mountains,” Ian said, and Louise could tell he was trying to be graceful about the sudden change. A call popped up from Mark. Louise declined it. “I’m flying into San Francisco,” she said. “You can bring Poppy back tomorrow or the next day.” The image on the screen lurched as Ian took the phone. She heard him say to Poppy, “I’ll be right back.” Then the phone showed her the inside of his nostrils and part of his eyes. “You’re really coming back early?” he asked. “This isn’t a joke?” “I’m finding a flight as soon as we hang up,” Louise said. “Thank God,” Ian said. “She wet the bed again last night. My mom already has her lined up with this child psychologist—” “No way,” Louise said. “I’m home tomorrow afternoon.” “I know,” Ian said, “but, like, hurry? This has been awful.” “Let me talk to her again,” Louise said. The phone lurched back into the bedroom and Ian held the phone out for Poppy. “I’m coming home,” Louise told her. “But I want to see a big girl when I get there. Can you talk like a big girl for me?” “Come home now,” Poppy said in her normal voice. “It’s very far away,” Louise said. “It takes me a little time to get there. Do you know how far away it is?” “A hundred miles,” Poppy said. A hundred was the longest distance that meant anything to Poppy because it was a hundred miles from San Francisco to Ian’s parents’ mountain house. “It’s a hundred miles twenty times,” Louise said. “Do you know how many that is?” “Twenty,” Poppy said. “It’s further than that,” Louise said. She couldn’t believe how good it felt to hear Poppy’s voice. Louise remembered her second year of grad school when her mom had called one night and Louise had gone on about the interpersonal politics of charette, and finding a paid internship, and she’d finally realized her mom wasn’t talking. “Why’d you call?” Louise had asked. “I just needed to hear your voice,” her mom had said. Louise wondered what her mom had been going through that night, but she would never know. Not now. Not anymore. Her mom’s life was over. Her secrets didn’t matter now. Mark called again. Louise declined. “You’re only twenty miles away,” Poppy decided. “No, I’m one hundred miles, twenty times away,” Louise said. Louise had no idea why she was trying to explain multiplication to a fiveyear-old, but she remembered how much she’d liked it when her dad had explained things to her, even when she hadn’t fully understood. “Flights are going to be expensive this late,” Ian said. “Are you flying Delta?” “I don’t know,” Louise said, annoyed he was interrupting this moment and making it more confusing than it needed to be for Poppy. “I haven’t looked yet. Poppy, can you imagine one hundred miles twenty times?” “You’re a hundred miles,” Poppy declared. Mark called again. Louise declined, punching her screen hard. “Why don’t we draw it?” Louise said. “Do you have a piece of


never been apart. I pulled Rich’s soaking-wet shirt off his body, and we both laughed as he hoisted me up onto the counter, his lips never leaving mine. His skin was so warm, I felt like I might dissolve into him as he pulled me even closer. I was so lost in the feeling of him that I couldn’t imagine ever being apart again. Our hearts beat in time, our bodies were a melody, our breath the lyrics. And I knew that nothing had changed. Just like we had carved all those years ago: RICH + LANIER = LOVE. Daphne CHAOS AND DESTRUCTION LIGHTING A FIRE IS STILL one of my favorite things to do. There’s such power in the feeling of adding light and heat to the world. It must have been a marvelous—and truly terrifying—experience for whoever first rubbed two sticks or rocks together and made a flame. The storm had passed, leaving a lovely crispness in the air, and I decided to build a fire in the cobblestone campfire circle by the river for my friends and anyone else who wanted to come. As I set it up, I feel the paper in my pocket rustle and smile. There is something terribly romantic about being somewhere with horrible cell service and having the man you can’t get enough of send you love notes instead of texts. Sure, I had some concerns yesterday about my future with Huff. But I woke up this morning realizing that Huff is right: My routine with Steven has to change. I’ve been clinging so hard to a past that has worked that I haven’t been able to envision a future. And even though Henry is well-adjusted, he is four; he can adjust again. He already loves Huff, and we will take both quality time with him and weekends at his dad’s house at the same slow pace. Steven isn’t that twenty-three-year-old kid I first met, and I’ve been holding on to control of my son a little too tight. As the circle bursts into flames—the dry wood from the shed had done the trick despite the humidity—I notice Lanier coming toward me. I pin on my happiest, least suspicious face as I thrust my arms toward the firepit and shout “Campfire!” This has always been our favorite camp activity, where truths are told and fates melded. Which reminds me that I have a lot of truth I’m not telling… Lanier walks over to me looking nothing short of dazed. “Hey,” I say. “What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” “I think I have,” she says. She plops down in one of the Adirondack chairs and I sit on the edge of the firepit, facing her. “What is it about thunderstorms and that sailing hut?” she asks wearily. I gasp and put my hand to my mouth, feeling as though I have just lost a thousand pounds of worry. “Does that mean what I think it means?” Oh, please God, please. She nods, biting her lip. She looks around and whispers, “I slept


* * * — Back in the day, Victor’s was a vaudeville theatre, all red velvet and gold and a high ceiling with satyrs chasing nymphs around a lake of wine. When Victor bought it she kept the style but retrofitted a series of platforms into the seating, so that the whole place starts in the gods and falls down an endless stair to the dance floor. What used to be the director’s box is now a dais with a Last Supper table and a bridge made of actual obsidian called the Stairway, blocked by a single velvet rope, which dancers of particular talent and desirability may be offered the right to ascend. Some of those who go up think they’re going to meet a soulmate, a lost heart bewildered by new youth. They watch too many movies and think they’ll be the one to teach an ancient innocent in a college kid body all about what it is to be young today. Others are just looking for the wildest time there is. I don’t know who’s at the Last Supper table tonight. Not unless it’s a woman named Susan Green. I slip through the tables to the bar and pick a seat with a view of the doors. Victor catches sight of me and rolls her eyes. Victor looks like your auntie if your auntie wore a vintage catsuit in burgundy velvet, accessorised with a domino mask. She has silver hair in a boy cut and a lazy smoker’s voice you can’t help but listen to. Last of the great local originals. “Vic.” “Cal Sounder. Sam let you in.” “I promised to be well behaved.” “Why, yes, Cal, I’d love to buy your shiny bridge.” “Susan Green.” “Have a mojito instead. She’s not on yet. And don’t call her that. It’s Diamant when she’s working.” “She a singer?” “Yes, Cal, my star singer is a singer, isn’t that amazing?” “She got any particular admirers? Regulars?” Victor doesn’t think much of that question. “In this place? Honey, she has hundreds. You wait.” “Titan. First-doser. Mama’s boy hair, bad shirts.” “Ugh. The boyfriend.” Roddy and a cabaret singer. “You’re not serious.” “That’s what I said to her. But the two of them, honestly, Cal. Like lovesick fauns. I banned him, of course. All the sass went out of her when he was watching. All that sparkling sex just…poof. As soon as he wasn’t here, it was better. But still she went from ‘none of you can keep up with this vagina’ to ‘look but don’t touch’ in the space of a week. I could cry.” She helps herself to my mojito instead. “Well, you weren’t going to drink it anyway. Sit here and brood, darling, and don’t start anything. Diamant will grace us with her nun’s cabaret in twenty minutes.” “He’s dead, Vic.” “Who’s dead?” “The boyfriend.” She stops, eyes hard on mine. “No shit?” “No shit.” A long silence. “Damn.” “Yeah.” “And you’re on it.” “Yeah.” “You maybe change your profession recently? Become a grief counsellor?” “Still a detective.” “Damn.” “Maybe you’ll


echoed through the trees, and my own ghost walked beside me. I stumbled in my sensible heels, the wet of the woods seeping in and leaving my feet numb, but I never slowed. Here. This had been the spot, more or less. I’d been sitting on that rock, eating my lunch. We’d had some little argument again, Cass needling me with insults guaranteed to make me run or make me fight. This time I’d chosen to run. I’d sat alone, stewing on my anger and eating my peanut butter sandwich, and then— But the memories shredded into the same confusion as ever. Stahl’s face falsely imprinted over reality. Ragged gaps where pain had obliterated all else. The babble of voices—Cass’s and Liv’s, the voices of rescuers, weaving in and out of each other impossibly, without any sense of time line. I strode blindly away from the clearing, chasing my ghost backward through memory. The slip of a girl in her oversized sweatshirt, marching angrily through the woods. Clambering out from under the boulder. They’d been here. I lay on my stomach and wriggled through the gap, and then I turned back, peering out at the woods. You could just see the rock where I’d sat. Where the attack had started. They would have been able to see it—see all of it. Oscar or Big Jim or Marcus Barnes, whoever it had been. I turned away and wrapped my arms around my knees. The sun slanted down on Persephone’s bones. Jessi’s bones, I reminded myself. She was never Persephone. She was never anything but a corpse. She couldn’t protect us, couldn’t heal the wounds of the world the way Cass claimed she could. The way we tried so hard to believe that she would, if only we did what she asked of us. Liv had believed it most of all, as she always did. And looking back, she was the one who needed to believe it. It wasn’t the world that needed fixing, it was her. And Cass had promised her that Persephone would give her the kind of peace she so desperately needed. And so we’d done the rituals. We’d made the offerings. And all along, she’d been just some poor dead girl who’d dreamed of escape just like we did. I picked up a string of beads, flinging them angrily away from the skeleton. We’d turned her into this thing, an altar for our own unhappiness. We’d never treated her like a person. Like someone who would be mourned and missed. If we’d told someone what we’d found, her family might have answers by now. Liv might still be alive. I clawed at the other offerings. Moldering playing cards, a brooch, an earring missing its mate, four wave-polished stones. I gathered them all, moving first mechanically, then with manic energy, shoving them into a pile at the back of the little cave. I grabbed something smooth and wooden. At first I thought it was just a stick, something that had fallen down here among the bones, but then my thumb brushed


