old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length. It quite overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the room. After a very brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward. Yet there were no tokens that his physical strength might not have sufficed for a free and determined gait. It was the spirit of the man that could not walk. The expression of his countenance--while, notwithstanding it had the light of reason in it --seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die away, and feebly to recover itself again. It was like a flame which we see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it more intently than if it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward,--more intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once extinguished. For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood still, retaining Hepzibah's hand instinctively, as a child does that of the grown person who guides it. He saw Phoebe, however, and caught an illumination from her youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a cheerfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was standing in the sunshine. He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at curtsy. Imperfect as it was, however, it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace, such as no practised art of external manners could have attained. It was too slight to seize upon at the instant; yet, as recollected afterwards, seemed to transfigure the whole man. "Dear Clifford," said Hepzibah, in the tone with which one soothes a wayward infant, "this is our cousin Phoebe,--little Phoebe Pyncheon,--Arthur's only child, you know. She has come from the country to stay with us awhile; for our old house has grown to be very lonely now." "Phoebe--Phoebe Pyncheon?--Phoebe?" repeated the guest, with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined utterance. "Arthur's child! Ah, I forget! No matter. She is very welcome!" "Come, dear Clifford, take this chair," said Hepzibah, leading him to his place. "Pray, Phoebe, lower the curtain a very little more. Now let us begin breakfast." The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, and looked strangely around. He was evidently trying to grapple with the present scene, and bring it home to his mind with a more satisfactory distinctness. He desired to be certain, at least, that he was here, in the low-studded, cross-beamed, oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some other spot, which had stereotyped itself into his senses. But the effort was too great to be sustained with more than a fragmentary success. Continually, as we may express it, he faded away out of his place; or, in


was rumored to have a relationship with the Devil (much as Silas is supposed to). The men argue over whether the Warrens' stables are haunted. Not everyone in the pub believes in ghosts--the farrier, Mr. Dowlas, is as you'd expect a skeptic. But this lively debate suggests that plenty of people in Raveloe do believe in ghosts. Belligerently, the farrier dares any ghost to come stand inside. At this moment, Silas walks in. ^^^^^^^^^^ SILAS MARNER: CHAPTER 7 At first you see Silas as the men at the Rainbow see him--a weird figure who doesn't fit in the convivial surroundings. Eliot gently mocks their reaction to Silas, using insect imagery again, in their curious quivering antennae. Their minds still running on ghosts, the men look at him as if he were one. Then Mr. Snell, as the host, addresses Silas. Silas replies in broken, agitated phrases, calling for the authorities. He injects a note of tragedy into this comic evening. The men don't react to the news of his robbery at first. When Silas accuses Jem Rodney, Jem seems more annoyed than afraid. Jem's one of the poorer customers, sitting far from the fire, yet he is more accepted here than Silas is. Once they've absorbed what's going on, the men at the pub treat Silas kindly. Eliot moves inside his mind to describe the effect of this. A vague sensation of blurry faces, voices, and the fire's warmth unlocks Silas' heart, and a new kind of feeling starts to grow inside him (note the plant imagery). The news transforms Silas' reputation: The superstitious villagers imagine that the Devil robbed Silas, so he must not be one of the Devil's helpers. Everyone chimes in with his own opinion. Mr. Snell, the peacemaker, tries to convince Silas of Jem's innocence. And Mr. Macey, who believes in authority, starts talking about the proper legal proceedings. NOTE: MEMORY Mr. Macey's remark about accusing the innocent arouses Silas' memory of his own false accusation years ago. The force of memory is important for George Eliot. Remembering his mother's death helped Silas rediscover his herbal medicines to cure Sally Oates in Chapter 2. He tried to forget his past in Lantern-Yard, but remembering it is good for him now, giving him compassion for Jem. Silas is jolted by Mr. Macey's words into withdrawing his accusation of Jem. This takes a great effort, however--it's excruciating to give up his hope of recovering his money. The men around him don't seem to understand his inarticulate pain. Mr. Macey makes a dry joke about Silas' money being in Hell. Dowlas the farrier suggests that Silas missed the thief's footprints because of his poor eyesight ("eyes... like an insect's," he says). Officiously, Dowlas lays out the procedure for inspecting the premises and offers to serve as a deputy. But at least he's willing to get involved. Everyone in the room, in fact, agrees that it's their duty as respectable men to take action. How would the men of your neighborhood act if a local eccentric came running to them wildly for


said. "You haven't forgot much, Mr. Finch. They say it never leaves you." Atticus was silent. "Atticus?" said Jem. "Yes?" "Nothin'." "I saw that, One-Shot Finch!" Atticus wheeled around and faced Miss Maudie. They looked at one another without saying anything, and Atticus got into the sheriff's car. "Come here," he said to Jem. "Don't you go near that dog, you understand? Don't go near him, he's just as dangerous dead as alive." "Yes sir," said Jem. "Atticus-" "What, son?" "Nothing." "What's the matter with you, boy, can't you talk?" said Mr. Tate, grinning at Jem. "Didn't you know your daddy's-" "Hush, Heck," said Atticus, "let's go back to town." When they drove away, Jem and I went to Miss Stephanie's front steps. We sat waiting for Zeebo to arrive in the garbage truck. Jem sat in numb confusion, and Miss Stephanie said, "Uh, uh, uh, who'da thought of a mad dog in February? Maybe he wadn't mad, maybe he was just crazy. I'd hate to see Harry Johnson's face when he gets in from the Mobile run and finds Atticus Finch's shot his dog. Bet he was just full of fleas from somewhere-" Miss Maudie said Miss Stephanie'd be singing a different tune if Tim Johnson was still coming up the street, that they'd find out soon enough, they'd send his head to Montgomery. Jem became vaguely articulate: "'d you see him, Scout? 'd you see him just standin' there?... 'n' all of a sudden he just relaxed all over, an' it looked like that gun was a part of him... an' he did it so quick, like... I hafta aim for ten minutes 'fore I can hit somethin'...." Miss Maudie grinned wickedly. "Well now, Miss Jean Louise," she said, "still think your father can't do anything? Still ashamed of him?" "Nome," I said meekly. "Forgot to tell you the other day that besides playing the Jew's Harp, Atticus Finch was the deadest shot in Maycomb County in his time." "Dead shot..." echoed Jem. "That's what I said, Jem Finch. Guess you'll change your tune now. The very idea, didn't you know his nickname was Ol' One-Shot when he was a boy? Why, down at the Landing when he was coming up, if he shot fifteen times and hit fourteen doves he'd complain about wasting ammunition." "He never said anything about that," Jem muttered. "Never said anything about it, did he?" "No ma'am." "Wonder why he never goes huntin' now," I said. "Maybe I can tell you," said Miss Maudie. "If your father's anything, he's civilized in his heart. Marksmanship's a gift of God, a talent- oh, you have to practice to make it perfect, but shootin's different from playing the piano or the like. I think maybe he put his gun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantage over most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn't shoot till he had to, and he had to today." "Looks like he'd be proud of it," I said. "People in their right minds never take pride


appeared. He saved her, Elaine said. Yes. He did. Lillian’s injuries predate her arrival in Chersenesos. The hospitals, the doctors…none of them is within a thousand miles of the city until long after the pattern is established. Stefan saved her, all right. He saved her, with T7, from the violence of her husband. Roddy Tebbit was hunting the man who killed his wife. He never realised she was still alive, and he never realised that the man he was looking for was Peter Antonin. * * * — When you have dates and names, and when you know someone was given T7, you can fill in the blanks, even if Stefan Tonfamecasca doesn’t want you to. I go back to the city recorder’s office. Maryam the clerk gives me a little smile and makes mint tea in a tall pot, and serves it in glasses while we work. “Family history?” she asks me, and I say yes, but not my family. Unless I end up marrying in. Then I inherit all this, and all the players, all still alive. Except Roddy, I suppose. There are no deaths recorded in the Antonin matter. Lillian survived, and obviously so did Peter. She disappears off the radar, which must have been weirdly simple, because the T7 process would have given her a new face—or rather, her old one back. The body’s self-image would have been reset, shifting bone and rejecting plastic, kicking against the intrusions of Peter’s design. Figure it hurt like hell. I call Athena—Maryam gets little dimples when she hears the change in my voice—and ask her to send me all the T7 emergency deployments for that year. It’s so long ago, neither of us was even born. The software grinds its way through the archive files, and for a while I wonder if it’s going to be like dealing with the city, but the Tonfamecasca company can afford to move data from old formats to new ones as the technology changes, and after a few minutes the system spits back answers. Not good ones, of course. I guessed that already. I tell Athena not to look until I tell her. I tell her there’s a story she needs to hear in sequence. She says okay. I wonder if she’ll say that when I tell her about Maurice, and Doublewide’s farm. That’s part of the sequence too. Maryam shows me to a little nook between marriages and land registry, where there’s a comfortable chair and the light falls just so from one of the high windows. I sit and I read and I wish I’d never learned how. When Lillian Antonin was lying on the floor and paramedics broke in and put her on a stretcher, and she was taken direct to the T7 unit of Demeter Mercy under the eaves of the cathedral, Stefan Tonfamecasca personally handled the infusion, and paid for it, and held her hand through the painful months that followed, as her renewing body spat out implants and screws and laid down new bone over the old cracks. He


