflict it on yourself?' said Harry, taking her hand. 'Think, dear Rose, think what you have heard to-night.' 'And what have I heard! What have I heard!' cried Rose. 'That a sense of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father that he shunned all--there, we have said enough, Harry, we have said enough.' 'Not yet, not yet,' said the young man, detaining her as she rose. 'My hopes, my wishes, prospects, feeling: every thought in life except my love for you: have undergone a change. I offer you, now, no distinction among a bustling crowd; no mingling with a world of malice and detraction, where the blood is called into honest cheeks by aught but real disgrace and shame; but a home--a heart and home--yes, dearest Rose, and those, and those alone, are all I have to offer.' 'What do you mean!' she faltered. 'I mean but this--that when I left you last, I left you with a firm determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself and me; resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would make yours mine; that no pride of birth should curl the lip at you, for I would turn from it. This I have done. Those who have shrunk from me because of this, have shrunk from you, and proved you so far right. Such power and patronage: such relatives of influence and rank: as smiled upon me then, look coldly now; but there are smiling fields and waving trees in England's richest county; and by one village church--mine, Rose, my own!--there stands a rustic dwelling which you can make me prouder of, than all the hopes I have renounced, measured a thousandfold. This is my rank and station now, and here I lay it down!' * * * * * * * 'It's a trying thing waiting supper for lovers,' said Mr. Grimwig, waking up, and pulling his pocket-handkerchief from over his head. Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable time. Neither Mrs. Maylie, nor Harry, nor Rose (who all came in together), could offer a word in extenuation. 'I had serious thoughts of eating my


light.’ ‘What kind of light?’ ‘Not our kind.’ Tetu took off his backpack and pulled out a small antique mahogany box, an incongruous item set among emergency rations and survival equipment. As though presenting a gift, he opened the lid of the box and Echo leaned forward, peering at fragments of alien technology, a collection veined with capillaries of mauve and jade, which continued to pulse despite being broken and separate from any obvious power source. She picked up the largest of these shards, bringing the light close to her eyes. ‘The law states that all alien discoveries must be turned over to McMurdo.’ ‘That’s the whole point. I’m going to hand them over. And hope that they pick me.’ ‘Why wouldn’t they pick you? You’re one of the smartest people in Hope Town.’ ‘McMurdo is taking fewer ordinary-born people. They’re only interested in ice-adapted people now. And everyone will have told them how difficult I am. If they don’t take me… I can’t imagine my future on the Peninsula. I won’t survive in Hope Town.’ ‘What’s wrong with Hope Town?’ ‘For a start, everyone is under so much pressure to be happy all the time. Our only job is joy, planning the next music festival, or organizing sports leagues. What are the opportunities? Working on the algae farms, or the canneries, or the recycle plants? I get the survival strategy; life is to be enjoyed and it’s a smart approach. But I can’t be here, in this town, stitching seal pelts, looking forward to the next party. That can’t be my life.’ ‘What do you want your life to be?’ ‘Something bigger.’ What he didn’t say was that he couldn’t imagine a life without her. Tetu’s parents had both been taken by the cold when he’d been young and there were many orphaned children living with foster parents; it was rare for a family not to have at least one adopted child. He’d skipped from family to family over the years, never finding anyone he could settle with. Recently he’d stopped even unpacking his bag, certain that each placement would last only a few months. Since the death of his parents the only unbroken relationship in his life had been with Echo. They hiked together, explored the mountains together. They’d always watch the last sunset of summer and the first sunrise after winter. For the first time in his life, he’d experienced happiness. He was in love with someone who might not even experience love in the same way. Echo undressed, remarking: ‘These clothes are useless in the water.’ Trying not to stare, Tetu mumbled: ‘Yes, I guess they are.’ Standing naked, her scales giving her the appearance of wearing an elegant outer shell, she turned to Tetu. ‘Are you embarrassed by the fact I’m naked?’ Silent for a moment, he eventually overcame his awkwardness. ‘Echo, you don’t have to ask every question that comes into your head.’ ‘I’m curious.’ ‘No, I’m not embarrassed. I’m trying to be respectful.’ ‘You can look, I don’t mind.’ She thought to herself how thin-skinned


