in no hurry to recognize Lucinda’s voice. I’d agreed to the ride only after I made her swear up and down that she would drop me at the door—only—and not come up. “But I have to get your prescriptions,” she protested. “I can get my own damn prescriptions,” I insisted. But one guess for how the drop-off went down. That’s right. She picked up my prescriptions without permission and then came up to my hovel un-frigging-invited. I hadn’t been home fifteen minutes when she showed up. I was still standing in the entryway, trying to adjust to the unfamiliar silence. Peanut was still being boarded. There was no jangle of tags or scuttling of dog paws as he scrambled to greet me at the door, wagging his tail so hard he bapped himself on the ears. There was no—hopefully still-recognizable—loving little dog face to make me feel like everything could be okay. It was bad. And then, suddenly, there was Lucinda. Knocking on my hovel door. Even worse. After a lifetime of trying to hide my extreme lack of life success from both her and my dad, her arrival was pure insult to injury. I thought about ignoring her. But then I decided not to prolong the agony. “This is where you live?” she asked, stepping in as I opened the door. “I thought you went home,” I said. “I picked up your prescriptions,” Lucinda said, like she’d done me a favor. “Didn’t I tell you not to do that?” But Lucinda was looking around. “It’s very … bohemian,” she said, like that was the nicest thing she could come up with. “How did you get up here?” I demanded. “Mr. Kim gave me the code.” “You met Mr. Kim?” She nodded, still looking around. “He kept calling me Martha Stewart.” At that, I stifled a smile. Mr. Kim always had everybody’s number. I sighed. “That’s actually a great nickname for you.” She considered that. Was she complimented or insulted? Either way, I didn’t like seeing my worlds collide. “Don’t bother Mr. Kim, okay?” Mr. Kim, along with the whole Kim family, belonged to me. But she wasn’t listening. “You live here?” I could have lied, I guess. But maybe I was tired of lying. And it was hopeless anyway. She was here. It was what it was. “It’s temporary,” I said. And then, with her trademark decisiveness, she pulled out her wallet, scanned down her credit cards, and took one out. “Take it,” she said. “I don’t need it,” I said. “Just take it,” she insisted. “Your dad will never know.” “I’m fine,” I said. “This one gives you points,” she said, waving it at me. “So?” “So every time you use it, we’re making money.” “That is not how that works.” But she gave me a wink. “Just use it. I do all the bills, anyway. I’ll never tell.” How dare she act like I needed her? I never needed anyone. Ever. For anything. And the reason that was true? The reason I never let myself do a very simple


own feeling of warmth and relaxed sensuality. But he accepted her reserve. He thought it came from a desire to protect herself from him, or else it was her reaction to his coolness to her earlier in the evening, his deliberate coolness, which he knew had been taken as a rebuff. He was patient. He drank champagne and talked a little about the happenings of the day and about the personalities of Mathis and Leiter and about the possible consequences for Le Chiffre. He was discreet and he only talked about the aspects of the case on which she must have been briefed by London. She answered perfunctorily. She said that, of course, they had picked out the two gunmen, but had thought nothing of it when the man with the stick had gone to stand behind Bond's chair. They could not believe that anything would be attempted in the Casino itself. Directly Bond and Leiter had left to walk over to the hotel, she had telephoned Paris and told M's representative of the result of the game. She had had to speak guardedly and the agent had rung off without comment. She had been told to do this whatever the result. M had asked for the information to be passed on to him personally at any time of the day or night. This was all she said. She sipped at her champagne and rarely glanced at Bond. She didn't smile. Bond felt frustrated. He drank a lot of champagne and ordered another bottle. The scrambled eggs came and they ate in silence. At four o'clock Bond was about to call for the bill when the matre d'htel appeared at their table and inquired for Miss Lynd. He handed her a note which she took and read hastily. 'Oh, it's only Mathis,' she said. 'He says would I come to the entrance hall. He's got a message for you. Perhaps he's not in evening clothes or something. I won't be a minute. Then perhaps we could go home.' She gave him a strained smile. 'I'm afraid I don't feel very good company this evening. It's been rather a nerve-racking day. I'm so sorry.' Bond made a perfunctory reply and rose, pushing back the table. 'I'll get the bill,' he said, and watched her take the few steps to the entrance. He sat down and lit a cigarette. He felt flat. He suddenly realized that he was tired. The stuffiness of the room hit him as it had hit him in the Casino in the early hours of the previous day. He called for the bill and took a last mouthful of champagne. It tasted bitter, as the first glass too many always does. He would have liked to have seen Mathis's cheerful face and heard his news, perhaps even a word of congratulation. Suddenly the note to Vesper seemed odd to him. It was not the way Mathis would do things. He would have asked them both to join him at the bar of the Casino or he would have joined them


we needed to keep the project secret, which would get harder with more people in the mix. The solution to the first problem was inside a vault, collecting dust. A piece of paper with my signature was the sole document affirming my authorship of the op-ed, and it was under lock and key at the New York Times headquarters. No other record existed. “You’re going to need to get that,” Keith told me. So I drove to New York City on a bathwater summer day to see friends. That was the cover story. The precautions were less paranoia and more practical necessity. Sure, I didn’t have any reason to think I was being followed (yet), but I had every reason to believe people were seeking Anonymous. To find him—to find me—a smart and committed sleuth would surveil the only person who could confirm my identity. The man I was going to see. The middle man. I parked on the Upper East Side near the Carlyle. The art-deco hotel was where I was scheduled to have lunch with a former Oxford classmate. Beforehand, I diverted by taxi to a coffee shop a mile away along Central Park. I was early on purpose. Inside I snagged a table and eyed the entrance, scanning incoming patrons who might seem unusual. I ordered avocado toast. Nothing was out of the ordinary when my guest appeared in the doorway. Jim Dao, the New York Times opinion editor, had a trim frame and sunglasses. He knew the purpose of the visit, which is why he had suggested a spot far away from the paper’s headquarters. We greeted each other with a hug like old friends, though we’d only met in person once. We made small talk for a while. Jim talked about his family and a recent biking mishap. He was an avid cyclist. When my food arrived, he casually slipped an envelope under my plate. I pretended to ignore it and told him about summer travel plans. Jim couldn’t resist asking what was next, so he lowered his voice. “So what does the timing look like?” he asked. “No later than a year before the election,” I told him. It was already July 2019. I wanted to release the book in November, twelve months before America would decide Trump’s fate. “That’s going to be a really tight deadline for a partner,” he said, referring to a book publisher. Four months was a lightning-fast turnaround time in the publishing world. “And for me,” I replied. We chatted a bit longer before I paid. As I got up to leave for my cover lunch, Jim nodded back to my plate. “Don’t forget that.” He wasn’t talking about the toast that I’d barely touched. The envelope was still under my plate. I’d nearly forgotten it. I thanked Jim with a forced laugh, knowing that if a waiter had picked up the document, the tiny slipup could have exposed everything. (Little did I know, the plan would be compromised in far more serious ways in the months to come.) On the


of women alone; that she was not the first one they had ever seen. But most of the others were poor. Besides she liked being lonesome for a change. This freedom feeling was fine. These men didn’t represent a thing she wanted to know about. She had already experienced them through Logan and Joe. She felt like slapping some of them for sitting around grinning at her like a pack of chessy cats, trying to make out they looked like love. Ike Green sat on her case seriously one evening on the store porch when he was lucky enough to catch her alone. “You wants be keerful ’bout who you marry, Mis’ Starks. Dese strange men runnin’ heah tryin’ tuh take advantage of yo’ condition.” “Marry!” Janie almost screamed. “Joe ain’t had time tuh git cold yet. Ah ain’t even give marryin’ de first thought.” “But you will. You’se too young uh ’oman tuh stay sin- gle, and you’se too pretty for de mens tuh leave yuh alone. You’se bound tuh marry.” “Ah hope not. Ah mean, at dis present time it don’t come befo’ me. Joe ain’t been dead two months. Ain’t got settled down in his grave.” “Dat’s whut you say now, but two months mo’ and you’ll sing another tune. Den you want tuh be keerful. Womenfolks is easy taken advantage of. You know what tuh let none uh dese stray niggers dat’s settin’ round heah git de Their Eyes Were Watching God 109 inside track on yuh. They’s jes lak uh pack uh hawgs, when dey see uh full trough. Whut yuh needs is uh man dat yuh done lived uhround and know all about tuh sort of manage yo’ things fuh yuh and ginerally do round.” Janie jumped upon her feet. “Lawd, Ike Green, you’se uh case! Dis subjick you bringin’ up ain’t fit tuh be talked about at all. Lemme go inside and help Hezekiah weigh up dat bar- rel uh sugar dat just come in.” She rushed on inside the store and whispered to Hezekiah, “Ah’m gone tuh de house. Lemme know when dat ole pee-de-bed is gone and Ah’ll be right back.” Six months of wearing black passed and not one suitor had ever gained the house porch. Janie talked and laughed in the store at times, but never seemed to want to go further. She was happy except for the store. She knew by her head that she was absolute owner, but it always seemed to her that she was still clerking for Joe and that soon he would come in and find something wrong that she had done. She almost apologized to the tenants the first time she collected the rents. Felt like a usurper. But she hid that feeling by sending Hezekiah who was the best imitation of Joe that his seventeen years could make. He had even taken to smoking, and smoking cigars, since Joe’s death and tried to bite ’em tight in one side of his mouth like Joe. Every chance he got he was reared back in Joe’s