false hope of an “Axis of Adults.” Five. I didn’t have a five. So I skipped to six. That was the number of relationship anniversaries Anabel and I shared before our untimely end. Okay, now I was stuck. The mental accounting of self-pity wasn’t necessarily about a Trump second term—either way, my life would never be the same—but I survived and thrived on having control. I was starting to feel powerless when my thoughts drifted to a darker place. Fourteen. The number of floors above street level. I pondered the distance to the ground, which was more than enough. Twenty. The exact number of rounds of ammunition. I found the pistol lying in the pile, and my thumb was raw from loading and unloading the clip. The cartridges popped out with a satisfying metallic snap. Sixty-plus. I hadn’t refilled my prescriptions lately, so I was guessing. But it seemed like a good estimate for the number of pills on the nightstand. Like brand-name cereals in a grocery aisle, I weighed my options. I drank the martini and the remnants of a warm beer. A banging noise outside the bedroom interrupted. I brought the gun as I got up to see who was at the door. No one was visible through the blurry peephole. I unlatched the deadbolt and slid back the chain lock, cautiously peering out and keeping the gun in the apartment. The hallway was empty. I locked everything and returned to the bedroom. In reality, there wasn’t any need to fret about an intruder. The most dangerous person—the someone who would try to put a gun to my head that night—was me. There wasn’t anything a bodyguard could do about it. I fiddled with the cold cartridges again on the floor, wondering about the collateral damage. What if the anticipation of the recoil—or blowback—caused me to flinch and miss, and only cripple myself? That’s when I realized something. The bullets were not hollow-point. I had used up all of my home defense rounds at the range and had only the round-nose ones my friend gave me. Whether or not I misfired, the projectile might not be fatal and it would probably travel through the wall into another apartment, which also wasn’t good. Fuck. I couldn’t help but let out a laugh. I didn’t even have the right ammo to kill myself. Sometime after three in the morning, I moved my watery martini to the nightstand and lay on the bed with my phone, a distraction from the morbid musings. A lot of people online were talking about mail-in ballots and the crucial state of Arizona, which hadn’t yet been called. The election wasn’t over. Hundreds of unread messages beckoned in my social media apps. The majority of them were days and weeks old, from a time when I was trying hard to tune out unsolicited messages and too worn down for hate mail. For some reason I decided to open my inboxes. The notes weren’t what I had expected. “I know you will probably never get a moment to read


something's always told me we'd never get holt of that swag." "Why, Huck, I never told on that tavern-keeper. You know his tavern was all right the Saturday I went to the picnic. Don't you remember you was to watch there that night?" "Oh yes! Why, it seems 'bout a year ago. It --------------------------------------------------------- -305- was that very night that I follered Injun Joe to the widder's." "You followed him?" "Yes -- but you keep mum. I reckon Injun Joe's left friends behind him, and I don't want 'em souring on me and doing me mean tricks. If it hadn't ben for me he'd be down in Texas now, all right." Then Huck told his entire adventure in confidence to Tom, who had only heard of the Welshman's part of it before. "Well," said Huck, presently, coming back to the main question, "whoever nipped the whiskey in No. 2, nipped the money, too, I reckon -- anyways it's a goner for us, Tom." "Huck, that money wasn't ever in No. 2!" "What!" Huck searched his comrade's face keenly. "Tom, have you got on the track of that money again?" "Huck, it's in the cave!" Huck's eyes blazed. "Say it again, Tom." "The money's in the cave!" "Tom -- honest injun, now -- is it fun, or earnest?" "Earnest, Huck -- just as earnest as ever I was in my life. Will you go in there with me and help get it out?" "I bet I will! I will if it's where we can blaze our way to it and not get lost." --------------------------------------------------------- -306- "Huck, we can do that without the least little bit of trouble in the world." "Good as wheat! What makes you think the money's -- " "Huck, you just wait till we get in there. If we don't find it I'll agree to give you my drum and every thing I've got in the world. I will, by jings." "All right -- it's a whiz. When do you say?" "Right now, if you say it. Are you strong enough?" "Is it far in the cave? I ben on my pins a little, three or four days, now, but I can't walk more'n a mile, Tom -- least I don't think I could." "It's about five mile into there the way anybody but me would go, Huck, but there's a mighty short cut that they don't anybody but me know about. Huck, I'll take you right to it in a skiff. I'll float the skiff down there, and I'll pull it back again all by myself. You needn't ever turn your hand over." "Less start right off, Tom." "All right. We want some bread and meat, and our pipes, and a little bag or two, and two or three kite-strings, and some of these new-fangled things they call lucifer matches. I tell you, many's the time I wished I had some when I was in there before." A trifle after noon the boys borrowed a small skiff from a citizen who was absent, and got under way at once.


hands with her, and, putting his finger under her chin, turned up her face, examined it gravely, and let it go, saying with a nod, "You've got your grandfather's spirit, if you haven't his face. He was a fine man, my dear, but what is better, he was a brave and an honest one, and I was proud to be his friend." "Thank you, sir," And Jo was quite comfortable after that, for it suited her exactly. "What have you been doing to this boy of mine, hey?" was the next question, sharply put. "Only trying to be neighborly, sir." And Jo to how her visit came about. "You think he needs cheering up a bit, do you?" "Yes, sir, he seems a little lonely, and young folks would do him good perhaps. We are only girls, but we should be glad to help if we could, for we don't forget the splendid Christmas present you sent us," said Jo eagerly. "Tut, tut, tut! That was the boy's affair. How is the poor woman?" "Doing nicely, sir." And off went Jo, talking very fast, as she told all about the Hummels, in whom her mother had interested richer friends than they were. "Just her father's way of doing good. I shall come and see your mother some fine day. Tell her so. There's the tea bell, we have it early on the boy's account. Come down and go on being neighborly." "If you'd like to have me, sir." "Shouldn't ask you, if I didn't." And Mr. Laurence offered her his arm with old-fashioned courtesy. "What would Meg say to this?" thought Jo, as she was marched away, while her eyes danced with fun as she imagined herself telling the story at home. "Hey! Why, what the dickens has come to the fellow?" said the old gentleman, as Laurie came running downstairs and brought up with a start of surprise at the astounding sight of Jo arm in arm with his redoubtable grandfather. "I didn't know you'd come, sir," he began, as Jo gave him a triumphant little glance. "That's evident, by the way you racket downstairs. Come to your tea, sir, and behave like a gentleman." And having pulled the boy's hair by way of a caress, Mr. Laurence walked on, while Laurie went through a series of comic evolutions behind their backs, which nearly produced an explosion of laughter from Jo. The old gentleman did not say much as he drank his four cups of tea, but he watched the young people, who soon chatted away like old friends, and the change in his grandson did not escape him. There was color, light, and life in the boy's face now, vivacity in his manner, and genuine merriment in his laugh. "She's right, the lad is lonely. I'll see what these little girls can do for him," thought Mr. Laurence, as he looked and listened. He liked Jo, for her odd, blunt ways suited him, and she seemed to understand the boy almost as well as if she had been one herself.


either Emily or Andy, not exactly. It’s envy more than jealousy, he decides. It isn’t even that he wants someone to adore him the way they obviously adore one another. It isn’t even that he wishes he had a chance to fall in love. He remembers Andy’s hand on the small of Emily’s back as they walked out of the restaurant. That’s what he wants, and he doesn’t even know what to call it. He changes out of his suit and puts on a pair of jeans and a leather jacket, then heads out, up to Greenwich Avenue, where at least he can find someone to take the edge off. * * * July 1958 Nick is pretty sure that if he hadn’t first known his nephew—a fourteen-year-old who goes through life with untied shoes and perpetually skinned knees, surrounded by a chaotic cloud of comic books and pencils and baseball cards—he wouldn’t know what to think about Andy. In May, Andy gets stuck in the elevator at the criminal courts building for three hours, then turns up at the Chronicle looking mildly traumatized but bearing a box of doughnuts to apologize for cutting it so close to the filing deadline. In June, he’s nearly run down by a cab on Canal Street, only stopped by Nick’s hand darting out to grab his coat. In a single week in July, Andy bangs his head into the ladder of a fire truck while he and Nick are covering a warehouse fire, gets food poisoning from a chicken salad sandwich that Nick tells him looks bad, and is almost bitten by a guard dog at the scene of a robbery in the Bronx. When, one Monday morning, Andy emerges from the elevator leaning on a cane, Nick takes one look at him and shakes his head. “Christ. You need someone to follow you around. An ambulance or at least a medic. Maybe a Saint Bernard.” “Nice,” Andy says, looking like he’s trying not to smile. “This is how you treat the wounded?” “What was it this time? You already have elevators, fire trucks, and taxicabs. A helicopter? A hot-air balloon?” Andy looks like he’d rather do anything than answer. “A boat, actually.” Nick bursts out laughing. “This is a place of business, gentlemen,” shouts Jorgensen, the deputy city desk editor. “A boat,” Nick says, when he gets himself under control. “The decks are quite slippery, I’ll have you know,” Andy sniffs. “Even slipperier when you accidentally step on a fish.” Nick falls off his chair, which sets Andy off laughing, and Nick is so unprepared for the baritone rumble of laughter that he doesn’t even notice when he hits his head on the corner of a desk. “You’re bleeding,” Andy says, stricken. Nick brings his fingers to his temple and they come away red. Jorgensen rolls across the room on his chair, tosses the first aid kit onto the floor where it lands beside Nick with a metallic clank, and rolls back, muttering something about how it’s a dark day when reporters start acting


were moving below. They’re a weapon Dacre likes to reserve for civilian towns and the railroad, I’m afraid.” Iris couldn’t hide her shiver. Lark noticed, and his voice mellowed. “Now then, the company will soon divide in the trenches, but you’ll trail my platoon. When we come to a stop, you may both also find a place to rest for the night. I’ll ensure you’re up before dawn, to move to the front. Of course, keep quiet and stay low and alert. Those are your imperatives. Should we be bombarded and Dacre’s forces overtake our trenches, I want the two of you to retreat to the town instantly. You may be deemed ‘neutral’ in this conflict, but I wouldn’t put it past the enemy to kill you both on sight.” Iris nodded. Roman murmured his agreement. She followed Lieutenant Lark’s Sycamore Platoon down into the trenches, Roman close behind her. So close, she could hear his breath, and the way it skipped, as if he were nervous and struggling to conceal it. A few times, he inadvertently stepped on her heel, jarring her. “Sorry,” he whispered with a fleeting touch to her back. It’s all right, she wanted to say, but the words caught in her throat. She didn’t really know what she had expected, but the trenches were well constructed, with wood planks laid on the ground to ward off mud. They were wide enough for two people to walk shoulder to shoulder comfortably. Sticks were woven along the walls, which curved like the path of a snake. Winding left and then right, and then splitting into two pathways before splitting yet again. She passed artillery stations, where huge cannons sat on the grass like sleeping beasts. A few low points had sandbags piled up, to provide additional coverage, and the deeper she went into the channels, the more she began to see the bunkers Lark had mentioned. Stone shelters were hollowed out of the earth, with dark, open doorways. There was nothing inviting about them, almost as if they were frozen maws, waiting to swallow soldiers, and Iris hoped she didn’t have to shelter in one. Cool air touched her face. It smelled of dank soil with a touch of rot from the decaying wood. A few times, Iris caught the stench of refuse and piss, all threaded with cigarette smoke. She imagined she saw the scurrying of a rat or two, but perhaps the shadows were teasing her. Her shoulders sagged in relief when the Sycamore Platoon came to a halt for the night, in a stretch of trench that was relatively dry and clean. Iris let her bag slip from her shoulders, choosing a spot beneath a small, hanging lantern. Roman mirrored her, sitting across the path from her, his long legs crossed. Lark came by to check on them just as the stars began to dust the sky overhead. He smiled with a cigarette clamped in his teeth, settling down not too far from them, just within Iris’s sight. The silence felt thick and strange. She was


