wind has many voices, skirling over him as though with varying opinions, at once forgiving and unforgiving, speaking of righteous necessity but also of penitence, the heady wine of violence and the sobering bread of peace, and it seems to him that there is truth in all of it. He gets to his feet and hesitates, considering the corpse. No nearby ditch exists in which to roll the body. In the immensity of the ruined orchard, the likelihood is low that one of the dead man’s companions will stumble across him. As he seemed to have been on an urgent task, however, he is sure to be missed soon. His unexplained disappearance will alert the others to the existence of a potential threat. Shaken, in no way reassured by the outcome of his first two skirmishes, with a sense of time running out, Michael moves forward. He is guided by the virtual compass, which proves only that Nina’s phone is switched on and signaling, not that she remains alive. The wind diminishes significantly as he makes his way to the next tree line, as if the storm might be in the process of exhausting itself, but though the rain now falls in plumb skeins, it descends in no less volume than before. He passes between trees so disfigured that they seem not formed by nature, but rather assembled by some avant-garde artist working with the splintered bones of numerous species both Earthly and alien to sculpt mockeries of creation. Beyond lies open territory, a complex of buildings—and five men clustered in the pale backwash of two flashlight beams that are aimed at the ground. They are standing in front of the largest structure, at a doorless entrance above which Michael can make out the words WHOLE FRUIT in ghostly white letters against dark weatherboarding. The virtual compass glowing toward the periphery of his vision points directly at this packing plant and now changes in color from amber to red. Nina and John must be somewhere inside that building, cornered or already captured. It’s essential that Michael know which is the case. Remaining between two trees, though phoneless himself, he reaches into the telecom system with which Nina purchased service and calls her. Evidently she is holding the phone, for she answers on the first ring. Although the five men are sixty or seventy yards away, Michael whispers, “Have they found you?” “No,” she whispers. “Where are you?” “Looking at a building called ‘Whole Fruit.’” “My God. Thank God.” “Five of them are outside. Maybe they’re about to come for you. I think I can take them, most of them. Can you stay low and hidden?” “Not for long. We—” He interrupts. “Stay low, low and hidden,” and disconnects. As far as he can tell, the five men are focused on Whole Fruit and on one another, none scanning the night for a threat, but he can’t be sure. Although he will be a small dark form moving through the vast rural darkness, through curtains of rain, he is loath to step out


friends, I'm stymied. Let me ponder this while I get us some nibblies and check on Rmy and our guest." He stood up and headed for the back of the plane. Sophie felt tired as she watched him go. Outside the window, the blackness of the predawn was absolute. Sophie felt as if she were being hurtled through space with no idea where she would land. Having grown up solving her grandfather's riddles, she had the uneasy sense right now that this poem before them contained information they still had not seen. There is more there, she told herself. Ingeniously hidden... but present nonetheless. Also plaguing her thoughts was a fear that what they eventually found inside this cryptex would not be as simple as "a map to the Holy Grail." Despite Teabing's and Langdon's confidence that the truth lay just within the marble cylinder, Sophie had solved enough of her grandfather's treasure hunts to know that Jacques Saunire did not give up his secrets easily. 206 CHAPTER 73 Bourget Airfield's night shift air traffic controller had been dozing before a blank radar screen when the captain of the Judicial Police practically broke down his door. "Teabing's jet," Bezu Fache blared, marching into the small tower, "where did it go?" The controller's initial response was a babbling, lame attempt to protect the privacy of their British client-one of the airfield's most respected customers. It failed miserably. "Okay," Fache said, "I am placing you under arrest for permitting a private plane to take off without registering a flight plan." Fache motioned to another officer, who approached with handcuffs, and the traffic controller felt a surge of terror. He thought of the newspaper articles debating whether the nation's police captain was a hero or a menace. That question had just been answered. "Wait!" the controller heard himself whimper at the sight of the handcuffs. "I can tell you this much. Sir Leigh Teabing makes frequent trips to London for medical treatments. He has a hangar at Biggin Hill Executive Airport in Kent. On the outskirts of London." Fache waved off the man with the cuffs. "Is Biggin Hill his destination tonight?" "I don't know," the controller said honestly. "The plane left on its usual tack, and his last radar contact suggested the United Kingdom. Biggin Hill is an extremely likely guess." "Did he have others onboard?" "I swear, sir, there is no way for me to know that. Our clients can drive directly to their hangars, and load as they please. Who is onboard is the responsibility of the customs officials at the receiving airport." Fache checked his watch and gazed out at the scattering of jets parked in front of the terminal. "If they're going to Biggin Hill, how long until they land?" The controller fumbled through his records. "It's a short flight. His plane could be on the ground by... around six-thirty. Fifteen minutes from now." Fache frowned and turned to one of his men. "Get a transport up here. I'm going to London. And get me the Kent local police. Not


rake away an' be right down happy over it.' Them was the very words she said." "Were they?" said Mary. "How many things she knows, doesn't she?" "Eh!" said Martha. "It's like she says: `A woman as brings up twelve children learns something besides her A B C. Children's as good as 'rithmetic to set you findin' out things.'" "How much would a spade cost--a little one?" Mary asked. "Well," was Martha's reflective answer, "at Thwaite village there's a shop or so an' I saw little garden sets with a spade an' a rake an' a fork all tied together for two shillings. An' they was stout enough to work with, too." "I've got more than that in my purse," said Mary. "Mrs. Morrison gave me five shillings and Mrs. Medlock gave me some money from Mr. Craven." "Did he remember thee that much?" exclaimed Martha. "Mrs. Medlock said I was to have a shilling a week to spend. She gives me one every Saturday. I didn't know what to spend it on." "My word! that's riches," said Martha. "Tha' can buy anything in th' world tha' wants. Th' rent of our cottage is only one an' threepence an' it's like pullin' eye-teeth to get it. Now I've just thought of somethin'," putting her hands on her hips. "What?" said Mary eagerly. "In the shop at Thwaite they sell packages o' flower-seeds for a penny each, and our Dickon he knows which is th' prettiest ones an, how to make 'em grow. He walks over to Thwaite many a day just for th' fun of it. Does tha' know how to print letters?" suddenly. "I know how to write," Mary answered. Martha shook her head. "Our Dickon can only read printin'. If tha' could print we could write a letter to him an' ask him to go an' buy th' garden tools an' th' seeds at th' same time." "Oh! you're a good girl!" Mary cried. "You are, really! I didn't know you were so nice. I know I can print letters if I try. Let's ask Mrs. Medlock for a pen and ink and some paper." "I've got some of my own," said Martha. "I bought 'em so I could print a bit of a letter to mother of a Sunday. I'll go and get it." She ran out of the room, and Mary stood by the fire and twisted her thin little hands together with sheer pleasure. "If I have a spade," she whispered, "I can make the earth nice and soft and dig up weeds. If I have seeds and can make flowers grow the garden won't be dead at all--it will come alive." She did not go out again that afternoon because when Martha returned with her pen and ink and paper she was obliged to clear the table and carry the plates and dishes downstairs and when she got into the kitchen Mrs. Medlock was there and told her to do something, so Mary waited for what seemed to her a long time before she came back.


it. “I’m going to apply. To the program.” Her jaw tightens, her mouth compresses, her eyes narrow. “Why?” “Why not?” I snap back. She never wants me around. I never want her around either, obviously, but God. “You don’t own the bloody BEP.” “Neither do you.” She scowls, but it’s not very intimidating. Celine’s face is overblown and dramatically soft, like when magnolia leaves are about to fall. Someone should tell her all that glaring is a waste of time. Won’t be me, though. Instead, I say, “Well, now we’ve established our complete lack of ownership—” But she’s not done. “You weren’t even interested before I took you here—” “Er, technically, I took you here.” “But now you think you can waltz into whatever you want and get whatever you want, just like you always do—” That is so outrageously wrong that I laugh out loud. It’s like a single, off-kilter yelp, halfway between amusement and astonishment. “Are you serious?” I always get what I want? Is she high? If that were true, I’d be doing literally anything other than arguing with Celine Bangura right now. “Of course I’m serious,” she snaps, but when I don’t reply—when I don’t bite back—a little furrow pops up between her eyebrows. “What?” she demands. I don’t speak. I can’t. For once, I honestly have no idea what to say. “You think you can waltz into whatever you want and get whatever you want, just like you always do—” There’s no way on earth she sees me like that. Not when I spend half my life memorizing textbooks just to scrape the grades she gets so effortlessly. Not when she has strangers on social media basically proposing marriage in her comments section. Not when a single, judgmental look from her makes me lose my composure. There’s just no way. And yet I study her face, the firm set of her mouth and the certainty in her eyes, and I know: it’s the only way she’ll ever see me, because it’s what she wants to see. How else can she justify all the things she said to me four years ago? How can you justify all the things you said to her? Suddenly, I’m exhausted. But I’m also weirdly determined, the way I feel right before a match when I know the rival team is good but ours is better. I’m doing this enrichment program. I’m running off into the woods, whether she wants me there or not. “Cheer up, Celine,” I say, rising to my feet. “Maybe you won’t get in.” THURSDAY, 4:48 P.M. FAMILY CHAT Brad: i want to do the explorer thing Mason: LOLOLOLOL Dad: Okay. Want to talk more when you get home? Brad: if Celine’s doing it, i def can Mum: I thought you said it sounded like a disgusting nightmare trail of doom and darkness? Brad: that doesn’t sound like me at all Mason: yes it does you DRAMA KING Brad: i changed my mind Brad: there’s a scholarship Dad: A scholarship for camping in the woods? Brad: a full one