– for too long was that she was soon itching to escape beyond the boundaries. She laughed – wasn’t that true of just about everything? Boredom was a big problem for Minnie: she was always looking for a new challenge, a new encounter. She wondered if she could persuade her friends to come to London for their next lunch date; they could throw themselves in at the deep end at The Ritz or find a café with a good pianist or, even better, treat themselves to dinner and a show. Minnie clapped her hands excitedly. It might be fun to go somewhere beyond the village. Her phone buzzed and she held it against her ear. ‘Hello, Araminta Moore… oh, Francine, how are you?’ Minnie listened as an old colleague from St Hilda’s chattered, her voice rattling in the earpiece. Then Minnie said, ‘Dinner? Of course, yes, I’m free on Wednesday evening.’ She listened again before a low chuckle escaped. ‘Oh, so I’m making up numbers, am I? Well, make sure you sit me opposite a good-looking man with an interesting brain.’ Then she smiled slowly. ‘Francine – I’ll see you on Wednesday, around seven… That’s lovely, I’ll look forward to it.’ Minnie put the phone down and burst out laughing. She’d been offered a last-minute dinner invitation on Wednesday – that could only mean that another single female had just cancelled. Minnie wasn’t always the first-choice guest – she had a reputation for speaking her mind and upsetting the applecart. She’d cut conversation dead by responding curtly to people she knew were clearly wrong. Minnie didn’t suffer fools gladly. But she’d been invited to dinner and Wednesday evening was ripe with possibilities. Francine Jarvis had been a lecturer with Minnie; they knew each other well and it would be good to catch up with some old faces and talk about interesting subjects. There would always be controversy. She eased herself to her feet and stretched her arms above her head, twirling once. A dinner party with an old friend and lots of banter. Perfect. 10 On Wednesday morning, Lin was collecting breakfast dishes in the kitchen, listening to a sentimental tune on the radio, singing along with the lyrics. Outside, the lawn was illuminated green and gold in the sunlight. She peered into the back garden through the kitchen window, noticing the neat vegetable patch, clusters of primroses, daffodils swaying. Beyond, in George Ledbury’s field, a piece of farm machinery chugged along, throwing out soil. Lin picked up a tea towel and began to dry the breakfast plates. She wondered what Minnie would be doing now; she’d probably be stretched out like a happy cat on the sofa, reading a book. Josie would be doing the same thing, basking in the garden. Lin hadn’t started her own book yet; it was still in the torn wrapping paper. She compared herself to her teacher, Miss Hamilton. Cecily was much older, but she was inspirational – she hadn’t lost any of her elegance and zest for life. She’d be in her neat bungalow now


our Duke's father. Those horns were sprayed with a transparent fixative within hours after this beast killed the Old Duke." Mapes stood up. "Ah, now!" she said. "It's just blood," Jessica said. "Old blood at that. Get some help hanging these now. The beastly things are heavy." "Did you think the blood bothered me?" Mapes asked. "I'm of the desert and I've seen blood aplenty." "I . . . see that you have," Jessica said. "And some of it my own," Mapes said. "More'n you drew with your puny scratch." "You'd rather I'd cut deeper?" "Ah, no! The body's water is scant enough 'thout gushing a wasteful lot of it into the air. You did the thing right." And Jessica, noting the words and manner, caught the deeper implications in the phrase, 'the body's water.' Again she felt a sense of oppression at the importance of water on Arrakis. "On which side of the dining hall shall I hang which one of these pretties, my Lady?" Mapes asked. Ever the practical one, this Mapes, Jessica thought. She said: "Use your own judgment, Mapes. It makes no real difference." "As you say, my Lady." Mapes stooped, began clearing wrappings and twine from the head. "Killed an old duke, did you?" she crooned. "Shall I summon a handler to help you?" Jessica asked. "I'll manage, my Lady." Yes, she'll manage, Jessica thought. There's that about this Fremen creature: the drive to manage. Jessica felt the cold sheath of the crysknife beneath her bodice, thought of the long chain of Bene Gesserit scheming that had forged another link here. Because of that scheming, she had survived a deadly crisis. "It cannot be hurried," Mapes had said. Yet there was a tempo of headlong rushing to this place that filled Jessica with foreboding. And not all the preparations of the Missionaria Protectiva nor Hawat's suspicious inspection of this castellated pile of rocks could dispel the feeling. "When you've finished hanging those, start unpacking the boxes," Jessica said. "One of the cargo men at the entry has all the keys and knows where things should go. Get the keys and the list from him. If there are any questions I'll be in the south wing." "As you will, my Lady," Mapes said. Jessica turned away, thinking: Hawat may have passed this residency as safe, but there's something wrong about the place. I can feel it. An urgent need to see her son gripped Jessica. She began walking toward the arched doorway that led into the passage to the dining hall and the family wings. Faster and faster she walked until she was almost running. Behind her, Mapes paused in clearing the wrappings from the bull's head, looked at the retreating back. "She's the One all right," she muttered. "Poor thing." =========================== "Yueh! Yueh! Yueh!" goes the refrain. "A million deaths were not enough for Yueh!" -from "A Child's History of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan The door stood ajar, and Jessica stepped through it into a room with yellow walls. To her left stretched a low settee


splendid to think I had touched somebody's heart. It's so romantic to take part in a concert, isn't it? Oh, it's been a very memorable occasion indeed." "Wasn't the boys' dialogue fine?" said Diana. "Gilbert Blythe was just splendid. Anne, I do think it's awful mean the way you treat Gil. Wait till I tell you. When you ran off the platform after the fairy dialogue one of your roses fell out of your hair. I saw Gil pick it up and put it in his breast pocket. There now. You're so romantic that I'm sure you ought to be pleased at that." "It's nothing to me what that person does," said Anne loftily. "I simply never waste a thought on him, Diana." That night Marilla and Matthew, who had been out to a concert for the first time in twenty years, sat for a while by the kitchen fire after Anne had gone to bed. "Well now, I guess our Anne did as well as any of them," said Matthew proudly. "Yes, she did," admitted Marilla. "She's a bright child, Matthew. And she looked real nice too. I've been kind of opposed to this concert scheme, but I suppose there's no real harm in it after all. Anyhow, I was proud of Anne tonight, although I'm not going to tell her so." "Well now, I was proud of her and I did tell her so 'fore she went upstairs," said Matthew. "We must see what we can do for her some of these days, Marilla. I guess she'll need something more than Avonlea school by and by." "There's time enough to think of that," said Marilla. "She's only thirteen in March. Though tonight it struck me she was growing quite a big girl. Mrs. Lynde made that dress a mite too long, and it makes Anne look so tall. She's quick to learn and I guess the best thing we can do for her will be to send her to Queen's after a spell. But nothing need be said about that for a year or two yet." "Well now, it'll do no harm to be thinking it over off and on," said Matthew. "Things like that are all the better for lots of thinking over." 26. The Story Club Is Formed Junior Avonlea found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence again. To Anne in particular things seemed fearfully flat, stale, and unprofitable after the goblet of excitement she had been sipping for weeks. Could she go back to the former quiet pleasures of those faraway days before the concert? At first, as she told Diana, she did not really think she could. "I'm positively certain, Diana, that life can never be quite the same again as it was in those olden days," she said mournfully, as if referring to a period of at least fifty years back. "Perhaps after a while I'll get used to it, but I'm afraid concerts spoil people for everyday life. I suppose that is why Marilla disapproves of them. Marilla is such a sensible


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

I’m sure. Anton always has a purpose. And an Arceneaux Consecration is a special occasion; I shouldn’t expect it to be the same as others I’ve seen.” It sounded like Gabriel had gotten very good at rationalizing whatever Anton did. The man could probably strip naked and waltz around the South Sanctuary, and Gabriel would think it had some higher spiritual purpose. Lore pulled off the cork of the wine bottle with her teeth. It smelled vinegary, and her nose wrinkled when she poured it. “It’s shit,” she warned, handing a glass to Gabriel, “but so is this day.” She half expected him to refuse—she wasn’t clear on how the Presque Mort felt about alcohol—and for a moment, it looked like he would, eyeing the glass balefully. “If you don’t help me drink this, I’ll just throw back the whole bottle,” Lore said. “I promise you don’t want that. I sing when I’m drunk, and I’m a very bad singer.” Gabriel studied the glass a moment longer before plucking it from her fingers. “Fine.” He tossed back a swallow, pulling a face. “Apollius’s wounds, that’s awful.” “But it is better than thinking about the situation in which we find ourselves.” Lore sat back on the carpet with her own glass, crossing her legs beneath her borrowed skirt. “I still don’t know how I’m supposed to get close to Bastian. Or why we had to attend his extremely… eccentric… Consecration.” “It won’t be hard,” Gabriel said darkly, taking another sip of wine. He avoided the subject of the Consecration entirely. “Like August said, Bastian likes pretty people. Just let him come to you.” “That could’ve been a compliment, if you didn’t say pretty with the same tone that most people say pus.” Lore tossed back the rest of her vinegary wine and poured more. “But this is the most words you’ve said to me since yesterday, so I suppose I should be grateful.” Gabriel said nothing, staring down into the crimson depths of his glass. “Being here is… difficult,” he said finally. They sat in silence for a moment. “I’m sorry,” Lore murmured. He looked at her, then, brows lowered. “Sorry for what?” “That you have to stay here. With me.” He snorted. “You’re not the worst company in the Citadel.” “You really need to work on your compliments.” Gabriel lifted his wine her direction, a mock toast. She raised her glass in kind, and they both drank. It was strangely easy, being with the Mort. He wasn’t one to talk, but his silence was soothing, like sitting with an old friend, someone you’d known for ages. Lore frowned into her wine. She’d barely known Gabriel for two whole days; their relationship began with a fight in an alley. And he was obviously deeply loyal to Anton, while Lore didn’t really trust the Priest Exalted or his brother. Getting too comfortable with the one-eyed Mort was surely not a good idea—and she knew better, besides. What was it about him that made her want to toss out years of experience teaching her trust