so natural-- however tragic--that money ill-gotten should be cruelly expiated, that his mind, hardly lingering over Mrs. Beaufort's doom, wandered back to closer questions. What was the meaning of May's blush when the Countess Olenska had been mentioned? Four months had passed since the midsummer day that he and Madame Olenska had spent together; and since then he had not seen her. He knew that she had returned to Washington, to the little house which she and Medora Manson had taken there: he had written to her once--a few words, asking when they were to meet again--and she had even more briefly replied: "Not yet." Since then there had been no farther communication between them, and he had built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned among his secret thoughts and longings. Little by little it became the scene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he brought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him, his judgments and his visions. Outside it, in the scene of his actual life, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency, blundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view as an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own room. Absent--that was what he was: so absent from everything most densely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him to find they still imagined he was there. He became aware that Mr. Jackson was clearing his throat preparatory to farther revelations. "I don't know, of course, how far your wife's family are aware of what people say about--well, about Madame Olenska's refusal to accept her husband's latest offer." Archer was silent, and Mr. Jackson obliquely continued: "It's a pity--it's certainly a pity--that she refused it." "A pity? In God's name, why?" Mr. Jackson looked down his leg to the unwrinkled sock that joined it to a glossy pump. "Well--to put it on the lowest ground--what's she going to live on now?" "Now--?" "If Beaufort--" Archer sprang up, his fist banging down on the black walnut-edge of the writing-table. The wells of the brass double-inkstand danced in their sockets. "What the devil do you mean, sir?" Mr. Jackson, shifting himself slightly in his chair, turned a tranquil gaze on the young man's burning face. "Well--I have it on pretty good authority--in fact, on old Catherine's herself--that the family reduced Countess Olenska's allowance considerably when she definitely refused to go back to her husband; and as, by this refusal, she also forfeits the money settled on her when she married--which Olenski was ready to make over to her if she returned--why, what the devil do YOU mean, my dear boy, by asking me what I mean?" Mr. Jackson good-humouredly retorted. Archer moved toward the mantelpiece and bent over to knock his ashes into the grate. "I don't know anything of Madame Olenska's private affairs; but I don't need to, to be certain that what you insinuate--" "Oh, I don't: it's Lefferts, for one," Mr. Jackson interposed. "Lefferts--who


He’s dealing with the final things. “What letter?” she asked, at length. His eyes flickered at that. He still had it: the taste for a game, the nose for a tease. “Find it,” he said, “and you’ll know, won’t you?” She yearned to move toward him, and she wanted to creep away, all at the same time. As if blood spoke to blood, repelling and seeking in equal measure. “Are you comfortable?” she said, at last. She asked because she was curious. She wondered what it felt like to be there, right on the brink. Because surely this was the end? Surely they were very near it now? You only had to measure the shrinking line of his neck, see the way the weight had fallen away from his cheeks. His movements were growing slower and slower, the degradation unstoppable. He let out a shallow breath. His eyes moved toward the blur of the medicine cabinet, the bowls, the pillboxes. “I’m bored,” he whispered. She loathed him in that moment, but she wanted to laugh, too. I would be bored, she thought. Oh, I would be so bored by it, dying. Straightening, she said, “Tell me about this letter.” “It’s about your poor mother,” he replied, barely a whisper. Mrs. King felt her body turn quite still. It was extraordinary, wasn’t it, how easily people could shock you? Even if she counted up all the years she’d been here, all the hours and minutes and seconds—and she could count them, she felt sometimes that she simply held them all in her mind, like little slots marked up with luggage labels—then she still couldn’t think of a time he’d mentioned Mother. In his house, in his world, this world that she had entered, Mother didn’t exist. Lockwood had impressed as much upon her, the first day she arrived. She felt a frisson pass through her skin. “What on earth do you mean?” she said, voice low. There was something building in her chest, something dangerously akin to fear. Because she knew how games worked. There had to be a delicious little bit of irony, a slice of pain. Someone had to lose for someone else to win. Mrs. King knew she was a bastard, an indiscretion, a stain. She’d folded that away inside herself long ago. This had to be something different. “This is yours,” he said. He lifted a finger, barely half an inch. “All this.” To Mr. de Vries, an inch could cover oceans, prairies, great sweeping tracts of land. Silver. Gold. Mountains, studded with diamonds. So many possessions, held under his name, in his empire. She should have been confused. Dizzy with the scope of it, uncomprehending. But she felt only nausea, deep in her gut. She understood at once. Ha-ha, she thought, dully. A twist, a ruse, right at the end. “You were married to Mother.” He didn’t nod. He didn’t shake his head. He just stared at her. Mother always said she was a widow. Mrs. King never gave it any credence. She’d imagined Mother as a nervy,


affection, and his many letters; we are sincerely grateful. Adieu! my cousin; take care of your self; and, I entreat you, write! Elizabeth Lavenza. Geneva, March 18, 17--, "Dear, dear Elizabeth!" I exclaimed, when I had read her letter: "I will write instantly and relieve them from the anxiety they must feel." I wrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me; but my convalescence had commenced, and proceeded regularly. In another fortnight I was able to leave my chamber. One of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Clerval to the several professors of the university. In doing this, I underwent a kind of rough usage, ill befitting the wounds that my mind had sustained. Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous symptoms. Henry saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view. He had also changed my apartment; for he perceived that I had acquired a dislike for the room which had previously been my laboratory. But these cares of Clerval were made of no avail when I visited the professors. M. Waldman inflicted torture when he praised, with kindness and warmth, the astonishing progress I had made in the sciences. He soon perceived that I disliked the subject; but not guessing the real cause, he attributed my feelings to modesty, and changed the subject from my improvement, to the science itself, with a desire, as 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


challenge you to fight me, here and now. If you win, you will keep making decisions for the merchants. If I win, you will take your orders from your queen.” He frowns. “Surely you don’t want to fight a man as low as me.” “The strongest one rules, you said. So let us discover who is stronger.” She downs the wine and places the empty cup on the table. The other traders step back toward the wall. The small man looks panicked, like a field mouse. A thought crosses his mind and he speaks. “What about the king?” “The king will never know of this,” she says. “He will be spared from your vile behavior.” She has just stopped speaking when the man jumps forward, his fists clenched. She moves to the side without effort. He is slow, unbalanced, weak—a man who has never wrestled in his life. And still he wishes to command her. When he moves in her direction again, she takes his arm and bends it behind his back. He falls to his knees, gasping. She punches his head, and he drops to the floor like a sack of wheat. She turns to the other men. They are wide-eyed, gaping. “He has lost consciousness,” she says. “But he will revive in a moment. He no longer commands you. I do. And from now on, every time you hear someone complain that they have to take orders from a queen, remind them of what happened to the small trader.” They nod. It is hard to tell if they are frightened or just in awe. What is the difference anyway? Her brother used to say that there is none. 18 The Favorite Daughter IT IS AUTUMN, and the land is painted in yellow and orange shades. Envoys come and go from the palace, bringing news of trade, marriages, alliances. Warriors and villagers ask for an audience in the megaron, each with their own request: My king, my son is born a cripple, my wife lay with another man, the merchants wouldn’t sell me their wine. My queen, the neighbor stole my bread, insulted the gods, spoke of treason. Their words fill the room like songs, and Clytemnestra looks at the painted walls as she listens. Beside her, Aileen sits on a low stool, organizing piles of clay tablets filled with inventories: sheep and rams, axes and spears, wheat and barley, horses and war prisoners. Many commoners come to speak to the queen. They walk into the bright light of the hall, kneel in front of the king, then turn to Clytemnestra with their requests on land disputes and marriage portions. They know that she listens calmly to every plea and that she gives her help to those who respect her. They also know that it is better to have her as an ally than as an enemy. Everyone in the citadel remembers when a villager’s daughter was raped and killed by a nobleman’s son after she cried out her defilement. The dead girl’s father had come to the megaron, a small,


see a picture of him. See what he looked like again.” “And can you tell your mom why?” “Why should I have to?” Her hands moved faster, the clicking louder. “You don’t have to, but I think she’ll worry if you don’t.” Rita tilted her head at Maud. “Is that right?” “Yes,” Maud said. She felt a gratitude for Rita that was close to adoration. “Because I don’t understand why I liked him so much,” Ella said bluntly. “At Montgomery Place, he didn’t seem so old. Or disgusting.” “Why disgusting?” Maud said. Ella shrugged. “He just is.” “Could I have a quick word with your mom?” Rita asked. After Ella had left for the waiting room, Maud said, “Disgusting sounds alarming.” “She knows she had a little crush on him,” Rita said. “She’s said that to you?” “Not in so many words. He listened to her when she was vulnerable. That gave him power. And she understands that his keeping their meetings a secret was inappropriate.” “I keep wondering if more happened with him,” Maud said. “I feel she’s not saying something. It’s this worry that won’t go away.” “Maud,” Rita said, “if I had any suspicion that more had happened, I wouldn’t only tell you and Peter, I’d tell the authorities. Ella is trying to let what happened last summer go. I’m not surprised that she looked him up.” “I can’t let it go,” Maud said. She had pieces of evidence that no one else did. Gabriel had said that he loved her and slept with her, while meeting her daughter in secret over and over. But if she told Rita all this, she would eventually have to tell Peter. And he’d be enraged by her lies. Their marriage wouldn’t survive the blow. “It’s going to be hard to trust Ella again.” Rita leaned forward in her chair, her face both tough and sympathetic. “Self-harm does that. But you’ll have to, eventually. For both your sakes.” Two months later, Maud sat with Peter in the waiting room at Lone Pines as he typed on the laptop balanced on his knees. It had been nine months since Ella was first admitted to the hospital, and they were at their monthly family session with Rita. Soon they would walk down the hall to Rita’s office, where Ella would talk to Peter and barely say a word to Maud. “I need to start working again,” she said. Peter glanced up from his laptop. “Are you looking?” “No. But Ella hasn’t relapsed in a long time. I’ll do something part-time until she’s out of treatment. I’ve been reading more about the landscape here. I think I’ll be more marketable now.” “She may never be out of treatment.” Peter went back to typing. “So I shouldn’t go back to work? Ever?” “I didn’t say that.” “You implied it.” “No,” he said. “You inferred it.” He sighed. “We said we wouldn’t have those old fights.” “I know,” Maud said. “We won’t. But I’m finding a job.” Rita came to the door, and Maud got up from the