The Invisible Man- A Grotesque Romance.txt

There was Fearenside telling about it all over again for the second time; there was Mrs. Hall saying his dog didn't have no business to bite her guests; there was Huxter, the general dealer from over the road, interrogative; and Sandy Wadgers from the forge, judicial; besides women and children,-- all of them saying fatuities: "Wouldn't let en bite me, I knows"; "'Tasn't right have such dargs"; "Whad 'e bite'n for then?" and so forth. Mr. Hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it incredible that he had seen anything very remarkable happen upstairs. Besides, his vocabulary was altogether too limited to express his impressions. "He don't want no help, he says," he said in answer to his wife's enquiry. "We'd better be a-takin' of his luggage in." "He ought to have it cauterised at once," said Mr. Huxter; "especially if it's at all inflamed." "I'd shoot en, that's what I'd do," said a lady in the group. Suddenly the dog began growling again. "Come along," cried an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood the muffled stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat-brim bent down. "The sooner you get those things in the better I'll be pleased." It is stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers and gloves had been changed. "Was you hurt, sir?" said Fearenside. "I'm rare sorry the darg--" "Not a bit," said the stranger. "Never broke the skin. Hurry up with those things." He then swore to himself, so Mr. Hall asserts. Directly the first crate was carried into the parlour, in accordance with his directions, the stranger flung himself upon it with extraordinary eagerness, and began to unpack it, scattering the straw with an utter disregard of Mrs. Hall's carpet. And from it he began to produce bottles--little fat bottles containing powders, small and slender bottles containing coloured and white fluids, fluted blue bottles labelled Poison, bottles with round bodies and slender necks, large green-glass bottles, large white-glass bottles, bottles with glass stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps, wine bottles, salad-oil bottles--putting them in rows on the chiffonier, on the mantel, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the book-shelf-- everywhere. The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst could not boast half so many. Quite a sight it was. Crate after crate yielded bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw; the only things that came out of these crates besides the bottles were a number of test-tubes and a carefully packed balance. And directly the crates were unpacked, the stranger went to the window and set to work, not troubling in the least about the litter of straw, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside, nor for the trunks and other luggage that had gone upstairs. When Mrs. Hall took his dinner in to him, he was already so absorbed in his work, pouring little drops out of the bottles into test-tubes, that he did not hear her until she


if her illness had blurred her faculties; but suddenly she broke out: "Well, it's settled, anyhow: she's going to stay with me, whatever the rest of the family say! She hadn't been here five minutes before I'd have gone down on my knees to keep her--if only, for the last twenty years, I'd been able to see where the floor was!" Archer listened in silence, and she went on: "They'd talked me over, as no doubt you know: persuaded me, Lovell, and Letterblair, and Augusta Welland, and all the rest of them, that I must hold out and cut off her allowance, till she was made to see that it was her duty to go back to Olenski. They thought they'd convinced me when the secretary, or whatever he was, came out with the last proposals: handsome proposals I confess they were. After all, marriage is marriage, and money's money--both useful things in their way . . . and I didn't know what to answer--" She broke off and drew a long breath, as if speaking had become an effort. "But the minute I laid eyes on her, I said: `You sweet bird, you! Shut you up in that cage again? Never!' And now it's settled that she's to stay here and nurse her Granny as long as there's a Granny to nurse. It's not a gay prospect, but she doesn't mind; and of course I've told Letterblair that she's to be given her proper allowance." The young man heard her with veins aglow; but in his confusion of mind he hardly knew whether her news brought joy or pain. He had so definitely decided on the course he meant to pursue that for the moment he could not readjust his thoughts. But gradually there stole over him the delicious sense of difficulties deferred and opportunities miraculously provided. If Ellen had consented to come and live with her grandmother it must surely be because she had recognised the impossibility of giving him up. This was her answer to his final appeal of the other day: if she would not take the extreme step he had urged, she had at last yielded to half-measures. He sank back into the thought with the involuntary relief of a man who has been ready to risk everything, and suddenly tastes the dangerous sweetness of security. "She couldn't have gone back--it was impossible!" he exclaimed. "Ah, my dear, I always knew you were on her side; and that's why I sent for you today, and why I said to your pretty wife, when she proposed to come with you: `No, my dear, I'm pining to see Newland, and I don't want anybody to share our transports.' For you see, my dear--" she drew her head back as far as its tethering chins permitted, and looked him full in the eyes--"you see, we shall have a fight yet. The family don't want her here, and they'll say it's because I've been ill, because I'm a weak old woman, that she's persuaded me. I'm not well enough yet to


which wasn't much. The Hatter was the first to break the silence. `What day of the month is it?' he said, turning to Alice: he had taken his watch out of his pocket, and was looking at it uneasily, shaking it every now and then, and holding it to his ear. Alice considered a little, and then said `The fourth.' `Two days wrong!' sighed the Hatter. `I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!' he added looking angrily at the March Hare. `It was the BEST butter,' the March Hare meekly replied. `Yes, but some crumbs must have got in as well,' the Hatter grumbled: `you shouldn't have put it in with the bread-knife.' The March Hare took the watch and looked at it gloomily: then he dipped it into his cup of tea, and looked at it again: but he could think of nothing better to say than his first remark, `It was the BEST butter, you know.' Alice had been looking over his shoulder with some curiosity. `What a funny watch!' she remarked. `It tells the day of the month, and doesn't tell what o'clock it is!' `Why should it?' muttered the Hatter. `Does YOUR watch tell you what year it is?' `Of course not,' Alice replied very readily: `but that's because it stays the same year for such a long time together.' `Which is just the case with MINE,' said the Hatter. Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. `I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could. `The Dormouse is asleep again,' said the Hatter, and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose. The Dormouse shook its head impatiently, and said, without opening its eyes, `Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself.' `Have you guessed the riddle yet?' the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. `No, I give it up,' Alice replied: `what's the answer?' `I haven't the slightest idea,' said the Hatter. `Nor I,' said the March Hare. Alice sighed wearily. `I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, `than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers.' `If you knew Time as well as I do,' said the Hatter, `you wouldn't talk about wasting IT. It's HIM.' `I don't know what you mean,' said Alice. `Of course you don't!' the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptuously. `I dare say you never even spoke to Time!' `Perhaps not,' Alice cautiously replied: `but I know I have to beat time when I learn music.' `Ah! that accounts for it,' said the Hatter. `He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!' (`I only wish it was,' the


been pierced with spikes. “Ez?” he said, urgency in his voice. “Fuck, Ez, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” I looked left, right, ahead, head heavy with pain. I could feel sweat gathering at my hairline. “I’m fine,” I said. “You don’t look fine.” Gingerly, I lay back on the bed. How the fuck was I going to get out of this? I could feel him looming over me, his face pointed at mine. “Are you in shock? Are you concussed?” “Would I be talking to you like this if I had a concussion?” I snapped. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve never had this happen.” I laid my forearm across my throbbing eyes. “Did you do this to your wife? Maybe that’s why she left you.” He sat back. “No, I never did this to her.” I sighed jaggedly, removed my forearm, blinked into the darkness. “Just put the pillow under my head,” I said, pretending I was seeing the ceiling. “I just need to lie down here a minute.” Like an eager helpmeet, he wedged the pillow under my head and lay down next to me. I began to sweat again. Soon I’d have “rested,” and then I’d have no excuse. “I’ve never gotten rough like that before,” he said timidly. “It’s always something I wanted to try.” “Well, you tried it.” “You told me to.” “Not like that,” I said. “Not in the face like that.” “I’m sorry.” It was good to hear him plead. It took my mind off the pain. “I’m really sorry it happened.” “Tell me how sorry you are.” “Really, really sorry,” he said, an uptick in his tone. “It was really, really bad.” “What was bad?” “What I did.” “It was disgusting.” “Yes, it was.” “It was uncalled for.” “Definitely.” “So what are you going to do?” I could feel him turned toward me. “Punish myself.” I nodded. “Finish without me. Finish alone.” “Yes, sir,” he said excitedly, and slid off the bed. “Go into the bathroom,” I said. “Go fuck yourself in there.” He padded into the bathroom, where I could hear him working on himself vigorously, and as he moaned, I opened my eyes and to my relief I could see the ceiling again, the chairs and étagère full of decorative pottery across from me. But now the blind spots had grown bigger: chunks of my vision had vanished entirely, and what was left was out of focus. The pain had subsided but wasn’t gone entirely. Karl gasped loudly and I sat up into the blur, felt for my shirt on the bed (it was white, and had blended in with the sheets), grabbed my glasses from the bedside table (they did little to improve my situation) and started getting dressed. I saw his shape come out of the bathroom, felt his dismay. “You’re leaving?” “I have to,” I lied. “I have a conference call.” “But I pushed everything back for you.” “Some things can’t be pushed back.” I stood up and fumbled with my pants. I could feel him watching


