the evening in a heated drawing-room, and in the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect was undeniably pleasing. "Lord love us--three whole days at Skuytercliff!" Beaufort was saying in his loud sneering voice as Archer entered. "You'd better take all your furs, and a hot-water-bottle." "Why? Is the house so cold?" she asked, holding out her left hand to Archer in a way mysteriously suggesting that she expected him to kiss it. "No; but the missus is," said Beaufort, nodding carelessly to the young man. "But I thought her so kind. She came herself to invite me. Granny says I must certainly go." "Granny would, of course. And I say it's a shame you're going to miss the little oyster supper I'd planned for you at Delmonico's next Sunday, with Campanini and Scalchi and a lot of jolly people." She looked doubtfully from the banker to Archer. "Ah--that does tempt me! Except the other evening at Mrs. Struthers's I've not met a single artist since I've been here." "What kind of artists? I know one or two painters, very good fellows, that I could bring to see you if you'd allow me," said Archer boldly. "Painters? Are there painters in New York?" asked Beaufort, in a tone implying that there could be none since he did not buy their pictures; and Madame Olenska said to Archer, with her grave smile: "That would be charming. But I was really thinking of dramatic artists, singers, actors, musicians. My husband's house was always full of them." She said the words "my husband" as if no sinister associations were connected with them, and in a tone that seemed almost to sigh over the lost delights of her married life. Archer looked at her perplexedly, wondering if it were lightness or dissimulation that enabled her to touch so easily on the past at the very moment when she was risking her reputation in order to break with it. "I do think," she went on, addressing both men, that the imprevu adds to one's enjoyment. It's perhaps a mistake to see the same people every day." "It's confoundedly dull, anyhow; New York is dying of dullness," Beaufort grumbled. "And when I try to liven it up for you, you go back on me. Come--think better of it! Sunday is your last chance, for Campanini leaves next week for Baltimore and Philadelphia; and I've a private room, and a Steinway, and they'll sing all night for me." "How delicious! May I think it over, and write to you tomorrow morning?" She spoke amiably, yet with the least hint of dismissal in her voice. Beaufort evidently felt it, and being unused to dismissals, stood staring at her with an obstinate line between his eyes. "Why not now?" "It's too serious a question to decide at this late hour." "Do you call it late?" She returned his glance coolly. "Yes; because I have still to talk business with Mr. Archer for a little while." "Ah," Beaufort snapped. There was no appeal from her tone, and with


nodded like one boy. "Yes, that's right. Let's go up there in the morning." Ralph looked out and saw the sea. "We've got to start the fire again." "You haven't got Piggy's specs," said Jack, "so you can't.'' "Then we'll find out if the mountain's clear." Maurice spoke, hesitating, not wanting to seem a funk. "Supposing the beast's up there?" Jack brandished his spear. "We'll kill it." The sun seemed a little cooler. He slashed with the spear. "What are we waiting for?" "I suppose," said Ralph, "if we keep on by the sea this way, we'll come out below the burnt bit and then we can climb the mountain. Once more Jack led them along by the suck and heave of the blinding sea. Once more Ralph dreamed, letting his skillful feet deal with the difficulties of the path. Yet here his feet seemed less skillful than before. For most of the way they were forced right down to the bare rock by the water and had to edge along between that and the dark luxuriance of the forest. There were little cliffs to be scaled, some to be used as paths, lengthy traverses where one used hands as well as feet. Here and there they could clamber over wave-wet rock, leaping across clear pools that the tide had left. They came to a gully that split the narrow foreshore like a defense. This seemed to have no bottom and they peered awe-stricken into the gloomy crack where water gurgled. Then the wave came back, the gully boiled before them and spray dashed up to the very creeper so that the boys were wet and shrieking. They tried the forest but it was thick and woven like a bird's nest. In the end they had to jump one by one, waiting till the water sank; and even so, some of them got a second drenching. After that the rocks seemed to be growing impassable so they sat for a time, letting their rags dry and watching the clipped outlines of the rollers that moved so slowly past the island. They found fruit in a haunt of bright little birds that hovered like insects. Then Ralph said they were going too slowly. He himself climbed a tree and parted the canopy, and saw the square head of the mountain seeming still a great way off. Then they tried to hurry along the rocks and Robert cut his knee quite badly and they had to recognize that this path must be taken slowly if they were to be safe. So they proceeded after that as if they were climbing a dangerous mountain, until the rocks became an uncompromising cliff, overhung with impossible jungle and falling sheer into the sea. Ralph looked at the sun critically. "Early evening. After tea-time, at any rate." "I don't remember this cliff," said Jack, crestfallen, "so this must be the bit of the coast I missed." Ralph nodded. "Let me think." By now, Ralph had no self-consciousness in public thinking but would treat the day's decisions as though


line. I could not help it!' he added almost indignantly, raising his face to look at Winston. 'It was impossible to change the line. The rhyme was "rod". Do you realize that there are only twelve rhymes to "rod" in the entire language? For days I had racked my brains. There WAS no other rhyme.' The expression on his face changed. The annoyance passed out of it and for a moment he looked almost pleased. A sort of intellectual warmth, the joy of the pedant who has found out some useless fact, shone through the dirt and scrubby hair. 'Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been determined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?' file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (125 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:52 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt No, that particular thought had never occurred to Winston. Nor, in the circumstances, did it strike him as very important or interesting. 'Do you know what time of day it is?' he said. Ampleforth looked startled again. 'I had hardly thought about it. They arrested me--it could be two days ago--perhaps three.' His eyes flitted round the walls, as though he half expected to find a window somewhere. 'There is no difference between night and day in this place. I do not see how one can calculate the time.' They talked desultorily for some minutes, then, without apparent reason, a yell from the telescreen bade them be silent. Winston sat quietly, his hands crossed. Ampleforth, too large to sit in comfort on the narrow bench, fidgeted from side to side, clasping his lank hands first round one knee, then round the other. The telescreen barked at him to keep still. Time passed. Twenty minutes, an hour--it was difficult to judge. Once more there was a sound of boots outside. Winston's entrails contracted. Soon, very soon, perhaps in five minutes, perhaps now, the tramp of boots would mean that his own turn had come. The door opened. The cold-faced young officer stepped into the cell. With a brief movement of the hand he indicated Ampleforth. 'Room 101,' he said. Ampleforth marched clumsily out between the guards, his face vaguely perturbed, but uncomprehending. What seemed like a long time passed. The pain in Winston's belly had revived. His mind sagged round and round on the same trick, like a ball falling again and again into the same series of slots. He had only six thoughts. The pain in his belly; a piece of bread; the blood and the screaming; O'Brien; Julia; the razor blade. There was another spasm in his entrails, the heavy boots were approaching. As the door opened, the wave of air that it created brought in a powerful smell of cold sweat. Parsons walked into the cell. He was wearing khaki shorts and a sports-shirt. This time Winston was startled into self-forgetfulness. 'YOU here!' he said. Parsons gave Winston a glance in which there was neither interest nor surprise, but only misery. He began walking jerkily up and down, evidently unable to keep still. Each time he


this is not an outpost of Hell. Nevertheless, there is no safe neighborhood these days, and any homeboy with an active imagination might be as interested in a duffel bag as in the flash of a solid-gold Rolex. This is a residential district where precious illumination is allowed in a time of shortages; however, the lampposts are old and insufficiently bright, and the milky globes atop a number of them have been shot out or broken with stones. The street trees are nearly as old as the city and have not been properly maintained in decades; through the intricate thatchery of branches, the veiled glow of the westering moon is reduced to a stippling of gray light on the otherwise dark sidewalk. When any vehicle approaching from behind him slows down, he tenses in expectation that it will stop, that a confrontation might occur. They all motor eastward, toward a thin, ashen radiance along the eastern rim of the world that is rising as though the lost continent of Atlantis is slowly surfacing in the sea of night. The houses are mostly bungalows, stucco or clapboard, on small lots. Some are maintained with pride. An equal number are crumbling toward condemnation, the lawns long neglected. Perhaps 10 percent are abandoned. This is Vig territory, a gang as dangerous as the Bloods or the Crips, their name shortened from vigorous, to imply that they have drive, force, and strength. Nina Dozier’s stucco bungalow is in good repair, colorless in these last minutes of darkness but, in daylight, pale blue with white trim. Two small bedrooms. One bath. A living room that also serves as a home office. An eat-in kitchen. Maybe seven hundred square feet in all. The house had belonged to her mom and dad. She inherited it, along with a mortgage, when they were run down and killed in a crosswalk as they were coming home from a local market with bags of groceries. The hit-and-run driver, later caught, was a methamphetamine freak with a long rap sheet, recently released on bail after being charged with carjacking. He was driving a stolen Lincoln Aviator that he totaled later that day, without injury to himself. Because Nina’s son will be sleeping at this hour, Michael goes around the bungalow to the back, as they arranged. She is sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee, slim and fresh-faced, one of those women who seems too small to withstand the storms of this world but who walks through them all unbent, a mahogany Madonna. He taps softly on one of the four panes in the top half of the door, and she looks up. In spite of the proofs that he provided to her, she is clearly astonished that he has shown up as promised. Her surprise isn’t accompanied with relief; she is accustomed to people and fate disappointing her just when her expectations are highest. She disengages the two deadbolts and opens the door. Michael steps into this humble home in which lives the hope of the world. A BRIDGE