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

or perhaps my presence. “And, of course, most of my interactions have been confined to the common fae. I’ve studied the enchantments left behind by the courtly fae—the tall ones—as well as numerous firsthand accounts, but I’ve never met one.” Besides Bambleby, perhaps. “May I ask if you’ve encountered the Hidden Ones yourself?” She picked up her knitting. “My money is on a month. Krystjan gave me poor odds. Please don’t disappoint me—I need a new roof.” “Here we are,” Finn said, setting a bottle of mulled wine on the table. “I hope this will do, Amma.” “Idiot,” Thora said. “Ulfar’s stuff tastes like piss. How many times have I told you?” Finn only sighed and turned to me. “Aud would have me ask if everything is to your liking.” “Thank you, yes,” I said, though I had not yet tasted the stew. “Thora is your grandmother?” “She’s grandmother to half the village, give or take.” Thora made that rude sound again. The door swung open, admitting a swirl of cold, and a dishevelled figure stood framed against the darkness. It appeared roughly woman-shaped, but it was difficult to tell given the many layers of coats and shawls. The figure did not proceed further, but simply stood upon the threshold with the night billowing at her back. “Auður,” called Aud, then she went to the stranger’s side, murmuring something. The firelight fell upon her face, revealing a young woman in her middle twenties, her mouth slack, her eyes darting ceaselessly without appearing to see. She gripped Aud’s arm tightly, and when Aud directed her to a chair, she sat in a boneless slump. Curious, I drifted to the woman’s side. “Is she well?” Aud stiffened. “As well as can be expected.” Ulfar set a bowl of stew before the girl. Auður did not look at it, or him. “Eat,” Aud said in Ljoslander. Auður picked up her spoon and mechanically filled her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Drink,” Aud said. Auður drank. I watched them with growing confusion. There was something both uncanny and abhorrent about the way in which Auður responded to Aud’s instructions, like a puppet on strings. Aud saw me watching, and her face darkened. “I would ask that you refrain from including my niece in your book,” she said. I understood, and gave a slight nod. “Of course.” I know of several species of Folk who are in the habit of abducting mortals for the thrill of breaking them. In truth, it is something most of the courtly fae are given to on occasion. I once met a Manx man whose daughter had taken her own life after a year and a day spent in some horrific faerie kingdom so lovely that its beauty became as addictive as opiates. Others have endured torments and returned so changed their families barely recognize them. But in Auður’s manner and expression, its scrubbed-clean quality, I found something I’d never encountered before. And for all my expertise, it sent a shiver of foreboding through me, a sense that perhaps, for the first time


is that I’m greasing the gears; I’m getting back into the zone. I’ve sparked a flame that I haven’t felt in a very long time. I have to be patient with myself, to give that flame time and space to grow. On my way back to the dormitory, I glimpse my students through the window of Mimi’s, one of the many bubble tea cafés near campus. The twelve of them are crowded around a table meant for six; so many chairs pulled up that they each get only a little bit of table space. They seem totally comfortable around one another, hunched over their laptops and notebooks. They’re writing—perhaps working on my homework assignment. I watch as they show one another snippets of work, laughing at funny turns of phrase, nodding appreciatively as they take turns reading out loud. God, I miss that. It has been so long since I thought of writing as a communal activity. All the published writers I know are so cagey about their writing schedules, their advances, and their sales numbers. They hate divulging information about their career trajectories, just in case someone else shows them up. They hate even more to share details about their works in progress, terrified that someone will scoop their ideas and publish before they can. It’s a world of difference from my undergraduate days, when Athena and I would crowd around a library table late at night with our classmates, talking over metaphors and character development and plot twists until I couldn’t tell anymore where my stories ended and theirs began. Perhaps that’s the price of professional success: isolation from jealous peers. Perhaps, once writing becomes a matter of individual advancement, it’s impossible to share with anyone else. I stand by the window of Mimi’s perhaps longer than I ought to, watching wistfully as my students joke around. One of them—Skylar—glances up and almost sees me, but I duck my head down and stride quickly off toward the dorms. I’M A FEW MINUTES LATE TO CLASS THE NEXT MORNING. THE LINE AT the campus Starbucks was moving at a glacial pace, and I discovered why when I got to the counter, where a girl with pink hair and two nose piercings struggled for nearly five minutes to input my very simple order. When I finally reach the classroom, all my students are crowded around Skylar’s laptop, giggling. They don’t notice as I walk in. “Look,” says Skylar. “There’s even a sentence-by-sentence comparison of the first few paragraphs of both stories.” Christina leans forward. “Noooo.” “And there’s an NLP comparison—look, here.” I know without asking: they’ve found Adele Sparks-Sato’s blog report. “They think all of The Last Front is stolen, too,” says Johnson. “Look, the paragraph right after. There’s a quote from a former editorial assistant at Eden; she says it always felt fishy—” “You think she took it right out of her apartment? Like, the night she died?” “Oh my God,” says Skylar, delighted and horrified. “That’s diabolical.” “Do you think she killed her?” “Oh my God, don’t—” I clear my


and gouged my cheek on the faucet, skating and slipping and sliding around in my own liquid waste. I’m not sure that I mastered a technique, but I did figure out how to sort of get some pee near his body once out of every third try? That’s a decent success rate! Early one pitch-black winter morning I pissed on him before I went to work (undiluted morning pee was his favorite), and he jumped up to turn the shower on and grabbed my hand like he wanted us to take a shower together, which is an activity I do not believe in. I really had to get to work, i.e., go upstairs to my own apartment where all my bath products lived in close proximity to my many forks and cups. As I started to step out of the shower, he pulled me back in to kiss me goodbye. That’s romantic, isn’t it? From a man who told me that kissing on the lips “wasn’t really his thing.” Super nice, huh? That is, until he proceeded to discharge a mouthful of urine down my unsuspecting throat. I should’ve known, man. I should’ve heard it collecting in his mouth! Aren’t your other senses supposed to be heightened in the dark? Only a chaotic evil person would hold someone else’s piss in his mouth for like two real minutes before expectorating it down that someone’s throat. And I know you’re thinking you would’ve beat that dude’s ass, and that’s easy to say because no one is piss-snowballing you right now. But at the time, I just stood there, in bewildered surprise, thinking about how I’d just swallowed three tablespoons of my own salted uric acid. I tried to spit some out, but he’d vomited it into me with such force. Needless to say, our relationship sort of dried up after that. And I made myself a new golden rule. (Piss onto others as you would have them piss onto you.) * * * — Now, I am forty-three years old, and I no longer have control of my bladder. Twenty years ago, I was at this club called Slicks in Chicago on two-dollar-Corona night, and even back then in my “youth,” my party strategy was to get there by nine so no one takes the good chairs. This is what I liked to tell my friends when they scoffed at the idea of arriving at a nightclub while it was still light out, but the truth is that if I sit too still between the hours of 7:00 and 8:30 p.m., I will clinically die until noon the next day, so if I’m gonna go out, I need to have a bra and shoes on by 6:55 at the very latest or that shit’s not fucking happening. Okay, anyway, it was deep house night, and I had been guzzling lukewarm water-beers for four hours straight in a pair of unforgiving jeggings when my kidneys started pulsing in time to the beat. It was already too late. I looked in the general direction of


few steps before leveling out into a tunnel. The Sainted King offered a courtly hand. “Come along.” Lore took the King’s hand and let him lead her into the gloom. She hated tunnels. Thankfully, this one was short. Up ahead, a lone bloodcoat guard stood at the lip of where the tunnel opened up into what looked like full sunlight. Not just any bloodcoat, Lore noticed as they approached. Gold lapels gleamed on his red jacket, the bayonet and sword by his side polished to a high shine. He made no indication that he noticed them at all, but when August approached, he inclined his head and stepped aside. “The Sacred Guard,” August said as they passed. “A highly sought-after position, only granted to those who show themselves worthy both physically and spiritually, and whose loyalty I can be assured of.” He gave her a sidelong look. “They don’t get much chance to use their weapons, but they certainly know how.” If she wasn’t so completely distracted by the sight of the vaults, Lore might’ve wondered if that was a threat. The room at the end of the tunnel was wide and circular, but the ceiling soared miles above their heads, topped with a cut-glass skylight that filtered the morning sun into faceted shards. It must’ve been what Lore had seen gleaming in the center of the Citadel yesterday. The skylight was impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the vaults themselves. They climbed like stone towers, stretching nearly all the way to the glass above. Stairs were cut into the sides of the vaults, twisting upward, broken by platforms that led to small doors—the only way to get to the bodies inside. At the tops of the vaults, overgrown rosebushes reached for the sun. The roses were the only living things inside the vaults, other than August and Lore and the guard in the tunnel. Lore took a moment to concentrate on her mental wall, all those trees blocking out the awareness of Mortem. Trunks and leaves and blue sky beyond. Some of the doors in the towering vaults were closed, but most remained open, small windows into the darkness inside. Those were empty. Even nobles couldn’t always afford a Citadel vault. Most of the open doors were near the top—those were for the Arceneaux family only. “We’ve tried to keep one body from every village,” August said. He strode purposefully toward the nearest tower and the closed door at its base. Of course. No one would waste a top vault on a villager, no matter how strange their death. “The rest are destroyed.” “How much does one of those run?” Lore asked quietly, still staring at the vaults. The King looked up, snorted. “More than you’ve ever seen or ever will, girl. Keep your sights set on one of the body boxes outside the city.” He rapped on the stone wall. “Anton? We’re here.” The Priest Exalted opened the door, squinting against the light. He didn’t say anything, merely stood to the side to let his brother enter. He gave