under my heel, chips of stone spray out in an ominous arc, and then the world lurches to the left. I see an angled slice of Celine’s wide eyes before the air is sucked out of my stomach and gravity wins. My right side cracks hard against frozen ground, then bounces somehow and keeps on going. Yep. I fall right down the goddamn hill. Somewhere in the back of my mind, my OCD whispers, Told you so. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN BRAD You know those artsy war films where they let dirt splatter across the camera and roll around a lot, so the shots make you feel dizzy? Turns out falling down a hill is a lot like that, but faster and way more painful. I land at the very bottom, kind of like a ragdoll in that my body flops around with no input from me, but also not like a rag doll at all because I have bones and they are NOT HAPPY. “Brad!” Celine sounds very upset, so I give myself a solid two seconds to splinter into a thousand pieces of physical agony, then try lifting my head. Lucky me, it works. It also triggers a splitting headache that turns my vision white, but I’m not going to think about that because the moment I do— Oh my God. We’re going to die. We’ve gone blind. We’re already dead. Is everything still working? ARE WE GHOSTS? Ah. Right on cue. A few blinks, and I can see again, even if it’s painful. Oh, crap, where are my glasses? They were so cute. And so expensive. Mum’s gonna kill me. Shit. I fell down a hill. Mum’s gonna kill me. Wait. Focus. What were we doing again? Oh yes. I look up very, very slowly, and squint at the blurry shape of Celine, who is carefully edging her way down the same treacherous hill that attempted to take my life. “STOP,” I tell her, but something’s clearly wrong with me because my voice is faint and raspy and my body hurts like someone stabbed me in the ribs. I feel sick. This is the worst pain I’ve ever felt. I make a mental note of the sensation in case I need to use it in a book; my hero is definitely the type to get stabbed every so often. Meanwhile, Celine shouts “NO,” back at me and continues to court death like an idiot. Now I have to observe every single step she takes or else she might fall and die while I’m not looking. I hope she’s happy. I remember with a lurch that I’m not happy because she doesn’t want what I want, and now I hurt on the inside and on the outside. What a thrilling adventure life is, and by “thrilling adventure,” I mean it’s shit. “Brad?” This time it’s not Celine who calls my name, but someone who sounds alarmingly like Holly, if Holly was less than utterly monotonous for once. I can’t tell for sure who it is because they’re on my right side, and


order." Sophie needed only an instant to process Langdon's implication, and it seemed laughably simple. "You think this message is... une anagramme?" She stared at him. "Like a word jumble from a newspaper?" Langdon could see the skepticism on Sophie's face and certainly understood. Few people realized that anagrams, despite being a trite modern amusement, had a rich history of sacred symbolism. The mystical teachings of the Kabbala drew heavily on anagrams-rearranging the letters of Hebrew words to derive new meanings. French kings throughout the Renaissance were so convinced that anagrams held magic power that they appointed royal anagrammatists to help them make better decisions by analyzing words in important documents. The Romans actually referred to the study of anagrams as ars magna-"the great art." Langdon looked up at Sophie, locking eyes with her now. "Your grandfather's meaning was right in front of us all along, and he left us more than enough clues to see it." Without another word, Langdon pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and rearranged the letters in each line. O, Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint! was a perfect anagram of... Leonardo da Vinci! The Mona Lisa! 67 CHAPTER 21 The Mona Lisa. For an instant, standing in the exit stairwell, Sophie forgot all about trying to leave the Louvre. Her shock over the anagram was matched only by her embarrassment at not having deciphered the message herself. Sophie's expertise in complex cryptanalysis had caused her to overlook simplistic word games, and yet she knew she should have seen it. After all, she was no stranger to anagrams-especially in English. When she was young, often her grandfather would use anagram games to hone her English spelling. Once he had written the English word "planets" and told Sophie that an astonishing sixty-two other English words of varying lengths could be formed using those same letters. Sophie had spent three days with an English dictionary until she found them all. "I can't imagine," Langdon said, staring at the printout, "how your grandfather created such an intricate anagram in the minutes before he died." Sophie knew the explanation, and the realization made her feel even worse. I should have seen this! She now recalled that her grandfather-a wordplay aficionado and art lover-had entertained himself as a young man by creating anagrams of famous works of art. In fact, one of his anagrams had gotten him in trouble once when Sophie was a little girl. While being interviewed by an American art magazine, Saunire had expressed his distaste for the modernist Cubist movement by noting that Picasso's masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was a perfect anagram of vile meaningless doodles. Picasso fans were not amused. "My grandfather probably created this Mona Lisa anagram long ago," Sophie said, glancing up at Langdon. And tonight he was forced to use it as a makeshift code. Her grandfather's voice had called out from beyond with chilling precision. Leonardo da Vinci! The Mona Lisa! Why his final words to her referenced the famous painting, Sophie had no idea, but she could think of only one possibility.


and his eyes were wept dry with running. He yelled as if this yell would jet him on, fling him the last hundred yards. "Six, seven, eight ! " The doorknobs turned on five thousand doors. "Nine!" He ran out away from the last row of houses, on a slope leading down to a solid moving blackness. "Ten!" The doors opened. He imagined thousands on thousands of faces peering into yards, into alleys, and into the sky, faces hid by curtains, pale, night-frightened faces, like grey animals peering from electric caves, faces with grey colourless eyes, grey tongues and grey thoughts looking out through the numb flesh of the face. But he was at the river. He touched it, just to be sure it was real. He waded in and stripped in darkness to the skin, splashed his body, arms, legs, and head with raw liquor; drank it and snuffed some up his nose. Then he dressed in Faber's old clothes and shoes. He tossed his own clothing into the river and watched it swept away. Then, holding the suitcase, he walked out in the river until there was no bottom and he was swept away in the dark. He was three hundred yards downstream when the Hound reached the river. Overhead the great racketing fans of the helicopters hovered. A storm of light fell upon the river and Montag dived under the great illumination as if the sun had broken the clouds. He felt the river pull him further on its way, into darkness. Then the lights switched back to the land, the helicopters swerved over the city again, as if they had picked up another trail. They were gone. The Hound was gone. Now there was only the cold river and Montag floating in a sudden peacefulness, away from the city and the lights and the chase, away from everything. He felt as if he had left a stage behind and many actors. He felt as if he had left the great seance and all the murmuring ghosts. He was moving from an unreality that was frightening into a reality that was unreal because it was new. The black land slid by and he was going into the country among the hills: For the first time in a dozen years the stars were coming out above him, in great processions of wheeling fire. He saw a great juggernaut of stars form in the sky and threaten to roll over and crush him. He floated on his back when the valise filled and sank; the river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapours for supper. The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood. He saw the moon low in the sky now. The moon there, and the light of the moon caused by what?


about, and Jack’s not it. That’s what I tell myself until Saturday night, when it all comes to a head. • • • “S OMETIMES I WONDER WHY I WASN ’ T BORN IN THE EARLY seventeenth century, which really hinders my ability to wear a ruff in public and practice leech-based medicine. Or in ancient Rome, where I could have spent my days in a socially acceptable cycle of reclining, eating, puking. But then I experience wonders like this in IMAX, and I know, I just know, that I was meant to be alive in this day and age. My reward for an upright, leechless existence.” I blink at Cece, eyes still bleary from three hours in the theater. When we walked inside, the sun was up and the last week’s worth of snow had finally melted. Now it’s pitch black, and Cece’s catching a whole new batch of flakes with her tongue, like the Florida-born dork she is. I do love her. Quite a bit. And that’s why I sacrificed my precious Saturday afternoon to the gods of Faking It and spent it watching the original version of the famed 1968 Kubrick masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey. One hundred and sixty excruciating minutes of solar system screen saver pics set to . . . Vivaldi, maybe? With movies like this, who needs waterboarding? “Wasn’t it amazing?” She beams. “It sure was lots of things.” Cece is not too high on the cinematography to notice my tone. “You didn’t like it?” She frowns. “I do agree that the ‘Dawn of Man’ scene where the ape looks at the bone was dearly missed.” “Um, yeah. That’s it.” She steps in front of me, cocking her head. Bundled up in her red maxi coat, she looks about sixteen. “You didn’t enjoy the movie?” It’s easier like that, isn’t it? Never showing anyone who you really are . . . When you’re yourself, that’s when you’re exposed. For a split second, what Jack told me flashes through my head, a toocatchy tune earworming around. It’s nothing I hadn’t known, but once put into words, it got harder to ignore—a brusque shift from procedural to semantic knowledge. Say I considered it. Cece, after all, is my closest friend. I could smile, slide my arm under hers, pull her toward the T station, and say conversationally, I didn’t like the movie. I have no idea what even happened. My favorite character was the evil computer, and twenty minutes in I was on the verge of letting out the piercing shriek of a million Brood Ten cicadas. Also I’d love to never again watch the director’s cut of literally anything—in fact, I’d rather spend an afternoon staring at my student loan portal, the one that makes me burst into tears once a month. And since we’re at it, the other day I caught your hedgehog defecating on my pillow. My tea is next. The thought of admitting any of this makes my right side ache. That ulcer, probably. I still slide my arm under Cece’s, but what


two fingers in each corner of his mouth and whistling, and we got down to it. Cast members who’d turned in sketches always gave themselves the leading role, which they’d read, whereas writers assigned roles to various cast members, and these assignments sometimes stuck and sometimes didn’t. If Nigel decided a cast member, especially a favored one, had a “light week,” he might unilaterally make reassignments as a sketch advanced. We started with a sketch about the porn actress alleging that Trump had paid her to keep quiet about their affair, then there was a sketch where Noah was performing the national anthem before an NFL game as a duet with a famous diva played by Henrietta, and they were competing over the high notes. The first sketch to make me really laugh was the one now titled Blue-Eyed Soul, by Tony, in which Noah was the white politician preaching to a Black congregation. Even after nine years, I found table reads fascinating because they represented the intersection of multiple creative and psychological forces. In a room filled with the people who mattered in my life, but with no outside audience, I was always desperate with curiosity to find out how my sketches would be received and what the other sketches were like; I was often shocked by the brilliance of some sketches and the crumminess of others; and it was unsettlingly easy to infer social dynamics by the laughter and warmth, or lack of, with which a sketch was received. More than once, it had been at a table read that I’d first suspected two people were romantically involved, or that someone was going to be let go at the end of the season. An hour and five minutes in, we got to The Danny Horst Rule. After what I’d thought of as my best line, there was only half-hearted laughter, while, to my chagrin, the loudest laugh lines were the ones Danny had written for himself. Still, I could feel that the sketch’s catchily self-referential premise meant it was likely to make it to the next stage. Formal feedback didn’t happen during a table read—whether your sketch ended up in the lineup for the show was the feedback. But before we went on to the following sketch, the writer Jeremiah, who was sitting behind Nigel, said, “What I really respect is Sally’s fearlessness in the face of offending half the staff here.” From my chair against the window, I said, “I’ll take that as confirmation that it strikes a chord.” A writer named Jenna said, “And they lived heteronormatively ever after,” and Bailey leaned back from the table to fist-bump Jenna. By coincidence, my Blabbermouth sketch came right after The Danny Horst Rule, and Blabbermouth also got respectable if not inordinate laughs. Writers often sought out the cast members, including the host, who’d be reading their sketches to make suggestions about what tone to use. Though I hadn’t sought out Noah—I’d arrived at the read-through just before it started, and also, for some reason, I would have felt weird instructing