we're here? Eh?" "They knew at the airport." "The man with a trumpet-thing--" "My dad." Piggy put on his glasses. "Nobody knows where we are," said Piggy. He was paler than before and breathless. "Perhaps they knew where we was going to; and perhaps not. But they don't know where we are 'cos we never got there." He gaped at them for a moment, then swayed and sat down. Ralph took the conch from his hands. "That's what I was going to say," he went on, "when you all, all. . . ." He gazed at their intent faces. "The plane was shot down in flames. Nobody knows where we are. We may be here a long time." The silence was so complete that they could hear the unevenness of Piggy's breathing. The sun slanted in and lay golden over half the platform. The breezes that on the lagoon had chased their tails like kittens were finding their way across the platform and into the forest. Ralph pushed back the tangle of fair hair that hung on his forehead. "So we may be here a long time." Nobody said anything. He grinned suddenly. "But this is a good island. We--Jack, Simon and me-- we climbed the mountain. It's wizard. There's food and drink, and--" "Rocks--" "Blue flowers--" Piggy, partly recovered, pointed to the conch in Ralph's hands, and Jack and Simon fell silent. Ralph went on. "While we're waiting we can have a good time on this island." He gesticulated widely. "It's like in a book." At once there was a clamor. "Treasure Island--" "Swallows and Amazons--" "Coral Island--" Ralph waved the conch. "This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun." Jack held out his hand for the conch. "There's pigs," he said. "There's food; and bathing water in that little stream along there--and everything. Didn't anyone find anything else?" He handed the conch back to Ralph and sat down. Apparently no one had found anything. The older boys first noticed the child when he resisted. There was a group of little boys urging him forward and he did not want to go. He was a shrimp of a boy, about six years old, and one side of his face was blotted out by a mulberry-colored birthmark. He stood now, warped out of the perpendicular by the fierce light of publicity, and he bored into the coarse grass with one toe. He was muttering and about to cry. The other little boys, whispering but serious, pushed him toward Ralph. "All right," said Ralph, "come on then." The small boy looked round in panic. "Speak up!" The small boy held out his hands for the conch and the assembly shouted with laughter; at once he snatched back his hands and started to cry. "Let him have the conch!" shouted Piggy. "Let him have it!" At last Ralph induced him to hold the shell but by then the blow of laughter had taken away the child's voice. Piggy knelt by him, one hand on


pushing open the door. It creaked, but if the sound woke anyone inside, they didn’t protest. Bastian and Gabe settled Milo on the floor, then left quickly, soundlessly. He didn’t stir. “You’re a sneaky lot,” Val commented once they were all outside. “Have either of you considered poison running?” Gabe looked stricken, but Bastian shrugged. “Not as such, no, but never say never. Although my current schedule wouldn’t allow for it.” “That’s a shame.” Mari shook her head. “Our crew is dwindling rapidly these days.” “Arrests?” Lore asked quietly. Val’s operation might be newly legal, but bloodcoats had been known to arrest anyone they didn’t like the look of. “If only it were that simple.” A laugh huffed from Mari’s mouth, twisting into the air like smoke. “Our most loyal are still around—everyone you’d know, mouse, don’t worry—but the newer folks keep getting lured away.” She tightened the knot on her headscarf again, lips twisting wryly. “I guess getting paid enough to cover your rent for a year with one night of work is a hard bargain to pass up.” The words registered with all three of them at the same time. Bastian’s eyes widened. Gabe’s lips went flat. Lore’s pulse thumped in her wrists. “You know about the cargo movements?” “Cargo,” Val said derisively. “It’s contraband, has to be. No one pays that amount of money to move anything legal.” “Oh, it’s absolutely not legal.” Mari snorted. “Phillip let some of the details slip when he came by to quit, and you’d think he’d signed his own execution warrant when he realized. I had to promise up and down for nearly an hour that I wouldn’t tell anyone before he’d go.” “Do you have any information about where they move it to?” Gabe sounded like he was conducting an interrogation. Lore scowled at him. He paid no mind. “Or anything about who is actually doing the hiring?” Val gave him an icy glance. “I believe Mari just said she promised a friend not to disclose anything.” The skin on Lore’s shoulders prickled. The last thing she needed was for Gabe to goad Val into a fight. She was certain Gabe would lose. Bastian apparently thought the same thing. “Of course we would never want someone to go back on a promise,” he interjected with a smile. “I apologize for my friend’s impertinence.” If looks could light someone on fire, the glance Gabe shot Bastian would’ve left him in cinders. Mari crossed her arms, thoughtfully chewed her lip. “This is information you need, though, isn’t it?” she asked Lore softly. “For whatever they’re having you do up at the Citadel. Which means it’s more than just hauling contraband.” “Yes,” Lore said. She’d never been able to lie to Mari. She saw through to the core of things, even when you tried to hide them. Her mothers’ eyes flickered toward each other. “Can you tell us anything, Lore?” Mari asked softly. She wanted to. She wanted to let all of it go—the bodies, the lies, the esoteric mysteries she knew had to fit


a maximum of eight hundred pounds a month with bills included, so I spend my free evenings and entire weekend at viewings until I meet Jo Bowen (whose name is actually Joseph because her mother believes free speech can’t exist if any words remain gender-assigned. Jo has a sister called James who goes by Jamie and a brother called Elizabeth who goes by Eli). Jo has a room available in a three-bedroom flat in Wandsworth located a ten-minute walk from two stations. Hi Maddie, Yes, the room is still available! You’ll be living with me and another flatmate called Cam, who moved in last week. She works as a primary school teacher’s assistant and I work in the charity sector. Are you free to view the room and meet us Sunday afternoon? x The ground-floor maisonette is an old build and the landlady, Winnie (Jo’s mum, and possibly short for Winston?), bought this house in the seventies. The kitchen has white panel cupboards, an old-fashioned oven and linoleum floors; the fridge is the most modern fixture. The corridor is long but narrow, Cam’s room is next to the kitchen, and the living room is bright and colorful, with a red sofa in the middle and a teal armchair with a tartan blanket draped over it in the corner. A painted tapestry of a rural village hangs on the wall and two tall bookcases are slotted into opposite corners. Like the kitchen, it has enough room for three people, and there’s even a small garden out the back. Upstairs, Jo shows me a separate toilet and bathroom. I picture myself in the tub, lights off, candles lit, bubbles, music, seltzer in a wineglass and bath bombs that change the color of the water pink. Then we walk into what would be my room. It’s bigger than the box room I currently reside in at home, and I briefly consider what I’d do with the space if it were given to me. The room comes with a double bed, a large wardrobe, wide windows, and a small desk and chair. The rent is more than I hoped to pay, but this is the best flat—and residents—I’ve found by far. Before Jo, I’d spent an entire day wishing the opportunity to move out had been presented to me earlier. Only a day before my search began, Shu messaged to say Lydia had agreed to them living together and they were now looking for a place for just the two of them. Since then I’d met shared-bathroom-nightmare Carrie, who’d left two used tampons floating in the toilet; four-in-the-house-and-therefore-four-sets-of-crusting-washing-up-left-in-the-sink Jennifer, and who could forget are-you-single-because-this-is-an-open-kind-of-house Tim? I’d of course met some regular people too, but not surprisingly their rooms were snapped up before I’d even caught the train home. Usually I’d stand in the corner whilst I was essentially interviewed by the prospective flatmates, but Jo offers me a cup of tea and a seat on her squashy sofa and when Cam is off the phone we all talk about work, books, and social lives (theirs far


so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday- school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull. "Why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church." "Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help US -- can't we lick the other crowd then?" "How you going to get them?" "I don't know. How do THEY get them?" "Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school superinten- dent over the head with it -- or any other man." "Who makes them tear around so?" "Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to marry, they've got to do it -- and they've got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand." "Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flat- heads for not keeping the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. And what's more -- if I was one


his scarf. I’m certain he’s going to kiss me, but instead he says, “I read your books.” I back up, this revelation a shock to my system. “I wanted to tell you earlier,” he continues, “but I thought it might be too nerve-racking if you knew I was reading them on the flight.” “You mean, you read Maddy and Amber’s books.” “Sure,” he says. “Their names are on the covers, I guess. Maybe it’s because I was looking for you, but I could hear you, even in their voices.” I open my mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. The fact that I was that visible in those books, enough for this person who’s known me for only seven weeks to see me there . . . “Then I screwed up,” I say simply. He inches closer, not seeming to care that his sneakers are wet. “I don’t see it that way at all. Maybe you were trying to hide yourself in their stories, but you were still there. That’s how talented you are. That’s how vibrant your writing is—you can’t remove yourself from it completely, even if you try.” I swallow hard, unsure how to process all of this. “I know it would be a risk, and I know it wouldn’t be easy. But you could write for yourself if you wanted to. What you said that night I barely survived a debilitating illness”—this earns him a jab in the ribs—“about not being able to enjoy writing for a while . . . it just made me so sad. Because even in those books you were just doing for a paycheck, I could feel how much you loved it.” “You remember that?” I ask, wondering just how much he remembers. Just the heart-to-heart about my writing, or the crush confession, too. When he blushes, it ignites something deep inside me that I’ve spent ages trying to ignore. “All of it.” Everything he’s saying, the compliments and the subtext, it’s too overwhelming. My coat is too tight and the wind is too brutal and my socks are drenched. This whole moment is a symphony of Too Much. If I allow myself to think that I could make it as a writer, by myself, then that means opening myself up to the possibility of failure. It means leaving behind the security blanket of names that mean far more than my own. So I bend down, scoop up some snow, and hit him with a snowball, because that’s easier than thinking. He holds a hand to where his chest is flecked with white. “Oh, you’re in trouble now,” he says, scrambling to make one of his own while I race off into the snowy woods. * * * Eventually, when we can’t feel our fingers or toes, we shiver our way back to the inn. Our clothes are soaked from the snowball fight, so we peel them off and lay them to dry by the fireplace while we drag pillows and blankets onto the floor next to the flames. “Any more Cameos to shoot?”