retrieve the carpet of spiked chain-mail. He assumed it must be an adaptation of the nail-studded devices used by the Resistance against German staff-cars. Again he reflected on the efficiency of these people and the ingenuity of the equipment they used. Had M underestimated their resourcefulness? He stifled a desire to place the blame on London. It was he who should have known; he who should have been warned by small signs and taken infinitely more precautions. He squirmed as he thought of himself washing down champagne in the Roi Galant while the enemy was busy preparing his counter-stroke. He cursed himself and cursed the hubris which had made him so sure the battle was won and the enemy in flight. All this time Le Chiffre had said nothing. Directly the boot was shut, the third man, whom Bond at once recognized, climbed in beside him and Le Chiffre reversed furiously back on to the main road. Then he banged the gear lever through the gate and was soon doing seventy on down the coast. By now it was dawn - about five o'clock, Bond guessed - and he reflected that a mile or two on was the turning to Le Chiffre's villa. He had not thought that they would take Vesper there. Now that he realized that Vesper had only been a sprat to catch a mackerel the whole picture became clear. It was an extremely unpleasant picture. For the first time since his capture, fear came to Bond and crawled up his spine. Ten minutes later the Citron lurched to the left, ran on a hundred yards up a small side-road partly overgrown with grass and then between a pair of dilapidated stucco pillars into an unkempt forecourt surrounded by a high wall. They drew up in front of a peeling white door. Above a rusty bell-push in the door-frame, small zinc letters on a wooden base spelled out 'Les Noctambules' and, underneath, 'Sonnez SVP'. From what Bond could see of the cement frontage, the villa was typical of the French seaside style. He could imagine the dead blue-bottles being hastily swept out for the summer let and the stale rooms briefly aired by a cleaning woman sent by the estate agent in Royale. Every five years one coat of whitewash would be slapped over the rooms and the outside woodwork, and for a few weeks the villa would present a smiling front to the world. Then the winter rains would get to work, and the imprisoned flies, and quickly the villa would take on again its abandoned look. But, Bond reflected, it would admirably serve Le Chiffre's purpose this morning, if he was right in assuming what that was to be. They had passed no other house since his capture and from his reconnaissance of the day before he knew there was only an occasional farm for several miles to the south. As he was urged out of the car with a sharp crack in the ribs from the thin man's elbow, he knew that Le Chiffre could have


occasioned him by this accident, expressed surprise on seeing Valancourt, who explained his unexpected appearance by saying, 'You, sir, renewed my taste for society; when you had left the hamlet, it did indeed appear a solitude. I determined, therefore, since my object was merely amusement, to change the scene; and I took this road, because I knew it led through a more romantic tract of mountains than the spot I have left. Besides,' added he, hesitating for an instant, 'I will own, and why should I not? that I had some hope of overtaking you.' 'And I have made you a very unexpected return for the compliment,' said St. Aubert, who lamented again the rashness which had produced the accident, and explained the cause of his late alarm. But Valancourt seemed anxious only to remove from the minds of his companions every unpleasant feeling relative to himself; and, for that purpose, still struggled against a sense of pain, and tried to converse with gaiety. Emily meanwhile was silent, except when Valancourt particularly addressed her, and there was at those times a tremulous tone in his voice that spoke much. They were now so near the fire, which had long flamed at a distance on the blackness of night, that it gleamed upon the road, and they could distinguish figures moving about the blaze. The way winding still nearer, they perceived in the valley one of those numerous bands of gipsies, which at that period particularly haunted the wilds of the Pyrenees, and lived partly by plundering the traveller. Emily looked with some degree of terror on the savage countenances of these people, shewn by the fire, which heightened the romantic effects of the scenery, as it threw a red dusky gleam upon the rocks and on the foliage of the trees, leaving heavy masses of shade and regions of obscurity, which the eye feared to penetrate. They were preparing their supper; a large pot stood by the fire, over which several figures were busy. The blaze discovered a rude kind of tent, round which many children and dogs