novel back into print. In that same year at a conference on minority literature held at Yale and directed by Michael Cooke, the few copies of Their Eyes that were available were circulated for two hours at a time to conference participants, many of whom were reading the novel for the first time. In March of 1977, when the MLA Commission on Minority Groups and the Study of Language and Literature published its first list of out of print books most in demand at a national level, the program coordinator, Dexter Fisher, wrote: “Their Eyes Were Watching God is unanimously at the top of the list.” Between 1977 and 1979 the Zora Neale Hurston renaissance was in full bloom. Robert Hemenway’s biography, Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, published in 1977, was a runaway bestseller at the December 1977 MLA convention. The new University of Illinois Press edition of Their Eyes, published a year after the Hemenway biography in March of 1978, made the novel available on a steady and dependable basis for the next ten years. I Love Myself When I Am Laughing…And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader, edited by Alice Walker, was published by the Feminist Press in 1979. Probably more than anything else, these three literary events made it possible for serious Hurston scholarship to emerge. But the event that for me truly marked the beginning of the third wave of critical attention to Their Eyes took place in December 1979 at the MLA convention in San Francisco in a session aptly titled “Traditions and Their Transformations in Afro-American Letters,” chaired by Robert Stepto of Yale with John Callahan of Lewis and Clark College and myself (then at the University of Detroit) as the two panelists. Despite the fact that the session was scheduled on Sunday morning, the last session of the entire convention, the room was packed and the audience unusually attentive. In his comments at the end of the session, Stepto raised the issue that has become one of the most highly controversial and hotly contested aspects of the novel: whether or not Janie is able to achieve her voice in Their Eyes. What concerned Stepto was the courtroom scene in which Janie is called on not only to preserve her own life and liberty but also to make the jury, as well as all of us who hear her tale, understand the meaning of her life with Tea Cake. Stepto found Janie curiously silent in this scene, with Hurston telling the story in omniscient third person so that we do not hear Janie speak—at least not in her own first-person voice. Stepto was quite convinced (and convincing) that the frame story in which Janie speaks to Pheoby creates only the illusion that Janie has found her voice, that Hurston’s insistence on telling Janie’s story in the third person undercuts her power as speaker. While the rest of us in the room struggled to find our voices, Alice Walker rose and claimed hers, insisting passionately that women did


face. The action so sudden he’d moved his head to the side only after he felt wetness begin to spread across his nose, so unexpected it had silenced men whose voices could usually be heard in every house on the street. At least Paul and Hakeem, his classmates who also lived on that street, weren’t there to witness that moment. After seeing an old video of Klint da Drunk performing on Night of a Thousand Laughs, Paul had decided he wanted to be just like Klint. Since then, whenever a teacher skipped a period, Paul staggered around, bumping into desks and chairs, slurring insults at his classmates. Ẹniọlá placed a palm against his cheek to press in any wetness and leave his skin unmarked. If there was any trace of saliva on his face when he passed by Paul’s house on his way back home, the other boy’s hour or so in front of the class this afternoon would be all about him. Paul might say the wetness was there because Ẹniọlá drooled in his sleep, had not taken a bath before putting on his school uniform, came from a family that could not even afford soap. There would be laughter. He laughed too when Paul tortured other people. Most of the jokes were not even funny, but, hoping this would keep Paul’s focus on whatever unfortunate boy or girl he’d chosen that afternoon, Ẹniọlá laughed at everything Paul said. When Paul shifted his attention from one person, it would usually turn on a girl who hadn’t been laughing at his jokes. Usually. There had been that terrible afternoon when Paul had stopped talking about some other classmate’s tattered shoe to say Ẹniọlá’s forehead was shaped like the thick end of a mango. Ẹniọlá had been laughing at the girl with tattered shoes and found that as the class erupted into a fresh round of laughter he would hear in his sleep for months after, he could not shut his mouth. He wanted to stop laughing but couldn’t. Not when his throat began to hurt with tears or when his classmates became quiet because the chemistry teacher had stumbled in a few minutes before her period was over. He’d gone on laughing until she told him to kneel in one corner of the class with his face to the wall. Without a mirror, there was no way to tell…no. No. He wouldn’t ask any of the men around him to confirm if his face still had any streaks. He wouldn’t. As his hand slipped away from his cheek, Ẹniọlá squinted at the three-storey building where Paul’s family lived on the second floor. They shared its four rooms with two other families and an old woman who had no known relatives. The woman was standing in front of the house now, scattering grain on the sand while chickens squawked at her feet. No Paul. Maybe he had left for school already. But then, he could also be on the staircase or in the corridor, ready to step out just as Ẹniọlá passed by


at sea, ten miles south of there and nine miles from land. The trunk was bound in chains to which were attached six twenty-pound barbells; a hydraulic hand truck with a five-hundred-pound capacity was needed to get that package onto his boat and later raise it over the gunwale to slide it into the sea. If Royce believed in ghosts, he might wonder if the spirit of Harry Houdini freed Jennifer’s corpse for some macabre reason. After strangling a girlfriend, he never deposits her in a place where he has left another one. Indeed, he has conveyed two of them to New Mexico, wrapped in plastic drop cloths that he sprayed with lubricant before dropping them into ancient lava pipes, long tubes about three or four feet in width, leading down through solid stone, up which lava had gushed in an epoch long before the creation of humanity. Those lovelies lie hundreds—perhaps thousands—of feet below the possibility of discovery. Another he cremated in Arizona, by leaving her in an abandoned church to which he set fire. He had chosen to bury Lenore on public land, in a lonely vale more than thirty miles from his home. He had found the site before he strangled her and had tested the texture of the soil to be sure he could dig a grave easily enough with pick and spade. He almost had her in the ground when the robots appeared. After enough time has passed, many episodes in Royce Kinnel’s life seem surrealistic, phantasmagorical, too colorful and quirky to have played out as they did, more like vivid dreams than real-life experiences; reliving them in memory is far more entertaining than anything on television. Thinking back, Royce is often amazed at what he’s done and that he’s gotten away with it, although at the time his actions seemed as mundane as taking out the trash. A few hours earlier, however, the incident near Rancho Santa Fe struck him as surrealistic even as it occurred. Robots. As big as Great Danes. Appearing out of nowhere. Royce isn’t interested in either science fiction or science. He’s not interested in much of anything other than his girlfriends and housekeeping; he doesn’t care what’s cool in movies or music or art or fashion, and he has no politics. People say there will be robots everywhere one day, but he’s sure that is at least a decade from now. So, aliens. A lot of people seem to be fascinated with UFOs, but Royce isn’t. He couldn’t care less about aliens. Whatever extraterrestrial females are like, they won’t be hot in any way that’s likely to get his sap rising. Earth girls are enough for him. He wishes the robots hadn’t so unnerved him. He can’t go back and fill the grave now. That’s like asking to be caught. Although he panicked and although Lenore will now be found sooner than later, he is confident that no one can connect her to him. One of the benefits of his style of romance is that no one ever sees him in


Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

a name he had found in A History of Magic. His school books were very interesting. He lay on his bed reading late into the night, Hedwig swooping in and out of the open window as she pleased. It was lucky that Aunt Petunia didn't come in to vacuum anymore, because Hedwig kept bringing back dead mice. Every night before he went to sleep, Harry ticked off another day on the piece of paper he had pinned to the wall, counting down to September the first. On the last day of August he thought he'd better speak to his aunt and uncle about getting to King's Cross station the next day, so he went down to the living room where they were watching a quiz show on television. He cleared his throat to let them know he was there, and Dudley screamed and ran from the room. "Er -- Uncle Vernon?" Uncle Vernon grunted to show he was listening. "Er -- I need to be at King's Cross tomorrow to -- to go to Hogwarts." Uncle Vernon grunted again. "Would it be all right if you gave me a lift?" Grunt. Harry supposed that meant yes. "Thank you." He was about to go back upstairs when Uncle Vernon actually spoke. "Funny way to get to a wizards' school, the train. Magic carpets all got punctures, have they?" Harry didn't say anything. "Where is this school, anyway?" "I don't know," said Harry, realizing this for the first time. He pulled the ticket Hagrid had given him out of his pocket. "I just take the train from platform nine and three-quarters at eleven o'clock," he read. His aunt and uncle stared. "Platform what?" "Nine and three-quarters." "Don't talk rubbish," said Uncle Vernon. "There is no platform nine and three-quarters." "It's on my ticket." "Barking," said Uncle Vernon, "howling mad, the lot of them. You'll see. You just wait. All right, we'll take you to King's Cross. We're going up to London tomorrow anyway, or I wouldn't bother." "Why are you going to London?" Harry asked, trying to keep things friendly. "Taking Dudley to the hospital," growled Uncle Vernon. "Got to have that ruddy tail removed before he goes to Smeltings." *** Harry woke at five o'clock the next morning and was too excited and nervous to go back to sleep. He got up and pulled on his jeans because he didn't want to walk into the station in his wizard's robes -- he'd change on the train. He checked his Hogwarts list yet again to make sure he had everything he needed, saw that Hedwig was shut safely in her cage, and then paced the room, waiting for the Dursleys to get up. Two hours later, Harry's huge, heavy trunk had been loaded into the Dursleys' car, Aunt Petunia had talked Dudley into sitting next to Harry, and they had set off. They reached King's Cross at half past ten. Uncle Vernon dumped Harry's trunk onto a cart and wheeled it into the station for him. Harry thought this was strangely kind until Uncle