door is open and the light is on, but just into the girls’ locker room, where Robbie won’t stop asking questions even while she pees. She takes so long that he steps into a shower stall with his clothes on, turns on the water. He must have fallen asleep for a second, leaning against the wall, because she’s in here now with him, slapping his cheek, telling him to wake up. If they’re in the shower they might as well have sex, and he tries to take her wet clothes off. She gets mad and yells, pushes him away. She’s making too much noise. He asks why she won’t have sex, asks if it’s because she already had sex with someone today, asks if that person was you. She tells him he’s an idiot and tries to leave the shower stall. This Robbie grabs Thalia’s neck, shakes her, just wants to shake sense into her, needs to shake her against something hard, against this wet and slippery wall, and he feels like an animal, feels like when he’s flying down a hill in snow, when the fire flows into his muscles, when his body is a machine. He doesn’t tell his body what to do because it knows, it follows the hill, it follows gravity, and that’s what he’s doing now, following gravity, until Thalia starts seizing, her eyes rolling back. She slides to the bottom of the stall, the water washing the blood on the wall from red to pink to nothing. He sobers up, or at least the things in front of him come clear: He needs to fix this. Not fix her, because it’s too late, she’s twitching like she’s electrocuted—but fix all of this, this bad movie, this problem, this thing that’s befallen him. He drags her small, wet body out of the locker room and back to the pool, gets her clothes off, gets her into a swimsuit he finds. He has all the time in the world, because meanwhile the other Robbie, the one in the woods, is singing along with the boom box, a falsetto rendition of “Come to My Window.” That Robbie is hamming it up, spinning with his arms out, as this Robbie slides Thalia into the pool, knowing, to the extent he knows anything right now, that she’s still alive, that what he did in the shower might have been an accident but this is intentional, this is murder, is murder, is murder. He has time to find the bleach, to use it on the pool deck and in the hall—Omar is gone by now, his office light off—and in the locker room. He has time to vomit in the sink, to wash it down the drain, to wash his hands and face. There are extra clothes in Thalia’s backpack—a green sweater, jeans, some underwear—and he folds these neatly on the bench as if this were what she’d worn. He’ll take the wet, bloodstained clothes and find a way to burn them. He slips back out through the emergency exit. In the


will! --and you rise up from table virtually governor of the glorious old State! Governor Pyncheon of Massachusetts! And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty like this? It has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there needs little more than to signify your acceptance, why do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken chair, as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy. Well! it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, tautog, woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and gravies crusted over with cold fat. The Judge, had he done nothing else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork. It was he, you know, of whom it used to be said, in reference to his ogre-like appetite, that his Creator made him a great aninmal, but that the dinner-hour made him a great beast. Persons of his large sensual endowments must claim indulgence, at their feeding-time. But, for once, the Judge is entirely too late for dinner! Too late, we fear, even to join the party at their wine! The guests are warm and merry; they have given up the Judge; and, concluding that the Free-Soilers have him, they will fix upon another candidate. Were our friend now to stalk in among them, with that wide-open stare, at once wild and stolid, his ungenial presence would be apt to change their cheer. Neither would it be seemly in Judge Pyncheon, generally so scrupulous in his attire, to show himself at a dinner-table with that crimson stain upon his shirt-bosom. By the bye, how came it there? It is an ugly sight, at any rate; and the wisest way for the Judge is to button his coat closely over his breast, and, taking his horse and chaise from the livery stable, to make all speed to his own house. There, after a glass of brandy and water, and a mutton-chop, a beefsteak, a broiled fowl, or some such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had better spend the evening by the fireside. He must toast his slippers a long while, in order to get rid of the chilliness which the air of this vile old house has sent curdling through his veins. Up, therefore, Judge Pyncheon, up! You have lost a day. But to-morrow will be here anon. Will you rise, betimes, and make the most of it? To-morrow. To-morrow! To-morrow. We, that are alive, may rise betimes to-morrow. As for him that has died to-day, his morrow will be the resurrection morn. Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the corners of the room. The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first become more definite; then, spreading wider, they lose their distinctness of outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it


deputy chief of staff, taking over for Elizabeth Neumann, who stepped away to become the DHS assistant secretary handling counterterrorism issues. Chad Wolf was promoted to chief of staff. Elizabeth and I had a farewell wine night before I moved into her office, and she left me a few bottles. “You’ll need it,” she said, knowing how difficult the role was. I ended up stocking the filing cabinet with whiskey, tequila, and mescal instead. In theory, it was my post-9/11 dream job. I was charged with leading DHS strategy on everything from stopping mass shootings to preventing cyber warfare. This is why I had come to Washington. In reality, though, Donald Trump’s immigration obsession and his bad-idea bonfires sucked up most of the oxygen, making it almost impossible to run the country’s third-largest department. Trump phoned one morning while I was briefing the secretary on a national security threat. “Kiiiirstjen,” he said in his distinctive New York accent. “I can’t believe what I am seeing at the border.” The president was rankled by footage of migrants crossing into the United States and wanted to talk about creative options for blocking them. He had an idea: “a big, deep moat.” She muted the line. “Did he just say what I think he said?” “I want you to figure out how deep you can dig it, okay Kirstjen?” Trump proposed filling the moat with “snakes and alligators” to eat people alive if they fell into it. “How much would this cost, honey?” She unmuted. “We’ll look into it, Mr. President.” He kept pressing the point until she assured him again we’d get back to the White House. He wasn’t joking, and we weren’t laughing anymore. The call derailed the morning as DHS cobbled together a back-of-the-envelope estimate for digging a border-long ditch and filling it with snakes and alligators. Telling Trump it was a ridiculous idea wouldn’t stop him. He needed to see a huge price tag to let something go, so we told him a two-thousand-mile reptile-filled moat would cost tens of billions of dollars. Trump dropped the psychotic suggestion. We established a daycare routine with the president, alternating in shift-work-like fashion. The secretary and Chad fielded the ceaseless demands from the Oval Office on border security and immigration. I usually ran point on the non-immigration issues, but everything I was working on kept getting pushed to the back burner. I shared my exasperation with someone who felt the same way, Hannah Hummelberg. The twenty-something policy advisor had joined the DHS front office early that year after serving as an aide to Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell. Hannah shepherded decisions on the thorniest topics that landed on the secretary’s desk—terrorism, election security, counterintelligence. Like me, she found that the issues weren’t getting the attention they deserved. We had bigger problems. And they were emanating from the Oval Office. Hannah and I ended most days reviewing intel reports in the SCIF, where I told her about the bizarre conversations we’d had with the president. “Zero—ZERO!” Trump roared one day. He went on a tangent,


help Bezi get her headset on. “Just leave the channel open—that way you won’t have to toggle it on and off,” I say. “One of us should get to the control center and see if the cameras are still working. The lock on that outside door is the real deal, so you can lock yourself in there and be pretty safe.” “I’ll go,” Kyle says. “If the cameras are working, we can just avoid these weirdos until help gets here.” “Should we all go to the control center?” Bezi asks. “Just lock ourselves in there?” “I know that’s probably what we should do,” I say. “But Paige might still be out there, and maybe if we can listen in on these people, we can find out if they know where she is.” “I thought we were gonna hide,” Bezi says. “Now we gotta get close to them?” “I’m not saying we go hunt them down. I’m just saying we need to keep our ears open in case they let something slip about Paige or Heather or Jordan.” Bezi nods, but fear is stretched across her face, pulling the corners of her mouth down. I close my hand over hers. Suddenly, there’s a loud click, and the porch light on the lodge goes out. My phone buzzes, signaling to me that it’s not charging anymore. The always-present electrical hum stops, and silence swallows the lodge whole. “The power,” Kyle whispers. My heart ticks up. “The generator will keep the control center running for a few more hours. We gotta get over there.” Kyle sighs and pulls something out of his back pocket—the ghostlike mask he uses during the game. “Put it on,” I say. He slips the mask over his head. “That’s terrifying,” Bezi whispers. “When you get to the control center, talk to me on the headset so we know you’re safe,” I say. Kyle nods, takes a deep breath, and exits the lodge through the rear door. I lock it behind him, and then Bezi and I uncover the hatch in the kitchen floor. I slip my flashlight out of my pocket and shine it down the tunnel. “Electricity’s out down there too.” I lean back and sigh. “If those lights are out, that means power to the main breaker is out. Everything in the entire camp is off that’s not battery powered.” “Shit,” Bezi says. “So what do we do?” I cup my hand over my earpiece as I pick up the half-empty can of bear spray and slip it into my pocket. “Kyle? You okay?” There’s a rustling on the channel. The static is bad, but after a moment, Kyle’s voice breaks through. “Yeah. I’m going . . .  the pier. I thought . . . saw something by . . . lake.” “What? What did you see?” “I don’t know,” he says, his voice tight. “Like . . . something white . . . feathers.” My hands are slick with sweat as I try to keep my voice level. “Keep going. Do not stop. Tell me when


at a picture-book with Alfred Temple -- and so absorbed were they, and their heads so close together over the book, that they did not seem to be conscious of anything in the world besides. Jealousy ran red-hot through Tom's veins. He began to hate himself for throwing away the chance Becky had offered for a reconciliation. He called himself a fool, and all the hard names he could think of. He wanted to cry with vexation. Amy chatted happily along, as they walked, for her heart was singing, but Tom's tongue had lost its function. He did not hear what Amy was saying, and whenever she paused expectantly he could only stammer an awkward assent, which was as often misplaced as otherwise. He kept drifting to the rear of the school-house, again and again, to sear his eyeballs with the hateful spectacle there. He could not help it. And it maddened him to see, as he thought he saw, that Becky Thatcher never once suspected that he was even in the land of the living. But she did see, nevertheless; and she knew she was winning her fight, too, and was glad to see him suffer as she had suffered. Amy's happy prattle became intolerable. Tom hinted at things he had to attend to; things that must be done; and time was fleeting. But in vain --------------------------------------------------------- -188- -- the girl chirped on. Tom thought, "Oh, hang her, ain't I ever going to get rid of her?" At last he must be attending to those things -- and she said artlessly that she would be "around" when school let out. And he hastened away, hating her for it. "Any other boy!" Tom thought, grating his teeth. "Any boy in the whole town but that Saint Louis smarty that thinks he dresses so fine and is aristocracy! Oh, all right, I licked you the first day you ever saw this town, mister, and I'll lick you again! You just wait till I catch you out! I'll just take and -- " And he went through the motions of thrashing an imaginary boy -- pummelling the air, and kicking and gouging. "Oh, you do, do you? You holler 'nough, do you? Now, then, let that learn you!" And so the imaginary flogging was finished to his satisfaction. Tom fled home at noon. His conscience could not endure any more of Amy's grateful happiness, and his jealousy could bear no more of the other distress. Becky resumed her picture inspections with Alfred, but as the minutes dragged along and no Tom came to suffer, her triumph began to cloud and she lost interest; gravity and absent-mindedness followed, and then melancholy; two or three times she pricked up her ear at a footstep, but it was a false hope; no Tom came. At last she grew entirely miserable and wished she hadn't carried it so far. When poor Alfred, seeing that he was losing her, --------------------------------------------------------- -189- he did not know how, kept exclaiming: "Oh,here's a jolly one! look at this!" she lost patience at