terror was over, thank God, and Kristi’s publisher was interested in the story, but as Kristi sat in her office, going through the evidence against 21 and digging into his psyche as to why he would kill the twins, she found her mind straying and finally, hauling the kitten, gave up and headed downstairs where she poured herself a glass of water and checked the time. The tech from the security company she’d called to upgrade the system had canceled the first appointment as there had been a foul-up in the shipment of some essential part of her new security system, but the part had come in and the technician was supposedly on his way. He was over half an hour late, though, the digital display on her desk clock registering 2:47. Just as she thought about calling the company, she received a text from an anonymous number, indicating “Lance” was on his way and would arrive by 3:00. Good. Maybe the new system would ease her mind and she would sleep better. “Fat chance,” she said aloud as reports of the return of the Rosary Killer had overtaken the local news and were permeating via the Internet to the national level. Many people, including her father, had speculated that Father John had survived in that bayou where it was thought he had died only to return to New Orleans and wreak havoc on the city. “As if we don’t have enough,” she said. Worse yet, the rumors were flying that the killer had taken his vengeance out on Rick Bentz, the detective who had unmasked and nearly killed him, by murdering Jay McKnight, Bentz’s son-in-law. And, of course, those maniacs who fed on bizarre murders were all over social media, chatting it up, making it worse. “Careful, Kristi, those maniacs are the people who buy your books.” Jay’s voice echoed through her brain, clear as a bell. After being silent for two days. “I know,” she said under her breath, then checked her e-mail where Zera had left her a quick note: Good news! Rosary Killer is definitely going to be reprinted. Early as next summer. Publisher already promoting. Let’s talk! Not now. A headache started at the base of her skull. It was all too much. She decided to hang it up for the day. The story would wait, she told herself. Every day she was feeling a little stronger, a little more like her old self. She’d even agreed to meet with her friends for coffee in a couple of days after declining drinks and karaoke, which sounded just awful. She hadn’t liked it when she was single in her twenties and was certain it wasn’t for her. Besides, she was avoiding alcohol for the baby’s sake, though there was nothing she wanted more than a tall drink to numb her mind and her body from the grief. And the guilt. “Baby steps,” she told herself. The doorbell rang and she hurried down the stairs, and rather than just fling the door open as she usually would, she peered


had received, which--Master Bates being pretty well acquainted with the locality--were so exact that he was enabled to gain the magisterial presence without asking any question, or meeting with any interruption by the way. He found himself jostled among a crowd of people, chiefly women, who were huddled together in a dirty frowsy room, at the upper end of which was a raised platform railed off from the rest, with a dock for the prisoners on the left hand against the wall, a box for the witnesses in the middle, and a desk for the magistrates on the right; the awful locality last named, being screened off by a partition which concealed the bench from the common gaze, and left the vulgar to imagine (if they could) the full majesty of justice. There were only a couple of women in the dock, who were nodding to their admiring friends, while the clerk read some depositions to a couple of policemen and a man in plain clothes who leant over the table. A jailer stood reclining against the dock-rail, tapping his nose listlessly with a large key, except when he repressed an undue tendency to conversation among the idlers, by proclaiming silence; or looked sternly up to bid some woman 'Take that baby out,' when the gravity of justice was disturbed by feeble cries, half-smothered in the mother's shawl, from some meagre infant. The room smelt close and unwholesome; the walls were dirt-discoloured; and the ceiling blackened. There was an old smoky bust over the mantel-shelf, and a dusty clock above the dock--the only thing present, that seemed to go on as it ought; for depravity, or poverty, or an habitual acquaintance with both, had left a taint on all the animate matter, hardly less unpleasant than the thick greasy scum on every inaminate object that frowned upon it. Noah looked eagerly about him for the Dodger; but although there were several women who would have done very well for that distinguished character's mother or sister, and more than one man who might be supposed to bear a strong resemblance to his father, nobody at all answering the description given him of Mr. Dawkins was to be seen. He waited in a state of much suspense and uncertainty until the women, being committed for trial, went flaunting out; and then was quickly relieved by the appearance of another prisoner who he felt at once could be no other than the object of his visit. It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuffling into the office with the big coat sleeves tucked up as usual, his left hand in his pocket, and his hat in his right hand, preceded the jailer, with a rolling gait altogether indescribable, and, taking his place in the dock, requested in an audible voice to know what he was placed in that 'ere disgraceful sitivation for. 'Hold your tongue, will you?' said the jailer. 'I'm an Englishman, ain't I?' rejoined the Dodger. 'Where are my priwileges?' 'You'll get your privileges soon enough,' retorted the jailer, 'and pepper with 'em.' 'We'll


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

body able to understand bestially and desire bestially? Was that then he or an inhuman thing moved by a lower soul? His soul sickened at the thought of a torpid snaky life feeding itself out of the tender marrow of his life and fattening upon the slime of lust. O why was that so? O why? He cowered in the shadow of the thought, abasing himself in the awe of God Who had made all things and all men. Madness. Who could think such a thought? And, cowering in darkness and abject, he prayed mutely to his guardian angel to drive away with his sword the demon that was whispering to his brain. The whisper ceased and he knew then clearly that his own soul had sinned in thought and word and deed wilfully through his own body. Confess! He had to confess every sin. How could he utter in words to the priest what he had done? Must, must. Or how could he explain without dying of shame? Or how could he have done such things without shame? A madman! Confess! O he would indeed to be free and sinless again! Perhaps the priest would know. O dear God! He walked on and on through ill-lit streets, fearing to stand still for a moment lest it might seem that he held back from what awaited him, fearing to arrive at that towards which he still turned with longing. How beautiful must be a soul in the state of grace when God looked upon it with love! Frowsy girls sat along the curbstones before their baskets. Their dank hair hung trailed over their brows. They were not beautiful to see as they crouched in the mire. But their souls were seen by God; and if their souls were in a state of grace they were radiant to see: and God loved them, seeing them. A wasting breath of humiliation blew bleakly over his soul to think of how he had fallen, to feel that those souls were dearer to God than his. The wind blew over him and passed on to the myriads and myriads of other souls on whom God's favour shone now more and now less, stars now brighter and now dimmer sustained and failing. And the glimmering souls passed away, sustained and failing, merged in a moving breath. One soul was lost; a tiny soul: his. It flickered once and went out, forgotten, lost. The end: black, cold, void waste. Consciousness of place came ebbing back to him slowly over a vast tract of time unlit, unfelt, unlived. The squalid scene composed itself around him; the common accents, the burning gas-jets in the shops, odours of fish and spirits and wet sawdust, moving men and women. An old woman was about to cross the street, an oilcan in her hand. He bent down and asked her was there a chapel near. --A chapel, sir? Yes, sir. Church Street chapel. --Church? She shifted the can to her other hand and directed him; and, as she held out her reeking withered


ship throbbed to the tireless pulse of the propeller, and though one day was very like another, it was apparent to Buck that the weather was steadily growing colder. At last, one morning, the propeller was quiet, and the Narwhal was pervaded with an atmosphere of excitement. He felt it, as did the other dogs, and knew that a change was at hand. Francois leashed them and brought them on deck. At the first step upon the cold surface, Buck's feet sank into a white mushy something very like mud. He sprang back with a snort. More of this white stuff was falling through the air. He shook himself, but more of it fell upon him. He sniffed it curiously, then licked some up on his tongue. It bit like fire, and the next instant was gone. This puzzled him. He tried it again, with the same result. The onlookers laughed uproariously, and he felt ashamed, he knew not why, for it was his first snow. Chapter II The Law of Club and Fang Buck's first day on the Dyea beach was like a nightmare. Every hour was filled with shock and surprise. He had been suddenly jerked from the heart of civilization and flung into the heart of things primordial. No lazy, sun-kissed life was this, with nothing to do but loaf and be bored. Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment's safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril. There was imperative need to be constantly alert; for these dogs and men were not town dogs and men. They were savages, all of them, who knew no law but the law of club and fang. He had never seen dogs fight as these wolfish creatures fought, and his first experience taught him an unforgetable lesson. It is true, it was a vicarious experience, else he would not have lived to profit by it. Curly was the victim. They were camped near the log store, where she, in her friendly way, made advances to a husky dog the size of a full-grown wolf, though not half so large as she. There was no warning, only a leap in like a flash, a metallic clip of teeth, a leap out equally swift, and Curly's face was ripped open from eye to jaw. It was the wolf manner of fighting, to strike and leap away; but there was more to it than this. Thirty or forty huskies ran to the spot and surrounded the combatants in an intent and silent circle. Buck did not comprehend that silent intentness, nor the eager way with which they were licking their chops. Curly rushed her antagonist, who struck again and leaped aside. He met her next rush with his chest, in a peculiar fashion that tumbled her off her feet. She never regained them, This was what the onlooking huskies had waited for. They closed in upon her, snarling and yelping, and she was buried, screaming with agony, beneath the bristling mass of bodies. So sudden was