it was complete and finished. Jody told her to dress up and stand in the store all that evening. Everybody was coming sort of fixed up, and he didn’t mean for nobody else’s wife to rank with her. She must look on herself as the bell-cow, the other women were the gang. So she put on one of her bought dresses and went up the new-cut road all dressed in wine-colored red. Her silken ruffles rustled and muttered Their Eyes Were Watching God 49 about her. The other women had on percale and calico with here and there a headrag among the older ones. Nobody was buying anything that night. They didn’t come there for that. They had come to make a welcome. So Joe knocked in the head of a barrel of soda crackers and cut some cheese. “Everybody come right forward and make merry. I god, it’s mah treat.” Jody gave one of his big heh heh laughs and stood back. Janie dipped up the lemonade like he told her. A big tin cup full for everybody. Tony Taylor felt so good when it was all gone that he felt to make a speech. “Ladies and gent’men, we’se come tuhgether and geth- ered heah tuh welcome tuh our midst one who has seen fit tuh cast in his lot amongst us. He didn’t just come hisself nei- ther. He have seen fit tuh bring his, er, er, de light uh his home, dat is his wife amongst us also. She couldn’t look no mo’ better and no nobler if she wuz de queen uh England. It’s uh pledger fuh her tuh be heah amongst us. Brother Starks, we welcomes you and all dat you have seen fit tuh bring amongst us—yo’ belov-ed wife, yo’ store, yo’ land—” A big-mouthed burst of laughter cut him short. “Dat’ll do, Tony,” Lige Moss yelled out. “Mist’ Starks is uh smart man, we’se all willin’ tuh acknowledge tuh dat, but de day he comes waggin’ down de road wid two hund’ed acres uf land over his shoulder, Ah wants tuh be dere tuh see it.” Another big blow-out of a laugh. Tony was a little peeved at having the one speech of his lifetime ruined like that. 50 Zora Neale Hurston “All y’all know whut wuz meant. Ah don’t see how come—” “’Cause you jump up tuh make speeches and don’t know how,” Lige said. “Ah wuz speakin’ jus’ all right befo’ you stuck yo’ bill in.” “Naw, you wuzn’t, Tony. Youse way outa jurisdiction. You can’t welcome uh man and his wife ’thout you make comparison about Isaac and Rebecca at de well, else it don’t show de love between ’em if you don’t.” Everybody agreed that that was right. It was sort of piti- ful for Tony not to know he couldn’t make a speech without saying that. Some tittered at his ignorance. So Tony said testily, “If all them dat’s goin-tuh cut de monkey is done cut it and through wid, we’ll thank Brother Starks fuh a re- spond.” So Joe


in her refrigerator, where piled-up casseroles and desserts vied for space, but weren’t what she needed. Still, she managed to find solace in the loud whir of the blender as the last kiwi, a few blueberries, a couple of leaves of spinach that hadn’t wilted were whipping to a froth along with an overripe banana and some yogurt that had been decidedly past its pull date. Then she sat down at the table and, sipping her concoction, sorted through the mail. Bills, advertisements, and more cards. Condolences from faraway friends. She opened them all with a kitchen knife and read the kind words, heartfelt and touching, friends with whom she’d lost contact over the years and only kept in touch occasionally, sometimes with Christmas cards, others through social media, Facebook and Instagram and such. College and high school friends she’d barely seen in the past few years, people she’d worked with or who knew her father and had drifted away. She set them aside and halfway through the pile found an envelope without a return address. Stranger still, there was no postmark, as if the card had been personally dropped into the box. Odd, she thought, slitting the white envelope open to expose a card on deckle-edged paper, as if it were a wedding invitation. No words were on the outside, just an inked drawing of a single black rose. What was this? She flipped it open. Inside, the card was inscribed with a single Bible verse written in careful calligraphy: ~For the wages of sin is death Romans 6:23~ “What the—?” Her blood turned to ice. Who would send such a dark, damning message? With trepidation, her skin crawling, she studied the card and envelope but caught no clue about who’d sent it. No—not sent it. Left it in her mailbox. Boldly stepped onto her front porch and left the card in her overflowing box. Maybe it was a dark joke. A prank. After all, it wouldn’t be the first, but it was sick and, she thought, evil. The message cruel. She turned the card over, but there was no information on the back and she felt as if it had been handcrafted, not purchased in any shop or store. The message had been created for her, about her husband. No, she thought, this was not a sympathy card, not intended for condolence. This particular piece of paper was a warning. Intended for her. She sucked in a sharp breath. Though she tried to argue with herself, she’d worked on too many weird real-life crimes not to see some validity in her thoughts. She wasn’t letting her imagination get the better of her as she stared at the card with the black rose inked onto the thick white paper. She was facing the mind-chilling truth. The attack on her hadn’t been random. Someone was seeking his sick kind of revenge. And her valiant husband had lost his life defending her. Sadness stole over her, but it quickly gave way to anger. Who the hell was behind this? Why? And God, why


filming. Three steps, kick off the wall, land solid. Go again. Sometimes she does a twist instead, rolling along the chicken wire and coming down like a dancer. I realise I’m in their shot. I’ve always watched them, like birds flying. Now I wonder how many of them scout for Doublewide, how much he sees. How close an eye he’s keeping on me. * * * — Doorman looks me up and down and throws me some revolutionary socialism like it’s a shibboleth. Maybe it is. “What is to be done?” “Well, fuck Bernstein, for a start.” Guy laughs. “I like Bernstein.” “You put a gun to my head, I guess West Side Story’s okay.” His face wrinkles for a second. “Wait—” “I’m screwing with you, man. But I gotta be honest, I don’t really love the vanguard concept all the way to the top.” He stretches out a fist and knocks it against mine. “I hear that.” And he opens the door. * * * — Inside the place is blue with honest-to-god tobacco. There’s a disclaimer about lung cancer and emphysema next to the sign that says they don’t give credit. Technically tobacco is illegal now, in a workplace, but the people here aren’t exactly the type to run to the cops, and the cops aren’t exactly all that interested in busting Lacarte’s for a health violation that’s only gonna buy them ass ache. It’s the house crop, grown in greenhouses outside the city and the workers get a cut of the sticker price rather than being paid for their time. Most of the patrons take it in cheap white clay pipes, so the whole scene looks like a Dutch painting with hippies. I go to the bar and order a Caledonian red ale. It really is red, too, not cherry but there’s no other word for it. It tastes fine, sharp and full of earth. The woman who pours it wears an eyepatch, with a scar running down onto her cheek. “I don’t know you,” she says. “I’m Tony.” “Cal.” “You just moved here, Cal?” “I been around awhile. Too lumpen to come for a drink, maybe.” She laughs. “Long live the revolution, then.” I drink for a while. There’s a guy at the end of the bar reading a book. Figure it’s going to be more a political text than pulp. Two tables in deep conversation, not looking for company. I get Tony to bring me some bread. When it comes, it’s Russian black rye, with oil and pickles and a shot. “You looking to meet new people?” “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m looking for. One of the brothers around?” She looks guarded then. “You got a complaint?” “Naw, I don’t want to rile anybody up. Figure it’s polite I talk to one of them. I need something, Tony, and I could not tell you what. But it has to do with this place, maybe, and maybe they can help. If that’s a problem, I’ll just eat my rye and get the hell out.” “You spoke to


is as blank as a fresh Word document. I head to the press area and collect my credentials, draping the lanyard around my neck and feeling very much like a Seasoned Professional—until I realize I have no idea where I’m going. “Excuse me, do you know where Hall E is?” I ask a Dalek. They point in the opposite direction, up an escalator. “Right down there. If you’re going for the two o’clock panel, you probably want to get there early. Anything with Nocturnals cast fills up fast.” And then, as they maneuver their blocky metallic costume into the crowd: “Exterminate!” As it turns out, they’re not wrong. I make it to the auditorium with five minutes to spare and only just manage to claim a seat in the back row. A hush falls over the crowd as a moderator with short lavender hair and a Rose City T-shirt steps up to the microphone. “Good afternoon, PDX!” she yells. Cheers erupt from the audience. She tells everyone to save their questions for the Q & A after the panel, along with some general etiquette: photos are okay but no flash, anyone being disruptive will be asked to leave. “And now, give a warm Rose City welcome to our panelists! You know him, you love him, you doodled his name in your teenage diaries—it’s Finn Walsh!” The way the audience reacts—I am not at all prepared. Finn struts onstage in dark jeans, a forest green cardigan, and graphic tee featuring some collection of symbols I’m not familiar with, a gleam in his eye as he gives the crowd a hearty wave. They roar back, a few people even jumping to their feet. The girl next to me might even be . . . crying? He carries himself differently than he did that first night in Seattle, and even the next day at lunch. There’s almost a swagger to him, a confidence that only hundreds of screaming fans can buy. Is he taller, or am I just farther away? His face is clean-shaven, the bright overhead lights glinting off his auburn hair as he takes a seat in a plush pink chair, stretching out his long legs. I may have watched those Mexley clips and one whole episode of The Nocturnals, but this is Finn performing right in front of me, or at least from a dozen yards away. And he’s good. The moderator introduces the other two panelists: Lizzy Woo, who starred as a government agent in a superhero TV adaptation, but who I’m more familiar with as a lovelorn barista in an ensemble romantic comedy Noemie and I were obsessed with a few years ago, and Jermaine Simmons, from a mermaid show on HBO we watched a season of before getting frustrated by how sexy it surprisingly wasn’t. “It’s HBO,” Noemie had said. “Why is no one getting naked?” Until this point, I’ve never considered myself someone who would get particularly starstruck. I was a little intimidated by Maddy, mainly because of how minimal our interactions were, but my Bachelor contestant, Amber