off. “I always think about it,” June said. “I’m fifty years old and every wedding is a reminder of the parents I lost.” I nod. “Well, every wedding is a reminder of the parent I lost. But Ray I never had.” That was true. When I moved in with Ray, a part of me had been hopeful that we would find a way to connect. That was a pipe dream. Bryce approaches and nods for me to come over to him, and I wonder what sort of father he’ll be. “I’m going to grab some water,” I call, but everyone is having so much fun they barely notice. “What do you want?” I ask, quietly, coldly, once I’m off in the corner of the pool deck with him. “I handed off all my jobs,” he says. “I’m going to go work for my mother.” I raise an eyebrow at him. “O-kayyyy… Why?” “Because those were her conditions. She helps me dig my way out of this mess, I come work for the family business.” I shake my head. “What?” “I just don’t get it, Bryce. You have the world at your fingertips. You have the money and the family and the fiancée and everything. What else did you need?” He looks out at the dance floor at Lanier, then back at me. “I grew up in this perfect family of these uber-successful people and I didn’t want to be handed everything. Do you have any idea the pressure I have been under my entire life to make it big on my own?” I cross my arms. “Bryce, for most of my life I didn’t have anyone who cared whether I ate dinner, let alone became successful in business, so you aren’t going to out–sob story me.” “Okay, fine. But do you know how utterly humiliating it was to have to run to my mother, to have to beg her to save me because it was all smoke and mirrors? Because I lost it all?” I do feel the tiniest bit bad for him. “Do you know who will understand the need for personal success bringing out your worst colors?” He rolls his eyes. “Your fiancée. Because wanting to prove herself made her do some dumb things when she was younger. But you owe it to her to tell her. And even if you don’t think she deserves the truth, Cape Carolina is tiny. She will find out.” He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.” “Why in the hell not?” “Everyone has to sign an NDA before they get their first payment. And who wouldn’t want their money?” That was, I suspected, Bryce’s latest in a long line of incorrect thoughts. I was certain there was someone who would rather make him—or his family—pay. Local media made a lot of enemies. “Have they all signed?” He bit his lip. “No. But I’m hopeful they will.” So there were still a million reasons Bryce wasn’t in the clear. He had to know that all the vendors and subs were pretty tight in Cape


Mr Dedalus asked. --The same, Simon, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I'm just waiting for Ben Dollard. He's going to say a word to long John to get him to take those two men off. All I want is a little time. He looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple bulging in his neck. --I know, Mr Dedalus said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Ben! He's always doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard! He put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant. --There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets. Ben Dollard's loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards them at an amble, scratching actively behind his coattails. As he came near Mr Dedalus greeted: --Hold that fellow with the bad trousers. --Hold him now, Ben Dollard said. Mr Dedalus eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Ben Dollard's figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he muttered sneeringly: --That's a pretty garment, isn't it, for a summer's day? --Why, God eternally curse your soul, Ben Dollard growled furiously, I threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw. He stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his roomy clothes from points of which Mr Dedalus flicked fluff, saying: --They were made for a man in his health, Ben, anyhow. --Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Ben Dollard said. Thanks be to God he's not paid yet. --And how is that BASSO PROFONDO, Benjamin? Father Cowley asked. Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring, glassyeyed, strode past the Kildare street club. Ben Dollard frowned and, making suddenly a chanter's mouth, gave forth a deep note. --Aw! he said. --That's the style, Mr Dedalus said, nodding to its drone. --What about that? Ben Dollard said. Not too dusty? What? He turned to both. --That'll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also. The reverend Hugh C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of saint Mary's abbey past James and Charles Kennedy's, rectifiers, attended by Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of hurdles. Ben Dollard with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward, his joyful fingers in the air. --Come along with me to the subsheriff's office, he said. I want to show you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He's a cross between Lobengula and Lynchehaun. He's well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw John Henry Menton casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall if I don't ... Wait awhile ... We're on the right lay, Bob, believe you me. --For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously. Ben Dollard halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling button of his coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away the heavy shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright. --What few days? he boomed. Hasn't your


I won't allow it. Go away! Janet, turn him round. Lead him off!' and I saw, from behind my aunt, a sort of hurried battle-piece, in which the donkey stood resisting everybody, with all his four legs planted different ways, while Janet tried to pull him round by the bridle, Mr. Murdstone tried to lead him on, Miss Murdstone struck at Janet with a parasol, and several boys, who had come to see the engagement, shouted vigorously. But my aunt, suddenly descrying among them the young malefactor who was the donkey's guardian, and who was one of the most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in his teens, rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, captured him, dragged him, with his jacket over his head, and his heels grinding the ground, into the garden, and, calling upon Janet to fetch the constables and justices, that he might be taken, tried, and executed on the spot, held him at bay there. This part of the business, however, did not last long; for the young rascal, being expert at a variety of feints and dodges, of which my aunt had no conception, soon went whooping away, leaving some deep impressions of his nailed boots in the flower-beds, and taking his donkey in triumph with him. Miss Murdstone, during the latter portion of the contest, had dismounted, and was now waiting with her brother at the bottom of the steps, until my aunt should be at leisure to receive them. My aunt, a little ruffled by the combat, marched past them into the house, with great dignity, and took no notice of their presence, until they were announced by Janet. 'Shall I go away, aunt?' I asked, trembling. 'No, sir,' said my aunt. 'Certainly not!' With which she pushed me into a corner near her, and fenced Me in with a chair, as if it were a prison or a bar of justice. This position I continued to occupy during the whole interview, and from it I now saw Mr. and Miss Murdstone enter the room. 'Oh!' said my aunt, 'I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure of objecting. But I don't allow anybody to ride over that turf. I make no exceptions. I don't allow anybody to do it.' 'Your regulation is rather awkward to strangers,' said Miss Murdstone. 'Is it!' said my aunt. Mr. Murdstone seemed afraid of a renewal of hostilities, and interposing began: 'Miss Trotwood!' 'I beg your pardon,' observed my aunt with a keen look. 'You are the Mr. Murdstone who married the widow of my late nephew, David Copperfield, of Blunderstone Rookery! - Though why Rookery, I don't know!' 'I am,' said Mr. Murdstone. 'You'll excuse my saying, sir,' returned my aunt, 'that I think it would have been a much better and happier thing if you had left that poor child alone.' 'I so far agree with what Miss Trotwood has remarked,' observed Miss Murdstone, bridling, 'that I consider our lamented Clara to have been, in all essential respects, a


as a warning. Esper says he had to tell the Trump aide that such an action would be a war crime. (Miller denied that the episode occurred.) The no-holds-barred attitude applied to the border more than anything. Aides would go to whatever lengths were necessary to fulfill Trump’s pledge to secure the territorial line with Mexico. That included a willingness to explore lethal drone strikes against innocent civilians. The border symbolizes the wider aims of the MAGA movement. In order to make America great again, adherents believe Washington must curb the influx of foreigners who are ruining America. Everything MAGA leaders reject about the existing order—the “globalist” promotion of free trade, the “establishment” story of America as a nation of immigrants, the “woke elites” whose internationalist views are destroying Western culture—is embodied by the situation at the border. Politics aside, the crisis is real. The United States is unable to control the flow of people and contraband across its territory, which has reached unprecedented levels. Drugs and dangerous individuals infiltrate America easily because of inadequate security, creating a volatile situation for border communities and the wider country. But the situation is also unfair to migrants seeking a better life. America’s porous border has incentivized a spike in human trafficking, cartel activity, and violence, which makes the journey dangerous for these would-be Americans. When they arrive, a broken immigration system forces them into years of uncertainty in the shadows before they’re given a final answer about whether or not they can stay here. Polls show a majority of Americans support tougher border security and immigration reform. Whether it’s a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants living in the United States or a faster process for aspiring Americans to become citizens, the solution is uncomplicated in theory. In practice, political polarization has put a legislative solution well out of reach for every recent U.S. president who tried. Donald Trump saw only one side of this equation: security. To him, this was the primary mission of DHS—deporting undocumented immigrants, punishing those who made it to the border, and making it harder for any others to follow their path. Everything else was secondary or irrelevant. He conveyed this to DHS leaders in some form or fashion weekly. Kristen Marquardt, who served as a Trump-appointed counterterrorism leader at DHS, compared the president’s obsession with the border to the strong desert winds she experienced as a CIA officer overseas. “You know those ‘shamals’ in the Middle East—those sandstorms that block out the sun? That’s what immigration did to the Department of Homeland Security during the Trump administration,” she explained. “There was no light, no air, no room for anything else.” Another far-right president would create the same environment, with potentially dire consequences. I raised the possibility with an advisor who was appointed by Trump to manage national security programs. She saw what happened to DHS under her former boss. “If MAGA comes back,” the woman told me, “the department created to stop 9/11 will be willfully closing its eyes to the next big attack, cyber breach, you name