gunpoint, but the classroom had taught him something about answering paradoxical questions. When a question has no correct answer, there is only one honest response. The gray area between yes and no. Silence. Staring at the cryptex in his hands, Langdon chose simply to walk away. Without ever lifting his eyes, he stepped backward, out into the room's vast empty spaces. Neutral ground. He hoped his focus on the cryptex signaled Teabing that collaboration might be an option, and that his silence signaled Sophie he had not abandoned her. All the while buying time to think. The act of thinking, Langdon suspected, was exactly what Teabing wanted him to do. That's why he handed me the cryptex. So I could feel the weight of my decision. The British historian hoped the touch of the Grand Master's cryptex would make Langdon fully grasp the magnitude of its contents, coaxing his academic curiosity to overwhelm all else, forcing him to realize that failure to unlock the keystone would mean the loss of history itself. With Sophie at gunpoint across the room, Langdon feared that discovering the cryptex's elusive password would be his only remaining hope of bartering her release. If I can free the map, Teabing will negotiate. Forcing his mind to this critical task, Langdon moved slowly toward the far windows... allowing his mind to fill with the numerous astronomical images on Newton's tomb. You seek the orb that ought be on his tomb. It speaks of Rosy flesh and seeded womb. Turning his back to the others, he walked toward the towering windows, searching for any inspiration in their stained-glass mosaics. There was none. Place yourself in Saunire's mind, he urged, gazing outward now into College Garden. What would he believe is the orb that ought be on Newton's tomb? Images of stars, comets, and planets twinkled in the falling rain, but Langdon ignored them. Saunire was not a man of science. He was a man of humanity, of art, of history. The sacred feminine... the chalice... the Rose... the banished Mary Magdalene... the decline of the goddess... the Holy Grail. Legend had always portrayed the Grail as a cruel mistress, dancing in the shadows just out of sight, whispering in your ear, luring you one more step and then evaporating into the mist. Gazing out at the rustling trees of College Garden, Langdon sensed her playful presence. The signs were everywhere. Like a taunting silhouette emerging from the fog, the branches of Britain's oldest apple tree burgeoned with five-petaled blossoms, all glistening like Venus. The goddess was in the garden now. She was dancing in the rain, 281 singing songs of the ages, peeking out from behind the bud-filled branches as if to remind Langdon that the fruit of knowledge was growing just beyond his reach. Across the room, Sir Leigh Teabing watched with confidence as Langdon gazed out the window as if under a spell. Exactly as I hoped, Teabing thought. He will come around. For some time now, Teabing had suspected Langdon might hold the key to the Grail.


would have hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and in your heart, you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously courted you. There -- I have saved you the trouble of accounting for it; and really, all things considered, I begin to think it perfectly reasonable. To be sure, you knew no actual good of me -- but nobody thinks of _that_ when they fall in love.'' ``Was there no good in your affectionate behaviour to Jane while she was ill at Netherfield?'' ``Dearest Jane! who could have done less for her? But make a virtue of it by all means. My good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasions for teazing and quarrelling with you as often as may be; and I shall begin directly by asking you what made you so unwilling to come to the point at last. What made you so shy of me, when you first called, and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you called, did you look as if you did not care about me?'' ``Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement.'' ``But I was embarrassed.'' ``And so was I.'' ``You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.'' ``A man who had felt less, might.'' ``How unlucky that you should have a reasonable answer to give, and that I should be so reasonable as to admit it! But I wonder how long you _would_ have gone on, if you had been left to yourself. I wonder when you _would_ have spoken, if I had not asked you! My resolution of thanking you for your kindness to Lydia had certainly great effect. _Too_ _much_, I am afraid; for what becomes of the moral, if our comfort springs from a breach of promise? for I ought not to have mentioned the subject. This will never do.'' ``You need not distress yourself. The moral will be perfectly fair. Lady Catherine's unjustifiable endeavours to separate us were the means of removing all my doubts. I am not indebted for my present happiness to your eager desire of expressing your gratitude. I was not in a humour to wait for any opening of your's. My aunt's intelligence had given me hope, and I was determined at once to know every thing.'' ``Lady Catherine has been of infinite use, which ought to make her happy, for she loves to be of use. But tell me, what did you come down to Netherfield for? Was it merely to ride to Longbourn and be embarrassed? or had you intended any more serious consequence?'' ``My real purpose was to see _you_, and to judge, if I could, whether I might ever hope to make you love me. My avowed one, or what I avowed to myself, was to see whether your sister were still partial to Bingley, and if she were, to


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

wrote down because said villagers were standing there watching him expectantly; a few passages he’d copied from my field notes, perhaps to remind himself to put them in our paper; a handful of local faerie stories I recalled him collecting from Thora. He’d only bothered to describe a few of his days towards the beginning of our stay, and I half expected to find these full of complaints about my tyrannical demands or the deprivations of our lodging, but I suppose he considered written expostulations a pointless effort, for these entries were factual if extremely abbreviated. He had a habit of doodling, marginalia I was inclined to ignore given that a full half of these sketches were of me, including one that made me still. In it, I was bent over my notebook, hair tumbling over my shoulders as it usually does in the evening, my chin on my hand and a small smile on my face. It was very detailed work, each stroke carefully chosen. I could see the places where he’d smudged the ink with a thumb to create shadow—the curve of my neck; the hollow between my collarbones. I flipped the page—my face was hot, and little shivers ran over me like the strokes of a pen. I focused on the other sketches, some of which were of ghastly trees, huge and grasping yet drawn with a loving hand, and others were of a creature that I eventually understood to be a cat. This was not an easy deduction; he’d only ever drawn it in hints, a few slashes of black ink, as if it was not wholly a material being. Yet there was something about those hints that unsettled me. I could not tell if he was terrible at drawing cats or if he simply had a terrible cat. I turned at last to the entry he had marked, the day he would have discovered me missing. To my astonishment (self-doubt not being a quality I had ever attributed to Wendell Bambleby), it began with a great many crossings-out, the words illegible now, though I saw the shape of my name beneath the scorings several times. 27/11/09 All right. I shall simply begin. You would want me to be academic about this, wouldn’t you? To treat your disappearance like some bloody appendix. I will skip over my discovery of your letter. Suffice it to say that I will not be letting Krystjan in until I have cleaned up. Things are looking a bit warped, as if in my fury I put a crease in the veil between Faerie and the mortal realm. Poor Shadow! He was so affrighted he fled to the tavern. Never fear, I have given him plenty of pats, as well as an entire bowl of Ulfar’s gravy, and I believe he has forgiven me. (At this point, he seemed to have stabbed the page several times). Anyway. That was not terribly academic, was it? Only I cannot stop picturing you reading this. I think that I have to picture you reading this, otherwise I


Christina Lauren - The True Love Experiment.txt

wanted to go inside. How do we move on from this? A breeze darts across the field, ruffling the trees and sending umbrellas and blankets tumbling along the grass. When I reach up to push my hair off my forehead, Fizzy’s eyes follow the movement. I’m reminded that she said I should wear it like this more often, that she likes it. I clear my throat, ready to steer us in a less dangerous direction. “I forgot to tell you: callbacks were great. I think we’ve found our Heroes.” Her entire face brightens. “Oh my God, tell me everything. Wait, first tell me they’re all insanely hot.” I mentally stumble at the shift in her enthusiasm, and just how much I dislike it. “Ratings-through-the-roof hot,” I say. “I don’t want to say too much because nothing’s finalized, but we narrowed it down to eight men. All approved archetypes.” She’s about to reply when there’s a blur of movement and two small tornados collide into our bodies. Stevie looks up from where her arms are wrapped around my waist. Juno is hugging Fizzy. “Can we have ice cream after the game?” Stevie asks. I bend to kiss the top of her head. “Sure. Can you say hello to Fizzy? She’s starring in the show I’ve been working on.” I turn her around and Stevie tilts her head back to look up at me. “I already know who Fizzy is,” Stevie says. “She’s walked us home a few times.” Fizzy reaches over to twirl the end of Stevie’s long hair. “Sometimes we stop for hot chocolates on the way. Sometimes for cocktails. Depends how the day went.” Both the girls giggle, but then something catches Stevie’s eye—a sticker on the back of Fizzy’s phone—and she steps forward to examine it. “You never said you liked Wonderland!” “She looooooves them,” Juno says. “How have we never talked about it?” Fizzy says. “They are my happy place!” I look closer at the small holographic logo, wondering how I missed it when there’s a similar one attached to fifty percent of Stevie’s belongings. Probably because when I’m with Fizzy, the last thing I’m looking at is her phone. “Have you seen them in concert?” Fizzy asks. Stevie shakes her head. “I’ve never been to a concert before.” “They’re coming in two weeks! You should go!” “It’s sold out,” I say. Fizzy swats this detail away. “I could get us tickets. I dated an executive over at the stadium, and let me tell you—” She stops, noting my apprehension over what might come out of her mouth, and settles on, “I know a guy.” “That’s a pretty late night.” I’m already imagining carrying a sleeping Juno and Stevie across a mile-long parking lot. “They’d be exhausted the next day.” She scoffs. “It’s summer! Besides, being exhausted after a night of screaming your face off is a fangirl rite of passage.” She gives me a silent, pleading look, adding quietly, “Joy, remember?” I exhale, unable to resist any of these females and their sweet persuasion. “If Fizzy knows a