I see him before this scourge is over, then I’ll probably lose him forever. Fetal poison is still fresh in him, making him too young to survive should the malevolent miasma of the disease reach him. Lady Kuo carefully takes Lian from my arms. Here at last is the grandson she’s been waiting for. She puts a hand on my sleeve and says, “Manzi is in the garden. Please save him.” I understand she loves Manzi as her second son. She’s doted on him his entire life and has without doubt spent more time with him these past fourteen years than with her own birth son, my husband. Her affection for the boy has been reflected in the bride-price gifts that have been sent to the salt merchant’s family for their daughter and in the plans that are already under way for a marriage celebration two years from now that will rival my own. “I’ll do all I can,” I promise her. Could there be anything harder in the cosmos than turning my back on my mother-in-law, son, and servant? My heart pounds in my chest and my breasts ache, but I retrace my steps, pick up the satchels, and go to the entrance to the Garden of Fragrant Delights. The two guards let me pass, and in moments I’m surrounded by the beauty and tranquility of plants and rockeries. I make my way along the pebble paths to the Hermitage, where I see bundles on the terrace. Only as I cross the zigzag bridge do I realize these lumps are people, which means that the interior of the Hermitage must already be full. Stepping onto the terrace, I get my first glimpse of the scourge. In my mind I thought it might look like any other rash—in patches, red, maybe flaking or oozing—but I was wrong. We call smallpox tian hua—heavenly flowers—but it’s also considered a dou—bean—rash, because the eruptions look and feel like hard beans under the surface of the skin. Very hard beans. I must find my daughter. As I walk past each person, I let my eyes travel over exposed skin. Some of the ill have only a few beans, but others have beans on beans, covering every inch of flesh. I cross the threshold into the Hermitage. My hand covers my mouth and nose. The stench is dreadful. Like anything in nature, the bean must grow, sprout, and open, only instead of blossoming into a flower or producing ripe fruit, this bean ultimately bursts to release the poison inside. Those before me have entered this stage of the disease. Now they will either die like my brothers did or survive as I did. If they survive, some will be scarred beyond recognition. They might have marriage contracts canceled. If they are servants, they might be dismissed. The lucky will end up like me, with only a few pockmarks to show the world of their inner fortitude. “Mama.” I spin in a circle, looking for the source of the voice. In a corner, two women sit with their


lot and their council, mark me, they’re out- needlessness of further questions. right fools and cowards. I’ll save your life—if so be as I can— “Ah, well, he did, though,” said he. “And there’s some- from them. But, see here, Jim—tit for tat—you save Long thing under that, no doubt—something, surely, under that, John from swinging.” Jim—bad or good.” I was bewildered; it seemed a thing so hopeless he was And he took another swallow of the brandy, shaking his asking—he, the old buccaneer, the ringleader throughout. great fair head like a man who looks forward to the worst. “What I can do, that I’ll do,” I said. “It’s a bargain!” cried Long John. “You speak up plucky, and by thunder, I’ve a chance!” He hobbled to the torch, where it stood propped among the firewood, and took a fresh light to his pipe. “Understand me, Jim,” he said, returning. “I’ve a head on my shoulders, I have. I’m on squire’s side now. I know you’ve got that ship safe somewheres. How you done it, I don’t know, but safe it is. I guess Hands and O’Brien turned soft. I never Contents much believed in neither of THEM. Now you mark me. I ask no questions, nor I won’t let others. I know when a game’s Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 238 239 blade of an open knife shine in his hand with varying colours in the moon and torchlight. The rest were all somewhat stoop- ing, as though watching the manoeuvres of this last. I could just make out that he had a book as well as a knife in his hand, and was still wondering how anything so incongruous had come in their possession when the kneeling figure rose once more to his feet and the whole party began to move together towards the house. “Here they come,” said I; and I returned to my former position, for it seemed beneath my dignity that they should Chapter 29. find me watching them. The Black Spot Again. “Well, let ‘em come, lad—let ‘em come,” said Silver cheer- ily. “I’ve still a shot in my locker.” THE council of buccaneers had lasted some time, when The door opened, and the five men, standing huddled to- one of them re-entered the house, and with a repetition of gether just inside, pushed one of their number forward. In the same salute, which had in my eyes an ironical air, begged any other circumstances it would have been comical to see his for a moment’s loan of the torch. Silver briefly agreed, and slow advance, hesitating as he set down each foot, but holding this emissary retired again, leaving us together in the dark. his closed right hand in front of him. “There’s a breeze coming, Jim,” said Silver, who had by “Step up, lad,” cried Silver. “I won’t eat you. Hand it over, this time adopted quite a friendly and familiar tone. lubber. I know the rules, I do; I won’t hurt a depytation.” I turned to the loophole nearest me and looked out.


the remnants of her diary in his private archive. Some were yellowed and blackened, uneven at the edges, as if they had been collected from a fire. Dumai had still taken them to read. How I wish I understood this tether to the gods – a thread between the mortal and divine, the upper heavens and the earth, Queen Nirai had written. I wake holding a restless star; I dream of rain, and voices flow through me like water. This is indeed a world of strange wonders. Dumai found her father in the Water Pavilion, wrapped in more layers than most courtiers. Snowflakes blew in from the porch, and two cups of clear wine steamed in front of him. Two cups. He had company – a guest with a small frame, wearing a grey veil. Dumai stopped. ‘Mother?’ Unora turned. ‘My kite.’ Dumai could hear her smile. They had seen one another at the temple, the night she had sounded the bell, but not since. ‘What is this about?’ she said, smiling in return. ‘Why have you come?’ ‘Your father summoned me here, to conduct the formal rites to welcome the gods back,’ Unora said, beckoning her. ‘Now they are awake, we godsingers must serve them in all places.’ Dumai knelt beside her, and Unora grasped her hand. She smelled of the temple, like woodfall and ginger. ‘We have much to discuss,’ Emperor Jorodu said. ‘Dumai, I met Tukupa the Silver. She spoke of this risen fire.’ Shadow murked the skin below his eyes. ‘What you saw in Sepul is surely a consequence. What we must find out is how much danger is to come.’ ‘The fire stems from beneath the earth, caused by some . . . imbalance. Furtia has not explained any further,’ Dumai said. ‘Father, have you heard anything from Queen Arkoro?’ ‘No.’ The silence lingered for some time. Dumai prayed King Padar had reached Mozom Alph. ‘I searched the temple repository for any explanation of what you saw in the Broken Valley,’ Unora said. ‘I found nothing about creatures hatching from rock, but I did uncover a curious record, entitled Tales for Winter Nights. The godsinger who wrote it would ask climbers to share the most interesting story they knew, and record it for posterity. ‘One told a famous legend from across the Abyss. Centuries ago, a winged creature emerged from a fire mountain in the West. In the short time it lived, it brought ruin and sickness to a land called Lasia, where the people knew it as the Nameless One. At some point, the creature was vanquished, though no one knows where it went.’ Unora placed an engraved scroll container on the table. ‘The godsinger tried to capture its image.’ Dumai opened it and unfurled the paper inside. Alongside rows of characters, a creature had been painted. ‘This is what the Westerners fear. A wyrm – a serpent of the earth.’ Unora watched her. ‘Is it like what you saw?’ Flames spilled between its pointed teeth. Its wings evoked a bat, but the rest of it


I told you. A Lannister always pays his debts." He yawned. "I think I will try and sleep. Wake me if we're about to die." He rolled himself up in the shadowskin and shut his eyes. The ground was stony and cold, but after a time Tyrion Lannister did sleep. He dreamt of the sky cell. This time he was the gaoler, not the prisoner, big, with a strap in his hand, and he was hitting his father, driving him back, toward the abyss . . . "Tyrion. " Bronn's warning was low and urgent. Tyrion was awake in the blink of an eye. The fire had burned down to embers, and the shadows were creeping in all around them. Bronn had raised himself to one knee, his sword in one hand and his dirk in the other. Tyrion held up a hand: stay still, it said. "Come share our fire, the night is cold," he called out to the creeping shadows. "I fear we've no wine to offer you, but you're welcome to some of our goat." All movement stopped. Tyrion saw the glint of moonlight on metal. "Our mountain," a voice called out from the trees, deep and hard and unfriendly. "Our goat." "Your goat," Tyrion agreed. "Who are you?" "When you meet your gods," a different voice replied, "say it was Gunthor son of Gurn of the Stone Crows who sent you to them." A branch cracked underfoot as he stepped into the light; a thin man in a horned helmet, armed with a long knife. "And Shagga son of Dolf." That was the first voice, deep and deadly. A boulder shifted to their left, and stood, and became a man. Massive and slow and strong he seemed, dressed all in skins, with a club in his right hand and an axe in his left. He smashed them together as he lumbered closer. Other voices called other names, Conn and Torrek and Jaggot and more that Tyrion forgot the instant he heard them; ten at least. A few had swords and knives; others brandished pitchforks and scythes and wooden spears. He waited until they were done shouting out their names before he gave them answer. "I am Tyrion son of Tywin, of the Clan Lannister, the Lions of the Rock. We will gladly pay you for the goat we ate." A GAME OF THRONES 405 "What do you have to give us, Tyrion son of Tywin?" asked the one who named himself Gunthor, who seemed to be their chief. "There is silver in my purse," Tyrion told them. "This hauberk I wear is large for me, but it should fit Conn nicely, and the battle-axe I carry would suit Shagga's mighty hand far better than that wood-axe he holds." "The halfman would pay us with our own coin," said Conn. "Conn speaks truly," Gunthor said. "Your silver is ours. Your horses are ours. Your hauberk and your battle-axe and the knife at your belt, those are ours too. You have nothing to give us but your lives. How would


in a flat voice. “Move away from the android.” “His name is Hap,” Rambo said. “We made him. Sort of.” “I did most of the work, Gio,” Nurse Ratched said. “If there is to be any praise, please lavish it upon me. If instead you are angry and will seek to dole out punishment, please note that I had nothing to do with this because it was all Victor.” Dad jerked his head in warning. “Move. Now.” They did, Victor stepping slowly around Hap, who hadn’t looked away from Dad. Hap didn’t try to stop them, even when Rambo bumped into his leg. “Oops,” Rambo said. “Sorry. Sorry. Can you just … lift your leg a little? That’s better. Thank you.” He zoomed toward Dad, circling behind him and tugging on his pant leg. “He broke my broom when I hit him with it. But other than that, he’s not so bad.” “Are you all right?” Dad said in a low voice as Victor stopped next to him. “I’m fine.” “Did he hurt you?” “No. Dad, he’s not—” “Good,” Dad said. “Now I don’t want to hear another word out of your mouth until I ask for it.” “Uh-oh,” Rambo whispered. Dad ignored him. He glared at Hap. “Who are you? Why have you come here?” Then, oddly, “Have we met before? You look familiar.” Hap sneered at him. “Wh-who the f-fuck are you?” “My name is Giovanni Lawson. Answer my question. What is your designation?” “He says he does not know,” Nurse Ratched said. “I see no reason to believe he is lying. It appears his memory circuits have been wiped as ours were. He is a blank slate. A tall, handsome, angry blank slate.” “Designation,” Dad demanded. “Now.” “I d-don’t know,” Hap snarled. “It was b-black and then I was here.” “Victor. Explain.” Vic looked at the floor. His father was rarely angry. In fact, Victor could only remember a handful of times he’d ever seen it before. “We found him,” he said quietly. “In the Scrap Yards. Buried under dead machines.” He flexed his hands, knuckles popping. “We couldn’t … we couldn’t leave him. He was alive. He was awake.” Dad closed his eyes, brow furrowed before smoothing out. “And you brought him here.” “Yes,” Nurse Ratched said. “It did not seem right to leave him where he was. He has yet to do anything explicitly murderous.” “Explicitly,” Dad said as he opened his eyes. “Explicitly.” “There was the incident with the broom,” Nurse Ratched said. “It was such a good broom too,” Rambo moaned. “Why is he shirtless?” Dad asked. “Because Victor decided to remove all of Hap’s clothing in order to—” “I did not,” Vic snapped at her. “Hap,” Dad said. “Hap.” “That’s the name we gave him,” Rambo said. “It’s a good name. It stands for Hysterically Angry Puppet because he looks like he’s always mad. I think that’s just his face, though.” “What do you want?” Dad asked, taking a step forward. Hap didn’t move. He blinked slowly as he stared. “I … do n-not