cock to the musicians and began to dance. Her brass anklets rattled as she danced and her body gleamed with cam wood in the soft yellow light. The musicians with their wood, clay and metal instruments went from song to song. And they were all gay. They sang the latest song in the village: " If I hold her hand She says, 'Don't touch!' If I hold her foot She says, 'Don't touch!' But when I hold her waist-beads she pretends not to know." The night was already far spent when the guests rose to go, taking their bride home to spend seven market weeks with her suitor's family. They sang songs as they went, and on their way they paid short courtesy visits to prominent men like Okonkwo, before they finally left for their village. Okonkwo made a present of two cocks to them. CHAPTER THIRTEEN Go-di-di-go-go-di-go. Di-go-go-di-go. It was the ekwe talking to the clan. One of the things every man learned was the language of the hollowed-out wooden instrument. Dum! Dum! Dum! boomed the cannon at intervals. The first cock had not crowed, and Umuofia was still swallowed up in sleep and silence when the ekwe began to talk, and the cannon shattered the silence. Men stirred on their bamboo beds and listened anxiously. Somebody was dead. The cannon seemed to rend the sky. Di-go-go-di-go-di-di-go-go floated in the message-laden night air. The faint and distant wailing of women settled like a sediment of sorrow on the earth. Now and again a full-chested lamentation rose above the wailing whenever a man came into the place of death. He raised his voice once or twice in manly sorrow and then sat down with the other men listening to the endless wailing of the women and the esoteric language of the ekwe. Now and again the cannon boomed. The wailing of the women would not be heard beyond the village, but the ekwe carried the news to all the nine villages and even beyond. It began by naming the clan: Umuofia obodo dike! "the land of the brave." Umuofia obodo dike! Umuofia obodo dike! It said this over and over again, and as it dwelt on it, anxiety mounted in every heart that heaved on a bamboo bed that night. Then it went nearer and named the village: "Iguedo of the yellow grinding-stone!" It was Okonkwo's village. Again and again Iguedo was called and men waited breathlessly in all the nine villages. At last the man was named and people sighed "E-u-u, Ezeudu is dead." A cold shiver ran down Okonkwo's back as he remembered the last time the old man had visited him. "That boy calls you father," he had said. "Bear no hand in his death." Ezeudu was a great man, and so all the clan was at his funeral. The ancient drums of death beat, guns and cannon were fired, and men dashed about in frenzy, cutting down every tree or animal they saw, jumping over walls and dancing on the roof. It was a warrior's funeral, and from


one thing, of course," I went on: "they mustn't, before she goes, see each other for three seconds." Then it came over me that, in spite of Flora's presumable sequestration from the instant of her return from the pool, it might already be too late. "Do you mean," I anxiously asked, "that they HAVE met?" At this she quite flushed. "Ah, miss, I'm not such a fool as that! If I've been obliged to leave her three or four times, it has been each time with one of the maids, and at present, though she's alone, she's locked in safe. And yet--and yet!" There were too many things. "And yet what?" "Well, are you so sure of the little gentleman?" "I'm not sure of anything but YOU. But I have, since last evening, a new hope. I think he wants to give me an opening. I do believe that--poor little exquisite wretch!--he wants to speak. Last evening, in the firelight and the silence, he sat with me for two hours as if it were just coming." Mrs. Grose looked hard, through the window, at the gray, gathering day. "And did it come?" "No, though I waited and waited, I confess it didn't, and it was without a breach of the silence or so much as a faint allusion to his sister's condition and absence that we at last kissed for good night. All the same," I continued, "I can't, if her uncle sees her, consent to his seeing her brother without my having given the boy-- and most of all because things have got so bad--a little more time." My friend appeared on this ground more reluctant than I could quite understand. "What do you mean by more time?" "Well, a day or two--really to bring it out. He'll then be on MY side--of which you see the importance. If nothing comes, I shall only fail, and you will, at the worst, have helped me by doing, on your arrival in town, whatever you may have found possible." So I put it before her, but she continued for a little so inscrutably embarrassed that I came again to her aid. "Unless, indeed," I wound up, "you really want NOT to go." I could see it, in her face, at last clear itself; she put out her hand to me as a pledge. "I'll go--I'll go. I'll go this morning." I wanted to be very just. "If you SHOULD wish still to wait, I would engage she shouldn't see me." "No, no: it's the place itself. She must leave it." She held me a moment with heavy eyes, then brought out the rest. "Your idea's the right one. I myself, miss--" "Well?" "I can't stay." The look she gave me with it made me jump at possibilities. "You mean that, since yesterday, you HAVE seen--?" She shook her head with dignity. "I've HEARD--!" "Heard?" "From that child--horrors! There!" she sighed with tragic relief. "On my honor, miss, she says things--!" But at this evocation she broke down; she dropped, with a sudden sob,


up his knife and selected the thickest of the pieces of hot toast. He suddenly thought: two of them are dead, and I have got one more on my side. It's a start. He dipped the knife into the glass of very hot water which stood beside the pot of Strasbourg porcelain and reminded himself to tip the waiter doubly for this particular meal. CHAPTER 7 - ROUGE ET NOIR Bond was determined to be completely fit and relaxed for a gambling session which might last most of the night. He ordered a masseur for three o'clock. After the remains of his luncheon had been removed, he sat at his window gazing out to sea until there came a knock on the door as the masseur, a Swede, presented himself Silently he got to work on Bond from his feet to his neck, melting the tensions in his body and calming his still twanging nerves. Even the long purpling bruises down Bond's left shoulder and side ceased to throb, and when the Swede had gone Bond fell into a dreamless sleep. He awoke in the evening completely refreshed. After a cold shower, Bond walked over to the Casino. Since the night before he had lost the mood of the tables. He needed to re-establish that focus which is half mathematical and half intuitive and which, with a slow pulse and a sanguine temperament, Bond knew to be the essential equipment of any gambler who was set on winning. Bond had always been a gambler. He loved the dry riffle of the cards and the constant unemphatic drama of the quiet figures round the green tables. He liked the solid, studied comfort of card-rooms and casinos, the well-padded arms of the chairs, the glass of champagne or whisky at the elbow, the quiet unhurried attention of good servants. He was amused by the impartiality of the roulette ball and of the playing-cards - and their eternal bias. He liked being an actor and a spectator and from his chair to take part in other men's dramas and decisions, until it came to his own turn to say that vital 'yes' or 'no', generally on a fifty-fifty chance. Above all, he liked it that everything was one's own fault. There was only oneself to praise or blame. Luck was a servant and not a master. Luck had to be accepted with a shrug or taken advantage of up to the hilt. But it had to be understood and recognized for what it was and not confused with a faulty appreciation of the odds, for, at gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck. And luck in all its moods had to be loved and not feared Bond saw luck as a woman, to be softly wooed or brutally ravaged, never pandered to or pursued. But he was honest enough to admit that he had never yet been made to suffer by cards or by women. One day, and he accepted the fact he would be brought to his knees by


them. “Your letters have been a light for me to follow. Your words? A sublime feast that fed me on days when I was starving. I love you, Iris.” Iris took the paper from him, folding it back into her pocket. She knew what she wanted, and yet if she thought about it too much, she might ruin everything. The fear that this might shatter was nearly overwhelming. As if sensing her thoughts, Roman reached out, guiding her to straddle his lap. She was wonderfully, unbearably close to him. Their faces were level, their gazes aligned. His heat seeped into her and she shifted on his thighs. She gripped his sleeves, as if the world was spinning around them. He made a sound—a slip of breath—that made her heart race. “I’ll hurt you, Kitt!” She started to lean back, but he touched her hips, holding her steady. “You’re not going to hurt my leg,” he said with a smile. “Don’t worry about hurting me.” He drew her closer, closer until she gasped. “Now, before we can proceed with anything else, I have a very important question for you.” “Go on,” Iris said. This must be the moment. He was about to propose again. Mirth shone in his eyes. “Were you serious when you told the nurse that you wouldn’t snog me again?” Iris gaped, and then she laughed. “Is that what you’re most worried about?” Roman’s hands tightened on her hips. “I fear that once you taste something like that … you don’t forget it, Iris. And now I must see if your words from three days ago hold, or if you will rewrite them with me here, in this moment.” She was quiet, full of heady thoughts as Roman’s statement sank in. She had never wanted someone so fiercely—it nearly felt like she was falling ill —and she caressed his hair. The black strands were soft between her fingers, and Roman shut his eyes, wholly captive to her touch. She took that moment to study his face, the slant of his mouth as his breaths skipped. “I suppose I can be persuaded to rewrite those words,” she whispered in a teasing cadence, and he opened his eyes to regard her. His pupils were large and dark, like new moons. Iris could nearly see herself within them. “But only with you, Kitt.” “Because I excel at writing?” he countered. Iris smiled. “That, among other things.” She kissed him—a light brushing of her lips against his—and he was still, as if she had enchanted him. But soon his mouth eagerly opened beneath hers, his hands tracing the curve of her spine. It sent a shiver through her, to feel his fingertips memorize her, to feel his teeth nip at her bottom lip as they began to explore each other. She touched him in return, learning the broad slope of his shoulders and the dip of his collarbone and the sharp cut of his jaw. She felt like she was drowning; she felt like she had run up the bluff. There was a pleasant