demanded. “How do we do that?” Resnick smiled. “We just need to be in the right place before the right time.” “That makes no sense,” Aubrey grumbled. “Maybe not to you, newbie,” Doogan said, not smiling at all. “Quiet, Doogan,” Captain Church said. “Orders, General?” “Stay here,” said Resnick. “I need them thinking you are just as trapped as they are, and to help them until they don’t need help anymore.” “Will we see you again?” Lieutenant Chan asked. “If things go as expected, we will come back after the next mission,” Resnick said. “Pristy, Derrota, Aubrey, with me.” Pristy followed Resnick into the passageway, the others trailing behind them. She stepped up beside the general and asked, “Do you really believe this will work?” “Check your historical timeline stability score,” Resnick said. Pristy looked at her ChronoLink. “53.4 percent.” “So we’re doing something right,” Resnick said. “Now we just have to keep doing it right, and fast. Because in an hour and a half, Stratham Hold is going to be overrun. And then we’ll all have much bigger problems to deal with.” Chapter 26 Liquilid Empire Star System USS Adams Sonya Winters Running, walking, then running some more—did she know she was being impetuous? Of course she did. At the ripe old age of sixteen, almost seventeen, she figured if one couldn’t be impulsive, impassioned, hell, unbridled—whatever adjective you wanted to throw at it—as a teenager, then when? Only now, as she hurried down a rarely used Adams maintenance passageway, did she start to have second thoughts concerning her most recent actions. Her arm, more accurately, her shoulder, blazed with pain with each jarring step. Having hacked the nurse station’s work schedule, she’d timed her escape from HealthBay during the shift change. Did she feel bad, having to pilfer Nurse Donna’s locker, the only nurse equally petite and having a similar shape? Not really. Donna was bitchy, and beyond lazy. When wasn’t the woman on bathroom break? So no, screw her. But she had to hand it to her—Donna had nice civvies. Now, wearing a smart-looking black sweatshirt, stylish navy-blue leggings, and a pair of high-top running shoes that must have cost the dawdling nurse a pretty penny, Sonya was somewhat adequately dressed for the mission at hand. “Stop with the scolding, Tina … What are you, my mother?” she said, scowling up at the circling glimmer of gold near the deckhead. “I’ll return all her shit later. Maybe …” She could barely hear the fairy’s high-pitched reply above the echoes of her footfalls within the narrow passageway. “I’m Iris! Iris Iris Iris Iris Iris! Not Tina!” “Okay, okay, got it; you’re also beyond annoying!” Cringing as she hurried down what seemed an endless stairwell from hell, she stabilized her left arm, still in a sling, with her opposite hand. She thumb-tapped her Jadoo ring, bringing up the projected 3D menu, which subsequently showed the countdown timer she’d set prior to leaving HealthBay. She’d miscalculated; this was taking much longer than anticipated. Flight Bay was still two flights down and she


clothes, they’re offerings laid out for her, in this secret and unwanted temple. I walk across the hall: guest room. I don’t know what I expect to find. Did Maurice take lovers, from time to time? Did he feel the need either for sex or just contact? Did they look like Elaine, or as little like her as possible. No answers here. If he did, he purged the apartment of them after they left. I sit down at the terminal in his office and open it up. There are no passwords: the door only opens to Maurice or Stefan, or now, to me, because Stefan says so. I open his bank accounts and look through. There’s the payment to Denton that Orhan told me about, clear as day. I look for Mullen, and there’s nothing there. I open up the correspondence file, and do the same, searching for Mullen’s name. There’s nothing there, but I wouldn’t expect anything. That’s a hit. You pay for that a little more discreetly. I search for my own name and find Maurice’s broadly expressed opinion to Elaine, to Denton, to Athena. I already knew he didn’t like me. I find his arguments with Athena about the Tonfamecasca company, the way she’s doing his job. They are polite, but she let him know she was in charge. I search for Susan Green, Roddy Tebbit, Peter Antonin, for Lillian. If Maurice had anything about any of them, he didn’t have it here. Maybe he kept all that in his head. I search for Elaine, and find her everywhere. Drafts of letters, notes, lists of gifts. I wonder if he killed Roddy to impress her. But it doesn’t really make sense. * * * — Say you’re Maurice Tonfamecasca and you just found out that Peter Antonin is teaching at the university as if he wasn’t a monster. Maurice probably doesn’t much care about monsters generally—he sort of is one—but this monster is different. Maurice just tried to kill me because he thinks I upset Elaine. What would he do to Peter Antonin, if he could? Figure he’d put on his executive tactical and go ninja the little motherfucker to the point of death. But that makes for a crime scene that does not look like our crime scene. If Maurice broke into Roddy’s place and beat him to death with a stapler, how did Roddy end up shot just once in the side of the head? That is a controlled, quiet sort of crime, not a crime of rage. It’s almost merciful. It doesn’t have anything like the flavour of the man who broke down the door to my office. But all right, that man and the man who lived in this apartment are not the same, and we all contain multitudes. Picture Maurice, in that moment of discovery. He has time to be colder than he was with me, he plans it out. Peter’s sins are so appalling that they merit thought. He drugs his target—let’s assume, even though it doesn’t show up later on Musgrave’s machines—and


astray, mistaken, seriousness, misery, resentment, sloth, inaction, inertia, faineance, erroneous. uncheerfulness, solemnity, lethargy, idlesse. ANTONYMS: (n) energy, subsisting: (adj) extant, living. bleakness, gravity, gloominess. activity, bustle, liveliness, sunless: (adj) cloudy, dark, cheerless, decapitated: (adj) decollated, headless. responsibility. clouded, lightless, gloomy, excused: (adj) privileged, immune. seething: (v) ebullient; (adj) irate, tenebrous, mentally disordered, figurative: (adj) metaphorical, figural, raging, enraged, spitting mad, beside blurred. emblematic, representative, florid, yourself, teed off, packed; (n) toils: (n) net, cobweb, meshes, mesh. 42 The Scarlet Letter beyond the grave. Peace be with all the world My blessing on my friends My forgiveness to my enemies For I am in the realm of quiet The life of the Custom--House lies like a dream behind me. The old Inspector--who, by-the-bye, l regret to say, was overthrown and killed by a horse some time ago, else he would certainly have lived for ever--he, and all those other venerable personages who sat with him at the receipt of custom, are but shadows in my view: white-headed and wrinkled images, which my fancy used to sport with, and has now flung aside for ever. The merchants-- Pingree, Phillips, Shepard, Upton, Kimball, Bertram, Hunt--these and many other names, which had such classic familiarity for my ear six months ago,--these men of traffic, who seemed to occupy so important a position in the world--how little time has it required to disconnect me from them all, not merely in act, but recollection It is with an effort that I recall the figures and appellations of these few. Soon, likewise, my old native town will loom upon me through the haze of memory, a mist brooding over and around it; as if it were no portion of the real earth, but an overgrown village in cloud-land, with only imaginary inhabitants to people its wooden houses and walk its homely lanes, and the unpicturesque prolixity of its main street. Henceforth it ceases to be a reality of my life; I am a citizen of somewhere else. My good townspeople will not much regret me, for--though it has been as dear an object as any, in my literary efforts, to be of some importance in their eyes, and to win myself a pleasant memory in this abode and burial-place of so many of my forefathers--there has never been, for me, the genial atmosphere which a literary man requires in order to ripen the best harvest of his mind. I shall do better amongst other faces; and these familiar ones, it need hardly be said, will do just as well without me.% It may be, however--oh, transporting and triumphant thought I--that the great-grandchildren of the present race may sometimes think kindly of the scribbler of bygone days, when the antiquary of days to come, among the sites memorable in the town's history, shall point out the locality of THE TOWN PUMP. Thesaurus abode: (n) dwelling, house, residence, genial: (adj) cheerful, bright, affable, ANTONYM: (n) conciseness. place, domicile, lodge, abidance, cordial, amiable, nice, friendly, ripen: (v) grow, ripe, age, season, mansion, lodging, address, seat. convivial, warm, agreeable, suave. fructify, elaborate, cultivate;


party I’d missed out on in high school: crowded, sweaty, full of dangerous alcohol consumption. I made myself a gin and tonic and got a can of Coke for Orson, who immediately downed two gulps. “You can just hang out in the kitchen or the living room,” Tony Jr. called to us over the noise of the crowd. “But don’t go into the dining room. My parents have a piano in there.” I could see over his shoulder the shape of a small player piano. I imagined it probably had stained keys and foot pedals whose brass shine had been worn dull. The idea that Tony Jr. was protecting this piano made me both sad for and proud of him. We passed through the kitchen, saying hi to our coworkers and politely ignoring the people we didn’t know, Orson insisting that we sit down by the food in the living room. Wanting to sit was unlike Orson, but wanting food was, so we wound our way into the living room and found a seat on the couch, from where we watched the sad dramas of the party. Arguments, almost-hookups, drunken hellos. “Are you bored?” he asked after a while. The question made me giddy. He could read my mind. “Yeah, I am, actually,” I said. “Do you want to go?” “No, no. I think I want to get you another drink and me another Coke.” This hadn’t been what I was expecting, but I pretended it had been. “Yeah,” I said. “Thanks. That’s cool.” I watched him disappear into the crowd and waited under the dim lights. More people crowded through the door and Tony Jr. welcomed them, instructed them to throw their coats on the sofa adjacent to the one I was sitting on. Eventually a girl in a jean skirt and tank top approached me and perched herself on the sofa’s arm. “Hey,” she said. I responded in kind. “Are you, like, a friend of Tony Jr.’s?” “I work with him,” I said. “I don’t know him that well.” She nodded thoughtfully. I saw that her red Solo cup was nearly full to the brim. “He’s really nice.” I agreed that he was really nice. “So I saw you walking in with this guy. Is he your friend?” “Orson?” I wanted to say that he was my best friend, but this felt like too intimate a fact to share with the girl. “Yeah, he is.” “That’s cool.” She smiled. “Is he single?” I drank the last of my gin and tonic. “He actually has a girlfriend,” I said. “Do you know Ingrid?” The girl’s eyes went flat. She had lost all interest in me. “No.” “Yeah, she works at Tony’s, too.” “That’s cool,” she said, and then looked across the room to someone who clearly wasn’t calling her name. “It was nice to meet you.” It occurred to me that it was taking Orson an unusually long time to get us drinks. I abandoned my cup on the coffee table and pushed through the crowd in the living room, where