father's kinsman, and he had been moreover a friend of Hrin, ere evil befell. Therefore in the autumn of the Year of Lamentation Morwen sent Trin forth over the mountains with two aged servants, bidding them find entry, if they could, into the kingdom of Doriath. Thus was the fate of Trin woven, which is fulltold in that lay that is called Narn i Hn Hrin, the Tale of the Children of Hrin, and is the longest of all the lays that speak of those days. Here that tale is told in brief, for it is woven with the fate of the Silmarils and of the Elves; and it is called the Tale of Grief, for it is sorrowful, and in it are revealed most evil works of Morgoth Bauglir. In the first beginning of the year Morwen gave birth to her child, the daughter of Hrin; and she named her Nienor, which is Mourning. But Trin and his companions passing through great perils came at last to the borders of Doriath; and there they were found by Beleg Strongbow, chief of the marchwardens of King Thingol, who led them to Menegroth. Then Thingol received Trin, and took him even to his own fostering, in honour of Hrin the Steadfast; for Thingol's mood was changed towards the houses of the Elf-friends. Thereafter messengers went north to Hithlum, bidding Morwen leave Dor-lmin and return with them to Doriath; but still she would not leave the house in which she had dwelt with Hrin. And when the Elves departed she sent with them the Dragon-helm of Dor-lmin, greatest of the heirlooms of the house of Hador. Trin grew fair and strong in Doriath, but he was marked with sorrow. For nine years he dwelt in Thingol's halls, and during that time his grief grew less; for messengers went at times to Hithlum, and returning they brought better tidings of Morwen and Nienor. But there came a day when the messengers did not return out of die north, and Thingol would send no more. Then Trin was filled with fear for his mother and his sister, and in grimness of heart he went before the King and asked for mail and sword; and he put on the Dragon-helm of Dor-lmin and went out to battle on the marches of Doriath, and became the companion in arms of Beleg Cthalion. And when three years had passed, Trin returned again to Menegroth; but he came from the wild, and was unkempt, and his gear and garments were way-worn. Now one there was in Doriath, of the people of the Nandor, high in the counsels of the King; Saeros was his name. He had long begrudged to Trin the honour he received as Thingol's fosterson; and seated opposite to him at the board he taunted him, saying: 'If the Men of Hithlum are so wild and fell, of what sort are the women of that land? Do they run like deer clad only in their hair?' Then Trin in great anger took up a drinking-vessel, and cast it


hard thing to do, and she should have tried to do it long ago. Peter too made efforts. He had stopped his overreliance on the imperative, and when his jaw stiffened, he retracted, took a breath, and regained his self-composure. Ella had terrified them both into good behavior. On her laptop, Maud opened the garden design software that she’d recently learned to use. She added the pomegranate tree, typing the scientific name. That tree was a fact. Those walls were a fact. She wouldn’t think about the white pomegranate that grew in the hills of Turkey. She wouldn’t think about the archaeological dig at Hasankeyf, with its mineral springs and caves. She focused on the glowing screen, which became a coffee-colored square of soil. She needed to help Maria convince Alice Lincoln to fund this project. She needed to restore this garden. She needed to crush the thoughts about Gabriel that were sprouting again in earth she’d thought scorched. 11 Over the first six months that had followed their return from the Hudson Valley, Ella gradually told Maud and Peter about her self-harm. She had first cut her thigh the winter before they went to Montgomery Place. She hadn’t been happy at school since the start of seventh grade, and one afternoon, sitting on her bed, feeling rejected by her friends again, she clenched her leg with her fingers and dug nails into skin, leaving half-moons. Pressing harder, she dragged the moons into comets. Instantly the sick tension in her body released. Two days later, she did it again, this time in the school bathroom. By January, she’d moved from her nails to an X-Acto knife blade from the art room, wrapped in tissue paper in her pocket. Every day, during lunch, she’d wait in a stall for the bathroom to empty, then tug down her jeans. At home, she sat at the dinner table, her only desire to lock herself in the bathroom with a fresh patch of skin. She didn’t reflect on what she was doing. “I wasn’t thinking about it,” she said. “I just did it.” If that bone-bruising dread came over her—in the lunch line at school, sitting on the couch watching television—if that voice said, You’re ugly, you’re stupid, no one likes you, she’d get up, relief descending before she’d even reached for the blade. By spring, she became more daring, pushing deeper, harder, teasing out more blood. After stanching the cut with toilet paper, she’d tug up her pants, open the door, and go back to the classroom or the kitchen feeling better than she had when she’d left. There was excitement too. It felt good to get away with it. When she couldn’t fall asleep, she ran her fingertips over the ridges, remembering where she’d been when she’d made this cut near her hip bone, that one by the peach-colored mole. A few days before the flight to New York, her period came early, and she bled through her jeans at school. Mortified, she went to the nurse for a pad. In the bathroom, she


midnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered also the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time that I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a tale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had communicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the ravings of insanity. Besides, the strange nature of the animal would elude all pursuit, even if I were so far credited as to persuade my relatives to commence it. And then of what use would be pursuit? Who could arrest a creature capable of scaling the overhanging sides of Mont Saleve? These reflections determined me, and I resolved to remain silent. It was about five in the morning when I entered my father's house. I told the servants not to disturb the family, and went into the library to attend their usual hour of rising. Six years had elapsed, passed in a dream but for one indelible trace, and I stood in the same place where I had last embraced my father before my departure for Ingolstadt. Beloved and venerable parent! He still remained to me. I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over the mantel-piece. It was an historical subject, painted at my father's desire, and represented Caroline Beaufort in an agony of despair, kneeling by the coffin of her dead father. Her garb was rustic, and her cheek pale; but there was an air of dignity and beauty, that hardly permitted the sentiment of pity. Below this picture was a miniature of William; and my tears flowed when I looked upon it. While I was thus engaged, Ernest entered: he had heard me arrive, and hastened to welcome me: "Welcome, my dearest Victor," said he. "Ah! I wish you had come three months ago, and then you would have found us all joyous and delighted. You come to us now to share a misery which nothing can alleviate; yet you presence will, I hope, revive our father, who seems sinking under his misfortune; and your persuasions will induce poor Elizabeth to cease her vain and tormenting self- accusations. --Poor William! he was our darling and our pride!" Tears, unrestrained, fell from my brother's eyes; a sense of mortal agony crept over my frame. Before, I had only imagined the wretchedness of my desolated home; the reality came on me as a new, and a not less terrible, disaster. I tried to calm Ernest; I enquired more minutely concerning my father, and her I named my cousin. "She most of all," said Ernest, "requires consolation; she accused herself of having caused the death of my brother, and that made her very wretched. But since the murderer has been discovered--" "The murderer discovered! Good God! how can that be? who could attempt to pursue him? It is impossible; one might as well try to overtake the winds, or confine a mountain-stream with a straw. I saw him too; he was free last night!"


trembling. Granger touched Montag's arm. "Welcome back from the dead." Montag nodded. Granger went on. "You might as well know all of us, now. This is Fred Clement, former occupant of the Thomas Hardy chair at Cambridge in the years before it became an Atomic Engineering School. This other is Dr. Simmons from U.C.L.A., a specialist in Ortega y Gasset; Professor West here did quite a bit for ethics, an ancient study now, for Columbia University quite some years ago. Reverend Padover here gave a few lectures thirty years ago and lost his flock between one Sunday and the next for his views. He's been bumming with us some time now. Myself: I wrote a book called The Fingers in the Glove; the Proper Relationship between the Individual and Society, and here I am! Welcome, Montag! " "I don't belong with you," said Montag, at last, slowly. "I've been an idiot all the way." "We're used to that. We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn't be here. When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage. I struck a fireman when he came to burn my library years ago. I've been running ever since. You want to join us, Montag?" "Yes." "What have you to offer?" "Nothing. I thought I had part of the Book of Ecclesiastes and maybe a little of Revelation, but I haven't even that now." "The Book of Ecclesiastes would be fine. Where was it?" "Here," Montag touched his head. "Ah," Granger smiled and nodded. "What's wrong? Isn't that all right?" said Montag. "Better than all right; perfect!" Granger turned to the Reverend. "Do we have a Book of Ecclesiastes?" "One. A man named Harris of Youngstown." "Montag." Granger took Montag's shoulder firmly. "Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes. See how important you've become in the last minute!" "But I've forgotten!" "No, nothing's ever lost. We have ways to shake down your clinkers for you." "But I've tried to remember!" "Don't try. It'll come when we need it. All of us have photographic memories, but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there. Simmons here has worked on it for twenty years and now we've got the method down to where we can recall anything that's been read once. Would you like, some day, Montag, to read Plato's Republic?" "Of course!" "I am Plato's Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus." "How do you do?" said Mr. Simmons. "Hello," said Montag. "I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and-this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke,


J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law. --Ha ha, Alf, says Joe. --Still, says Bloom, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife. --Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half and half. --How half and half? says Bloom. Do you mean he ... --Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that's neither fish nor flesh. --Nor good red herring, says Joe. --That what's I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what that is. Begob I saw there was trouble coming. And Bloom explaining he meant on account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Breen out on grass with his beard out tripping him, bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of his old fellow's was pewopener to the pope. Picture of him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney's moustaches, the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal Zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to the world. --And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my opinion an action might lie. Six and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our pints in peace. Gob, we won't be let even do that much itself. --Well, good health, Jack, says Ned. --Good health, Ned, says J. J. ---There he is again, says Joe. --Where? says Alf. And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin. --How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Joe. --Remanded, says J. J. One of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid. --Who tried the case? says Joe. --Recorder, says Ned. --Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes. --Heart as big as a


