I had survived far worse. It was just one thing too much. And then when Thalia died—the way her body had been mangled—the way she’d been tossed in the water—the way every girl was just a body to be used, to be discarded—the way that if you had a body, they could grab you—if you had a body, they could destroy you— And I ended up by that tree in the woods. And I ended up hurting myself in slower ways, too. Loretta Young didn’t understand that Clark Gable had raped her. She considered their daughter a “walking mortal sin” until, in her eighties, she learned about date rape by watching Larry King Live and realized her inability to fend him off hadn’t been her fault. I decided to tell the Loretta Young story to my film class that afternoon. It was something to send them off into the world with. For now, I was at the door of Quincy 212, my podcasters waiting inside for our last meeting. I had a lot of news for them. I took my coat off, fixed my hair. When I opened the door, the sun shone behind them and they were made of light. 60 Saturday morning, Anne drove me to the airport while Fran took the boys to tumbling class. On NPR, they were talking about the news story—the one where the small-town mayor killed himself the day after his former secretary reported him for sexual harassment. Or rather, the one where the chef hanged himself in his empty restaurant because the rape charges were about to be filed. The one where the ex-husband showed up at her door and said he’d already swallowed pills, and unless she took him back he wouldn’t let her drive him to the hospital. I’d brainstormed conversation topics ahead of time, lest the hour and a half in the car grow awkward, but it turned out Anne had an agenda. We were only turning out of the campus drive when she said, “The thing with Fran is she’s just so protective of the school.” I had picked up a piece of purple onion skin from the passenger seat, a stowaway from some grocery trip, and now I folded it into smaller and smaller pieces, felt its fibers crack cleanly each time. I said, “She wants me to drop it. I’m aware.” “I know it comes out as her disagreeing with you, telling you you’re making things up. She doesn’t want to rock the boat.” I couldn’t control the noise I made, an outraged puff of air. “Christ,” I said. “This is not about anyone’s discomfort. If Omar—” “No, I know.” “It’s funny,” I said, “because Fran is the person who taught me how to rock boats.” “Well. But this is her home. You get that.” And yes, although I fundamentally disagreed, I did understand that her instinct was to protect Granby, in the reflexive way a drone will protect a beehive. I couldn’t imagine having that level of attachment to a place. By the time we met, I


like a shawl, took on an air of ancient mystery. A shadowed shot of Liv, looking upward, her surroundings indistinct, seemed as if she were emerging from a blackened void. Cass and Liv walking side by side, pinkies hooked together, Liv looking over her shoulder at the camera, at me, with a brilliant slice of smile. Then a photo of the three of us, together. I was clearly holding the camera. We were sitting on Liv’s childhood bed, shoulder to shoulder, and I was in the middle. Cass and Liv were sticking out their tongues, looking at the camera. I was looking at Liv, my eyes shining. A little breath slipped between my lips, my heart aching. Liv was dead—but so were all three of those girls. The girls we’d been before. Under the photos were two pieces of notebook paper, folded over, the creases worn with age. I unfolded one delicately, and my breath caught in my throat. I stole money from Mrs. Green’s purse. I hate my dad and sometimes I wish that he would die. He’s a drunk and he’s useless. I cheated on a math test last month. There were a dozen more lines. I’d written them all. My secrets. We’d all made a page like this—the sixth ritual. The darkest secrets of our hearts, Cass had said. We wrote them down and then we burned them. She’d thrown them into the fire and rambled about purifying our souls with the flames. But then how were they here? I unfolded the other page. It had to be Liv’s—I recognized the handwriting. I’m not good enough for the Goddesses. I have to try harder but I’m afraid. I’m not a good friend. I’m weak and I’m a coward. I can’t do anything right. “Oh, Liv,” I whispered. “I didn’t know it was that bad.” My heart ached for the little girl she’d been. She’d been so vulnerable, and the things that were coming for her were too immense for anyone to handle, much less a child whose demons were starting to wake. But she’d survived them—only for her life to be stolen from her. I tried to picture it again. Liv by the pond, a gun pointing at her head, and the hand holding the gun—Ethan’s. I bit down on a scream, crumpling the papers in my fist. Cass must have kept these. Had she thrown fake pages into the fire? Why? Probably so that she could read them, I realized, and sighed. She’d always had trouble letting go of control. She’d probably been worried we’d written something about her. “What are you doing?” I twisted around, adrenaline spiking. Oscar stood in the doorway, watching me with his usual blunt curiosity. “Just reliving some old memories,” I said. I gestured at the Polaroids, mouth dry. “I took these. Ages ago.” Oscar leaned against the doorframe. He’d ditched his suit jacket and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, baring thick forearms. “You were always a nosy little—” “Can you try to not be a complete creep for thirty seconds?”