not hustling quite as much now as I used to be because I’m no longer quite as broke. That night of the contest? When my painting got zero votes from the judges? It really was an ugly duckling. A scout from a fine art gallery named Ellery Smith was there that night, and she loved my painting. In fact, the very thing that the judges and the other artists and the patrons all disliked about it—namely, the face—was the thing that she liked the most. She liked the mystery of it. How hard it was to read. How full of emotion it all was. She said it left her fascinated. She could never get tired of looking at it. It raised more questions than it answered. She got in touch a week or so later to see if she could represent me, and six months after that I was doing a show in her gallery of ten similar portraits. All of which sold for three thousand dollars a pop. Seriously. Mr. and Mrs. Kim got a bargain. They did hang the painting in the lobby, by the way. And when I saw it hanging there for the first time, I decided it didn’t look like Gong Yoo or John Denver or Danny DeVito. It didn’t look exactly like Joe, either, to be honest. But it felt like him. It felt like my experience of trying to see him. It looked like all the mysteries and emotions that surrounded the man I fell in love with—before I had any idea who he was. Artistically, it was good. And it made me wonder if maybe these were the kinds of paintings I should have been doing all along. If I’d been trying so hard to be exactly like my mother that I hadn’t left room to explore or to play or to be a little more like me. The experience of painting the portraits is different now, of course. Because it doesn’t take that long before the faces of strangers come into view. I’ve got only about three impressions before I see them like everyone else does. I draw the face first and try to capture all that mystery. And I view that early time as a chance to see the world like no other artist I know does. The superpower lady? From Facebook? Now I know exactly what she means. Seeing the world differently helps you see things not just that other people can’t—but that you yourself never could if you weren’t so lucky. It lets you make your own rules. Color outside your own lines. Allow yourself another way of seeing. Most of the time now, if I see someone I know, the face comes together pretty fast. But not always. If it’s been a while since I’ve seen that person. Or if I’m tired or preoccupied. I’ve walked up to Joe in Maria’s grocery store more than once and put my arms around him—only to realize I’ve just freaked out a total stranger. It happens. But I find the antidote to


aside and yanks the sword from the wounded man. The guards are behind her, and Odysseus is in front, unarmed. On her right, his man and Leon are thrashing, moving together on the ground. Leon is choking, kicking the floor. “Let him go,” Clytemnestra says. The men behind her attack. Their swords close in around her. Clytemnestra keeps them off, swinging hers, but they are too many. She feels the blade of one cutting her leg and she stumbles. They take her down while she shouts, still waving the sword. Someone’s blood spurts on her face. They tie her hands and feet with thick rope. When they try to gag her, she bites their hands and they scream. But soon even her mouth is tied, the knot so tight her head throbs. She can’t see Leon. In front of her, the figures of Odysseus’s men waver before they walk away, outside the tent. She sees Odysseus’s serious face as he kneels in front of her and waits for him to speak, but he says nothing. He places a hand on her knee as though he were soothing a dog, then he leaves too. She is alone. * * * The rope cuts into her wrists, and her arms are numb. They must have tied her to the chair, because however she moves, she feels a weight against her back. She tries to think, to ignore the pain, but the heat makes it impossible. The gag in her mouth is so tight that she can’t feel any liquid in her mouth. She needs water. She needs something sharp. When she was young and disobedient, Leda would leave her alone in her room without food or water. When her throat started to scorch, she would convince herself that her mind was tricking her, her body really didn’t need water, and thus she would endure. Now she wills herself to do the same. She must think first, then do something. Her mistake was to trust. It is always the worst mistake to commit. She trusted a man who is a master of exploits. And he tricked her. The many-minded, Odysseus is called, but he is just a traitor. Unless he wanted to keep her here to protect her? But that seems impossible. Where is Iphigenia? Someone must be harming her daughter, or they wouldn’t have brought Clytemnestra here, to Odysseus’s tent. Iphigenia needs protection, and as long as she’s safe, Clytemnestra is safe too. So no. Odysseus has betrayed her, though she still doesn’t know how. Something moves behind her. A pained mumble, then a struggled breath. Biting into the gag, she turns, the chair scraping. Leon is lying on the opposite side of the tent. He seems alive, barely. His face is almost purple, and he is gasping for air. They have tied and gagged him too. Clytemnestra moves in his direction, pushing the weight of her body forward with her legs. A jug lies on the floor. It came down with the table when Leon was thrown against it, but there is still


beautiful charade into my book! I am sure I have not got one half so good." "Leave out the two last lines, and there is no reason why you should not write it into your book." "Oh! but those two lines are"-- --"The best of all. Granted;--for private enjoyment; and for private enjoyment keep them. They are not at all the less written you know, because you divide them. The couplet does not cease to be, nor does its meaning change. But take it away, and all appropriation ceases, and a very pretty gallant charade remains, fit for any collection. Depend upon it, he would not like to have his charade slighted, much better than his passion. A poet in love must be encouraged in both capacities, or neither. Give me the book, I will write it down, and then there can be no possible reflection on you." Harriet submitted, though her mind could hardly separate the parts, so as to feel quite sure that her friend were not writing down a declaration of love. It seemed too precious an offering for any degree of publicity. "I shall never let that book go out of my own hands," said she. "Very well," replied Emma; "a most natural feeling; and the longer it lasts, the better I shall be pleased. But here is my father coming: you will not object to my reading the charade to him. It will be giving him so much pleasure! He loves any thing of the sort, and especially any thing that pays woman a compliment. He has the tenderest spirit of gallantry towards us all!-- You must let me read it to him." Harriet looked grave. "My dear Harriet, you must not refine too much upon this charade.--You will betray your feelings improperly, if you are too conscious and too quick, and appear to affix more meaning, or even quite all the meaning which may be affixed to it. Do not be overpowered by such a little tribute of admiration. If he had been anxious for secrecy, he would not have left the paper while I was by; but he rather pushed it towards me than towards you. Do not let us be too solemn on the business. He has encouragement enough to proceed, without our sighing out our souls over this charade." "Oh! no--I hope I shall not be ridiculous about it. Do as you please." Mr. Woodhouse came in, and very soon led to the subject again, by the recurrence of his very frequent inquiry of "Well, my dears, how does your book go on?--Have you got any thing fresh?" "Yes, papa; we have something to read you, something quite fresh. A piece of paper was found on the table this morning--(dropt, we suppose, by a fairy)-- containing a very pretty charade, and we have just copied it in." She read it to him, just as he liked to have any thing read, slowly and distinctly, and two or three times over, with explanations of every part as she proceeded-- and he was very much


smooth. Somehow still appealing. “I can’t believe what you just did for me,” he said between heavy breaths, reaching down to haul her up against his chest. “Natalie, the way you . . .” He shook his head, plowed his left hand through his hair, looking totally and utterly dazed. “Damn, woman.” She preened, testing a palm on his chest, her head on his shoulder. Just temporarily. Until they caught their breath. “Look, I’ve got about three point eight seconds before I’m unconscious, thanks to you. So I’m going to use it to tell you to stay. Sleep right here. On me.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead hard, his lips remaining there for a few seconds. “It’s the safest place you’ll ever be.” She ignored the flutter trapped in her throat. “Maybe it’s tradition.” “Tradition,” he agreed. They passed out cold less than ten seconds later. Chapter Sixteen August rolled out of bed with a smile on his face. It took every ounce of strength in his body to ignore the impulse to whistle while pulling on his drawers. Damn. Now that was how two people kicked off a marriage. An oral sex competition where there were no losers. The sun hadn’t yet risen in the sky, but he was an early bird out of practice. He’d throw some eggs down his gullet, catch a workout behind the barn, and get started on production. But first he stopped at the foot of the bed and admired the view. Watching people sleep was creepy as hell. No one would blame him for stopping to check out his own wife’s ass, though, right? It was in plain view. No panties or anything. “What am I? A monk?” he muttered under his breath, turning at the door for one final, prolonged peek before closing it behind him and heading into the kitchen. As quietly as possible, he poured himself a glass of orange juice and scrambled up five eggs, eating them in as many bites. He paused in the act of chewing, his lips twitching when a snore reached him from the bedroom. He didn’t remember any snoring from last night. Then again, he’d been passed out cold after the best blow job of his entire life. Natalie snored. Good. They’d drown each other out. He’d once been told by his teammates that he sounded like a grizzly with a cold. With a smile on his face, August set his egg bowl in the sink and rinsed out the empty glass that had held his orange juice. He high-fived himself and slipped into the front yard, locking the door and testing it twice, now that he had a woman to protect. Stretching an arm across his chest to loosen up the muscle, he strode toward his makeshift workout area, reaching into the barn to flip on the rear light. Then he got to work on the pullup bar. Day one as a married man. Their sexual chemistry was fire. More than life itself, he wanted to go crawl back into that bed with


able to work at all. As fortunate as I have been compared to many, my creative career path is a difficult one for me to recommend. Stable editorial and writing jobs can be scarce, and I spent many years in low-paying roles with nice titles, working long hours for independent publishers with limited budgets. At times, I think my background made me more reluctant to negotiate—I was earning more than my parents had ever made; shouldn’t I just be grateful to have this dream of a job, working with fellow writers, helping them tell the stories that mattered most to them? Shouldn’t I feel glad to be in the room at all, especially when so few people in that room looked like me? It feels important to acknowledge that any financial strain my husband and I have experienced has been born of our own luck, choices we were privileged to make. Our “broke” bore no resemblance to my parents’ “broke,” because ours was finite and because we always had other options: we could have quit our graduate programs, avoided having children, tried to pursue more lucrative careers. But when you have no savings and your debt is increasing, your anxious brain doesn’t care that you chose the situation. Each month that we were a little short of what we needed, each year that I couldn’t afford to fly my parents out to see us or go see them in turn, I felt a terrible, squeezing guilt—not only because I was failing them, but because I had yet to make the most of all the opportunities I’d been given. We’re often told that we will rise, reap the rewards, if only we work hard, have faith, wait our turn. What I wish I’d understood sooner is that my family didn’t have time to wait. I will always be thankful that a substantial raise and my first book royalty check finally allowed me to help my mother. It all came too late to be of any use to my father. * * * I am still anxious when making a big purchase, whether it is necessary or not, and usually have to work myself up to justifying it. The car is fifteen years old, the air conditioner can’t be repaired, it’s too small for all of us to be comfortable on long road trips → expenditure reluctantly approved. I tend to choose smaller, less important things—sneakers, nightstands, the number of streaming services we pay for—to be stingy about, as if that will compensate for money I’m forced to spend elsewhere. If I want to splurge on something, I will tell myself that I have to take on a freelance assignment or speaking engagement, earn additional income, to make up for it. And yet I feel an undeniable thrill when I buy “nice things” for myself or for others, because to me it will always seem like a luxury to spend money on something I want but don’t strictly need. In contrast, my husband’s approach to finances is rational, evenhanded, devoid of fear or strong