Nothing new appeared. He was still listed on the Ithaca College faculty page. By now he might be in Turkey, where he could molest other girls. But he hadn’t molested Ella, she reminded herself. He’d only wanted to. Maybe. She and Peter started family therapy with Ella. The first session was a misery of Ella in one corner and Peter and Maud in another as the therapist coaxed Ella to speak. Maud and Peter told her how much they loved her, how terrified they’d been that night she disappeared, how they thought she was smart and tough and could do anything. They spilled out words while Ella clenched her knees to her chest and stared at the floor. “She won’t talk to us,” they told Ella’s psychiatrist, who said that right now Ella was struggling with the desire to self-harm and the inability to do so. All of her energy went into that effort. A few sessions later, when Ella did start to talk in family therapy, Maud missed her silence. Right away she brought up Gabriel. “You’re sick,” she said to Maud, her eyes burning. “How could you think I would do something like that with him?” “The doctors and police were concerned, Ella,” Peter said, “not only your mother and me.” “I thought he was the only person in this world who understood me,” Ella said. “But nobody does. You don’t. You never have.” The family therapist, a ponderous man with gutted cheeks, tried to redirect. “Ella,” he said gently, “your depression and the self-harm started before you went to New York and met Mr. Crews.” Watching a storm cross Ella’s face, Maud felt muddled and panicked. There was no timeline, no logic, no perspective that organized this story into clarity. “The higher antidepressant dose should kick in soon,” Peter said on the drive home. He had been reading about the structure of the teenage brain, about norepinephrine and serotonin, and cognitive behavioral therapy. “We need to get into her head and try to understand why she would do this.” But Maud had understood viscerally in the hospital room when she saw the scars on Ella’s thighs: The dangerous secret that makes you feel alive. The secret that gives you control. Ella lived in the concrete block of the inpatient unit for seven weeks. Peter, Louise, and Maud had to be buzzed in and out of the steel door. Visiting hours ran from seven to eight p.m. Hair unwashed as if she’d neglected it in the shower, body listless, Ella sat in the lounge with other girls, scrunched up in a chair upholstered in plasticky fabric. Her nails were clipped short to keep her from scratching, but she managed to anyway, and bandages often encased her arm. They tried to play Scrabble; Ella watched and never touched her tiles. “When will she be better?” Louise kept asking. She herself seemed smaller now, more hesitant in her speech, her steps whispering down the hall instead of clumping. Eventually Maud and Peter decided that Louise should visit only once a week and


down the sloping curve of the path. Her fair hair had streamed out behind her like gold in the sun. TOWER OF IVORY. HOUSE OF GOLD. By thinking of things you could understand them. But why in the square? You went there when you wanted to do something. It was all thick slabs of slate and water trickled all day out of tiny pinholes and there was a queer smell of stale water there. And behind the door of one of the closets there was a drawing in red pencil of a bearded man in a Roman dress with a brick in each hand and underneath was the name of the drawing: Balbus was building a wall. Some fellow had drawn it there for a cod. It had a funny face but it was very like a man with a beard. And on the wall of another closet there was written in backhand in beautiful writing: Julius Caesar wrote The Calico Belly. Perhaps that was why they were there because it was a place where some fellows wrote things for cod. But all the same it was queer what Athy said and the way he said it. It was not a cod because they had run away. He looked with the others across the playground and began to feel afraid. At last Fleming said: --And we are all to be punished for what other fellows did? --I won't come back, see if I do, Cecil Thunder said. Three days' silence in the refectory and sending us up for six and eight every minute. --Yes, said Wells. And old Barrett has a new way of twisting the note so that you can't open it and fold it again to see how many ferulae you are to get. I won't come back too. --Yes, said Cecil Thunder, and the prefect of studies was in second of grammar this morning. --Let us get up a rebellion, Fleming said. Will we? All the fellows were silent. The air was very silent and you could hear the cricket bats but more slowly than before: pick, pock. Wells asked: --What is going to be done to them? --Simon Moonan and Tusker are going to be flogged, Athy said, and the fellows in the higher line got their choice of flogging or being expelled. --And which are they taking? asked the fellow who had spoken first. --All are taking expulsion except Corrigan, Athy answered. He's going to be flogged by Mr Gleeson. --I know why, Cecil Thunder said. He is right and the other fellows are wrong because a flogging wears off after a bit but a fellow that has been expelled from college is known all his life on account of it. Besides Gleeson won't flog him hard. --It's best of his play not to, Fleming said. --I wouldn't like to be Simon Moonan and Tusker Cecil Thunder said. But I don't believe they will be flogged. Perhaps they will be sent up for twice nine. --No, no, said Athy. They'll both get it on the vital spot.


But it was a lie. Food held no interest for her and her nights were sleepless, filled with nightmares of those horrid, panicked moments in the alley next to St. Louis Cathedral, a glorious edifice that had once been comforting to her, a landmark that helped her in her struggle with her faith, a symbol of God here on earth. Now she avoided it, hated the huge white cathedral with its three spires knifing into the heavens as if reaching up to God. Her heart shredded. Each night as she fell into a restless sleep, she found herself once more in that fateful alley, again fighting for her life, the nameless attacker slashing brutally with his knife as the rain poured over them. Then she would see Jay, lunging forward, trying to save her as their assailant fled. Finally she would crawl over to her husband, cradle his head in her arms, and realize it was over as she witnessed his features fade to black and white. She heard herself screaming her denials. Not Jay. Not her husband. But she’d known his soul was leaving, had witnessed it so many times before, and each night, over and over again, while stroking back his hair with her bloodstained fingers, she watched him die. A horror film forever on rewind. It was so wrong. So very wrong. Her soul should have left the earth that night—not his. Not Jay’s. Except for the baby. Remember the baby. God help me. The truth was that as he’d lain bleeding in her arms, she’d vowed her love, begged him to hang on, that they had so much life yet to live. Together. But had he heard her? Over her cries for help and tears and his own labored breathing, had Jay known she loved him, had always loved him? Despite the ups and downs of their relationship, the passion and the pain? There had always been doubts, she knew, a past of breakups and reconciliations, but deep down, she’d always loved him. He’d known that. Right? While drawing his final breaths he’d had to have heard how much she loved him. Oh, God, she hoped so. She surmised that he’d come to surprise her with flowers, that the strewn red roses he’d dropped had been his way of making amends for the fight they’d had. Her throat swelled at the thought and she blinked against fresh tears. As the first drops of rain began to fall, her father squeezed her shoulders and she sent a glance his way. He stood ramrod straight, his hair more salt than pepper these days, his jaw square, fine lines evident near his eyes and mouth, his gaze filled with concern. Beside him was his wife, Olivia, a gorgeous blond woman who stood stiffly in a long, black coat, her daughter balanced on one hip. The child, Ginny, Kristi’s curly-haired half sister, so innocent, was turning one at the end of the month. Too young to be here, Kristi thought. Too little to recognize the enormity of it all. Perhaps best if


Beatty's graceful fingers thrust out to seize his wrist. "God, what a pulse! I've got you going, have I, Montag. Jesus God, your pulse sounds like the day after the war. Everything but sirens and bells! Shall I talk some more? I like your look of panic. Swahili, Indian, English Lit., I speak them all. A kind of excellent dumb discourse, Willie!" "Montag, hold on! " The moth brushed Montag's ear. "He's muddying the waters!" "Oh, you were scared silly," said Beatty, "for I was doing a terrible thing in using the very books you clung to, to rebut you on every hand, on every point! What traitors books can be! You think they're backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives. And at the very end of my dream, along I came with the Salamander and said, Going my way? And you got in and we drove back to the firehouse in beatific silence, all -dwindled away to peace." Beatty let Montag's wrist go, let the hand slump limply on the table. "All's well that is well in the end." Silence. Montag sat like a carved white stone. The echo of the final hammer on his skull died slowly away into the black cavern where Faber waited for the echoes to subside. And then when the startled dust had settled down about Montag's mind, Faber began, softly, "All right, he's had his say. You must take it in. I'll say my say, too, in the next few hours. And you'll take it in. And you'll try to judge them and make your decision as to which way to jump, or fall. But I want it to be your decision, not mine, and not the Captain's. But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you now to know with which ear you'll listen." Montag opened his mouth to answer Faber and was saved this error in the presence of others when the station bell rang. The alarm-voice in the ceiling chanted. There was a tacking-tacking sound as the alarm-report telephone typed out the address across the room. Captain Beatty, his poker cards in one pink hand, walked with exaggerated slowness to the phone and ripped out the address when the report was finished. He glanced perfunctorily at it, and shoved it in his pocket. He came back and sat down. The others looked at him. "It can wait exactly forty seconds while I take all the money away from you," said Beatty, happily. Montag put his cards down. "Tired, Montag? Going out of this game?" "Yes." "Hold on. Well, come to think of it, we can finish this hand later. Just leave your cards face down and hustle the equipment. On the double


- and to see the day break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used to shine into my room, and wake me once - I would have done even that, to save her!' Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections. 'What shall I ever do!' she said, fighting thus with her despair. 'How can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to everyone I come near!' Suddenly she turned to my companion. 'Stamp upon me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can't believe - why should you? - a syllable that comes out of my lips. It would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a word. I don't complain. I don't say she and I are alike - I know there is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and love her. Oh, don't think that all the power I had of loving anything is quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being what I am, and having ever known her; but don't think that of me!' He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her. 'Martha,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen't know half the change that's come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it likely. Well!' he paused a moment, then went on. 'You doen't understand how 'tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You doen't understand what 'tis we has afore us. Listen now!' His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him, as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her passionate sorrow was quite hushed and mute. 'If you heerd,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'owt of what passed between Mas'r Davy and me, th' night when it snew so hard, you know as I have been - wheer not - fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece,' he repeated steadily. 'Fur she's more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear afore.' She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet. 'I have heerd her tell,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'as you was early left fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough seafaring-way, their place.