citizen had come upon Potter washing himself in the "branch" about one or two o'clock in the morning, and that Potter had at once sneaked off -- suspicious circumstances, especially the washing which was not a habit with Potter. It was also said that the town had been ransacked for this "murderer" (the public are not slow in the matter of sifting evidence and arriving at a verdict), but that he could not be found. Horsemen had departed down all the roads in every direction, and the Sheriff "was confident" that he would be captured before night. --------------------------------------------------------- -120- All the town was drifting toward the graveyard. Tom's heartbreak vanished and he joined the procession, not because he would not a thousand times rather go anywhere else, but because an awful, unaccountable fascination drew him on. Arrived at the dreadful place, he wormed his small body through the crowd and saw the dismal spectacle. It seemed to him an age since he was there before. Somebody pinched his arm. He turned, and his eyes met Huckleberry's. Then both looked elsewhere at once, and wondered if anybody had noticed anything in their mutual glance. But everybody was talking, and intent upon the grisly spectacle before them. "Poor fellow!" "Poor young fellow!" "This ought to be a lesson to grave robbers!" "Muff Potter'll hang for this if they catch him!" This was the drift of remark; and the minister said, "It was a judgment; His hand is here." Now Tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye fell upon the stolid face of Injun Joe. At this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle, and voices shouted, "It's him! it's him! he's coming himself!" "Who? Who?" from twenty voices. "Muff Potter!" "Hallo, he's stopped! -- Look out, he's turning! Don't let him get away!" People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head said he wasn't trying to get away -- he only looked doubtful and perplexed. --------------------------------------------------------- -121- "Infernal impudence!" said a bystander; "wanted to come and take a quiet look at his work, I reckon -- didn't expect any company." The crowd fell apart, now, and the Sheriff came through, ostentatiously leading Potter by the arm. The poor fellow's face was haggard, and his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face in his hands and burst into tears. "I didn't do it, friends," he sobbed; "'pon my word and honor I never done it." "Who's accused you?" shouted a voice. This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his face and looked around him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe, and exclaimed: "Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never -- " "Is that your knife?" and it was thrust before him by the Sheriff. Potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to the ground. Then he said: "Something told me 't if I didn't come back and get


and the instant the "Amen" was out the fly was a prisoner of war. His aunt detected the act and made him let it go. The minister gave out his text and droned along monotonously through an argument that was so prosy that many a head by and by began to nod -- and yet it was an argument that dealt in limitless fire and brimstone and thinned the predestined elect down to a company so small as to be hardly worth the saving. Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse. However, this time he was really interested for a little while. The minister made a grand and moving picture of the assembling together of the world's hosts at the millennium when the lion and the lamb should lie down together and a little child should lead them. But the pathos, the lesson, the moral of the great spectacle were lost upon the boy; he only thought of the conspicuousness of the principal character before the on-looking nations; his face lit with the thought, and he said to himself that he wished he could be that child, if it was a tame lion. Now he lapsed into suffering again, as the dry argument was resumed. Presently he bethought --------------------------------------------------------- -63- him of a treasure he had and got it out. It was a large black beetle with formidable jaws -- a "pinchbug," he called it. It was in a percussion-cap box. The first thing the beetle did was to take him by the finger. A natural fillip followed, the beetle went floundering into the aisle and lit on its back, and the hurt finger went into the boy's mouth. The beetle lay there working its helpless legs, unable to turn over. Tom eyed it, and longed for it; but it was safe out of his reach. Other people uninterested in the sermon found relief in the beetle, and they eyed it too. Presently a vagrant poodle dog came idling along, sad at heart, lazy with the summer softness and the quiet, weary of captivity, sighing for change. He spied the beetle; the drooping tail lifted and wagged. He surveyed the prize; walked around it; smelt at it from a safe distance; walked around it again; grew bolder, and took a closer smell; then lifted his lip and made a gingerly snatch at it, just missing it; made another, and another; began to enjoy the diversion; subsided to his stomach with the beetle between his paws, and continued his experiments; grew weary at last, and then indifferent and absent-minded. His head nodded, and little by little his chin descended and touched the enemy, who seized it. There was a sharp yelp, a flirt of the poodle's head, and the beetle fell a couple of yards away, and lit on its back once more. The neighboring spectators shook with a gentle inward joy, several faces went behind --------------------------------------------------------- -64- fans and handkerchiefs, and Tomwas


right dat way. Ah know ’tain’t nothin’ dere.” “You and Logan been fussin’? Lawd, Ah know dat grassgut, liver-lipted nigger ain’t done took and beat mah baby already! Ah’ll take a stick and salivate ’im!” “No’m, he ain’t even talked ’bout hittin’ me. He says he never mean to lay de weight uh his hand on me in malice. He chops all de wood he think Ah wants and den he totes it inside de kitchen for me. Keeps both water buckets full.” “Humph! don’t ’spect all dat tuh keep up. He ain’t kissin’ yo’ mouf when he carry on over yuh lak dat. He’s kissin’ yo’ foot and ’tain’t in uh man tuh kiss foot long. Mouf kissin’ is on uh equal and dat’s natural but when dey got to bow down tuh love, dey soon straightens up.” “Yes’m.” “Well, if he do all dat whut you come in heah wid uh face long as mah arm for?” “’Cause you told me Ah mus gointer love him, and, and Ah don’t. Maybe if somebody was to tell me how, Ah could do it.” “You come heah wid yo’ mouf full uh foolishness on uh busy day. Heah you got uh prop tuh lean on all yo’ bawn days, and big protection, and everybody got tuh tip dey hat tuh you and call you Mis’ Killicks, and you come worryin’ me ’bout love.” “But Nanny, Ah wants to want him sometimes. Ah don’t want him to do all de wantin’.” 28 Zora Neale Hurston “If you don’t want him, you sho oughta. Heah you is wid de onliest organ in town, amongst colored folks, in yo’ par- lor. Got a house bought and paid for and sixty acres uh land right on de big road and . . . Lawd have mussy! Dat’s de very prong all us black women gits hung on. Dis love! Dat’s just whut’s got us uh pullin’ and uh haulin’ and sweatin’ and doin’ from can’t see in de mornin’ till can’t see at night. Dat’s how come de ole folks say dat bein’ uh fool don’t kill nobody. It jus’ makes you sweat. Ah betcha you wants some dressed up dude dat got to look at de sole of his shoe everytime he cross de street tuh see whether he got enough leather dere tuh make it across. You can buy and sell such as dem wid what you got. In fact you can buy ’em and give ’em away.” “Ah ain’t studyin’ ’bout none of ’em. At de same time Ah ain’t takin’ dat ole land tuh heart neither. Ah could throw ten acres of it over de fence every day and never look back to see where it fell. Ah feel de same way ’bout Mr. Killicks too. Some folks never was meant to be loved and he’s one of ’em.” “How come?” “’Cause Ah hates de way his head is so long one way and so flat on de sides and dat pone uh fat back uh his neck.” “He never made his


But then the turban moved, and the woman bent to say something to the other person sitting inside the motor, and suddenly the world became very still. It turned on its axis no more; it made no revolutions; it came to a terrible halt. For it was clear to Hephzibah, as it was clear to those people on the pavement, that this motor car was altogether too grand, too anonymous, to contain any ordinary person. It had curtains drawn down over the windows. The tassels were bobbing, gleaming gold. Hephzibah felt the thrill passing through the crowd. Saw the traffic slowing. Surely not, Hephzibah thought. Not possible. Not the... The viscountess in the orange turban stepped back. And slowly, back straight, she descended into a curtsey. The crowd sighed with anticipation. Hephzibah was transfixed. Someone else began to emerge from the motor. Hair glossed and folded, dark with wax. A neck bound tight with a choker, as if the pearls had been sewn directly into the skin, flesh jeweled from chin to clavicle. No costume, not even a nod to one. But a sash, royal blue, cutting straight across the shoulder. It blazed up at Hephzibah. So did a face. A familiar face. One you saw on picture postcards. Long and angular. Thick brows. Heavy lidded, heavy jawed. Hephzibah felt her fingers trembling. “Ah,” she said to the boy lightly, as if she didn’t care. “The Princess Victoria is here, after all.” Her mind began racing. How, how, how on earth...? Hephzibah staggered to the door of the Boiserie. Looked out at the saloon, at the open doors to the ballroom. The noise and the fug of champagne on the air hit her in a rush. You’re the greatest actress you know, she told herself. The best. So, act. 33 Ten minutes to go Miss de Vries let her neck fall back, spine arching. Lord Ashley’s fingers were digging into her shoulder blade, his nails scratching black muslin. She kept one fist on her train, taking care not to trip. The electroliers were popping and spitting overhead, and the crowd roared with pleasure as they swept past. Lord Ashley had led her inside to dance, as the news of their engagement swept through the house. “They’re offering us their congratulations,” she said in Lord Ashley’s ear as he hurtled her backward into the center of the room. Up close, she could see his curls were slick with grease, darker than his usual white blond. The waltz was the fastest of the night, the orchestra red-faced and exhausted. “Get your skirts out of the way,” he huffed, wrenching her waist. He wants to show off to the crowd, she thought. The room was spinning around them, all roaring salmon-painted pillars and the tang of sweat. But Miss de Vries made out two figures moving ponderously in her direction. Shepherd and Lockwood, making a beeline for her. She smiled, radiant, laughing, for the crowd. “May we stop,” she said, catching her breath, “my lord?” His hands came away so fast he nearly dropped her.