of short-term changes--the reasoning that leads Godfrey to keep his secret marriage hidden or that makes Dunstan rob Silas. 5. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE PAST Raveloe is a society strongly connected to its past. In contrast, the town Silas comes from seems impersonal and transient--when Silas returns thirty-two years later, Lantern-Yard has been literally wiped off the face of the Earth. Individuals in this book also are connected to their own pasts in different degrees. Godfrey hopes to bury his past. Silas and Eppie cherish their past together. As Silas is redeemed by his love for Eppie, he regains a sense of his past, and memory heals him. Attachment to the past can be stultifying, however, for characters like Squire Cass and Nancy Lammeter. Look at the role played in this novel by local traditions, personal memories, and familiar objects or places. By her own comments, then, Eliot gives this story, set in the past, a meaning for her own modern world. 6. OTHER THEMES In Silas Marner, Eliot also examines the class system of England in microcosm (mark the differences between the upper and lower classes, and judge Eliot's comments on them). Connected to this is her belief in the importance of work. The villagers understand the value of having a craft or skill and the role this gives one in a community. Silas clings to his craft when all else is taken from him. In the upper class, the Lammeter girls understand hard work, but the Cass sons are dangerously idle. In examining the social structure of Raveloe, however, Eliot defines a society that no longer exists. In describing Raveloe particularly by comparing it to the town Silas comes from--she depicts an England that may have been destroyed by the spread of the Industrial Revolution. ^^^^^^^^^^ SILAS MARNER: STYLE At her best, George Eliot writes in a strong, precise style, each word chosen carefully. At her worst, her sentences circle around what she's trying to say, stringing out clauses loaded with abstract, colorless words. In the second paragraph of the book, for example, she starts off with a plain sentence that sets up Silas' situation in simple, concrete words. But by the end of the paragraph she's tangled up in long, meandering sentences, using abstract terms like "a shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm." This puts some readers off before they've even gotten into the book. When George Eliot is not speaking to the reader directly, however, her style is less self-conscious. Often she takes on the voice of a village gossip to show the community's view of Silas; her language becomes casual, humorous, and colloquial. (See for example the fifth sentence in that second paragraph, beginning "They had, perhaps, heard their mothers and fathers hint....") When she takes on the voice of an upperclass observer, she uses a light, arch irony. (See the first paragraph of Chapter 3.) Her scenes of straight dialogue can also be surprisingly dramatic, as characters use distinctive dialects, and speeches move energetically back and


ground and billows around my ankles like a low-lying cloud. Before I head to the main office, I do a walk-through of the camp to make sure everything is as it should be. I start at the eastern edge where the control center, located in the Craftsman Lodge, is situated. The outer door is locked, and I don’t bother to check inside. There’s never any issue in there, but outside, the generator is sitting like a relic from some bygone era. It broke last summer, and when I googled the make and model to see if I could fix it myself, it said it was built in 1990. I flip open the side panel. The fuel indicator reads full, and the little green light in the corner is steady, which means it’s ready to kick on in case the main power fails. A good final girl always makes sure the generator, no matter how ancient, has fuel and is in good working order. I cut through the wooded pathway between my cabin and the shower building and come upon Porter and Javier, one of our new hires, arguing in a small clearing. Porter’s got his hand pushed down on his hip. “Just because you’re too scared to go over there and check don’t mean it doesn’t need to be done.” “You do it, then,” Javier says. “You know the whole place like the back of your hand. Doesn’t it make more sense for you to go check?” Porter throws his hands up, then spots me walking toward them. “Oh, good,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Boss is here. Let her tell you whose job it is to check the perimeter fencing because news flash, sugafoot, it ain’t me.” I approach Javier. “That would be your job. Is there a problem?” Javier smiles, and his right eyebrow arches up. He’s tall, dark hair and eyes, a scattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose. He looks like an athlete, but I’ve seen him trip over damn near every exposed root or uneven pathway out here. I don’t think he’s coordinated enough to walk in a straight line, much less play sports. “Aw, come on, Charity,” he whines. “Porter is so much better at this. He knows every inch of this place, and besides, something might happen to me, and then we’d never get a chance to really know each other, you know?” He flashes me another smile. He’s so obvious, it’s actually a little funny. “I’m a vegetarian,” I say to him. He looks at me, confused. “Huh?” “She don’t like meat,” Porter says. “Strictly strawberries, like my man Harry Styles said.” Javier’s brows push together. Me and Porter are both part of the alphabet mafia, so we get it, but poor Javier is clueless. “I’m gay,” I say. “Very, very gay. Save all that flirting and goofy grinning for somebody who wants it and who also isn’t your direct supervisor.” Porter tilts his head to the side. “I, however, am strictly dickly and not your supervisor, so please feel free to


with which his guests drew lines on the floor before they ate kola nuts. "And these white men, they say, have no toes." "And have you never seen them?" asked Machi. "Have you?" asked Obierika. "One of them passes here frequently," said Machi. "His name is Amadi." Those who knew Amadi laughed. He was a leper, and the polite name for leprosy was "the white skin." CHAPTER NINE For the first time in three nights, Okonkwo slept. He woke up once in the middle of the night and his mind went back to the past three days without making him feel uneasy. He began to wonder why he had felt uneasy at all. It was like a man wondering in broad daylight why a dream had appeared so terrible to him at night. He stretched himself and scratched his thigh where a mosquito had bitten him as he slept. Another one was wailing near his right ear. He slapped the ear and hoped he had killed it. Why do they always go for one's ears? When he was a child his mother had told him a story about it. But it was as silly as all women's stories. Mosquito, she had said, had asked Ear to marry him, whereupon Ear fell on the floor in uncontrollable laughter. "How much longer do you think you will live?" she asked. "You are already a skeleton." Mosquito went away humiliated, and any time he passed her way he told Ear that he was still alive. Okonkwo turned on his side and went back to sleep. He was roused in the morning by someone banging on his door. "Who is that?" he growled. He knew it must be Ekwefi. Of his three wives Ekwefi was the only one who would have the audacity to bang on his door. "Ezinma is dying," came her voice, and all the tragedy and sorrow of her life were packed in those words. Okonkwo sprang from his bed, pushed back the bolt on his door and ran into Ekwefi's hut. Ezinma lay shivering on a mat beside a huge fire that her mother had kept burning all night. "It is iba," said Okonkwo as he took his machete and went into the bush to collect the leaves and grasses and barks of trees that went into making the medicine for iba. Ekwefi knelt beside the sick child, occasionally feeling with her palm the wet, burning forehead. Ezinma was an only child and the centre of her mother's world. Very often it was Ezinma who decided what food her mother should prepare. Ekwefi even gave her such delicacies as eggs, which children were rarely allowed to eat because such food tempted them to steal. One day as Ezinma was eating an egg Okonkwo had come in unexpectedly from his hut. He was greatly shocked and swore to beat Ekwefi if she dared to give the child eggs again. But it was impossible to refuse Ezinma anything. After her father's rebuke she developed an even keener appetite for eggs. And she enjoyed above


(adv) awfully, ghastly, return, refund. not solved, open, strange, dissonant, dreadfully, fearfully, hideously, steed: (n) horse, mount, charger, undecided. ANTONYM: (adj) terribly, gruesomely, terrifically, knight, courser, warhorse, pony, apparent. atrociously, horrendously, awful. stallion, mare. winged: (adj) swift, rapid, speedy, ravenous: (adj) hungry, greedy, avid, sunrise: (n) dawn, sunup, daybreak, quick, flying, alate, sublime, lofty, famished, gluttonous, voracious, daylight, aurora, first light, alated, aligerous, composed. Nathaniel Hawthorne 217 bedazzled %eyes. There he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written space behind him! Thesaurus behind: (adj, n) back, rear; (adj, adv) small. tiny, cramped, small, miniature, backward, late; (adv) backwards, space: (n) gap, scope, opening, period, affordable, bounded, insignificant, later, aback, beyond; (n) backside, place, void, margin, latitude, extent, slight, shallow, restricted. can; (prep) abaft. ANTONYMS: (adj, emptiness, distance. ANTONYM: (n) written: (adj) registered, clerical, adv) early; (adv) fore; (adj) prompt. mess. conscript, enrolled, literal, hard-and- immeasurable: (adj) endless, immense, tract: (n) region, area, expanse, essay, fast, on paper; (n) examination. infinite, huge, enormous, illimitable, pamphlet, section, extent, district, ANTONYMS: (adj) verbal, unmeasurable, incalculable, dissertation, plot, lot. unscripted, unwritten. inestimable, innumerable, vast: (adj) large, immense, spacious, interminable. ANTONYMS: (adj) extensive, immeasurable, enormous, limited, minute, finite, shallow, gigantic, wide, boundless, colossal, slight, negligible, tiny, few, minor, great. ANTONYMS: (adj) narrow, Nathaniel Hawthorne 219 CHAPTER XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY Betimes in the morning of the day on which the new Governor was to receive his office at the hands of the people, Hester Prynne and little Pearl came into the market-place. It was already thronged with the craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the town, in considerable numbers, among whom, likewise, were many rough figures, whose attire of deer-skins marked them as belonging to some of the forest settlements, which surrounded the little metropolis of the colony.% On this public holiday, as on all other occasions for seven years past, Hester was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth. Not more by its hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its fashion, it had the effect of making her fade personally out of sight and outline; while again the scarlet letter brought her back from this twilight indistinctness, and revealed her under the moral aspect of its own illumination. Her face, so long familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. It was like a mask; or, rather like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's features; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that Hester was actually dead, in respect to any Thesaurus accustomed: (adj, n) habitual; (adj) unclothe; (n) nakedness. expression, nameless, inexpressible, familiar, normal, wonted, usual, figures: (n) statistics, numbers, nondescript, terrible, intangible, natural, everyday, ordinary, information, facts, poll. termless. ANTONYMS: (adj) habituated, common, traditional. illumination: (n) brightness, explainable, conceivable, concrete. ANTONYMS: (adj) unusual, green, illuminance, lighting, light, metropolis: (n) city, capital, town, unseasoned, unconventional, explanation, elucidation, edification, municipality, buffalo, meshed, untrained, abnormal, luminousness, luminosity, borough, burgh, independence, hull, uncharacteristic, exceptional. illustration; (adj, n) irradiation. bale. attire: (n, v) array, garb, apparel, wear; ANTONYMS: (n) education,