were playing, and the whole formed a picture highly grotesque. The travellers saw plainly their danger. Valancourt was silent, but laid his hand on one of St. Aubert's pistols; St. Aubert drew forth another, and Michael was ordered to proceed as fast as possible. They passed the place, however, without being attacked; the rovers being probably unprepared for the opportunity, and too busy about their supper to feel much interest, at the moment, in any thing besides. After a league and a half more, passed in darkness, the travellers arrived at Beaujeu, and drove up to the only inn the place afforded; which, though superior to any they had seen since they entered the mountains, was bad enough. The surgeon of the town was immediately sent for, if a surgeon he could be called, who prescribed for horses as well as for men, and shaved faces at least as dexterously as he set bones. After examining Valancourt's arm, and perceiving that the bullet had


Robart has married her off to a prince nearly sixty years her senior.’ Thrit stared at him. ‘Saint.’ He sat on his haunches. ‘That’s why you suspect Lord Robart.’ Wulf nodded stiffly. ‘Einlek told me to see her safe, and I will.’ ‘Saint, Wulf, I don’t think he meant to swive her.’ ‘It’s not about that,’ Wulf said quietly. Thrit raised an eyebrow. ‘Aye, she’s bonny. I’m not claiming it would be some great hardship. But me and her – it’s not that way. We made a vow, as bairns, that we’d always be friends. What sort of friend would I be if I let some old man plough her?’ Thrit grimaced. ‘A sound argument,’ he said, ‘but for the love of the Saint, Wulf, be careful. Adultery with her is high treason. Your head is far too handsome to be on a spike.’ ‘I will. She may not choose me, either way.’ ‘I think we both know that’s a lie.’ Thrit hitched up a smile. ‘She’d be a fool not to.’ Wulf frowned as he looked into those dark eyes. Thrit cleared his throat and turned away. ‘We should both get some rest,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you this evening.’ ‘Aye.’ Standing in the corridor, Wulf was left to wonder if he had just missed something. He thought of going to his own room to sleep off the long journey. Instead, he returned downstairs to find Mara tucked into the inglenook, as he had often found her in the past, with a tome in her lap. It occurred to him that this might be his last visit to Langarth. When Fýredel returned with its flock, there would be no mercy, and no end to the destruction. He sat beside his sister and wrapped her into his arms, planting a kiss on the crown of her head. ‘What was that for?’ she said, looking up at him. ‘Nothing.’ Mara reached up to pat his cheek. ‘I love you as well,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you – because I never have, and I bitterly regretted that fact when I thought you’d gone and died – that the day Father brought a bairn from those trees was the best day of my life.’ Wulf swallowed, heat in his eyes. Mara leaned into him and slept. **** At first, he thought the row of hailstones on the shutters had woken him. Mara stirred at his side, eyes opening. They both stilled when they heard footsteps and voices in the entrance hall. ‘Let me talk to him first,’ Mara whispered. ‘He’ll go into a nervous shock if he sees you.’ She left to meet their father. ‘Mara,’ Lord Edrick said in surprise. ‘I thought you’d be with Lady Marian. How long have you been here?’ ‘Not long. I’ll explain later, I promise,’ Mara said. Wulf slowly followed their voices. ‘Father, I brought the most wonderful news, but I think you might want to sit down.’ Wulf could see Lord Edrick now. He looked even older, damp from the downpour. ‘I can’t imagine how there


queen, but I sit alone at the back so as not to infect everyone else’s happiness with my grim and gray mood. This gives me a lot of time to gaze out the window and ruminate on my sins. I have to fix this. I have to fix everything, and as much as my pride and my nerves cringe away from it, I’m done coddling both. Either I face my feelings, or I don’t. Either I try, really try, to move on from everything my dad put us through, or I spend the rest of my life living in his shadow. I know what I want to do. And I’m Celine bloody Bangura, so I have no excuse not to do it. That’s what I tell myself, again and again, as I step off the bus in front of the Sherwood. Mum is waiting by her parked Corsa down the street, bundled up in her bright blue coat, arms folded against the cold. She spots me and waves, her whole face lighting up with this wide, welcoming smile, and my chest heaves. Beside me, Aurora whispers, “Celine, are you okay?” “I’m fine,” I gasp. “Are you crying?” “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll text you later.” Then I rush off before anyone else notices the literal ocean spilling down my cheeks. Mum’s not wearing her glasses, so she doesn’t notice my