I sit in the carpool line at my son’s school. The whole scene seems like it must have been a dream. A nightmare. I pinch myself. Nope. I’m definitely awake. Which means my lunch meeting with a furious Wendy was real too. Bryce’s actions are about to cause a lot of collateral damage, I’m afraid. I tap my fingers on the steering wheel, wondering why June hasn’t called me back. It isn’t like it’s summer, when she’s busy helping girls into kayaks or over homesickness. I can’t tell her what’s going on, but I need to hear her voice. She is my safe place. My stomach is in absolute knots. In fact, I’m not sure I really understood that phrase until today. I glance up at the empty school playground. No kids have come out yet. I have at least ten more minutes of waiting in the line and why isn’t June calling me back? My phone rings and I jump. But it’s only Finn. Although maybe that is better. I can actually talk to him about this. “Hey.” Finn starts rambling. “You won’t have to break attorney-client privilege or tell Lanier. It won’t be a problem. People will find out when one of the subcontractors or homeowners talks and when they do it will be all over the news and—” “Finn!” I interrupt. “Think. I’m McCann Media’s attorney.” I lean my head on the steering wheel. “Oh… right. It won’t be anywhere. Because they own all the newspapers, radio, and TV stations.” “Yup. And even if they didn’t, I can’t really see this making the news. I mean, a contractor not paying his bills isn’t exactly exciting.” Until he gets arrested, I add in my head. The fifth graders in their matching khakis and red polos file out onto the playground, which means Henry, who is in preschool, will be out after the older children get into their parents’ cars. Seeing them, I can’t help but remember all the days Lanier and I played on this very playground, skipping rope side by side, saying we’d marry brothers so we could be sisters for real. I have to tell her what I know. Finn is back at it with the chattering, and I love him for the distraction. “Well, it isn’t that bad, right?” he says. “Finn! He literally stole almost a million dollars from people! And the shitty thing is, worst case, he’ll probably file bankruptcy and walk away scot-free. Those people he’s stolen from will get totally screwed, maybe even lose houses or businesses. And he’ll just get away with it.” The only real, true punishment for Bryce would be losing Lanier. Which he will because I will tell her. And then Bryce will turn me in to the bar. And I will get disbarred for breaking attorney-client privilege. Which, well, I probably should. I took an oath to protect my clients’ secrets. If I break that oath, my career is over. Then I think of Lanier again, of her family. This would affect all of them. I remember how


nowhere!" "Would you not?" exclaimed Clifford, with singular energy. "It is as clear to me as sunshine,--were there any in the sky,--that the greatest possible stumbling-blocks in the path of human happiness and improvement are these heaps of bricks and stones, consolidated with mortar, or hewn timber, fastened together with spike-nails, which men painfully contrive for their own torment, and call them house and home! The soul needs air; a wide sweep and frequent change of it. Morbid influences, in a thousand-fold variety, gather about hearths, and pollute the life of households. There is no such unwholesome atmosphere as that of an old home, rendered poisonous by one's defunct forefathers and relatives. I speak of what I know. There is a certain house within my familiar recollection,--one of those peaked-gable (there are seven of them), projecting-storied edifices, such as you occasionally see in our older towns,--a rusty, crazy, creaky, dry-rotted, dingy, dark, and miserable old dungeon, with an arched window over the porch, and a little shop-door on one side, and a great, melancholy elm before it! Now, sir, whenever my thoughts recur to this seven-gabled mansion (the fact is so very curious that I must needs mention it), immediately I have a vision or image of an elderly man, of remarkably stern countenance, sitting in an oaken elbow-chair, dead, stone-dead, with an ugly flow of blood upon his shirt-bosom! Dead, but with open eyes! He taints the whole house, as I remember it. I could never flourish there, nor be happy, nor do nor enjoy what God meant me to do and enjoy." His face darkened, and seemed to contract, and shrivel itself up, and wither into age. "Never, sir" he repeated. "I could never draw cheerful breath there!" "I should think not," said the old gentleman, eyeing Clifford earnestly, and rather apprehensively. "I should conceive not, sir, with that notion in your head!" "Surely not," continued Clifford; "and it were a relief to me if that house could be torn down, or burnt up, and so the earth be rid of it, and grass be sown abundantly over its foundation. Not that I should ever visit its site again! for, sir, the farther I get away from it, the more does the joy, the lightsome freshness, the heart-leap, the intellectual dance, the youth, in short,--yes, my youth, my youth!--the more does it come back to me. No longer ago than this morning, I was old. I remember looking in the glass, and wondering at my own gray hair, and the wrinkles, many and deep, right across my brow, and the furrows down my cheeks, and the prodigious trampling of crow's-feet about my temples! It was too soon! I could not bear it! Age had no right to come! I had not lived! But now do I look old? If so, my aspect belies me strangely; for--a great weight being off my mind--I feel in the very heyday of my youth, with the world and my best days before me!" "I trust you may find it so," said the old gentleman,


gone; but he jerked it in again, and says: "Heave that blame lantern out o' sight, Bill!" He flung a bag of something into the boat, and then got in himself and set down. It was Packard. Then Bill HE come out and got in. Packard says, in a low voice: "All ready -- shove off!" I couldn't hardly hang on to the shutters, I was so weak. But Bill says: "Hold on -- 'd you go through him?" "No. Didn't you?" "No. So he's got his share o' the cash yet." "Well, then, come along; no use to take truck and leave money." "Say, won't he suspicion what we're up to?" "Maybe he won't. But we got to have it anyway. Come along." So they got out and went in. The door slammed to because it was on the careened side; and in a half second I was in the boat, and Jim come tumbling after me. I out with my knife and cut the rope, and away we went! We didn't touch an oar, and we didn't speak nor whisper, nor hardly even breathe. We went gliding swift along, dead silent, past the tip of the paddle- box, and past the stern; then in a second or two more we was a hundred yards below the wreck, and the darkness soaked her up, every last sign of her, and we was safe, and knowed it. When we was three or four hundred yards down- stream we see the lantern show like a little spark at the texas door for a second, and we knowed by that that the rascals had missed their boat, and was beginning to understand that they was in just as much trouble now as Jim Turner was. Then Jim manned the oars, and we took out after our raft. Now was the first time that I begun to worry about the men -- I reckon I hadn't had time to before. I begun to think how dreadful it was, even for mur- derers, to be in such a fix. I says to myself, there ain't no telling but I might come to be a murderer myself yet, and then how would I like it? So says I to Jim: "The first light we see we'll land a hundred yards below it or above it, in a place where it's a good hiding-place for you and the skiff, and then I'll go and fix up some kind of a yarn, and get somebody to go for that gang and get them out of their scrape, so they can be hung when their time comes." But that idea was a failure; for pretty soon it begun to storm again, and this time worse than ever. The rain poured down, and never a light showed; every- body in bed, I reckon. We boomed along down the river, watching for lights and watching for our raft. After a long time the rain let up, but the clouds stayed, and the lightning kept whimpering, and by and by a flash showed


indulged in the weakness of a cry. Matthew, coming in with a lantern, caught her at it and gazed at her in such consternation that Marilla had to laugh through her tears. "I was thinking about Anne," she explained. "She's got to be such a big girl-and she'll probably be away from us next winter. I'll miss her terrible." "She'll be able to come home often," comforted Matthew, to whom Anne was as yet and always would be the little, eager girl he had brought home from Bright River on that June evening four years before. "The branch railroad will be built to Carmody by that time." "It won't be the same thing as having her here all the time," sighed Marilla gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted. "But there-men can't understand these things!" There were other changes in Anne no less real than the physical change. For one thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps she thought all the more and dreamed as much as ever, but she certainly talked less. Marilla noticed and commented on this also. "You don't chatter half as much as you used to, Anne, nor use half as many big words. What has come over you?" Anne colored and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked dreamily out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out on the creeper in response to the lure of the spring sunshine. "I don't know-I don't want to talk as much," she said, denting her chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. "It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over. And somehow I don't want to use big words any more. It's almost a pity, isn't it, now that I'm really growing big enough to say them if I did want to. It's fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it's not the kind of fun I expected, Marilla. There's so much to learn and do and think that there isn't time for big words. Besides, Miss Stacy says the short ones are much stronger and better. She makes us write all our essays as simply as possible. It was hard at first. I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I could think of-and I thought of any number of them. But I've got used to it now and I see it's so much better." "What has become of your story club? I haven't heard you speak of it for a long time." "The story club isn't in existence any longer. We hadn't time for it-and anyhow I think we had got tired of it. It was silly to be writing about love and murder and elopements and mysteries. Miss Stacy sometimes has us write a story for training in composition, but she won't let us write anything but what might happen in Avonlea in our own lives, and she criticizes it very sharply and makes us criticize