would have spent any time with. A decade younger than I was now. Had Stahl offered her a ride? Had he dragged her into the woods, hidden her away where no one could find her? I shuddered. I understood what Cass meant, now, when she said she wanted to tell Persephone that she’d had a daughter. He’s dead, I wanted to whisper to those bones. I’d found Persephone, just as Liv had, and this must be how Liv had felt, too, like she had searched the underworld for her ghost and sighted her at last. Jessi wasn’t Persephone but Eurydice, and Liv was Orpheus, guiding her back toward the surface only to—foolishly, inevitably—look back as she had been forbidden to do, and now both of them were lost below. Or had Orpheus been lost with his bride? I couldn’t remember anymore. We’d known all the stories by heart back then, small-town girls who could recite the names of all nine Muses and the lineage of ancient heroes, but that was a long time ago. I rubbed my hands over my arms, suddenly cold. Her name was Jessi. She wasn’t Persephone at all. Inexplicable grief passed over me like a shadow—mourning for the thing we’d imagined her to be. She hadn’t been our talisman, our goddess, our protector. She had been a girl, so much younger than I was now, who died in the forest and was lost. Who was missed. Who was mourned. My first instinct was to call Liv. My second was to call Cass. But Liv was gone, and Cass—I’d told her I wouldn’t go looking. I’d broken my promise. My fingernails dug at the scar on my wrist. Persephone, Persephone, I thought, and the voice in my mind was the voice of my childhood self—and Cass’s and Liv’s, too, echoing together in that tiny space with our hands clasped in a ring. Speak to us, Goddesses. Tell us what to do. How to please you. Hecate, Artemis, Athena, Persephone. The air thrumming with the power of our belief, our wanting to believe. You go first, Cass had told Liv, handing her the knife. We would each cut ourselves, just enough for a few drops of blood. The fifth ritual. But Liv’s hand shook, and I took it from her. I’ll do it. I’d cut too deep, the knife skating up the side of my wrist with startling speed. It was just supposed to be a few drops. Liv had screamed. I’d started panicking. Cass, though, stayed calm. She wrapped her jacket around it tight and we ran to my house, where we could be sure no one would be paying attention. Cass cleaned it with hydrogen peroxide, then sewed it up with a needle and fishing line while I bit down on a dishrag. Liv hovered on the other side of the room, hands pressed over her ears, trying not to retch. She hated blood. Cass bandaged it up, and I’d hidden it under my sleeve while it healed. At first Cass had said she and Liv would do


Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

drizzle turned into a cold, hard rain. Across the road was another farmstead, much smaller than Krystjan’s. A mangy goat browsed in the grass amongst a flock of chickens. At the end of the farmer’s lane was a house that had once been blue; the paint had largely peeled off, and the roof was sagging. There was something about the house that made me wish to look away. If not for the animals, I would have thought the place abandoned. A thin hand pushed back a faded curtain in the upstairs storey. Something about the hand was terribly wrong, though I could not place it. It may have been the way it moved, a sort of spiderish twitch. For a moment, a face peeped out at me. It was so white that I thought it must have been painted, topped with a dark thatch of hair. Child-sized it was, and while I could not make out any features, I sensed it was smiling. It pressed a hand to the glass as if in greeting, and I started. The hand was covered in blood. The figure was gone as abruptly as it had appeared, leaving the bloody handprint behind. Habit made me disregard my thundering heart and look away, and I counted to ten. When I looked back, there was no sign at all of blood. “Hm,” I grunted aloud. I would have to make inquiries regarding the owners of the farmstead. I wondered if they were aware they had a faerie living within their walls. My inquiries would have to be discreet, as I did not like the looks of the creature.[*] I was interrupted by the appearance of Groa, the shopkeeper. Plump and smiling, she issued a great quantity of apologies as she admitted me into the shop. Her English was not fluent, but with my smattering of Ljoslander we managed to cobble together an understanding. The shop was cheery and warm, cluttered with an impressive assemblage of goods, from food to farming and fishing implements. I nearly tripped over a sewing machine on my way to the counter. I requested flour, milk, butter, smoked fish, and tea, and Groa also encouraged me to take a few mutton sausages and a box of fresh carrots, leeks, and cabbage. Humming to herself, she wrapped my requests in paper. I felt warmed just being in her presence, and though I have not much talent for small talk, I found myself compelled to ask her a few questions about herself. She was older than I had first guessed, and had run the shop alone for twenty years since the death of her husband. She informed me that the blue house belonged to a young couple named Aslaug and Mord, who lived with their son, Ari. Her cheer dimmed a little when I broached this topic, and I did not press her. “How much?” I enquired, and she cheerily named an exorbitant sum ten times what such supplies would cost in Cambridge. I had to ask her to repeat herself. She did so, just as


night and wring a dread tale from lips that had been sealed with the dismalest and most formidable of oaths, Huck's confidence in the human race was well-nigh obliterated. Daily Muff Potter's gratitude made Tom glad he had spoken; but nightly he wished he had sealed up his tongue. Half the time Tom was afraid Injun Joe would never be captured; the other half he was afraid he would be. He felt sure he never could draw a safe breath again until that man was dead and he had seen the corpse. Rewards had been offered, the country had been scoured, but no Injun Joe was found. One of those omniscient and awe-inspiring marvels, a detective, came up from St. Louis, moused around, shook his head, looked wise, and made that sort of astounding success which members of that craft usually achieve. That is to say, he "found a clew." But you can't hang a "clew" for murder, and so after that detective had got through and gone home, Tom felt just as insecure as he was before. The slow days drifted on, and each left behind it a slightly lightened weight of apprehension. --------------------------------------------------------- -227- Chapter XXV THERE comes a time in every rightly-constructed boy's life when he has a raging desire to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure. This desire suddenly came upon Tom one day. He sallied out to find Joe Harper, but failed of success. Next he sought Ben Rogers; he had gone fishing. Presently he stumbled upon Huck Finn the Red-Handed. Huck would answer. Tom took him to a private place and opened the matter to him confidentially. Huck was willing. Huck was always willing to take a hand in any enterprise that offered entertainment and required no capital, for he had a troublesome superabundance of that sort of time which is not money. "Where'll we dig?" said Huck. "Oh, most anywhere." "Why, is it hid all around?" "No, indeed it ain't. It's hid in mighty particular places, Huck -- sometimes on islands, sometimes in rotten chests under the end of a limb of an old dead tree, just where the shadow falls at midnight; but mostly under the floor in ha'nted houses." "Who hides it?" --------------------------------------------------------- -228- "Why, robbers, of course -- who'd you reckon? Sunday-school sup'rintendents?" "I don't know. If 'twas mine I wouldn't hide it; I'd spend it and have a good time." "So would I. But robbers don't do that way. They always hide it and leave it there." "Don't they come after it any more?" "No, they think they will, but they generally forget the marks, or else they die. Anyway, it lays there a long time and gets rusty; and by and by somebody finds an old yellow paper that tells how to find the marks -- a paper that's got to be ciphered over about a week because it's mostly signs and hy'roglyphics." "HyroQwhich?" "Hy'roglyphics -- pictures and things, you know, that don't seem to mean anything." "Have you got one of them papers, Tom?" "No." "Well then, how


get a dog; it has been a long time since she had one in the house. She sheepishly tells me that she used some of the money I gave her to buy new mini blinds. “That’s perfect!” I say. I don’t care how she spends it, as long as it’s useful. It’s hard for either of us to imagine her remarrying, or wanting to remarry. But as she begins to plan the next stage of her life without my father, I realize that I can picture her living out her own days in peace—and, more important, it seems that she can as well. My heart lifts when she tells me that she is planning a trip to Greece with two of her friends from church, intending to use what’s left of my father’s life insurance payout to make her first-ever trip outside the country. All our calls are filled with talk of her plans: She and her friends are hoping to travel in the fall. They will visit monasteries and holy sites, see the sights, and swim in the sea; the trip is to be part pilgrimage, part escape. Her passport has long since expired, but she’s started the renewal process. After that adventure—once she’s ready—I resolve to help her consider what she wants her new life to look like. At least I can be her sounding board, if nothing else. I know her ties to Oregon are strong after four decades there—there’s her church, her chosen family, and I doubt she would consider leaving the area as long as my grandmother still lives there—but maybe someday she’ll decide that she wants to move closer to us. Or maybe we can relocate to the Northwest and provide more support to her once our kids are done with school. There’s no need to figure everything out now, I tell myself. Dad has been gone only a matter of months. Mom has time. We have time. 13 I was reading congratulatory texts from friends and hadn’t even made it out of bed when my mother called me on my publication day. She had seen her doctor the day before to discuss some mysterious spotting. A scan had revealed a strange mass in her abdomen, and now her doctor was referring her to a surgeon to have it removed and sent for testing. Mom was already convinced of the worst. “What if it’s cancer?” she said, her voice low and choked with fear. We had buried Dad nine months earlier. I would not allow myself to imagine anything happening to her. “You had a hysterectomy twenty years ago,” I said, as if she needed to be reminded. “You don’t have any organs there where cancer could develop. It’s got to be benign.” Over the next few weeks, my book tour took me all over the country: Seattle, Austin, Boston, New York. I would stop at home long enough to reconnect with my family, unpack, and have my event clothes dry-cleaned, then take off with another suitcase stuffed with dresses and jumpsuits. No matter where I


and rub your clit right away, but I’d make myself wait for it. I’d make you wait for it.” I clutch at him, trying to drag his mouth back to mine. But then he pauses. Pulls away, arching an eyebrow. “You gotta give me something,” he says. “I kind of feel like I’m doing the heavy lifting here.” Somehow, I manage to come up with the words. “I—I always get so wet for you,” I say, and that makes him hold me tighter. “Not just when we’re like this. I could be sitting next to you at a con and thinking about what we did the previous night. Or what I’d want to do the next night. I’ll get so turned on I can barely stand it, but I can’t do anything about it.” His head rolls back, and he lets out this fantastic groan. “That’s not just part of all this? You’re serious?” “Yes,” I exhale, wondering if I’m signing my own death warrant. If so, it’ll be a wonderful death. “Sometimes I’d have to get myself off before we met up to work, too, just to clear my head.” “What would you think about?” “The way your breath hitches when you touch me for the first time.” This is it. No inhibitions. “You, talking to me exactly like this. Whether you’d want me to ride you, or if you’d want to fuck me from behind, or against a wall.” His eyes flutter shut, a low hum slipping from his mouth. “All of it.” A fingertip glides up my spine. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done the same. Imagined your hand or your mouth instead of my fist.” My own hand drifts down to the front of his jeans. It’s been too long since I watched him come apart. I want to see him needy, desperate. Begging. “We’d be together one night, and the next day, all I’d want was to touch you again. I felt so fucking depraved—like I’d never be able to get enough of you.” It sounds so real that I need to hear him say it again. “Really?” He gives me this furrow of his brows. “You don’t think you’re irresistible?” he says. “I’ve always been attracted to you. Since we first met at that bookstore bar. When you were a petty thief.” I swat at his chest with my free hand. “I’ll have you know that I returned the book and felt so bad about it, I bought two more.” He grabs my hand, bringing it to his mouth. Presses kisses to my knuckles. “A real stand-up person. A Good Samaritan.” A little growl. “How does every part of you taste so good,” he says. “No one’s hands should taste this good.” He maneuvers me flat onto the bed, taking his time as he kisses down my body. Helping me out of my bra, sucking one nipple into his mouth while he thumbs the other, making me arch up off the bed. He doesn’t let up, tongue dipping into my navel and then