seen her in many months.” “Babies come when they come,” my friend answers. “Important families no longer hire her, but poor women still need help.” Midwife Shi has not been able to recapture her reputation after all these years. It seems shameful to me, but I say, “I’m happy your standing continues to grow.” “My mother trained me well,” she responds. “I know what I’m doing. Women trust me. No one is as capable as I am, I can assure you.” “Doctor Wong—” “Has been good to me. If it weren’t for him, I don’t know what my mother and I would have done.” Her jaw tightens under her flawless skin. “My husband is doing well, but if we want to keep improving our lives, all three of us need to work.” She leaves unspoken unlike you. “I now attend to births in all the best families in Wuxi—” “That’s—” I try to interrupt to show my sense of joy for her, but her need to prove something pushes her on. “Since I last saw you,” she talks over me, “I delivered Magistrate Fu’s son. You can’t get much higher than that.” “That’s wonderful! And I’m happy to see you reap the rewards of being a midwife with a good reputation. Grandmother and I are proud of you.” “I’ve received gifts of catties of meat, sacks of rice, and crates of coal.” She takes a breath before continuing. “Furniture! Porcelain vases! Bamboo screens!” Inside, I feel myself retreating. Her enthusiasm seems so mercantile, but then she and her husband have always been working people. The consequences of their labors can be seen in the shop, with its improved merchandise, and in this two-room apartment, where, over the years, I’ve noticed a nice kang purchased and set under the window for Meiling and her husband to sleep on, and a smaller kang in the other room for Midwife Shi. “If I’m lucky,” she comments, “one day a grateful family might honor me with a lavish funeral.” “That is the highest reward anyone can receive,” I have to admit. “Kailoo says that soon we’ll be able to buy our own tea farm, expand the business, and…” She grins. “I’ve been eager to tell you that we’re going to build a single-courtyard house.” “Oh, Meiling, this pleases me greatly!” “None of this would have happened if not for Doctor Wong. A midwife needs male doctors if she’s to fill the rice bowl.” That seems an exaggeration. But maybe it isn’t. I know of only two women doctors—Grandmother and me. Grandmother is limited to caring for the female inhabitants in the Mansion of Golden Light, and Lady Kuo is in charge of employing the physician in the Garden of Fragrant Delights. She likes Doctor Wong, and he uses Meiling. “When I’m mistress of the Yang household,” I say, “you and I will bring many babies into the world.” “I look forward to that.” She reaches for a salted plum. “Have you seen Doctor Wong’s book?” “Hmmm…” This is something I don’t want to talk about. Doctor


of the house, Mrs. Hall, who had been disciplined by years of experience, remained in the bar next the till. And suddenly the parlour door was opened, and Mr. Cuss appeared, and without glancing at her rushed at once down the steps towards the corner. "Hold him!" he cried. "Don't let him drop that parcel! You can see him so long as he holds the parcel." He knew nothing of the existence of Marvel. For the Invisible Man had handed over the books and bundle in the yard. The face of Mr. Cuss was angry and resolute, but his costume was defective, a sort of limp white kilt that could only have passed muster in Greece. "Hold him!" he bawled. "He's got my trousers! And every stitch of the Vicar's clothes! "'Tend to him in a minute!" he cried to Henfrey as he passed the prostrate Huxter, and coming round the corner to join the tumult, was promptly knocked off his feet into an indecorous sprawl. Somebody in full flight trod heavily on his finger. He yelled, struggled to regain his feet, was knocked against and thrown on all fours again, and became aware that he was involved not in a capture, but a rout. Every one was running back to the village. He rose again and was hit severely behind the ear. He staggered and set off back to the Coach and Horses forthwith, leaping over the deserted Huxter, who was now sitting up, on his way. Behind him as he was halfway up the inn steps he heard a sudden yell of rage, rising sharply out of the confusion of cries, and a sounding smack in some one's face. He recognised the voice as that of the Invisible Man, and the note was that of a man suddenly infuriated by a painful blow. In another moment Mr. Cuss was back in the parlour. "He's coming back, Bunting!" he said, rushing in. "Save yourself! He's gone mad!" Mr. Bunting was standing in the window engaged in an attempt to clothe himself in the hearth-rug and a West Surrey Gazette. "Who's coming?" he said, so startled that his costume narrowly escaped disintegration. "Invisible Man," said Cuss, and rushed to the window. "We'd better clear out from here! He's fighting mad! Mad!" In another moment he was out in the yard. "Good heavens!" said Mr. Bunting, hesitating between two horrible alternatives. He heard a frightful struggle in the passage of the inn, and his decision was made. He clambered out of the window, adjusted his costume hastily, and fled up the village as fast as his fat little legs would carry him. From the moment when the Invisible Man screamed with rage and Mr. Bunting made his memorable flight up the village, it became impossible to give a consecutive account of affairs in Iping. Possibly the Invisible Man's original intention was simply to cover Marvel's retreat with the clothes and books. But his temper, at no time very good, seems to have gone completely at some chance blow, and forthwith he set to


he says with a sly smile when Zach Brayer, the series creator, asks him to settle a debate once and for all: Alice or Sofia. “But for some reason, Zach wasn’t too keen on it.” Toward the end of the show, when it’s time for audience questions, someone asks about rumors of a reboot or spin-off swirling around the internet. I’ve seen the rumors, too—they all seem to stem from the fact that Zach said last month that he’d love to write something else set in the Nocturnals universe, maybe even with some of the same characters. “A reboot? I don’t think so,” Ethan says with a laugh. “No offense, but it would feel a little like going backward. I think I’m just at a different stage of my career right now.” A wave of gossipy murmurs moves through the audience. “So he’s just determined to be the worst, huh,” Noemie mutters. “I mean—” Ethan says, fumbling, clearly seeing the fans are souring on him, but Hallie’s already talking over him. “For those of us who aren’t above the show that jump-started all of our careers, I would love to do a reboot. Or a spin-off,” she says. “Meg at age thirty, trying to balance being a werewolf with her job as a museum curator? Here for it.” This gets a few hoots and a round of applause. But the best part is when Finn catches my eye, his gaze lingering on me for a long, lovely moment. In that one glance, I can tell there’s hope. * * * Afterward, Noemie leaves to get drinks with some fans she met years ago in a forum while I head backstage, searching for Finn’s dressing room. The crew recognized me from rehearsals, waved me right back. The halls are narrow, my feet unsteady, and by the time I find the door with Finn Walsh scrawled on a moon-shaped placard, my heart is in my throat. I smooth out a wrinkle in my shirt, adjust the heavy messenger bag I’ve been carrying, and knock. “Just a minute,” Finn calls. When he opens the door, jaw going slack, it’s clear he wasn’t expecting me. His face is a little pink, like he’s just wiped off his makeup, and his fingers freeze in the middle of loosening his tie. I have to fight the urge to grab it myself and tug him closer, because suddenly that’s all I want to do. “You were amazing,” I say instead. “Thank you. Uh.” He glances backward, rakes a hand through his hair. “Do you want to come in? It’s not much, but . . .” “Right, sure. Of course.” This awkwardness between us is new. He opens the door wider, revealing a vanity and costume rack, a half dozen flower arrangements crowding a tiny desk. The room is so small, I wonder if he can hear the racing of my pulse. This is Finn, I remind myself. The man who has never given me a reason to feel anything but confident. I can do this. He leans back against


is where we fell in love with you, Kimberly.” “To be clear,” Cleo tells Kimmy, “I was in love with you well before that.” “Awwh! You guys!” Kimmy instantly tears up. “You’ve always made me feel like I belong.” “Of course you belong,” I say. “You were our missing link.” Parth settles into the chair beside Sabrina’s. “We needed a redhead to round us out.” “Keep your eye on those blue-haired ladies, by the way,” Sabrina says, looking toward the women nursing sodas at the next table over. “When they go, we’ll grab one of their chairs.” “I’m fine to stand,” Wyn says, pulling the final available chair out for me. He meets my eyes. “Go ahead, honey. Give yourself a break from those heels.” I wonder if my fake smile is doing anything to soften my very real glare. “Well, someone sit,” Parth says. “You’re making me nervous.” “You know what?” I touch Wyn’s bicep. “I’ll sit in your lap.” He balks, and I push him toward the chair. With the air of one resigned to his grisly fate, Wyn sinks into it, and I drape myself across his thighs like a living toga. His arm comes around my back, a highly impersonal touch, but it’s all it takes for my body to remember, replay, relive that moment in the cellar. A server stops by, and Sabrina puts in an order for a pitcher of margaritas, a truckload of fries, and Cleo’s usual soda with lime. “Could I get one of those as well?” I call as he’s walking away. As badly as I want some alcohol to disrupt the electrical impulses firing through my neurons, I need to stay clearheaded. The memory of Wyn’s velvety murmur: Arms up, baby. My drunken warble: Did you get me the shirt about the rodeos? My spine prickles. The backs of my thighs warm. The crowd is roaring along to Shania Twain now, a bachelorette party tipsily leading the charge from the karaoke stage at the back wall. Before Kimmy, Cleo mostly dated ultrahip people who were completely uninterested in hanging out with us. Laura, who rode a motorcycle and had the bridge of her nose pierced. Giselle, who always wore red lipstick and never laughed. Trace, who joined a punk band that got huge, and then dumped Cleo for the famous model daughter of another famous model. Then Cleo met Kimmy, a gorgeous and affectionate goofball who never stopped laughing, while working on an organic farm in Quebec. The first time she came on the trip, Kimmy, Sabrina, and I smoked the best joint of our lives in the Lobster Hut bathroom, then performed “Goodbye Earl” together. From the beginning, she belonged. With Cleo. With us. An uneasiness needles between my ribs. Again, I find myself wondering what we’ll be, exactly, after this week, when the trip is over and the cottage is sold. When Wyn and I come clean. Sabrina has started filling salt-rimmed glasses from the margarita pitcher, and I fight the urge to throw one back. Instead, I lean across