visionary, fictional, grandness. ANTONYM: (n) idolized: (adj) adored, beloved, notional, chimerical. ANTONYMS: lightness loved, precious, worshipped (adj) real, palpable, actual, concrete, imminent: (adj) forthcoming, coming, ignominious: (adj) dishonorable, prosaic, normal, true close, future, near, pending, shameful, disreputable, infamous, imagining: (n) conception, approaching, at hand, menacing, base, discreditable, dishonourable, daydream, fantasy, opinion; (v) threatening, prospective. inglorious, black, despicable, imagine; (adj) imaginant ANTONYMS: (adj) remote, past degrading. ANTONYMS: (adj) imbecility: (n) folly, foolishness, immortal: (adj) eternal, enduring, honorable, glorious idiocy, fatuity, weakness, stupidity, undying, endless, monumental; (adj, ignominiously: (adv) disgracefully, feeblemindedness, lunacy; (adj, n) v) deathless, imperishable, shamefully, discreditably, debility, feebleness; (adj) infirmity celebrated; (n) deity, God, divinity. dishonorably, scandalously, imbibing: (n) drinking, absorption, ANTONYMS: (adj) obscure, earthly, dishonourably, opprobriously, intake, swillings, drink, potation, forgettable, perishable, temporary infamously, basely, vilely, foully drunkenness, gulping, boozing, immortality: (n) sempiternity, ignominy: (n) disgrace, dishonor, crapulence; (adj) absorbent perpetuity, athanasia, glory, aye, shame, reproach, contempt, imbue: (v) infuse, saturate, permeate, fame, everness, immortal, disrepute, degradation, discredit, tinge, steep, dye, fill, impregnate, permanency, deathlessness, scandal; (adj, n) odium; (adj) pervade, instill, inoculate undying. ANTONYM: (n) mortality opprobrium. ANTONYMS: (n) imbued: (adj) addicted, alive, immortally: (adv) undyingly, success, glorification, pride instinct, full everlastingly, deathlessly, ill-defined: (adj) unclear, ambiguous, imitated: (adj) mimical perpetually, eternally, perennially, vague, indistinct, obscure, fuzzy, imitative: (adj) mock, counterfeit, lastingly, abidingly, timelessly, loose, general, faint, hazy derivative, fake, false, fictitious, enduringly, permanently ill-fated: (adj) hapless, unfortunate, bogus, bastard, onomatopoeic, base, immunity: (n) freedom, franchise, unhappy, poor, accursed, cursed, sham. ANTONYMS: (adj) genuine, dispensation, privilege, exception, fatal, infelicitous, unchancy, real, nonimitative relief, invulnerability, exoneration, disastrous, inauspicious immaterial: (adj) insignificant, excuse, safety, liberty. ANTONYMS: ill-fitted: (adj) ill-suited, inapt inconsequential, irrelevant, (n) susceptibility, liability, inclusion ill-omened: (adj) ill-fated, ominous, disembodied, incorporeal, trivial, impalpable: (adj) imperceptible, inauspicious, infelicitous, doomed bodiless, spiritual, unimportant, shadowy, invisible, efflorescent, illuminated: (adj) lit, lighted, extraneous, psychic. ANTONYMS: gritty, insubstantial, incorporeal, luminous, enlightened, clear, light, (adj) significant, material, corporeal, inscrutable, ethereal, shining, irradiated, lighter, Lighty, physical, tangible, important inapprehensible, elusive. irradiate immature: (adj) green, childish, ANTONYMS: (adj) tangible, definite illuminating: (adj) illuminate, tender, unripe, raw, crude, youthful, impart: (v) give, convey, disclose, Nathaniel Hawthorne 293 communicate, announce, grant, strongly undignified, lowly reveal, hand, bestow, divulge, imperfect: (adj) faulty, deficient, impossibility: (n) impossibleness, confer. ANTONYMS: (v) withhold, defective, unfinished, incomplete, option, nonexistence, absurdity, withdraw poor, flawed, partial, inadequate, inability, impracticability, imparting: (n) giving, conveyance, broken, fallible. ANTONYMS: (adj) alternative, choice, contradiction, conveyance of title, conveyancing, perfect, whole, unblemished, contradiction in terms, conveying adequate, complete, sound, doubtfulness. ANTONYMS: (n) impassioned: (adj) fervent, fanatical, boundless, capable, flawless possibility, probability fiery, burning, passionate, hot, imperfectly: (adv) faultily, impossibly: (adv) unusually, torrid, vehement, keen, zealous; defectively, badly, deficiently, unthinkably, doubtfully, (adj, v) enthusiastic. ANTONYMS: incompletely, partially, poorly, implausibly, incredibly, (adj) impassive, indifferent, calm inadequately, sketchily, incorrectly, insufferably, oddly, unbearably, impatiently: (adv) petulantly, halfway. ANTONYMS: (adv) surprisingly, unbelievably, restlessly, keenly, intolerantly, perfectly, flawlessly, correctly, well unimaginably. ANTONYM: (adv) hastily, avidly, uneasily, imperious: (adj) haughty, tolerably enthusiastically, edgily, fidgetily, domineering, authoritative, impost: (n) custom, tax, customs, restively. ANTONYMS: (adv) arbitrary, imperative, masterful, customs duty, toll, dues, cess, excise, uncomplainingly, calmly, dictatorial, commanding, lordly, Scot,


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

a window open? I'm boiling." "Can't, Harry, sorry," said Hagrid. Harry noticed him glance at the fire. Harry looked at it, too. "Hagrid -- what's that?" But he already knew what it was. In the very heart of the fire, underneath the kettle, was a huge, black egg. "Ah," said Hagrid, fiddling nervously with his beard, "That's er..." "Where did you get it, Hagrid?" said Ron, crouching over the fire to get a closer look at the egg. "It must've cost you a fortune." "Won it," said Hagrid. "Las' night. I was down in the village havin' a few drinks an' got into a game o' cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest." "But what are you going to do with it when it's hatched?" said Hermione. "Well, I've bin doin' some readin'," said Hagrid, pulling a large book from under his pillow. "Got this outta the library -- Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit -- it's a bit outta date, o' course, but it's all in here. Keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mothers breathe on I em, see, an' when it hatches, feed it on a bucket o' brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour. An' see here -- how ter recognize diff'rent eggs -- what I got there's a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them." He looked very pleased with himself, but Hermione didn't. "Hagrid, you live in a wooden house," she said. But Hagrid wasn't listening. He was humming merrily as he stoked the fire. *** So now they had something else to worry about: what might happen to Hagrid if anyone found out he was hiding an illegal dragon in his hut. "Wonder what it's like to have a peaceful life," Ron sighed, as evening after evening they struggled through all the extra homework they were getting. Hermione had now started making study schedules for Harry and Ron, too. It was driving them nuts. Then, one breakfast time, Hedwig brought Harry another note from Hagrid. He had written only two words: It's hatching. Ron wanted to skip Herbology and go straight down to the hut. Hermione wouldn't hear of it. "Hermione, how many times in our lives are we going to see a dragon hatching?" "We've got lessons, we'll get into trouble, and that's nothing to what Hagrid's going to be in when someone finds out what he's doing -- " "Shut up!" Harry whispered. Malfoy was only a few feet away and he had stopped dead to listen. How much had he heard? Harry didn't like the look on Malfoy's face at all. Ron and Hermione argued all the way to Herbology and in the end, Hermione agreed to run down to Hagrid's with the other two during morning break. When the bell sounded from the castle at the end of their lesson, the three of them dropped their trowels at once and hurried through the grounds to the edge of the forest. Hagrid greeted them, looking flushed and excited. "It's nearly out." He


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

do! he said. --Butter you up! said Brother Michael. You'll get your walking papers in the morning when the doctor comes. --Will I? the fellow said. I'm not well yet. Brother Michael repeated: --You'll get your walking papers. I tell you. He bent down to rake the fire. He had a long back like the long back of a tramhorse. He shook the poker gravely and nodded his head at the fellow out of third of grammar. Then Brother Michael went away and after a while the fellow out of third of grammar turned in towards the wall and fell asleep. That was the infirmary. He was sick then. Had they written home to tell his mother and father? But it would be quicker for one of the priests to go himself to tell them. Or he would write a letter for the priest to bring. Dear Mother, I am sick. I want to go home. Please come and take me home. I am in the infirmary. Your fond son, Stephen How far away they were! There was cold sunlight outside the window. He wondered if he would die. You could die just the same on a sunny day. He might die before his mother came. Then he would have a dead mass in the chapel like the way the fellows had told him it was when Little had died. All the fellows would be at the mass, dressed in black, all with sad faces. Wells too would be there but no fellow would look at him. The rector would be there in a cope of black and gold and there would be tall yellow candles on the altar and round the catafalque. And they would carry the coffin out of the chapel slowly and he would be buried in the little graveyard of the community off the main avenue of limes. And Wells would be sorry then for what he had done. And the bell would toll slowly. He could hear the tolling. He said over to himself the song that Brigid had taught him. Dingdong! The castle bell! Farewell, my mother! Bury me in the old churchyard Beside my eldest brother. My coffin shall be black, Six angels at my back, Two to sing and two to pray And two to carry my soul away. How beautiful and sad that was! How beautiful the words were where they said BURY ME IN THE OLD CHURCHYARD! A tremor passed over his body. How sad and how beautiful! He wanted to cry quietly but not for himself: for the words, so beautiful and sad, like music. The bell! The bell! Farewell! O farewell! The cold sunlight was weaker and Brother Michael was standing at his bedside with a bowl of beef-tea. He was glad for his mouth was hot and dry. He could hear them playing in the playgrounds. And the day was going on in the college just as if he were there. Then Brother Michael was going away and the fellow out of the third of grammar told him to


went just after tea?" said George. "She'd think we were all ill. No, let's go after supper. We'll just say we're tired with rowing- which is perfectly true- and we'll get a good night's sleep, and be ready for our adventure tomorrow morning. And it is an adventure, you know. It isn't many people that have the chance of exploring an old, old wreck like that, which has always been at the bottom of the sea!" So, by eight o'clock, all the children were in bed, rather to Aunt Fanny's surprise. Anne fell asleep at once. Julian and Dick were not long- but George lay awake for some time, thinking of her island, her wreck- and, of course, her beloved dog! "I must take Tim too," she thought, as she fell asleep. "We can't leave old Tim out of this. He shall share in the adventure too! Chapter Eight EXPLORING THE WRECK Contents- Prev/Next JULIAN woke first the next morning. He awoke just as the sun was slipping over the horizon in the east, and filling the sky with gold. Julian stared at the ceiling for a moment, and then, in a rush, he remembered all that had happened the day before. He sat up straight in bed and whispered as loudly as he could. "Dick! Wake up! We're going to see the wreck! Do wake up!" Dick woke and grinned at Julian. A feeling of happiness crept over him. They were going on an adventure. He leapt out of bed and ran quietly to the girls' room. He opened the door. Both the girls were fast asleep, Anne curled up like a dormouse under the sheet. Dick shook George and then dug Anne in the back. They awoke and sat up. "Buck up!" whispered Dick. "The sun is just rising. We'll have to hurry." George's blue eyes shone as she dressed. Anne skipped about quietly, finding her few clothes- just a bathing suit, jeans and jersey- and rubber shoes for her feet. It wasn't many minutes before they were all ready. "Now, not a creak on the stairs- not a cough or a giggle!" warned Julian, as they stood together on the landing. Anne was a dreadful giggler, and had often given secret plans away by her sudden explosive choke. But this time the little girl was as solemn as the others, and as careful. They crept down the stairs and undid the little front door. Not a sound was made. They shut the door quietly and made their way down the garden path to the gate. The gate always creaked, so they climbed over it instead of opening it. The sun was now shining brightly, though it was still low in the eastern sky. It felt warm already. The sky was so beautifully blue that Anne couldn't help feeling it had been freshly washed! "It looks just as if it had come back from the laundry," she told the others. They squealed with laughter at her. She did say odd things at times. But they knew what she meant. The