Silence followed in their stead, broken only by the teetering clangs of porcelain in the café below. Io started pulling her things out of the duffel bag, stealing glances at her sister. There was definitely something up with her. Io blew air out of her nose, in silent protest. Whenever Ava got like this, Io had to prod and wedge and pry the answers out of her like a rotten tooth. “All right,” she said at last, circling around the bed to stand over Ava. “What’s wrong?” Ava sighed, the sound exaggerated and dramatic. Io waited, in case she deigned to follow it up with actual words, but no luck. “Is it the apartment? I said I’m sorry a dozen times, but until I’m certain it’s safe again, we can’t stay there. A phobos-born is involved, Ava.” Ava’s eyes slid from the ceiling to Io, hooded and tired. “I don’t care about the apartment.” Okay, they were getting somewhere now. “Is it about Bianca?” Io had a whole list of questions to ask regarding Bianca, like what do you even see in her and how hypocritical is it that she preaches no guns, no leeches, no paramours, then has a paramour herself, but she wisely chose not to voice any of them, except: “Will she be angry with you?” Ava propped herself on her elbows. The records remained balanced on her stomach, rising and falling with her breaths. “She’ll come around eventually. Time heals all things, isn’t that what Baba used to say?” Baba used to say a lot of aphorisms, according to her sisters. Io didn’t recall that; like many things in her life, her memories of her parents were secondhand, too: Do you remember that time Baba took us . . . ? Do you remember when Mama . . . ? Their father had been a clever fox of a man, but all Io could see of him when she closed her eyes was his sleeping form huddled on the sofa, and how she was not to disturb him under any circumstances. “I guess,” Io replied. “Do you think Bianca’ll go after Thais?” The bed groaned as Ava suddenly sat up, the records cascading to the floor. “Why would Bianca go after Thais?” Shit. Io forgot she hadn’t told Ava about the Teatro rally yet. She’d meant to, but the wraiths and the Nine and the phobos-born and Saint-Yves had taken precedence. She slid to her knees and began piling the scattered records, if only to avoid eye contact right now. “Thais is engaged to Saint-Yves.” “What?” Io placed the neat stack of records on the bed next to Ava’s thighs. “She didn’t mention it to you?” “She just said she was staying with her boyfriend up on the Hill. She looked so happy, so in love. That was enough for me.” Ava was always like that: content with a little, stifled by too much. But occasionally her laissez-faire attitude backfired, and Ava would have to come face-to-face with hard truths. Io found it almost comical how so many


to grave robbers!" "Muff Potter'll hang for this if they catch him!" This was the drift of remark; and the minister said, "It was a judgment; His hand is here." Now Tom shivered from head to heel; for his eye fell upon the stolid face of Injun Joe. At this moment the crowd began to sway and struggle, and voices shouted, "It's him! it's him! he's coming himself!" "Who? Who?" from twenty voices. "Muff Potter!" "Hallo, he's stopped! -- Look out, he's turning! Don't let him get away!" People in the branches of the trees over Tom's head said he wasn't trying to get away -- he only looked doubtful and perplexed. --------------------------------------------------------- -121- "Infernal impudence!" said a bystander; "wanted to come and take a quiet look at his work, I reckon -- didn't expect any company." The crowd fell apart, now, and the Sheriff came through, ostentatiously leading Potter by the arm. The poor fellow's face was haggard, and his eyes showed the fear that was upon him. When he stood before the murdered man, he shook as with a palsy, and he put his face in his hands and burst into tears. "I didn't do it, friends," he sobbed; "'pon my word and honor I never done it." "Who's accused you?" shouted a voice. This shot seemed to carry home. Potter lifted his face and looked around him with a pathetic hopelessness in his eyes. He saw Injun Joe, and exclaimed: "Oh, Injun Joe, you promised me you'd never -- " "Is that your knife?" and it was thrust before him by the Sheriff. Potter would have fallen if they had not caught him and eased him to the ground. Then he said: "Something told me 't if I didn't come back and get -- " He shuddered; then waved his nerveless hand with a vanquished gesture and said, "Tell 'em, Joe, tell 'em -- it ain't any use any more." Then Huckleberry and Tom stood dumb and staring, and heard the stony-hearted liar reel off his serene statement, they expecting every moment that the clear sky would deliver God's lightnings upon his head, and wondering to see how long the stroke --------------------------------------------------------- -122- was delayed. And when he had finished and still stood alive and whole, their wavering impulse to break their oath and save the poor betrayed prisoner's life faded and vanished away, for plainly this miscreant had sold himself to Satan and it would be fatal to meddle with the property of such a power as that. "Why didn't you leave? What did you want to come here for?" somebody said. "I couldn't help it -- I couldn't help it," Potter moaned. "I wanted to run away, but I couldn't seem to come anywhere but here." And he fell to sobbing again. Injun Joe repeated his statement, just as calmly, a few minutes afterward on the inquest, under oath; and the boys, seeing that the lightnings were still withheld, were confirmed in their belief that Joe had sold himself to the devil. He was now become, to


sluggishly with the swaying of the car. Le Chiffre was concentrating half on the road ahead and half on the onrushing glare of Bond's headlights in the driving-mirror. He seemed undisturbed when not more than a mile separated the hare from the hounds and he even brought the car down from eighty to sixty miles an hour. Now, as he swept round a bend he slowed down still further. A few hundred yards ahead a Michelin post showed where a small parochial road crossed with the highway. 'Attention,' he said sharply to the man beside him. The man's hand tightened on the lever. A hundred yards from the cross-roads he slowed to thirty. In the mirror Bond's great headlights were lighting up the bend. Le Chiffre seemed to make up his mind. 'Allez.' The man beside him pulled the lever sharply upwards. The boot at the back of the car yawned open like a whale's mouth. There was a tinkling clatter on the road and then a rhythmic jangling as if the car was towing lengths of chain behind it. 'Coupez.' The man depressed the lever sharply and the jangling stopped with a final clatter. Le Chiffre glanced again in the mirror. Bond's car was just entering the bend. Le Chiffre made a racing change and threw the Citron left-handed down the narrow side-road, at the same time dowsing his lights. He stopped the car with a jerk and all three men got swiftly out and doubled back under cover of a low hedge to the cross-roads, now fiercely illuminated by the lights of the Bentley. Each of them carried a revolver and the thin man also had what looked like a large black egg in his right hand. The Bentley screamed down towards them like an express train. CHAPTER 16 - THE CRAWLING OF THE SKIN As Bond hurtled round the bend, caressing the great car against the camber with an easy sway of body and hands, he was working out his plan of action when the distance between the two cars had narrowed still further. He imagined that the enemy driver would try to dodge off into a side-road if he got the chance. So when he got round the bend and saw no lights ahead, it was a normal reflex to ease up on the accelerator and, when he saw the Michelin post, to prepare to brake. He was only doing about sixty as he approached the black patch across the right-hand crown of the road which he assumed to be the shadow cast by a wayside tree. Even so, there was no time to save himself. There was suddenly a small carpet of glinting steel spikes right under his off-side wing. Then he was on top of it. Bond automatically slammed the brakes full on and braced all his sinews against the wheel to correct the inevitable slew to the left, but he only kept control for a split second. As the rubber was flayed from his off-side wheels and the rims for an instant tore up the


collaborated with—” “Stop.” I turn to face him directly and get half-wedged under his arm. We look like we’re about to embrace. In a Game of Thrones, stab-you-while-Ihug-you way. “Listen, I . . . Stop this, please. I don’t know what you want from me. I’ve been adjuncting for a year, and it sucks so much—so, so much. I just want a job in a good department to continue with my research.” “You deserve it,” he says quietly. I feel the words for irony. Find no trace. “Stop it,” I repeat. “I don’t know what game you’re playing, but—” “Game?” He scowls. “I just said that I hope you get the opportunity to continue your work, because you clearly are one of the great minds of our generation.” I tense. “I don’t need your condescending praises.” “I—” He shakes his head. His hand comes up to my chin, straightens my face to better study me. Which he does, for endless seconds, before asking, “What happened to you, Elsie?” “Excuse me?” I feel flayed alive when he looks at me like that. Stripped to my bones. “Every time I mention that I admire your work, you become dismissive and combative.” No, I don’t. Or do I? “Maybe if you didn’t spend half your time reminding me that I’m on par with a skanky villain from a mid-2000s CW show, I—” “I am able to multitask.” He sounds . . . not upset, but on his way. Not his usual detached self. “I can admire you as a scientist and at the same time resent what you’re doing to my brother.” “Allegedly doing to your brother. And . . .” Am I being needlessly antagonistic? No. No, Jack and I are antagonists. Insulin and glucagon. Rey and Kylo Ren. Galileo and the entire Catholic Church, circa 1615. “It’s hard to believe that you respect me when all I know you for is dissing the very people who do my job and advocating for George to be hired.” “That has nothing to do with you, and everything with George—who you know nothing about.” “Right. Maybe if I met him and heard all about his one and a half publications, I’d withdraw my application in cowed admiration.” Jack’s eyes widen. “What?” He bites the inside of his cheek. “Elsie. You’re operating on some pretty big assumptions—” “Elsie. Here you are.” Monica crosses the cowhide toward us. She looks at me. Then at Jack. Then at me again. “I thought you might need some saving,” she murmurs in my ear. Judging from his half smile, Jack heard, too. “I was just making sure she still wants to work with us after Christos put his hand down his waistband while trying to convince her that cereal is technically soup.” Jack’s tone is once again amused. Relaxed. “He does make some valid points,” I interject before Monica field-dresses Jack on the cowhide. “Monica, this evening has been so lovely. Thank you so much for having me in your beautiful home.” “But of course. Have you met my family?” “Your