me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like pap; but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, be- cause it had been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. They said he was floating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the bank. But I warn't comfortable long, because I happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he wouldn't. We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pre- tended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and


mother’s pleas, Ẹniọlá now refused to go begging again since none of the money would go towards his school fees. The betrayal he’d felt when he realised that his parents had chosen Bùsọ́lá over him had only intensified over time. Nothing his mother could say could make him budge. “You don’t know how you’ll get breakfast tomorrow?” Rashidi shook his head. “You, is it that you have never heard about what Honourable is doing? There’s breakfast, lunch and dinner in his house every day. You just need to show up.” Ẹniọlá frowned, he had never heard about what Rashidi was saying. Free food every day? It did not sound possible. “Free food? Honourable gives people free food?” “Not people, oh, not everybody,” Sàámú said. “Just young men like us. Not everybody.” Rashidi puffed on the cigarette. “You are telling us that nobody has ever invited you to come and eat in Honourable’s house?” Ẹniọlá shook his head. He noticed that Sàámú and Rashidi exchanged a look, but he did not think much of it. Rashidi leaned back and blew smoke rings into the air. “See this life now. There is free food in this town and you are going hungry in a town where you can get free breakfast, free lunch and free dinner.” “And you don’t pay any money?” Ẹniọlá asked. “No o. This food we just ate came from his house and we did not pay one naira for it.” Sàámú stood and stretched. “Honourable is just doing what God has sent him to do. He is doing good things for the young men in the community.” Rashidi patted Ẹniọlá’s arm. “You know, if you want lunch, you can go with us to Honourable’s house. Sàámú, what did the cook say we will be eating this afternoon?” Sàámú scratched his head. “Pounded yam, I think it is pounded yam.” “Are you sure you don’t pay for the food?” Ẹniọlá asked. Sàámú and Rashidi laughed. “Àní, Honourable Fẹ̀sọ̀jaiyé will never die. The food is free, but if you don’t want to go with us, there is no problem. Sàámú, lets go.” Rashidi crushed his cigarette with his sandal while Sàámú threw the bowl and cutlery into the black polythene bag. “Wait,” Ẹniọlá said when the boys got to the door. “Wait for me.” Ẹniọlá still did not believe all that Rashidi had said. He followed them only because he was curious. The boys went behind the classroom block and walked a short distance to the school’s fence. Rashidi and Sàámú scaled the fence with swift movements. “Are you not coming with us again?” Rashidi asked. Ẹniọlá moved further down along the fence until he got to a place where it was broken down, and then he stepped over the debris to the other side. * * * Honourable Kọ́lápọ̀ Timothy Fẹ̀sọ̀jaiyé was known by many names. To the university girlfriend who became his first wife, he was Kọ́lá. Before they all died on the day their father was to be buried, his brother and eleven stepsiblings had called him Timo or


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

into the not-dead child’s black eyes, the gape of that unmoving, whispering mouth. “Stop,” she rasped. “Please stop.” The body fell back, eyes still open, limbs slack. She snapped her hands closed, just like she’d done with Horse, just like she’d done with Cedric, breaking the threads of Mortem that bound her to the corpse. Then Lore bolted. August’s voice chased her out the door, echoing in all that stone, but Lore paid the King no mind. She tripped over her hem, hit her knees, skinning them beneath her skirt. A heaving breath in and another out, trying her best to keep the bile in her throat from surging. The white, necrotic skin on her fingers slowly leached back to living warmth, the gray of her veins fading with each breath. Her heart lurched in her chest, beating so hard it almost hurt. “Get up, girl.” Anton’s voice was as cold as the stone against her palms. Lore rubbed the back of her wrist over her mouth, deliberately taking her time before she straightened and glared up at the Priest Exalted. The sun through the skylight blazed his gray hair into a halo, obscured his features. “Ready for round two?” Lore nearly spat it. As humanity suffused her again, chasing out death, so did a righteous anger she couldn’t totally explain—the thought of that child, of how she’d disturbed his peaceful rest after something terrible happened to him, made shame prick up and down her spine. “Are there any other corpses you want to disturb while we have the time? Maybe we can climb up to the top and see if I can get some dead marquess to sing the national anthem—” “That’s quite enough,” Anton murmured, his expression still hidden in shadow. “This is exactly what we brought you here for. Don’t start having a conscience now.” “Rich, coming from a priest.” “I told you before. The Bleeding God understands that sometimes the rules must be bent for the greater good. For the glory of His promises to be fulfilled.” Anton’s hand lifted, a finger tracing over one of the golden rays on his pendant. “He forgives His faithful, always. For everything.” Lore swallowed. Tightened her fists in her skirt. The shame didn’t dissipate, but she managed to shove it down, push it somewhere to stay until she dealt with it later. “I failed,” she said, shaking her head, returning to the matter at hand instead of an existential one she couldn’t parse yet. “We learned absolutely nothing about what’s happening in the villages.” They’ve awakened. It still reverberated in her head, that awful whisper from a dead mouth. They’ve awakened. She’d asked the dead boy what happened to him, and she didn’t think the dead could lie. It was an answer of some kind, but not one that made any sense. “It doesn’t matter, on this first attempt.” August waved a hand as he stepped through the small door of the vault, ducking so his crown didn’t knock into the lintel. Despite his look of confused near-terror when he heard


passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel.over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end. "Was it here?" he asked in a low voice. "No, no, the yew alley is on the other side." The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face. "It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a place as this," said he. "It's enough to scare any man. I'll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it again, with a thousand candle- power Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door." The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenellated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke. "Welcome, Sir Henry! Welcome to Baskerville Hall!" A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouet- ted against the yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags. "You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Henry?" said Dr. Mortimer. "My wife is expecting me." "Surely you will stay and have some dinner?" "No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Barrymore will be a better guide than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service." The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Henry and I turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Henry and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp. "It's just as I imagined it," said Sir Henry. "Is it not the


I evidently saw, of drawing me out. What could I do? He meant to please, and he tormented me. I felt as if he had placed carefully, one by one, in my five those instruments which were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel death. I writhed under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain I felt. Clerval, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning the sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse, his total ignorance; and the conversation took a more general turn. I thanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak. I saw plainly that he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me; and although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide in him that event which was so often present to my recollection, but which I feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply. M. Krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums gave me even more pain than the benevolent approbation of M. Waldman. "D--n the fellow!" cried he; "why, M. Clerval, I assure you he has outstript us all. Ay, stare if you please; but it is nevertheless true. A youngster who, but a few years ago, believed in Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as in the gospel, has now set himself at the head of the university; and if he is not soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance. --Ay, ay," continued he, observing my face expressive of suffering, "M. Frankenstein is modest; an excellent quality in a young man. Young men should be diffident of themselves, you know, M. Clerval: I was myself when young; but that wears out in a very short time." M. Krempe had now commenced an eulogy on himself, which happily turned the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me. Clerval had never sympathized in my tastes for natural science; and his literary pursuits differed wholly from those which had occupied me. He came to the university with the design of making himself complete master of the oriental languages, and thus he should open a field for the plan of life he had marked out for himself. Resolved to pursue no inglorious career, he turned his eyes toward the East, as affording scope for his spirit of enterprise. The Persian, Arabic, and Sanscrit languages engaged his attention, and I was easily induced to enter on the same studies. Idleness had ever been irksome to me, and now that I wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former studies, I felt great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend, and found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the orientalists. I did not, like him, attempt a critical knowledge of their dialects, for I did not contemplate making any other use of them than temporary amusement.


likely to boast of it if he did, the horrid creature! I knew you couldn't guess it. Mother had a letter from Aunt Josephine today, and Aunt Josephine wants you and me to go to town next Tuesday and stop with her for the Exhibition. There!" "Oh, Diana," whispered Anne, finding it necessary to lean up against a maple tree for support, "do you really mean it? But I'm afraid Marilla won't let me go. She will say that she can't encourage gadding about. That was what she said last week when Jane invited me to go with them in their double-seated buggy to the American concert at the White Sands Hotel. I wanted to go, but Marilla said I'd be better at home learning my lessons and so would Jane. I was bitterly disappointed, Diana. I felt so heartbroken that I wouldn't say my prayers when I went to bed. But I repented of that and got up in the middle of the night and said them." "I'll tell you," said Diana, "we'll get Mother to ask Marilla. She'll be more likely to let you go then; and if she does we'll have the time of our lives, Anne. I've never been to an Exhibition, and it's so aggravating to hear the other girls talking about their trips. Jane and Ruby have been twice, and they're going this year again." "I'm not going to think about it at all until I know whether I can go or not," said Anne resolutely. "If I did and then was disappointed, it would be more than I could bear. But in case I do go I'm very glad my new coat will be ready by that time. Marilla didn't think I needed a new coat. She said my old one would do very well for another winter and that I ought to be satisfied with having a new dress. The dress is very pretty, Diana-navy blue and made so fashionably. Marilla always makes my dresses fashionably now, because she says she doesn't intend to have Matthew going to Mrs. Lynde to make them. I'm so glad. It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable. At least, it is easier for me. I suppose it doesn't make such a difference to naturally good people. But Matthew said I must have a new coat, so Marilla bought a lovely piece of blue broadcloth, and it's being made by a real dressmaker over at Carmody. It's to be done Saturday night, and I'm trying not to imagine myself walking up the church aisle on Sunday in my new suit and cap, because I'm afraid it isn't right to imagine such things. But it just slips into my mind in spite of me. My cap is so pretty. Matthew bought it for me the day we were over at Carmody. It is one of those little blue velvet ones that are all the rage, with gold cord and tassels. Your new hat is elegant, Diana, and so becoming. When I saw you