by Mm. There many of Trin's company were slain as they slept; but some fleeing by an inner stair came out upon the hill-top, and there they fought until they fell, and their blood flowed out upon the seregon that mantled the stone. But a net was cast over Trin as he fought, and he was enmeshed in it, and overcome, and led away. And at length when all was silent again Mm crept out of the shadows of his house; and as the sun rose over the mists of Sirion he stood beside the dead men on the hill-top. But he perceived that not all those that lay there were dead; for by one his gaze was returned, and he looked in the eyes of Beleg the Elf. Then with hatred long-stored Mm stepped up to Beleg, and drew forth the sword Anglachel that lay beneath the body of one that had fallen beside him; but Beleg stumbling up seized back the sword and thrust it at the Dwarf, and Mm in terror fled wailing from the hill-top. And Beleg cried after him: 'The vengeance of the house of Hador will find you yet!' Now Beleg was sorely wounded, but he was mighty among the Elves of Middle-earth, and he was moreover a master of healing. Therefore he did not die, and slowly his strength returned; and he sought in vain among the dead for Trin, to bury him. But he found him not; and then he knew that Hrin's son was yet alive, and taken to Angband. With little hope Beleg departed from Amon Rdh and set out northward, towards the Crossings of Teiglin, following in the track of the Orcs; and he crossed over the Brithiach and journeyed through Dimbar towards the Pass of Anach. And now he was not far behind them, for he went without sleeping, whereas they had tarried on their road, hunting in the lands and fearing no pursuit as they came northward; and not even in the dreadful woods of Taur-nu-Fuin did he swerve from the trail, for the skill of Beleg was greater than any that have been in Middle-earth. But as he passed by night through that evil land he came upon one lying asleep at the foot of a great dead tree; and Beleg staying his steps beside the sleeper saw that it was an Elf. Then he spoke to him, and gave him lembas, and asked him what fate had brought him to that terrible place; and he named himself Gwindor, son of Guilin. Grieving Beleg looked upon him; for Gwindor was now but a bent and fearful shadow of his former shape and mood, when in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad that lord of Nargothrond rode with rash courage to the very doors of Angband, and there was taken. For few of the Noldor whom Morgoth captured were put to death, because of their skill in forging and in mining for metals and gems; and Gwindor was not slain, but put to labour in the mines of the North. By secret


jury could convict on what we heard-" "Now don't you be so confident, Mr. Jem, I ain't ever seen any jury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man...." But Jem took exception to Reverend Sykes, and we were subjected to a lengthy review of the evidence with Jem's ideas on the law regarding rape: it wasn't rape if she let you, but she had to be eighteen- in Alabama, that is- and Mayella was nineteen. Apparently you had to kick and holler, you had to be overpowered and stomped on, preferably knocked stone cold. If you were under eighteen, you didn't have to go through all this. "Mr. Jem," Reverend Sykes demurred, "this ain't a polite thing for little ladies to hear..." "Aw, she doesn't know what we're talkin' about," said Jem. "Scout, this is too old for you, ain't it?" "It most certainly is not, I know every word you're saying." Perhaps I was too convincing, because Jem hushed and never discussed the subject again. "What time is it, Reverend?" he asked. "Gettin' on toward eight." I looked down and saw Atticus strolling around with his hands in his pockets: he made a tour of the windows, then walked by the railing over to the jury box. He looked in it, inspected Judge Taylor on his throne, then went back to where he started. I caught his eye and waved to him. He acknowledged my salute with a nod, and resumed his tour. Mr. Gilmer was standing at the windows talking to Mr. Underwood. Bert, the court reporter, was chain-smoking: he sat back with his feet on the table. But the officers of the court, the ones present- Atticus, Mr. Gilmer, Judge Taylor sound asleep, and Bert, were the only ones whose behavior seemed normal. I had never seen a packed courtroom so still. Sometimes a baby would cry out fretfully, and a child would scurry out, but the grown people sat as if they were in church. In the balcony, the Negroes sat and stood around us with biblical patience. The old courthouse clock suffered its preliminary strain and struck the hour, eight deafening bongs that shook our bones. When it bonged eleven times I was past feeling: tired from fighting sleep, I allowed myself a short nap against Reverend Sykes's comfortable arm and shoulder. I jerked awake and made an honest effort to remain so, by looking down and concentrating on the heads below: there were sixteen bald ones, fourteen men that could pass for redheads, forty heads varying between brown and black, and- I remembered something Jem had once explained to me when he went through a brief period of psychical research: he said if enough people- a stadium full, maybe- were to concentrate on one thing, such as setting a tree afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite of its own accord. I toyed with the idea of asking everyone below to concentrate on setting Tom Robinson free, but thought if they were as tired as I, it wouldn't work. Dill


The raw quality of my laugh scraped my ears. “Safer to wager my magic would intervene for Sefa than Marek.” Arin’s gaze slid to mine. Had my magic even affected him? His dangerous mood hadn’t changed, and I steeled my nerves against the urge to retreat. “What if you were wrong? What if you had miscalculated?” “Pointless questions are best left to the poets,” Arin said. He forced me a step backward. I locked my jaw, glaring up at him. Motion in my periphery signaled a newly animated Marek and Sefa. Arin struck in a burst of movement, slamming the heel of his hand against the inside of my wrist and sending the dagger flying. The Nizahl Heir’s eyes were shards of lethal promise. “Point a dagger at me again, and it will be your last.” The fragile peace Arin and I had fostered disappeared. To my consternation, his gamble paid off. Now that he knew my magic reacted to threats against Sefa or Marek, he found creative ways to ensure I felt genuine fear for them every session. He had Vaun take them for a walk to Essam, and my magic hurled a spade into the board. Another session, he described exactly how a tribunal would condemn Sefa for assaulting the High Counselor, and the methods they might choose to put her to death. I managed to levitate one of the war chests. Only for a second, while magic burned my cuffs and fear for Sefa tightened my gut. Today, the war chest flew across the room, cracking against the image of Niyar. It flickered, revealing the white wall behind the animated painting, before re-forming. Instead of rejoicing in this development, Arin seemed to grow grimmer. “Are you eating?” I was thrown. “Yes?” Though the quality of food had improved from the milky wheat nonsense of the first week, the guards’ talent for cooking had not improved with it. I had used Wes’s bread as a weapon the other day. “Jasadi magic is a well that replenishes at unpredictable speeds. If you reach the bottom of your well too quickly, you might be left powerless until it refills. You are scraping stone.” “I’m moving the chests.” The rest was irrelevant. I had been weak and weary before. I could work through it. I thought of Marek’s body strung across the Citadel’s gates. The pulse at my wrists didn’t sting this time. The weapons Arin arranged on top of the chest hovered in the air for a millisecond, then flew into the wall on the far side of the center with deadly accuracy. The perimeters of my vision blurred. When I opened my eyes, the fake sky greeted me. Arin’s head moved over the sun. He glowered at me. “I’ll need a moment,” I said casually. “You need more than a moment.” He reached down, and the room spun again as I was hauled upright. My traitorous legs buckled. Arin caught me with an arm around my waist, his frown deepening. Plastered to his side and weightless, I opened my mouth to


to do when you have guests, you know. Offer food, drinks. I’m a little rusty. Don’t have many visitors but I have some lemonade.” Javier stifles a gag. “I think we’re good.” “Ah well.” Ms. Keane sighs as she sits down in a rocking chair directly across from us. She rests the butt of the gun on the floor. “You’re the kids from the camp.” She sucks her teeth. Her ragged salt-and-pepper hair is hanging around her face like a shroud, but her eyes, black as coal, stand out. “I don’t like it. Not one little bit. It’s not the way things should be.” “I don’t know what you mean, but I want to,” I say. I try sucking up to her again. “I’m looking for my friends. They came out here to talk to you about the camp, about its history. We really want to understand, and they figured you’d be the best person to ask.” Her beady eyes narrow and her mouth turns down. “Its history?” Her unkempt brows push up. “What do you know about it? Can’t be too much or you wouldn’t be here.” I try to judge how quickly I can get to the door, but Ms. Keane is positioned almost directly between it and us. “Well, that’s what my friends came here to find out,” I say as I fight to keep my voice steady. “I heard what you said, Ms. Keane. You said we should be ashamed of ourselves, that if we knew what you know, it might mean something. What did you mean by that?” Ms. Keane rocks back and looks up at the ceiling but keeps her fingers curled around the barrel of the shotgun. “That camp is an abomination. Distasteful if you ask me.” She raises her face to the ceiling again. “How?” I ask. “We don’t know what you mean.” I glance at Javier, who looks down into his lap. Bezi slides her hand onto my leg and squeezes it. Hard. Her eyes are wide, and I realize she’s trying to get me to look at something in her line of sight. I follow her gaze to a window at the front of the house. Kyle’s shadowy silhouette is hovering behind the glass. He’s wildly gesturing to the side of the house, but I can’t make out what he’s trying to tell me. Ms. Keane raises her head and I immediately lower my gaze to the floor. “Did you know that this place is special?” she asks. Her voice has a hollow, faraway tone, like she’s completely disconnected from the fact that she’s holding us hostage. “It’s old. Used to be a glacier lying over the whole place. That’s why you have all these lakes. After the ice melted, the ground opened up like a bunch of starving mouths.” She pauses for a moment before continuing. “Don’t think they were out here when the land was all ice and snow, but the land was here. Sleeping under the ice.” I glance at Bezi, who has a look of utter confusion plastered