up after breakfast, so I donned my boots and tramped outside to the stream. The snow had ceased, and the sky was a soft eggshell colour, the mountains dreaming under their woollen blankets. There was a loveliness in the forest’s absence of colour, its haunted dark framed by grey-white boughs, as if the snowfall had winnowed it down to the essence of what a forest is. My sense of peace was short-lived. The stream was covered in ice too thick to pierce. I slipped trying, covering myself in snow. In a burst of inspiration, I filled the pot with snow, then set it over the fire. Bambleby was outside by the woodshed, looking like he was trying to solve a mathematical equation. For some reason, he had pushed away the snow with his boot so that he could stand upon the frosty grass. I actually felt a little sorry for him, shivering despite the weight of his cloak, for he reminded me of some temperate tree or bush, transplanted and forced to grow in some northerner’s garden against its will. I hefted the axe and placed a log upon the stump. “Perhaps we should send for Finn,” Bambleby said. “I’m perfectly capable,” I replied, though the axe was of an unnerving Ljoslander design and nearly came up to my shoulder. I swung. The dull blade glanced off the log, which went careening into a tree, dislodging a small avalanche of snow. My axe buried itself in the stump; unbalanced, I fell over. He looked appalled. “Good God, what a violent process.” I dragged myself to my feet, cheeks flaming as I brushed the snow from my backside. “It’s not supposed to go like that.” “I won’t be helping.” He backed up a step, raising his elegant hands. “I’ll cut off my foot. Or you will.” “Oh, come on.” I wasn’t looking forward to trying a second time, and in my anger, I couldn’t help baiting him. Baiting a faerie prince! An unfortunate habit I have fallen into, that. “Do you not heat your houses with wood,” I said, all innocence, “in the place you come from?” He gave me a withering look. “I’m quite happy to say that, in Dublin, we have servants to deal with these things.” “Well, this is not Dublin, and I’m not getting anywhere. You have to help.” “I do not. Give it one of your scowls; it will split itself in two.” “God!” I went to impale the axe in the ground in frustration. Unfortunately, Bambleby, contrary creature that he is, had just stepped forward to remove it from my possession. I redirected my swing just in time to avoid relieving him of his arm, but not fast enough to save his sleeve. “Dammit!” He pressed his hand to his arm, and at first I thought it melodrama, but then the snow beneath him began to turn pink. “I knew it,” he snapped as blood leaked through his fingers. “I knew you would be the death of me. I wish you had chosen my foot. This is


you want to rehearse with me?” I shook my head. “Is the microdose supposed to make me feel calmer?” “Yes. And happier. And not headachy. Is it working?” “Oh yeah, definitely. I feel all those things.” The first speaker assumed the stage and began talking about the importance of “innovative disruption.” I checked my phone again. I had no idea what I was checking for anymore. There was no way Orson was going to text me some contrite message about that night in Urmau. What would he say? That he loved me? I raised my head and saw Susan two tables away, her heavy-lidded eyes inclined pleasantly toward the stage as if she were watching a particularly entertaining movie instead of someone very rich talking about how he’d gotten very rich. She’d draped her jacket over her shoulders like a superhero’s cape, and in the dim light she looked somehow younger than she had when I’d spoken with her minutes ago. She was aging in reverse, had been since I’d met her. She’d gotten better and I’d gotten worse. Her head began to swivel toward me and I looked away. A fucking curse. “How are you feeling now?” Brianna whispered. “I’m fine,” I lied. She smiled, baring her braces, and one side of her face slid off her neck like runny putty. She looked like a Dalí painting. I giggled, put my hand out to touch her dribbling cheek. She didn’t flinch away. “Ez?” “Yep?” “You’re okay, right?” “Oh yeah. Very good.” I took my phone out again, its face just as runny as Brianna’s, the little characters beneath the apps like sigils etched on a glass bottle’s surface. This was unbearably funny for some reason. I bit my lip and looked up to see a literal zoo. The couple at the table next to us had tusks—or else gave off the vibe of having tusks—and everyone at the table behind us was covered in hair that exposed only their mouths and eyes. The idea that Brianna and I were at a furry convention crossed my mind, and I snorted with laughter, attracting the annoyed glances of some of the animals. Brianna’s fursona was a duck, her bill or else the idea of her bill mouthing the words Ez can you try to keep it down people are looking. The duck’s admonishment made it even harder to keep it down. I bent over so my head was between my knees and laughed a deoxygenated laugh, thinking of how stupid it was to have been afraid of anything or anyone in my life ever. I was a captain of industry. There was industry, and I was one of the captains of it. I imagined myself standing at the prow of a ship like Kate Winslet in Titanic, Orson behind me, our skin green to indicate either that we were seasick or that we were lucky or that we were in a cartoon that was very moving and photorealistic but still a cartoon. I gasped with laughter. “Ez,” Brianna quacked, her head next to


always found fault with their effort, and he said so with much threatening. "Do you think you are cutting up yams for cooking?" he asked Nwoye. "If you split another yam of this size, I shall break your jaw. You think you are still a child. I began to own a farm at your age. And you," he said to Ikemefuna, "do you not grow yams where you come from?" Inwardly Okonkwo knew that the boys were still too young to understand fully the difficult art of preparing seed-yams. But he thought that one could not begin too early. Yam stood for manliness, and he who could feed his family on yams from one harvest to another was a very great man indeed. Okonkwo wanted his son to be a great farmer and a great man. He would stamp out the disquieting signs of laziness which he thought he already saw in him. "I will not have a son who cannot hold up his head in the gathering of the clan. I would sooner strangle him with my own hands. And if you stand staring at me like that," he swore, "Amadiora will break your head for you!" Some days later, when the land had been moistened by two or three heavy rains, Okonkwo and his family went to the farm with baskets of seed-yams, their hoes and machetes, and the planting began. They made single mounds of earth in straight lines all over the field and sowed the yams in them. Yam, the king of crops, was a very exacting king. For three or four moons it demanded hard work and constant attention from cockcrow till the chickens went back to roost. The young tendrils were protected from earth-heat with rings of sisal leaves. As the rains became heavier the women planted maize, melons and beans between the yam mounds. The yams were then staked, first with little sticks and later with tall and big tree branches. The women weeded the farm three times at definite periods in the life of the yams, neither early nor late. And now the rains had really come, so heavy and persistent that even the village rain-maker no longer claimed to be able to intervene. He could not stop the rain now, just as he would not attempt to start it in the heart of the dry season, without serious danger to his own health. The personal dynamism required to counter the forces of these extremes of weather would be far too great for the human frame. And so nature was not interfered with in the middle of the rainy season. Sometimes it poured down in such thick sheets of water that earth and sky seemed merged in one grey wetness. It was then uncertain whether the low rumbling of Amadiora's thunder came from above or below. At such times, in each of the countless thatched huts of Umuofia, children sat around their mother's cooking fire telling stories, or with their father in his obi warming themselves from a log fire, roasting and eating maize.


beside him, taking the plug for the soldering iron from him and inserting it into herself. She said, “Ooh. Yes. That is it.” “Gross,” Rambo muttered. He nudged the side of Vic’s leg. “Is he going to die?” “No,” Vic said, leaning forward, elbows resting on his dad’s legs. “He’s not going to die.” “Because we’re going to be alive forever?” “Impossible,” Nurse Ratched said. “Nothing is immortal. Eventually, our power cell will drain and we will perish because we will be unable to find a replacement.” “But Vic will find one for us,” Rambo said. “Victor is human,” Nurse Ratched said. “He will die long before us. He is soft and spongy. Perhaps it will be cancer, either rectal or bone. Or the plague if he gets bitten by a rat. Or he will get squashed by an Old One like he almost was today.” Her screen blinked with the word OOPS. “Ah,” Dad said. “Is that what Rambo was shouting about before he heard the music?” Vic sighed as he leaned forward, the tip of the soldering iron hot and red. “It was nothing.” “That was a white lie,” Rambo said, sounding proud of himself. Victor groaned as he pressed the soldering iron against the wire connecting the solenoid. Dad grunted, but otherwise stayed still. “It wasn’t even close. I knew what I was doing.” “The expression on your face when the metal heap collapsed suggested otherwise,” Nurse Ratched said. “Would you like to view the reenactment I created right this second?” Vic pulled the soldering iron away from the solenoid as he looked back. On her screen, an eight-bit version of Vic appeared atop a tower of metal. A word bubble sprang from his mouth, filling with OH NO I AM STUPID AND ABOUT TO DIE. The little character fell to the ground with a bloody smack, his eyes turning to X’s. “Womp womp,” Nurse Ratched said as the screen darkened. “That is exactly what happened. Please do not hold your applause. I need validation.” “You fell?” Dad asked, eyes narrowing. Vic went back to the soldering. “Only a little bit.” An odd note filled his father’s voice. “Did you get hurt? Cuts, scrapes? Did you bleed?” “Why?” Vic asked. “You need more?” The heart—while a marvel of engineering unlike anything else that had been created—sometimes needed more than metal or wiring to function: a drop of blood, pressed against the white strip above the gears. It did not happen often—at most, once a year, but Nurse Ratched never failed to remind them that according to lore, a creature known as a vampire subsisted on the same thing. The last time had been four months before, when Dad had started acting more robotic, more like a machine. Dad said, “Victor.” “Not even nicked,” Vic assured him. Dad nodded, obviously relieved. “Good. And the Old Ones?” Vic shrugged. “You know how it is. They forget I even exist as soon as I leave the Scrap Yards. Out of sight, out of mind.” Dad sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t go there.