“There’s something you’re not saying.” Aunt Honey rolled her head from side to side on the pillow. “Don’t make me,” she begged. Louise leaned over the side of the bed and put one hand on Aunt Honey where she thought her shoulder would be. She made her voice soft and sympathetic. “You want us to know,” she said. “You need to get this out of you, and you’re so close. One last secret, then it’s over, and you’ll be free.” Aunt Honey turned her eyes to Louise. They were steady, her face was hard, but her eye sockets were wet. “I made a promise to my sister,” she said, hitting the last word hard. “Your sister is dead.” Aunt Honey stared at her, expression unchanging, then began to speak. “They had a closed-casket funeral and they were going to bury him in their plot at Stuhr’s, but the day before, my sister changed her mind. She couldn’t bear to be apart from her little boy. She had Jack bury him out back of the house. That’s why they could never move. That’s why your mother couldn’t build that deck. They’d have to dig holes for any extra house. That backyard belongs to Freddie.” Aunt Honey turned her face away. The loudest thing in the room was Poppy’s labored breathing. Louise stood up. Aunt Honey mumbled something, then turned to Louise. “I made a promise,” she said. “The only thing I had left of my sister was the promise I made to her never to say a word. Now I’ve broken it. You made me break my word to my sister.” “I’m sorry,” Louise said. “No, you’re not,” Aunt Honey said. “I could have never told and no one would have known.” “Someone would have dug up his bones one day,” Louise said. “People dig up bones all the time,” Aunt Honey said, her voice full of contempt. “The world is full of them. You made me break my promise to family.” Louise felt tired. She didn’t want to argue anymore. “We’ll move him to Stuhr’s,” Louise said. “Next to his mom and his dad and his sister. He should be with family.” “What do you know about family?” Aunt Honey asked, staring at her hard. Chapter 35 M ark and Louise silently walked out of the room, Louise leading Poppy by the hand, Pupkin hanging back, staring at Aunt Honey. They stood in the hall, not knowing what to say or where to go. “All her life,” Mark said. “All her life she must have known something was wrong. She never wanted to talk about death or Freddie because she must’ve known it didn’t add up. Even if it was just a freak accident, she must have felt so guilty that it happened when she took her eyes off her brother. And she never said a word. None of them did. And she clung to the one thing she had to remember her brother by for almost seventy years. Can you even imagine?” Louise couldn’t. She thought about those women—Aunt Honey, her


the cabinets and read the labels aloud. “ ‘Warrants, Arrests, Incidents, Cold Cases.’ Gods, this will take forever.” “Start with whatever drawer is locked,” Io said—and immediately held her breath, waiting for him to snap at her in response. But Edei obeyed without so much as a backward glance. She exhaled, wondering at the source of her trepidation. She had given him an order and expected him not to like it. What a silly reaction, that she should feel guilty of taking the lead on something she was clearly more skilled in. Guilt was an old habit, one she thought she had kicked. Gods, she was a bundle of anxiety tonight. She pulled open the desk drawers, revealing piles of managerial documents: police budgets, patrol timetables, district crime reports, etc. The top drawer had a state-of-the-art, complex lock. Her tools were no match for it. “Edei?” she whispered. “Some help?” After examining the lock and drawer, Edei left the room and came back with a metal rod he’d found gods know where. He jammed it against the wood and heaved. The lock detached with a loud crack—Io raised a hand. They stood there, motionless and agitated, while she watched the Quilt for any movement. The officers on the ground floor didn’t stir. It turned out to be worth it: Edei pulled out a hefty file marked SILTS STRANGLINGS. She joined him by the window, where they lifted the papers to the moonlight. Police reports on the deaths of Konstantin Fyodorov, the chernobog-born; Bianca’s employee Minos; and Jarl Magnussen; then a report titled Emmeline Segal. Two photos were attached to the report: a young, smiling girl posing in a feathered hat, and a bloated, white corpse laid on a metal table. The eyewitness had confirmed Emmeline was the wraith who killed the border guard, Fyodorov. The twenty-year-old had been a dancer in a dream palace on Lilac Row. “Segal,” Edei said. “I know the name. She used to work for the Miduchi gang.” The Miduchi were one of the lesser gangs of the Silts, a crew of young thieves specializing in breaking and entering. They never targeted the Silts, only the richer districts, which had earned them an unofficial go-ahead from the mob queen, so long as they “paid their dues.” “A gang squabble?” “It’s possible. Though Fyodorov was retired.” Io tapped at a file attached to the report: Emmeline’s public registry entry. It was a long lineage of her known family and a conclusion at the bottom, underlined three times with blotched ink: No known other-born affiliation. “Emmeline is not recorded as a cutter. Could she have been unregistered?” “I suppose the Miduchi could have an official on the payroll. Most gangs do.” Lots of other-born, especially those who society considered dangerous, tried to hide their powers. But even if they could get forged birth certificates that hid the existence of any siblings, it was hard to keep up the charade if you lived in a major city-nation like Alante: officials often employed the help of the muse-born to locate other-born who