as dead, for not a soul did I see. I rejoiced that it was so, for I wanted no witness of poor Lucy's condition. The time and distance seemed endless, and my knees trembled and my breath came laboured as I toiled up the endless steps to the abbey. I must have gone fast, and yet it seemed to me as if my feet were weighted with lead, and as though every joint in my body were rusty. When I got almost to the top I could see the seat and the white figure, for I was now close enough to distinguish it even through the spells of shadow. There was undoubtedly something, long and black, bending over the half-reclining white figure. I called in fright, "Lucy! Lucy!" and something raised a head, and from where I was I could see a white face and red, gleaming eyes. Lucy did not answer, and I ran on to the entrance of the churchyard. As I entered, the church was between me and the seat, and for a minute or so I lost sight of her. When I came in view again the cloud had passed, and the moonlight struck so brilliantly that I could see Lucy half reclining with her head lying over the back of the seat. She was quite alone, and there was not a sign of any living thing about. When I bent over her I could see that she was still asleep. Her lips were parted, and she was breathing, not softly as usual with her, but in long, heavy gasps, as though striving to get her lungs full at every breath. As I came close, she put up her hand in her sleep and pulled the collar of her nightdress close around her, as though she felt the cold. I flung the warm shawl over her, and drew the edges tight around her neck, for I dreaded lest she should get some deadly chill from the night air, unclad as she was. I feared to wake her all at once, so, in order to have my hands free to help her, I fastened the shawl at her throat with a big safety pin. But I must have been clumsy in my anxiety and pinched or pricked her with it, for by-and-by, when her breathing became quieter, she put her hand to her throat again and moaned. When I had her carefully wrapped up I put my shoes on her feet, and then began very gently to wake her. At first she did not respond, but gradually she became more and more uneasy in her sleep, moaning and sighing occasionally. At last, as time was passing fast, and for many other reasons, I wished to get her home at once, I shook her forcibly, till finally she opened her eyes and awoke. She did not seem surprised to see me, as, of course, she did not realize all at once where she was. Lucy always wakes prettily, and even at such a time, when her body must have been


I called home in his final months, I would often catch him on his own while my mother was at work. Later, if Mom asked him what we’d chatted about, all he would tell her was that we’d had a good talk. This is my sense of those calls as well, although no particular one stands out in my memory. My mother later said that our weekday talks had represented a turning point for him. “He knew that he wasn’t doing well,” she told me. “I think he decided that it was time to accept you, love you, forgive you for everything—and just be your father.” If that is true, he must have made the decision during his final weeks, the weeks my parents spent reading my book together. There was nothing in it that I hadn’t already discussed with them—by then, we had all learned how to talk about my adoption in ways we couldn’t when I was young. But giving them my book to read meant sharing in new, expanded language who I had become, how I differed from them, what it had been like to be their adopted child, without mitigation or platitudes. They could have resented me for it, or felt threatened by the many ways in which my feelings and experiences diverged from theirs. Instead, their response was We see you. While I wish that I could recall the last thing my father said to me, I find some solace in allowing his appreciation for the story I labored over—one in which I tried to explore and honor both the truth of my adoption and my adoptive parents’ love for me—to stand in for the final words I don’t remember. 12 After my father dies, I become, for a time, someone I do not recognize. Entire weeks are all but lost to me, scooped out of my once-airtight memory. Our rental term ends two months after the funeral, and when we move into another house, our third residence in seven years, I will hardly remember packing or unpacking. I don’t know how to ask for leave from my job. I tell myself that I can’t afford to take unpaid time off anyway. The truth is that I have always been able to work, and now I learn that grief is no hindrance to my productivity. I bank on this, even feel a kind of twisted pride in it. It doesn’t matter to me whether I take care of myself, because I do not deserve the care. All my parents ever wanted was to spend more time with us, to see us more than once a year or every other year, and I never found a way to make it happen, and now my father is dead. When other people—my husband, my friends—try to tell me that I am not at fault, I barely hear them. Punishing myself, keeping myself in as much pain as possible, seems like something a good daughter should do if it is too late for her to do anything else. There is a


made up its mind. The steps went still and solid, the door sprang wide, every window came ablaze with light. Even the house could say what Alex could not: Welcome back. You were missed. You are needed. Part demon or not, the golden boy of Lethe was back, and human enough to pass through the wards. “Where’s Tripp?” she asked. “He’s not answering his phone,” said Dawes. Alex’s stomach turned. “When did he last check in?” “Three hours ago,” said Turner as they shuffled into the dining room where someone had set the table. “I went by his apartment, but no answer.” Darlington looked skeptical. “I suppose this is a reasonable time to ask why you brought Tripp Helmuth, of all people, to hell?” Alex threw up her hands in annoyance. “You try putting together Team Murder on short notice.” She had left Tripp on the New Haven Green. She’d seen him set off toward downtown. Could he be late? Scared of returning to hell? He knew another descent was the only way to be rid of their demons. They were the bait. Their misery. Their hopelessness. “We never should have left him alone,” she said. “He had the seabird,” Turner noted. “But the salt spirits can only do so much. I don’t know about you, but I could tell Not Hellie was adapting. She was less scared of those snakes the last time I used them. She wasn’t frightened out on the sidewalk a minute ago.” “You’re all forgetting he could just be a coward,” Mercy said as they settled around the table. “That isn’t fair,” Dawes called from the kitchen. “What?” Mercy demanded. “You saw how freaked out he was. He didn’t want to make the descent a second time.” “None of us do,” said Turner. “And you wouldn’t either.” “I’ll go,” Mercy said, her chin lifting. “You’re down a pilgrim. You need someone to fill the gap.” “You’re not a killer,” said Alex. “Yet. Maybe I’m a late bloomer.” Dawes returned to the dining room with a big tureen of steaming soup. “This isn’t a joke!” “Let’s try to remember that not being a murderer is actually a good thing,” Darlington said. “I’ll take Tripp’s place. I’ll be the fourth.” Dawes set the tureen on the table with a loud, disapproving thud. “You will not.” Alex didn’t like the idea either. The Gauntlet wasn’t meant to be used as a revolving door. “I’m not giving up on Tripp. We don’t know that Not Spenser got him. We don’t know anything yet.” “We know the math,” said Turner. “Four pilgrims to open the door—four to make the journey, and four to close it all up at the end. The full moon is tomorrow night, and unless Tripp suddenly slinks out into the open, the prodigal demon is our only option.” “We’ll find another way,” Dawes insisted, ladling soup into bowls aggressively. “Sure,” Turner replied. “Should we just have Mercy stab someone?” “Of course not,” Dawes snapped, though Mercy looked scarily game. “But…” A faint, sad smile touched Darlington’s lips. “Go


The Invisible Man- A Grotesque Romance.txt

with the bottle still in his hand went upstairs again. He rapped at the stranger's door. There was no answer. He rapped again; then pushed the door wide open and entered. It was as he expected. The bed, the room also, was empty. And what was stranger, even to his heavy intelligence, on the bedroom chair and along the rail of the bed were scattered the garments, the only garments so far as he knew, and the bandages of their guest. His big slouch hat even was cocked jauntily over the bed-post. As Hall stood there he heard his wife's voice coming out of the depth of the cellar, with that rapid telescoping of the syllables and interrogative cocking up of the final words to a high note, by which the West Sussex villager is wont to indicate a brisk impatience. "Gearge! You gart what a wand?" At that he turned and hurried down to her. "Janny," he said, over the rail of the cellar steps, "'tas the truth what Henfrey sez. 'E's not in uz room, 'e ent. And the front door's unbolted." At first Mrs. Hall did not understand, and as soon as she did she resolved to see the empty room for herself. Hall, still holding the bottle, went first. "If 'e ent there," he said, "his close are. And what's 'e doin' without his close, then? 'Tas a most curious basness." As they came up the cellar steps, they both, it was afterwards ascertained, fancied they heard the front door open and shut, but seeing it closed and nothing there, neither said a word to the other about it at the time. Mrs. Hall passed her husband in the passage and ran on first upstairs. Some one sneezed on the staircase. Hall, following six steps behind, thought that he heard her sneeze. She, going on first, was under the impression that Hall was sneezing. She flung open the door and stood regarding the room. "Of all the curious!" she said. She heard a sniff close behind her head as it seemed, and, turning, was surprised to see Hall a dozen feet off on the top-most stair. But in another moment he was beside her. She bent forward and put her hand on the pillow and then under the clothes. "Cold," she said. "He's been up this hour or more." As she did so, a most extraordinary thing happened--the bed- clothes gathered themselves together, leapt up suddenly into a sort of peak, and then jumped headlong over the bottom rail. It was exactly as if a hand had clutched them in the centre and flung them aside. Immediately after, the stranger's hat hopped off the bed-post, describing a whirling flight in the air through the better part of a circle, and then dashed straight at Mrs. Hall's face. Then as swiftly came the sponge from the washstand; and then the chair, flinging the stranger's coat and trousers carelessly aside, and laughing dryly in a voice singularly like the stranger's, turned itself up with its four legs at Mrs. Hall,