expression until I’m a foot away and throwing myself into her arms. “Celine?” she asks, her confusion muffled by my hair, a comforting vibration through my entire tense body. “Baby? What’s wrong?” “Nothing,” I sob. “Oh, sweetheart. Come here, give me your bag. Get in the car.” Mum directs my basic functions like I’m five again and stuffs me into the passenger seat. Then she’s in the driver’s seat, picking up her glasses from the dashboard and peering at me like the clue to my inner turmoil might be tattooed on my face. Spoiler alert: it is not. “Is this about Bradley?” Mum asks. I would honestly rather die than say yes, because that would involve admitting to my mother that I have a romantic connection with another human person, and since I haven’t even managed to admit that to the person in question, I’m clearly not there yet. Brad’s phone sits heavy in my pocket, vibrating with a text that’s probably from Jordan. “He’s doing well,” Mum says. “Back at home resting. Just some cracked ribs and abrasions and a minor concussion. Maria says he’ll be right as rain—” This news does make me feel at least a quarter better. One of the links in the anxiety chain formerly known as my spine loosens. “—in time for your little party at the weekend.” Aaaand that makes me feel worse. Because Brad might be at the ball, but he won’t want to see me. And I don’t want to see Dad. And I should be so happy right now because I did it; I’m a Breakspeare Explorer, whether I get the scholarship or not; I have Katharine Breakspeare’s seal of approval and the


the rubble for something? Should she pull a board free from the barricade? She paused before it, rife with uncertainty even as her thoughts roared at her to hurry. At the corner of her eye, a wounded soldier was bowed over, weeping for his mother. His agony pierced Iris, and she decided she would take a board of wood from the barricade. There was no time for her to chase down the nurses or the doctors, who were already overwhelmed. There was no time to find a stretcher. She began to claw at the structure, determined to work a plank free. She didn’t feel the shadows or the cold that rippled through the smoke. She was so intent on liberating this piece of wood that she failed to realize that the wind had ceased and frost had spangled the cobblestones at her feet. “Down, down, down!” The command cut through the mire and the chaos like a blade. Iris froze, lifting her eyes to the churning sky. At first she thought the clouds were moving. A thunderstorm was building. But then she saw the wings, long and pronged, transparent in the fading light. She saw the monstrous white bodies emerge as they flew closer, nearly upon the town. She had never seen an eithral before. She had never been this close to one. Even as she had once lain sprawled in the field with Roman, she had never been so close as to taste the rot and death in their pinions. To feel the beat of their wings. “Down and steady!” The command came again. It was Keegan’s voice, hoarse and frayed and yet powerful enough to knock everyone’s sense back into place. Iris turned, frantically searching for Roman. She found him five paces away, standing frozen, but it was evident he had been coming to her. Wounded soldiers and rubble lay between them. There was no clear path, and his eyes were wide, his face pale. He had never appeared so afraid, and Iris had to resist the temptation to run to him. Don’t move, Iris, he mouthed to her. She drew a deep breath. Her hands twitched at her sides as the creatures flew closer. Any minute now. Any minute, and they would be overhead. “Mum,” the soldier beside her moaned, rocking on his heels. “Mum!” Iris glanced at him with alarm. So did Roman, a vein pulsing at his temple. “You must be quiet,” she said to the soldier. “You must stop moving.” “I need to find my mum,” the boy wept, beginning to crawl over the ruin. “I need to go home.” “Stay down!” Iris cried, but he wasn’t listening. She could see her breath; she could feel her heart pounding in her ears. “Please stop moving!” A shadow of wings spilled over her. The stench of decay stole through the chilled air. This is the end, Iris thought. She looked at Roman, five paces away. He was so close, and yet too far to reach. She imagined their future. All the things she wanted to do with