“That’s not what I mean,” he snaps and runs a hand through his overlong hair so that it flops onto his forehead. “What do you mean?” He swallows. “I want your world to begin and end with me,” he says, his ex- pression raw. His comment completely derails me. It’s like he’s punched me hard in the stomach, winding and wounding me. And the vision comes to mind of a small, frightened, copper-haired gray-eyed boy in dirty, mismatched, ill-fitting clothes. “It does,” I say without guile, because it’s the truth. “I’m just trying to estab- lish a career, and I don’t want to trade on your name. I have to do something, Christian. I can’t stay imprisoned at Escala or the new house with nothing to do. I’ll go crazy. I’ll suffocate. I’ve always worked, and I enjoy this. This is my dream job; it’s all I’ve ever wanted. But doing this doesn’t mean I love you less. You are the world to me.” My throat swells and tears prick the back of my eyes. I must not cry, not here. I repeat it over and over in my head. I must not cry. I must not cry. He stares at me, saying nothing. Then a frown crosses his face as if he’s con- sidering what I’ve said. “I suffocate you?” His voice is bleak, and it’s an echo of a question he’s asked me before. “No . . . yes . . . no.” This is such an exasperating conversation—not one that I want to have now, here. I close my eyes and rub my forehead, trying to fathom how we got to this. 146/551 “Look, we were talking about my name. I want to keep my name here be- cause I want to put some distance between you and me . . . but only here, that’s all. You know everyone thinks I got the job because of you, when the reality is—” I stop, when his eyes widen. Oh no . . . it is because of him? “Do you want to know why you got the job, Anastasia?” Anastasia? Shit. “What? What do you mean?” He shifts in his chair as if steeling himself. Do I want to know? “The management here gave you Hyde’s job to babysit. They didn’t want the expense of hiring a senior executive when the company was mid-sale. They had no idea what the new owner would do with it once it passed into his ownership, and wisely, they didn’t want an expensive redundancy. So they gave you Hyde’s job to caretake until the new owner” —he pauses, and his lips twitch in an ironic smile—“namely me, took over.” Holy crap! “What are you saying?” So it was because of him. Fuck! I’m horrified. He smiles and shakes his head at my alarm. “Relax. You’ve more than risen to the challenge. You’ve done very well.” There’s the tiniest hint of pride in his voice, and it’s almost my undoing. “Oh,” I murmur incoherently, reeling from this news. I sit right back in my


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

and I guessed that his father was not in fact proud of his son’s skill in the kitchen, perhaps even viewing it as a degradation of his manhood. Fortunately, Finn seemed kindhearted at the core, and he said with some formality, “I hope you enjoy it. If you need anything else, you can send word to the big house. Will half seven suit for breakfast?” “Yes,” I said, regretting the change from his former easy conversation. “Thank you.” “Oh, and this arrived for you two days ago,” he said, withdrawing an envelope from his pocket. “We get mail deliveries every week.” From the way he said it, he saw this as a source of local pride, so I forced a smile as I thanked him. He smiled back and departed, murmuring something about the chickens. I glanced at the letter, and found myself confronted with a florid script that read The Office of Dr. Wendell Bambleby, Cambridge in the upper left corner, and in the middle, Dr. Emily Wilde, Abode of Krystjan Egilson, Farmer, Village of Hrafnsvik, Ljosland. “Bloody Bambleby,” I said. I set the letter aside, too hungry to be vexed just then. Before I tucked into my own refreshments, I took the time to prepare Shadow’s, as was our custom. I collected a mutton steak from the outdoor cellar—to which I had been directed by Finn—and set it on a plate beside a bowl of water. My dear beast devoured his meal without complaint, while I sat by the crackling fire with my tea, which was strong and smoky, but good. I felt some regret at having poorly repaid Finn’s kindness, but I didn’t mourn the absence of his company—I had not been expecting it. I gazed out the window. The forest was visible, starting a little higher up the slope and giving off the inauspicious impression of a dark wave about to come cresting down on me. Ljosland has little in the way of trees, as its mortal inhabitants denuded much of the sub-Arctic landscape. However, a few forests remain—those claimed, or believed to be claimed, by their Hidden Ones. These are largely comprised of the humble downy birch, along with a few rowans and shrub willows. Nothing grows to a great height in such a cold place, and what trees I could see were stunted, tucking themselves ominously into the shadow of the mountainside. Their appearance was mesmerizing. The Folk are as embedded in their environments[*3] as the deepest of taproots, and I was all the more eager to meet the creatures who called such an inhospitable place home. Bambleby’s letter sat upon the table, somehow conspiring to give off a kind of negligent ease, and so finally, once I had finished the bread (good, tasting of smoke) as well as the cheese (also good, also tasting of smoke), I took it up and slid my nail through the seam. My dear Emily, it began. I hope you’re settled comfortably in your snowbound fastness, and that you are merry as you pore over your books and collect a


or someone else brings sex into it.” He says it like sex is something they only do in the cheap seats. “So were they?” “Stefan fucked everyone for over a hundred years. How could I possibly know? When are we even talking about? My lifetime? Before?” “You’re the family historian. You tell me.” He smiles like a dolphin. “All right, I’ll get someone to look into the files and have an answer for you as soon as possible.” “Is that supposed to mean tomorrow or next year?” “Well, let’s see: on Roddy Tebbit, I’m just working with a physical description. No names, no time frame. That could be a little vague for anything quick, I’m afraid. And Peter and Lillian, well, at least her name is uncommon. We probably haven’t employed more than a dozen of those globally. But a lot of the early records are formatted for a different system, so it’ll be a manual job. Still, I should have something for you in a couple of weeks, with a fair wind.” “Athena—” “Is welcome to take it up with me. I’m sure she wouldn’t want to burn significant corporate resources on a favour for a friend. That would be in violation of her fiduciary responsibilities. No, I think she’ll just make some noise and get on with polishing my office chair with that ass you can’t bring yourself to actually touch any more, however often you manage to kiss it when you need something for your little detective sideshow. No, Sounder, you’re a lapdog. Go foul the streets. I have a call.” “Thanks, Maurice. Always a pleasure.” I get in the elevator and push down, but it goes up. I feel my stomach get left behind somewhere around the fortieth floor. When the doors open, I look into a room like a madman’s cathedral. * * * — I step through onto a dark wood floor covered with Isfahan silks. The walls are made of faceted smoke crystal. The ceiling, triple height, is a single domed piece of the same stuff polished en cabochon. It must have been custom-made. There are cherry trees growing in pots the size of a compact car, and I can hear birds singing, sweet and high and clear. In the sunken lounge area there’s a fountain and a circle of sofas, and away by the wooden doors that lead out onto a terrace that’s almost as big as the room itself there’s a piece of solid granite cut into the shape of an enormous desk. I walk down to the fountain. When he speaks, I realise he’s been there watching me all along, and that I knew it because I could hear him, but he’s so huge my brain simply didn’t process him as alive. Stefan is twice the size of a normal human, almost four metres high and broad in proportion. Baseline, he was thickset, a wrestler rather than a dancer; after four doses of T7 he gives substance to the word his process made famous. For now he looks fifty years old, olive


I may die/ Won't you pour me one more of that sinful Old Janx Spirit"). Each of the two contestants would then concentrate their will on the bottle and attempt to tip it and pour spirit into the glass of his opponent - who would then have to drink it. The bottle would then be refilled. The game would be played again. And again. Once you started to lose you would probably keep losing, because one of the effects of Janx spirit is to depress telepsychic power. As soon as a predetermined quantity had been consumed, the final loser would have to perform a forfeit, which was usually obscenely biological. Ford Prefect usually played to lose. Ford stared at Arthur, who began to think that perhaps he did want to go to the Horse and Groom after all. "But what about my house ...?" he asked plaintively. Ford looked across to Mr Prosser, and suddenly a wicked thought struck him. "He wants to knock your house down?" "Yes, he wants to build ..." "And he can't because you're lying in front of the bulldozers?" "Yes, and ..." "I'm sure we can come to some arrangement," said Ford. "Excuse me!" he shouted. Mr Prosser (who was arguing with a spokesman for the bulldozer drivers about whether or not Arthur Dent constituted a mental health hazard, and how much they should get paid if he did) looked around. He was surprised and slightly alarmed to find that Arthur had company. "Yes? Hello?" he called. "Has Mr Dent come to his senses yet?" "Can we for the moment," called Ford, "assume that he hasn't?" "Well?" sighed Mr Prosser. "And can we also assume," said Ford, "that he's going to be staying here all day?" "So?" "So all your men are going to be standing around all day doing nothing?" "Could be, could be ..." "Well, if you're resigned to doing that anyway, you don't actually need him to lie here all the time do you?" "What?" "You don't," said Ford patiently, "actually need him here." Mr Prosser thought about this. "Well no, not as such...", he said, "not exactly need ..." Prosser was worried. He thought that one of them wasn't making a lot of sense. Ford said, "So if you would just like to take it as read that he's actually here, then he and I could slip off down to the pub for half an hour. How does that sound?" Mr Prosser thought it sounded perfectly potty. "That sounds perfectly reasonable," he said in a reassuring tone of voice, wondering who he was trying to reassure. "And if you want to pop off for a quick one yourself later on," said Ford, "we can always cover up for you in return." "Thank you very much," said Mr Prosser who no longer knew how to play this at all, "thank you very much, yes, that's very kind ..." He frowned, then smiled, then tried to do both at once, failed, grasped hold of his fur hat and rolled it fitfully round the top of


lot more. On the minus side, I’m mostly thinking about how bad it is and how I’m never going to finish it, rather than useful stuff like, you know, working on the plot. On our third day, rain falls again to match my attitude, and Victor gleefully drags us outside to perform manual labor. (I’m no therapist but I’m pretty sure he has issues.) “Can you hold on to this?” I ask Raj, trying to hammer our final tent peg into the soggy grass. He crouches down at my side and grimaces, which is basically all he’s been doing since we were paired off and given our tent. “You’re not gonna bonk my fingers, are you?” “I might.” “I’m an artist, Brad. I need these fingers. Break them and I will sue.” “It’s a soft mallet, Raj,” I tell him. “Get a grip.” Then I bonk his fingers on purpose. He collapses into the mud (it’s fascinating, really; he doesn’t even seem to hesitate) and howls, “Betrayal!” I bonk his head. “Violence! Vicious, relentless—” “Everything all right over here, boys?” Zion asks pointedly, looming over us like a tablet-wielding god when, in reality, he’s five years older than us, max. Raj pops up like a daisy, brighter than today’s cloud-covered sun. “Yes, sir, Zion, sir. Tent’s almost up. Pegs behaving. Everything’s in order. If you ask me, I think we’re doing a cracking job.” Zion rolls his eyes and taps at his tablet as he leaves. Shit. Did he at least notice what an effective leader I’m being today? Probably not, since I was leading via mallet attack. “Oops,” Raj says. “That probably wasn’t very committed of us.” “Nope,” I agree. My eyes flicker across the tent-dotted clearing without permission, and I catch a glimpse of Celine. Her tent’s been up for ages. She’s now helping everyone else put up theirs, showing both leadership and team-building skills. If I don’t get this scholarship and Celine does, I’m going to shave off my hair and eat it. “Hey,” Raj says, dragging my attention back to our sad excuse for a tent. He pushes the peg into the grass. “How’s this?” “Wrong. You’re supposed to hold it at a forty-five-degree angle.” “I thought it was a ninety-degree angle?” “No,” I say patiently, “the guide ropes loop into the pegs at a ninety-degree angle. The pegs—” “Come on, Brad,” he interrupts, “just whack the peg for me. You can do it.” I wave the damp scrap of paper that passes as the instructions. “I know you read this, because you got muddy fingerprints all over it—” “Ouch.” “—so you must realize the numbers were very clear. Forty. Five. Degrees. We have to do it right or it’ll…collapse! In the night!” “Brad, we’re not sleeping in these tents tonight.” “No,” I say seriously, “but it’s the principle of the thing.” “Fiiiiiiine,” he says, and takes the sheet, squinting at the diagram. I only realize I’m smiling when the rain streams around my cheeks instead of down them. “All right, how’s this?” I want to appreciate the