She’d wanted company. ‘His bicycle. It needs a bit of a… service.’ ‘Oh…’ ‘You don’t mind, do you, love?’ ‘Of course not.’ Lin tried to conceal her disappointment with a wide smile. ‘You’ll be back for lunch?’ ‘Well, I was thinking I might have lunch round at Jimmy’s, just a sandwich… it might be a long job…’ ‘Oh, all right.’ Neil shuffled his feet. ‘Are you sure, love?’ He pecked her cheek quickly. ‘I’ll be back in time to cook dinner.’ ‘Yes, fine, fine.’ Lin heard an edge to her voice, irritation. Neil seemed not to notice. He reached for his jacket, the smart dark one he’d bought a month ago. Lin frowned. ‘Isn’t that jacket a bit nice for wearing to fix a bicycle?’ Neil offered a cheeky grin. ‘I thought I’d break it in…’ He moved towards the door. ‘I’ll see you later.’ ‘Yes, fine.’ Lin watched him go then she stared around the empty kitchen. She felt inadequate and annoyed with herself. Josie spent every day alone and yet Lin was tired with her own company after just a few minutes. She wondered again if Neil found her dull. Perhaps that’s why he’d gone to Jimmy Baker’s, for some interesting conversation. She gazed through the window and told herself that she was being silly – she just felt a little down today. The arthritis medication made her feel tearful. Outside, the farm machinery was still rumbling along, parallel to the garden, and she could see Bobby Ledbury at the wheel, handsome, moody, in his early twenties. Lin smiled; he reminded her of the actor James Dean. In her childhood days, James Dean had been the symbol of restless youth and Bobby Ledbury was that sort of young man, dangerous and a bit unpredictable. She’d never had a proper conversation with Bobby, but she often spoke to Penny, his grandmother, in the Co-op and she said that he was always out on his motorbike until late. Lin folded a few tea towels and thought about her daughter Debbie. She wasn’t rebellious, but she was difficult to pin down. She and her family lived less than two hours away, but whenever Lin and Neil offered to visit, Debbie had something else to do. She and her husband Jon worked hard at their catering company, so it was understandable; Debbie’s children were teenagers now, probably a handful. Lin remembered when she’d last seen them a year ago – Debbie had been welcoming but detached. The grandchildren were lovely – Melissa was fifteen then, doing so well at school, Louis was thirteen and sporty, a bit quiet, but he had eagerly accepted the money Lin had offered him as they’d left. Lin’s shoulders drooped; she felt depressed. It didn’t help that Bobby Goldsborough was on the radio singing a song about a tree in the garden, how it had just been a twig the day his beloved planted it. It was a song about time passing and death and it made Lin feel worse. She’d ring Josie and they’d go for a walk


lifted as the president emerged beaming in a black tuxedo, cueing an obedient band to play “Hail to the Chief.” Trump swaggered down the stairs from the residence, basking in the moment. Melania Trump, who by some accounts had considered leaving her husband, was on his arm smiling in a dazzling ivory gown. Next to me, a Republican congressman from Virginia, who had lost reelection in the midterms because of Trump, excitedly snapped pictures of the commander in chief on his phone. And in front of us, Vice President Mike Pence—a silent hostage to the president’s daily transgressions—applauded his approaching boss. Pence would be remembered for an erect posture and flaccid conscience. He stood proudly next to the chief executive but never stood up to him. He was built to obey. Trump took to the podium. “No administration has done more in two years than the Trump administration,” he declared triumphantly, scanning the crowd. He seemed to notice that there were far more Republicans than Democrats standing before him. “We have a lot of Democrats here, and I am very happy about that,” Trump boasted. “I have a lot of friends who are Democrats.” He changed his tune about Congress, predicting an “exciting year” of bipartisan deals on everything from infrastructure to healthcare—before urging his guests to relax and explore the White House. “To me, it’s a happy place,” he said. From his demeanor, you wouldn’t have known Donald Trump was preparing for an explosive confrontation with the legislative branch. He was playing nice. But a week later, Trump butted heads with Congress and sparked the longest government shutdown in history—forcing almost a million federal employees to go home or work without pay—just in time for Christmas. THE NEXT TRUMP WILL BEND CONGRESS TO THE MAGA MOVEMENT’S WILL THROUGH OBSTRUCTION, INSTRUCTION, AND DESTRUCTION. Article One of the U.S. Constitution comes first in the document for a reason. The section outlines the role of the legislative branch, which the Founders considered to be the most closely connected to the people. They also saw it as a counterweight to a power-hungry chief executive. The legislature can restrain the president on almost every aspect of his or her job by making laws, controlling government funds, approving presidential appointments, and monitoring executive agencies. It should be the toughest guardrail against a wayward president. That’s why the Next Trump will work hard to bypass Congress. “Article One is pretty well undone,” former Republican congressman Reid Ribble told me. In a second MAGA term, he said, “it will be undone entirely.” Ribble doesn’t believe it will happen in a sweeping constitutional clash but quietly and gradually. Members of the GOP will grow accustomed to another Trump-like president governing by executive order. “They will allow [the Next Trump] to become a soft dictator by complying with his legislative circumvention because it’s in the service of implementing policies of which they approve,” he said. “It slowly normalizes legislative nullification.” “Obstruction” will be used to thwart congressional oversight. After the 2018 midterms, the White House called a meeting of the chiefs


still a medical newsletter writer because I didn’t want to talk to them about TNO or be asked for tickets. After the text where Gene told me he had a girlfriend, he sent another text saying, By the way it’s cool you’re a writer for TNO. I asked how he knew, and he said he’d seen a fleece jacket with the TNO logo at my apartment and assumed I’d bought it at the gift shop in the 66 Building, but later he’d also seen a mug that Henrietta had made for my birthday one year that had a picture of me, her, and Viv on it. So then he googled me.” I was quiet, and Noah looked at me. “How’d you feel about that?” “Remorseful. Not because he deserved better, although of course he did, but because who was I really pulling one over on? What was I achieving by sleeping with someone I didn’t want to tell the most basic information about my life?” “Before seeing Louisiana,” Noah said, “I hadn’t had sex for almost a year. In 2019, I went on a bunch of first dates, and a couple second dates, but I felt like I knew beforehand how they’d play out and it just wasn’t worth the energy. If you’re our age and single, dating kind of has to be an act of reckless optimism, right? The triumph of hope over experience?” “Did you really not have sex for almost a year?” “Yes.” “I’m not judging you, I’m just surprised.” “Because I’m a guy?” “Partly.” “Do you buy into the idea of all men as constantly horny? I thought the younger TNO staffers were teaching you that gender stereotypes are nonsense.” “I don’t know if you know this, but you’re also a celebrity. A good-looking celebrity. Don’t women throw their bras at you onstage?” “I don’t think that happens in real life.” “Never? Not even once or twice?” He smiled sheepishly. “Maybe once or twice.” Then he burrowed into me. “I am constantly horny for you, in case that’s not clear.” * * * — Margit and Glenn came back in the afternoon, and even though I knew they weren’t Noah’s parents, I felt a little like they were, and I wanted their approval. They appeared to be in their sixties—Margit was petite and dark-haired, and Glenn was tall—and I further realized that I’d half expected them to have on uniforms like the servants in a British period drama. Instead, they were wearing shorts and T-shirts, and when Noah introduced me in the kitchen, they greeted me in a friendly but brief way, and then Noah told Margit that we hadn’t eaten the salmon the night before so it would probably be good to have it for dinner. Equally casually, Noah said to me, “Do you want Glenn to vacuum your car?” “Oh,” I said. “No, that’s okay.” “If you change your mind, just give him the keys.” Then we went out to the pool and splashed around and treaded water for a while and stood in the shallow


had you whipped. You had disobeyed the king’s orders and hidden in the temple.” Clytemnestra remembers too. The coldness of the floor, the redness of the columns under her hands. The priestess had found her and dragged her by the hair onto the altar in front of her brothers. “You were afraid, as everyone is, but you didn’t show it. You wanted to make me angry, to prove yourself to your mother, to make your father proud.” It is true. She had bitten her tongue so hard she was afraid she might lose it and had stared at a crumpled leaf on the ground, swirling with the wind. “You are a strong woman. Whatever opposes you, you will fight it,” the priestess says. “It is only death that you can’t defeat, and the sooner you understand that, the better.” Clytemnestra leans back, and the priestess stands, the feeble light blurring her features. Her steps fade as she walks away. Clytemnestra remains in the bath for a long time, the water turning cold, the priestess’s words swirling in her mind. * * * That night, when she is cleaned and perfumed, she walks in the darkness of the corridors, away from the gynaeceum and toward the main entrance of the palace. She steps outside into the breeze, her feet bare, and hurries along the narrow path that leads down the hill to the river. A few torches are lit in the guests’ rooms—she can see them from outside, dim and flickering in the windows. Feeling each stone and flower under her feet, she runs toward the Eurotas, careful not to disturb the horses in the stables and the dogs in the village. In the shadows of the night, the valley floors are covered with wildflowers, shining under the stars like gems. On the right bank of the Eurotas, between the rocks and the weeds, an excavated corridor is lined by large, squared stones. At the end, an open door, like an empty eye socket, two painted green columns on the side. The tholos, the tomb where royals’ ashes are placed, its stones piled up to form a dome. Clytemnestra takes a few uncertain steps toward the entrance. Then, clutching her tunic, she moves from the shadows into the blackness of the tomb. She hasn’t set foot in here for a long time, not since her grandmother died. The place is small and dark, the air sad and sodden. Gold cups and jewels fill the spaces between the ashes, the tombs arranged like a beehive. Her husband and baby are here—she can feel their presence. She kneels. In the utter silence, she can almost hear a breeze, as if the dead were breathing. She presses her forehead to the ground, her arms tucked under her chest, and cries. * * * She doesn’t remember much about the wedding. Her world is opaque, shapeless, as though she were an unburied spirit, doomed to wander in the world of the living, mute and invisible. The only thing that feels real is her sisters’ touch on her