mouth shut. That note was explanation enough: Leave me alone. Ava abandoned her search, but never her hope; every six months, she updated their address and contact information in the public registry. One day, Ava was certain, Thais would come back. And now she had. Without a single word. Io could already imagine the astonished sadness in Ava’s eyes. She would do anything—anything—to keep Ava from being hurt again. But she couldn’t lie. Lies curdled love into something sour and noxious. “Ava,” she said. “Thais is back in Alante.” Io watched her sister’s eyes fall, her shoulders stiffen. She knew at once what was going to follow: “I know,” Ava replied. The first thing Io felt, the strongest, was betrayal. All their lives, Thais was on one end, Io on the other, and Ava in the middle. Ava wasn’t supposed to choose sides. She wasn’t supposed to choose Thais. The coffee cup was suddenly too hot. Io placed it on the short table, sloshing some on the carpet in the process. “You know?” Her voice came out a whisper. Ava reached for Io’s hands. “Sister mine, I’m so sorry! I wanted to tell you, but Thais made me promise I wouldn’t. I remember how angry at you she was before she left, and how often you guys fought, and I didn’t want . . . You are finally happy again. And she seems happy, too. I didn’t want to ruin it, for either of you!” Io’s thoughts raced. “Thais is angry with me?” “I mean . . .” Ava looked panicked, her thumbs running comforting circles on the backs of Io’s hands. “I don’t know if she’s still angry, but she definitely was before she left. You guys thought I didn’t notice any of it, because I was practicing for my Academia Aska audition, but I could hear you fighting all the time. I know she wanted you to keep working and you wanted to quit. I assume that’s what you fought about . . .” It was, in a way. When Io was fifteen, Thais fell in with a group of activists from the Artisti District. They had big ideas about how the economy would benefit from the inclusion of other-born in the upper ranks of society. Their leader was a blond charmer by the name of Thomas Mutton, who had no powers of his own and yet procured Thais jobs weaving new threads: a young mother struggling with postpartum depression, a failed artist trying to find his muse, a brokenhearted man looking to love again. Thais fancied herself a knight in shining armor, and the money wasn’t so bad, either. But then Thomas met Io. And he realized how much more money he could be making off a cutter. He started getting small jobs for Io, mainly with recovering addicts. Thais told her how wonderful it would be to help these people, how Io would be proving everyone who feared cutters wrong. Cut, they said, so Io cut. One day, Thomas proposed a different kind of job: one of the


fool, and in so far as he observed them he would fail to prosper. Not that Buck reasoned it out. He was fit, that was all, and unconsciously he accommodated himself to the new mode of life. All his days, no matter what the odds, he had never run from a fight. But the club of the man in the red sweater had beaten into him a more fundamental and primitive code. Civilized, he could have died for a moral consideration, say the defence of Judge Miller's riding-whip; but the completeness of his decivilization was now evidenced by his ability to flee from the defence of a moral consideration and so save his hide. He did not steal for joy of it, but because of the clamor of his stomach. He did not rob openly, but stole secretly and cunningly, out of respect for club and fang. In short, the things he did were done because it was easier to do them than not to do them. His development (or retrogression) was rapid. His muscles became hard as iron, and he grew callous to all ordinary pain. He achieved an internal as well as external economy. He could eat anything, no matter how loathsome or indigestible; and, once eaten, the juices of his stomach extracted the last least particle of nutriment; and his blood carried it to the farthest reaches of his body, building it into the toughest and stoutest of tissues. Sight and scent became remarkably keen, while his hearing developed such acuteness that in his sleep he heard the faintest sound and knew whether it heralded peace or peril. He learned to bite the ice out with his teeth when it collected between his toes; and when he was thirsty and there was a thick scum of ice over the water hole, he would break it by rearing and striking it with stiff fore legs. His most conspicuous trait was an ability to scent the wind and forecast it a night in advance. No matter how breathless the air when he dug his nest by tree or bank, the wind that later blew inevitably found him to leeward, sheltered and snug. And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolflike, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at