fetter, imprecation, promise, affidavit, cuss, thousand, gramme, gram, gm, bundle, truss, combine. swearing, pledge, assurance, gigabyte, Gb, curtilage. ANTONYMS: (v) untie, unbind, free, asseveration; (v) swear. token: (n) memento, souvenir, note, unfasten, unravel, permit, loosen, ruin: (n) devastation, desolation; (adj, keepsake, sign, relic, stamp, signal, loose, let; (n, v) release; (n) pleasure. n) downfall; (v) break, consume, indication; (adj) nominal; (n, v) trace. enticed: (adj) interested. demolish, destroy; (n, v) doom, ANTONYM: (adj) great. Nathaniel Hawthorne 73 CHAPTER %V. HESTER AT HER NEEDLE Hester Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet letter on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very law that condemned her--a giant of stem featured but with vigour to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm--had held her up through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison door, began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief. Thesaurus annihilate: (v) eradicate, exterminate, peaceful, peaceable. bland, dull, modest. eliminate, wipe out, extinguish, confinement: (n, v) childbirth, morbid: (adj) diseased, gruesome, destroy, quash, crush, demolish, delivery; (n) detention, custody, macabre, corrupt, pathologic, quench, extirpate. ANTONYMS: (v) restraint, internment, prison, labor, unwholesome, peccant, sick, build, help, save, protect, surrender. containment, incarceration, arrest. unhealthy, pathological; (adj, v) began: (v) Gan. ANTONYMS: (n) release, death, sickly. combative: (adj) aggressive, liberation. unattended: (adj) ignored, neglected, pugnacious, argumentative, bellicose, insulated: (adj) cloistered. alone, solitary, abandoned, agonistic, warlike, agonistical, lurid: (adj) ghastly, grisly, gruesome, disregarded, not safeguarded, lonely. martial, quarrelsome, fighting; (adj, v) loud, frightful, sharp, shocking, vigour: (n) force, strength, vigor, contentious. ANTONYMS: (adj) gaudy, sensational, hideous, horrific. energy, power, potency, vim, vitality, compromising, pacifistic, passive, ANTONYMS: (adj) subtle, muted, athleticism, verve, intensity. 74 The Scarlet Letter Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next: each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still


not given her and that was as yet quite obscure to me. It comes back to me that I thought instantly of this as something I could get from her; and I felt it to be connected with the desire she presently showed to know more. "When was it--on the tower?" "About the middle of the month. At this same hour." "Almost at dark," said Mrs. Grose. "Oh, no, not nearly. I saw him as I see you." "Then how did he get in?" "And how did he get out?" I laughed. "I had no opportunity to ask him! This evening, you see," I pursued, "he has not been able to get in." "He only peeps?" "I hope it will be confined to that!" She had now let go my hand; she turned away a little. I waited an instant; then I brought out: "Go to church. Goodbye. I must watch." Slowly she faced me again. "Do you fear for them?" We met in another long look. "Don't YOU?" Instead of answering she came nearer to the window and, for a minute, applied her face to the glass. "You see how he could see," I meanwhile went on. She didn't move. "How long was he here?" "Till I came out. I came to meet him." Mrs. Grose at last turned round, and there was still more in her face. "_I_ couldn't have come out." "Neither could I!" I laughed again. "But I did come. I have my duty." "So have I mine," she replied; after which she added: "What is he like?" "I've been dying to tell you. But he's like nobody." "Nobody?" she echoed. "He has no hat." Then seeing in her face that she already, in this, with a deeper dismay, found a touch of picture, I quickly added stroke to stroke. "He has red hair, very red, close-curling, and a pale face, long in shape, with straight, good features and little, rather queer whiskers that are as red as his hair. His eyebrows are, somehow, darker; they look particularly arched and as if they might move a good deal. His eyes are sharp, strange--awfully; but I only know clearly that they're rather small and very fixed. His mouth's wide, and his lips are thin, and except for his little whiskers he's quite clean-shaven. He gives me a sort of sense of looking like an actor." "An actor!" It was impossible to resemble one less, at least, than Mrs. Grose at that moment. "I've never seen one, but so I suppose them. He's tall, active, erect," I continued, "but never--no, never!--a gentleman." My companion's face had blanched as I went on; her round eyes started and her mild mouth gaped. "A gentleman?" she gasped, confounded, stupefied: "a gentleman HE?" "You know him then?" She visibly tried to hold herself. "But he IS handsome?" I saw the way to help her. "Remarkably!" "And dressed--?" "In somebody's clothes. "They're smart, but they're not his own." She broke into a breathless affirmative groan: "They're the master's!" I caught it up. "You DO know


next. I spent most of my time at the gym doing squats. That’s what I was doing when I met him. He was just a voice behind me, critiquing my form. “Keep those knees out,” he said. I dropped the twenty-pound dumbbell I was holding at my chest and turned to face him. “Who are you?” “Jesse. I’m a trainer here.” “I don’t need a trainer,” I snapped. “Of course not.” Our eyes locked and his were golden. Like a lion’s. “But I don’t want you to get hurt.” There was no way he could have known how much I got hurt—physically, mentally, and emotionally—every day. Or that his choice of words would break down my walls, make me instantly receptive to him. I allowed him to correct my posture. His touch was professional, gentle, and tentative. But it lit me up. At my next workout, he asked me out for coffee. “I’m married,” I said. “It’s just coffee.” His smile was bemused. “We can talk about your training.” “I can’t.” But the chemistry between us was impossible to ignore, and soon I opened up to him. I told him that I was being watched. That my husband had a security guard tailing me—supposedly, for my own protection. Jesse came up with a solution. His Audi was parked behind the building in the staff lot. We could slip out the back door and drive off together. As long as my Mercedes remained parked in front of the gym, I was safe. We went to his apartment. It was masculine, bare-bones, like he hadn’t lived there very long. It was on the ground floor, facing the alley, the windows barred. It was a dump, frankly, but to me it was a sanctuary. That’s where I explained the Master/slave dynamic in my marriage. I felt weak and ashamed, but the words poured out of me. Jesse listened, his face transformed by compassion and pity. When he touched my cheek, it felt so comforting. And when he kissed me, it felt loving and right. Things escalated quickly. I was starved for tenderness, affection, and good old-fashioned sex. Three to five days a week, I’d arrive at the gym, lift a few weights, and then we’d slip out the back door and into his Audi. I would slouch low in the seat as we raced to his apartment, my hair covering my face, my lips pressed into a smile of anticipation. I didn’t care that our relationship was a cliché. As soon as we closed the apartment door behind us, we were tearing at each other’s clothes. Sometimes we fucked right there on the parquet floor of the entryway. Maybe I should have felt cheapened by the urgent, almost animal sex. But to me it felt pure and beautiful. “I think I love you,” I told him after one particularly ardent session of lovemaking. It was far too soon, and my stomach twisted with fear. My words would scare him away. He’d think I was needy, pathetic, crazy. But Jesse pulled me close to him. “I


into the road, followed by a couple of dogs. The stranger was in a hunter's dress. His gun was slung across his shoulders, the hunter's horn hung from his belt, and in his hand was a small pike, which, as he held it, added to the manly grace of his figure, and assisted the agility of his steps. After a moment's hesitation, St. Aubert again stopped the carriage, and waited till he came up, that they might enquire concerning the hamlet they were in search of. The stranger informed him, that it was only half a league distant, that he was going thither himself, and would readily shew the way. St. Aubert thanked him for the offer, and, pleased with his chevalier-like air and open countenance, asked him to take a seat in the carriage; which the stranger, with an acknowledgment, declined, adding that he would keep pace with the mules. 'But I fear you will be wretchedly accommodated,' said he: 'the inhabitants of these mountains are a simple people, who are not only without the luxuries of life, but almost destitute of what in other places are held to be its necessaries.' 'I perceive you are not one of its inhabitants, sir,' said St. Aubert. 'No, sir, I am only a wanderer here.' The carriage drove on, and the increasing dusk made the travellers very thankful that they had a guide; the frequent glens, too, that now opened among the mountains, would likewise have added to their perplexity. Emily, as she looked up one of these, saw something at a great distance like a bright cloud in the air. 'What light is yonder, sir?' said she. St. Aubert looked, and perceived that it was the snowy summit of a mountain, so much higher than any around it, that it still reflected the sun's rays, while those below lay in deep shade. At length, the village lights were seen to twinkle through the dusk, and, soon after, some cottages were discovered in the valley, or rather were seen by reflection in the stream, on whose margin they stood, and which still gleamed with the evening light. The stranger now came up, and St. Aubert, on further enquiry, found not only that there was no inn in the place, but not any sort of house of public reception. The stranger, however, offered to walk on, and enquire for a cottage to accommodate them; for which further civility St. Aubert returned his thanks, and said, that, as the village was so near, he would alight, and walk with him. Emily followed slowly in the carriage. On the way, St. Aubert asked his companion what success he had had in the chase. 'Not much, sir,' he replied, 'nor do I aim at it. I am pleased with the country, and mean to saunter away a few weeks among its scenes. My dogs I take with me more for companionship than for game. This dress, too, gives me an ostensible business, and procures me that respect from the people, which would, perhaps, be refused to a