down the lights and the soundboard, that I reset the props and locked up the theater, went back to the dorm, studied alone until the fire alarm went off. What if my memories were as false as dreams? What if my dreams were really memories? What if we swam together in borrowed suits until the water became heavy and thick, until Omar tried to throw us the life preserver, but it only sank? There you were, throwing rocks from the observation deck, and they kept missing us, so I grabbed one and helped you, I lifted it over Thalia’s head and brought it down. Then I sank to the bottom, a rock myself; I sank there and lived there for years. 44 That afternoon, with most of my fever slept away and the rest medicated down, I FaceTimed Jerome. The kids tore around the house with the iPad, showing me the gerbil, the fish, the cat’s butt. Leo wanted to know if there was snow in New Hampshire, so I took my phone outside and showed him the unimpressive crust. He requested that I make a snowball, and I did my best. “Mommy,” Silvie said, “I’m eating my hay.” Pieces of yellow yarn hung from her mouth. Jerome sent them to the basement and I asked how he was holding up. He said, “I don’t think this is going away.” He meant for himself. I said, “So I got in some hot water defending you.” He rolled his head back. He said, “I know. You shouldn’t have done that. I mean, you didn’t need to. You go into mama bear mode.” He didn’t seem to know about the fallout for the podcast, and I didn’t need to lay that on him just now, nor did I want to speak it aloud. He said, “Aren’t these the same people who believe in rehabilitation? Honestly, if I’d shot someone in a robbery fifteen years ago, they’d be fighting for everyone to forgive me. They’d say I learned from my mistakes.” “That—Jerome. Come on.” “Who’s that singer from Boston, no one even remembers he tried to kill someone.” “I’m glad you didn’t shoot anyone. You wouldn’t trade this life for that.” “But being bad at relationships, that’s worse than murder. I don’t get it. I want to stay home and never talk to people ever again.” “Why don’t you cook with the kids? That always helps.” He said, “You’re okay in all this, right? You’ll be okay?” Silvie was back, crying. She said, “Mommy, Leo stepped on my tail. He won’t apologize, and my tail hurts and my mane hurts.” 45 Monday morning, an inch of fresh snow had settled on every tree branch, every railing. On the ground, it covered the old, hardened patches so your boot drifted down through soft new clouds only to hit solid ice. I hadn’t seen snow like this since I’d left. Not in New York, where the piles turned grainy and black within hours. Not in my time in London. Obviously not in LA. I imagined that if


and other things and glanced round uneasily. The flames, busy about the tent, drew their eyes back again. Eric watched the scurrying woodlice that were so frantically unable to avoid the flames, and thought of the first fire--just down there, on the steeper side of the mountain, where now was complete darkness. He did not like to remember it, and looked away at the mountain-top. Warmth radiated now, and beat pleasantly on them. Sam amused himself by fitting branches into the fire as closely as possible. Eric spread out his hands, searching for the distance at which the heat was just bearable. Idly looking beyond the fire, he resettled the scattered rocks from their flat shadows into daylight contours. Just there was the big rock, and the three stones there, that split rock, and there beyond was a gap--just there-- "Sam." "Huh?" "Nothing." The flames were mastering the branches, the bark was curling and falling away, the wood exploding. The tent fell inwards and flung a wide circle of light over the mountain-top. "Sam--" "Huh?" "Sam! Sam!" Sam looked at Eric irritably. The intensity of Eric's gaze made the direction in which he looked terrible, for Sam had his back to it. He scrambled round the fire, squatted by Eric, and looked to see. They became motionless, gripped in each other's arms, four unwinking eyes aimed and two mouths open. Far beneath them, the trees of the forest sighed, then roared. The hair on their foreheads fluttered and flames blew out sideways from the fire. Fifteen yards away from them came the plopping noise of fabric blown open. Neither of the boys screamed but the grip of their arms tightened and their mouths grew peaked. For perhaps ten seconds they crouched like that while the flailing fire sent smoke and sparks and waves of inconstant light over the top of the mountain. Then as though they had but one terrified mind between them they scrambled away over the rocks and fled. Ralph was dreaming. He had fallen asleep after what seemed hours of tossing and turning noisily among the dry leaves. Even the sounds of nightmare from the other shelters no longer reached him, for he was back to where he came from, feeding the ponies with sugar over the garden wall. Then someone was shaking his arm, telling him that it was time for tea. "Ralph! Wake up!" The leaves were roaring like the sea. "Ralph, wake up!" "What's the matter?" "We saw--" "--the beast--" "--plain!" "Who are you? The twins?" "We saw the beast--" "Quiet. Piggy!" The leaves were roaring still. Piggy bumped into him and a twin grabbed him as he made for the oblong of paling stars. "You can't go out--it's horrible!" "Piggy--where are the spears?" "I can hear the--" "Quiet then. Lie still." They lay there listening, at first with doubt but then with terror to the description the twins breathed at them between bouts of extreme silence. Soon the darkness was full of claws, full of the awful unknown and menace. An interminable dawn faded the


sharpening the kitchen knives by the fire while Raya counted her weekly earnings for the sixth time. “The more responsibilities you place on their shoulders, the better they will become at bearing them.” She’d looked at me so long that I’d started to tense, tightening my grip on one of the knives. Dark circles hollowed the space under Raya’s eyes. “Children are not meant to bear the woes of this life, Sylvia. It breaks them. They will spend their adult lives doing everything in their power to never feel the weight of the world again.” Exhaustion tugged at me. I hadn’t slept in two days, but each time I closed my eyes, I saw Nizahl soldiers riding into Mahair with swords and torches. Any illusion of safety here had been shattered. You are the Jasad Heir. Safety was not written for you, Hanim said. I shoved my face into the hard pillow. I mentally recited the herbs I would pack for Rory and planned the best spot to set up our table for the waleema. When nothing else worked, I resorted to a practice as old as the scars on my back. I pressed my cold palm against my heart and counted the beats. One, two. I’m alive. Three, four. I’m safe. Five, six. I won’t let them catch me. I stand alone at the head of a vast ballroom. An audience of faceless Jasadis waits breathlessly for my address. My bodice is in the shape of a lotus flower, curling out and around my ribs. Jasad’s iridescent symbol is etched on my skirt. The head of a falcon and gold wings sit on the body of the sleek black cat. A gold kitmer, a feline of pure magic and legend. The kitmer circles within my dress, agitated. On my head rests a crown. “Queen Essiya! The lost Heir has returned to reunite Jasad!” shouts a man of twisted shadow and smoke. “Magic will prosper once more!” I try to flee, but I am immobile beneath the weight of the crown. Golden thread stitches my lips shut. I silently bear their exultation, their relief, as it batters me from every side. Savior. Hero. Queen. Red drips down my chin as I force my lips apart, pulling the stitches taut. An iron tang fills my mouth, trying to drown out my words at their inception. “Please, I am not who you seek! I can’t help you!” I drop to my knees. The stitches tear, beautiful golden threads fluttering to the ground in a bloody heap. My freed voice rings in the empty ballroom. A strong grip lifts me to my feet. “Essiya, you’re going to wrinkle your dress.” Shock ripples through me. I stand over my mother by nearly a full head. The shoulders I used to climb are half the width of mine. I have curves in the places where she’s slim, and I am strong where she’s soft. “I’m taller than you,” is all I can think to say to my dead mother. Niphran’s laugh is music. “Only by a little.


out of place as a colt in a flower garden. Half a dozen jovial lads were talking about skates in another part of the room, and she longed to go and join them, for skating was one of the joys of her life. She telegraphed her wish to Meg, but the eyebrows went up so alarmingly that she dared not stir. No one came to talk to her, and one by one the group dwindled away till she was left alone. She could not roam about and amuse herself, for the burned breadth would show, so she stared at people rather forlornly till the dancing began. Meg was asked at once, and the tight slippers tripped about so briskly that none would have guessed the pain their wearer suffered smilingly. Jo saw a big red headed youth approaching her corner, and fearing he meant to engage her, she slipped into a curtained recess, intending to peep and enjoy herself in peace. Unfortunately, another bashful person had chosen the same refuge, for, as the curtain fell behind her, she found herself face to face with the `Laurence boy'. "Dear me, I didn't know anyone was here!" stammered Jo, preparing to back out as speedily as she had bounced in. But the boy laughed and said pleasantly, though he looked a little startled, "Don't mind me, stay if you like." "Shan't I disturb you?" "Not a bit. I only came here because I don't know many people and felt rather strange at first, you know." "So did I. Don't go away, please, unless you'd rather." The boy sat down again and looked at his pumps, till Jo said, trying to be polite and easy, "I think I've had the pleasure of seeing you before. You live near us, don't you?" "Next door." And he looked up and laughed outright, for Jo's prim manner was rather funny when he remembered how they had chatted about cricket when he brought the cat home. That put Jo at her ease and she laughed too, as she said, in her heartiest way, "We did have such a good time over your nice Christmas present." "Grandpa sent it." "But you put it into his head, didn't you, now?" "How is your cat, Miss March?" asked the boy, trying to look sober while his black eyes shone with fun. "Nicely, thank you, Mr. Laurence. But I am not Miss March, I'm only Jo," returned the young lady. "I'm not Mr. Laurence, I'm only Laurie." "Laurie Laurence, what an odd name." "My first name is Theodore, but I don't like it, for the fellows called me Dora, so I made the say Laurie instead." "I hate my name, too, so sentimental! I wish every one would say Jo instead of Josephine. How did you make the boys stop calling you Dora?" "I thrashed `em." "I can't thrash Aunt March, so I suppose I shall have to bear it." And Jo resigned herself with a sigh. "Don't you like to dance, Miss Jo?" asked Laurie, looking as if he thought the name