smitten with him, a smile dancing across her face when she recounted their time together. I told her to be careful, to look into his past, but she brushed me off. I tried to plant a seed of doubt so she could save herself, but she chose not to. When a person is falling in love, they ignore the warning signs. “Have you sold the netsuke?” I asked her one day. “I haven’t had time.” It was a key piece of evidence against her. It played into the narrative of the obsessed woman stalking me, breaking into my home, taking a souvenir. Why did she hold on to it? She clearly needed the money. Maybe her circumstances kept her from thinking straight. She was exhausted, stressed, drinking every night. She was playing right into our hands. I promised Lee new identification. A new start. As the grieving widow, I would no longer need to reinvent myself, but I pressed forward with the fake ID. I sent her to get a photo, just as Jesse had sent me. She had to believe I was helping her. At home, I played my doting slave role to perfection. Any hint of rebellion would tip Benjamin off to my plan, so I went along, meek, obsequious, and fawning. The punishments he doled out were rote, tolerable. I contacted Vanessa Vega and arranged a lunch. This would throw suspicion off me. How could a woman plotting her husband’s murder simultaneously plan a gala fundraiser? I wore a dress that day, a pale pink chiffon skirt despite the rain clouds brewing. I threw a cropped leather jacket over it to add some edge. Vanessa had suggested a trendy oyster bar in Pioneer Square, so I left early to avoid traffic. If I turned up late, word might get back to Benjamin and I’d be punished, for real. When I arrived at the restaurant, all brick walls and high ceilings, Vanessa was already seated at a central table with Laurie Gamble. My stomach danced unpleasantly. Vanessa was polished and perfect, but she had a certain warmth, unlike her BFF. Laurie was an icy blonde with an innate ability to be dismissive and condescending. I’d met her on several occasions, but she had consistently looked me over, then overlooked me. “Hello, gorgeous.” Vanessa rose and kissed both my cheeks in a European greeting. Laurie’s hug was perfunctory. I sat down across from them, instantly feeling outnumbered, subtly excluded. We made small talk—about hair, skin, and clothes mostly—as we perused the menus. Once we’d ordered oysters and salads, a bottle of wine for the table, Vanessa got down to business. “I’m so glad you agreed to help with the gala.” Like I had a choice. “Of course.” I smiled. “Put me to work.” Laurie leaned forward. “We’d like you to take the lead on the silent auction. I’ve put together a list of vendors you can visit to ask for donations.” Begging for freebies was a miserable job. But once my husband was found murdered in my own home… well, surely,


nothin’ don’t change him.” “You know many’s de time Ah done thought about dat Their Eyes Were Watching God 59 mahself. He gits on her ever now and then when she make little mistakes round de store.” “Whut make her keep her head tied up lak some ole ’oman round de store? Nobody couldn’t git me tuh tie no rag on mah head if Ah had hair lak dat.” “Maybe he make her do it. Maybe he skeered some de rest of us mens might touch it round dat store. It sho is uh hidden mystery tuh me.” “She sho don’t talk much. De way he rears and pitches in de store sometimes when she make uh mistake is sort of ungodly, but she don’t seem to mind at all. Reckon dey understand one ’nother.” The town had a basketful of feelings good and bad about Joe’s positions and possessions, but none had the temerity to challenge him. They bowed down to him rather, because he was all of these things, and then again he was all of these things because the town bowed down. 6 Every morning the world flung itself over and exposed the town to the sun. So Janie had another day. And every day had a store in it, except Sundays. The store itself was a pleasant place if only she didn’t have to sell things. When the people sat around on the porch and passed around the pictures of their thoughts for the others to look at and see, it was nice. The fact that the thought pictures were always crayon enlargements of life made it even nicer to listen to. Take for instance the case of Matt Bonner’s yellow mule. They had him up for conversation every day the Lord sent. Most especial if Matt was there himself to listen. Sam and Lige and Walter were the ringleaders of the mule-talkers. The others threw in whatever they could chance upon, but it seemed as if Sam and Lige and Walter could hear and see more about that mule than the whole county put together. All they needed was to see Matt’s long spare shape coming down the street and by the time he got to the porch they were ready for him. “Hello, Matt.” Their Eyes Were Watching God 61 “Evenin’, Sam.” “Mighty glad you come ’long right now, Matt. Me and some others wuz jus’ about tuh come hunt yuh.” “Whut fuh, Sam?” “Mighty serious matter, man. Serious!!” “Yeah man,” Lige would cut in, dolefully. “It needs yo’ strict attention. You ought not tuh lose no time.” “Whut is it then? You oughta hurry up and tell me.” “Reckon we better not tell yuh heah at de store. It’s too fur off tuh do any good. We better all walk on down by Lake Sabelia.” “Whut’s wrong, man? Ah ain’t after none uh y’alls fool- ishness now.” “Dat mule uh yourn, Matt. You better go see ’bout him. He’s bad off.” “Where ’bouts? Did he wade in de lake and uh alligator ketch him?” “Worser’n