college, but here’s the main point of this Brandon character: to introduce the idea that Sam is a “writer” into the show. I really wrestled with the idea of my writing being a part of this show, and if it were up to just me, I don’t know that it would be. I mean, practically speaking, writing is boring. On the one hand, the only writing I was doing when I worked at the bakery was at night, after we closed, on the little computer in the upstairs office while the overnight crew was down in the kitchen making Danish and bread for the morning rush. I didn’t write anything of consequence, just elaborate romantic fantasies written as short stories featuring thinly veiled versions of myself. On the other, if you tune into a show about me (in hindsight, an absolute nightmare possibility!), you’re probably doing so because you’ve read something I’ve written, and it would be super weird if the writing went unacknowledged on the show. We reached a kind of compromise that is hard to explain, please bear with me as I struggle through the vision: TV Sam would be a mixture of nineteen-, twenty-five-, and thirty-two-year-old Actual Sam, working nineteen-year-old Sam’s job and boning twenty-five-year-old Sam’s sex partners and having thirty-two-year-old Sam’s burgeoning writing/performing career. Does that makes sense? I shudder thinking about walking people who’ve actually lived this life with me through their real-time fact-checking of all the events I creatively maneuvered into this show: “Dude, we were twenty-five at the same time and I know for a fact you did not [verb] [human male name] in the back of [type of vehicle] while wearing [unflattering article of clothing] after we left [nightclub name] high on [street drug]! Why are you lying on basic cable?” INT. PHARMACY—DAY Do you remember that old show Herman’s Head? As a kid I was obsessed with it, and as an old kid, I’m still fascinated by people’s interior monologues, all the little shit that runs through your mind as you go about your day. I thought it would be fun, especially in this moment when Sam is trying desperately to impress this hot person Brandon, to see Sam in the pharmacy contradict literally everything she says. BRANDON Are you writing a lot these days? Pretty sure I still have a copy of your zine somewhere in my room. PHARMACY SAM (TO CAMERA) I’m not. SAM ON THE STREET I am! I’ve been writing some things, you know, on the internet…? BRANDON Oh you mean like a blog? SAM ON THE STREET Yes, like a blog! I, uhh, have a blog! PHARMACY SAM (TO CAMERA) I do not know what a blog is. The dog looks at Sam like, “Bitch, you do??” Sam shoots him a “Shut up” look in return, and I’m not sure how we were gonna teach a dog face-acting but never let anyone tell you I’m not delusional enough to try. I never had a zine in high school, but I did once write a monologue called “Boxes” for


publish about the war—he can’t deny us a soldier’s story every now and then, nor the facts, all right? So make sure you cite your stuff so he can’t claim it’s propaganda. You’ll then slip and seal your typed articles in the brown classified envelopes that you’ll find in your bag, and you’ll hand them directly to the conductor. Supplies will also come in on the train, so if you need something, let me know. Do you understand everything I’ve told you, Iris?” “Yes Ms. Hammond,” Iris said. But her mouth was dry, her palms sweaty. Was she really doing this? “Good,” Helena said. “Now, get dressed. You can’t take your valise, only the approved leather bag and your typewriter. Meet me out front on the pavement in five minutes.” She began to step out the door but tarried on the threshold. “Oh, what name are you writing under?” Iris paused, uncertain. At the Oath Gazette, her articles had been published under Iris Winnow. She wondered if she should add her middle initial, like Roman did, but thought it sounded a bit pretentious. Roman Cocky Kitt. As soon as she thought of him, her chest ached. The feeling surprised her because it was sharp and undeniable. I miss him. She missed irritating him by rearranging his desk. She missed stealing glances at his horribly handsome face, the rare sight of his smile and the fleeting sound of his laughter. She missed striking up banter with him, even if it was most often to see who could outsnark whom. “Iris?” Helena prompted. Iris shivered. That bewitching moment of longing for him faded as she set her resolve. She was about to go to the war front and she didn’t have time to wallow in … whatever these feelings were. “Iris Winnow is fine,” she said, reaching for the jumpsuit. “Just ‘fine’?” Helena looked pensive for a second, her mouth twisting. And then she winked at Iris and said, “I bet I can come up with something better.” She slipped out the door before Iris could reply. {16} Attie Six hundred kilometers feel like an eternity when you’re waiting for the unexpected. An eternity made of golden fields and pine forests and mountains that look blue in the distance. An eternity made of things you’ve never seen, air you’ve never tasted, and a train that rocks and clatters like guilt. I wonder if this is how it feels to be immortal. You’re moving, but not really. You’re existing, but time seems thin, flowing like a current through your fingers. I try to close my eyes and rest, but I’m too tempted to watch the world pass by my window. A world that seems endless and sprawling. A world that makes me feel small and insignificant in the face of its wildness. And then that sense of distance tightens my chest as if my bones can feel these six hundred kilometers—I’m leaving the only home I’ve ever known—and I withdraw his letters from my bag, and I reread them. Sometimes I regret leaving his last


He hit me agin an' agin-" Mr. Gilmer waited for Mayella to collect herself: she had twisted her handkerchief into a sweaty rope; when she opened it to wipe her face it was a mass of creases from her hot hands. She waited for Mr. Gilmer to ask another question, but when he didn't, she said, "-he chunked me on the floor an' choked me'n took advantage of me." "Did you scream?" asked Mr. Gilmer. "Did you scream and fight back?" "Reckon I did, hollered for all I was worth, kicked and hollered loud as I could." "Then what happened?" "I don't remember too good, but next thing I knew Papa was in the room a'standing over me hollerin' who done it, who done it? Then I sorta fainted an' the next thing I knew Mr. Tate was pullin' me up offa the floor and leadin' me to the water bucket." Apparently Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail. "You say you fought him off as hard as you could? Fought him tooth and nail?" asked Mr. Gilmer. "I positively did," Mayella echoed her father. "You are positive that he took full advantage of you?" Mayella's face contorted, and I was afraid that she would cry again. Instead, she said, "He done what he was after." Mr. Gilmer called attention to the hot day by wiping his head with his hand. "That's all for the time being," he said pleasantly, "but you stay there. I expect big bad Mr. Finch has some questions to ask you." "State will not prejudice the witness against counsel for the defense," murmured Judge Taylor primly, "at least not at this time." Atticus got up grinning but instead of walking to the witness stand, he opened his coat and hooked his thumbs in his vest, then he walked slowly across the room to the windows. He looked out, but didn't seem especially interested in what he saw, then he turned and strolled back to the witness stand. From long years of experience, I could tell he was trying to come to a decision about something. "Miss Mayella," he said, smiling, "I won't try to scare you for a while, not yet. Let's just get acquainted. How old are you?" "Said I was nineteen, said it to the judge yonder." Mayella jerked her head resentfully at the bench. "So you did, so you did, ma'am. You'll have to bear with me, Miss Mayella, I'm getting along and can't remember as well as I used to. I might ask you things you've already said before, but you'll give me an answer, won't you? Good." I could see nothing in Mayella's expression to justify Atticus's assumption that he had secured her wholehearted cooperation. She was looking at him furiously. "Won't answer a word you say long as you keep on mockin' me," she said. "Ma'am?" asked Atticus, startled. "Long's you keep on makin' fun o'me." Judge Taylor said, "Mr.


along a path in the shrubbery and stooping as he ran, like a man who evades observation. He vanished behind a laburnum, and appeared again clambering a fence that abutted on the open down. In a second he had tumbled over and was running at a tremendous pace down the slope towards Mr. Heelas. "Lord!" cried Mr. Heelas, struck with an idea; "it's that Invisible Man brute! It's right, after all!" With Mr. Heelas to think things like that was to act, and his cook watching him from the top window was amazed to see him come pelting towards the house at a good nine miles an hour. "Thought he wasn't afraid," said the cook. "Mary, just come here!" There was a slamming of doors, a ringing of bells, and the voice of Mr. Heelas bellowing like a bull. "Shut the doors, shut the windows, shut everything! the Invisible Man is coming!" Instantly the house was full of screams and directions, and scurrying feet. He ran to shut the French windows himself that opened on the veranda; as he did so Kemp's head and shoulders and knee appeared over the edge of the garden fence. In another moment Kemp had ploughed through the asparagus, and was running across the tennis lawn to the house. "You can't come in," said Mr. Heelas, shutting the bolts. "I'm very sorry if he's after you, but you can't come in!" Kemp appeared with a face of terror close to the glass, rapping and then shaking frantically at the French window. Then, seeing his efforts were useless, he ran along the veranda, vaulted the end, and went to hammer at the side door. Then he ran round by the side gate to the front of the house, and so into the hill-road. And Mr. Heelas staring from his window--a face of horror--had scarcely witnessed Kemp vanish, ere the asparagus was being trampled this way and that by feet unseen. At that Mr. Heelas fled precipitately upstairs, and the rest of the chase is beyond his purview. But as he passed the staircase window, he heard the side gate slam. Emerging into the hill-road, Kemp naturally took the downward direction, and so it was he came to run in his own person the very race he had watched with such a critical eye from the belvedere study only four days ago. He ran it well for a man out of training; and though his face was white and wet, his wits were cool to the last. He ran with wide strides, and wherever a patch of rough ground intervened, wherever there came a patch of raw flints, or a bit of broken glass shone dazzling, he crossed it and left the bare invisible feet that followed to take what line they would. For the first time in his life Kemp discovered that the hill- road was indescribably vast and desolate, and that the beginnings of the town far below at the hill foot were strangely remote. Never had there been a slower or more painful method of progression