that’s left. I was first mate, I was, old Flint’s first mate, and soul. I never wasted good money of mine, nor lost it neither; I’m the on’y one as knows the place. He gave it me at Savan- and I’ll trick ‘em again. I’m not afraid on ‘em. I’ll shake out nah, when he lay a-dying, like as if I was to now, you see. But another reef, matey, and daddle ‘em again.” you won’t peach unless they get the black spot on me, or un- As he was thus speaking, he had risen from bed with great less you see that Black Dog again or a seafaring man with one difficulty, holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost leg, Jim—him above all.” made me cry out, and moving his legs like so much dead “But what is the black spot, captain?” I asked. weight. His words, spirited as they were in meaning, con- “That’s a summons, mate. I’ll tell you if they get that. trasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in which they But you keep your weather-eye open, Jim, and I’ll share with were uttered. He paused when he had got into a sitting posi- you equals, upon my honour.” tion on the edge. He wandered a little longer, his voice growing weaker; but “That doctor’s done me,” he murmured. “My ears is sing- soon after I had given him his medicine, which he took like a ing. Lay me back.” child, with the remark, “If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it’s Before I could do much to help him he had fallen back me,” he fell at last into a heavy, swoon-like sleep, in which I again to his former place, where he lay for a while silent. left him. What I should have done had all gone well I do not “Jim,” he said at length, “you saw that seafaring man to- know. Probably I should have told the whole story to the day?” doctor, for I was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent Contents “Black Dog?” I asked. of his confessions and make an end of me. But as things fell “Ah! Black Dog,” says he. “HE’S a bad un; but there’s out, my poor father died quite suddenly that evening, which Robert Louis Stevenson. Treasure Island. 24 25 put all other matters on one side. Our natural distress, the with all that, he minded people less and seemed shut up in visits of the neighbours, the arranging of the funeral, and all his own thoughts and rather wandering. Once, for instance, the work of the inn to be carried on in the meanwhile kept to our extreme wonder, he piped up to a different air, a king me so busy that I had scarcely time to think of the captain, of country love-song that he must have learned in his youth far less to be afraid of him. before he had begun to follow the sea. He got downstairs next morning, to be sure, and had his So things


set, ajar--here comes Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon! Forth she steps into the dusky, time-darkened passage; a tall figure, clad in black silk, with a long and shrunken waist, feeling her way towards the stairs like a near-sighted person, as in truth she is. The sun, meanwhile, if not already above the horizon, was ascending nearer and nearer to its verge. A few clouds, floating high upward, caught some of the earliest light, and threw down its golden gleam on the windows of all the houses in the street, not forgetting the House of the Seven Gables, which--many such sunrises as it had witnessed--looked cheerfully at the present one. The reflected radiance served to show, pretty distinctly, the aspect and arrangement of the room which Hepzibah entered, after descending the stairs. It was a low-studded room, with a beam across the ceiling, panelled with dark wood, and having a large chimney-piece, set round with pictured tiles, but now closed by an iron fire-board, through which ran the funnel of a modern stove. There was a carpet on the floor, originally of rich texture, but so worn and faded in these latter years that its once brilliant figure had quite vanished into one indistinguishable hue. In the way of furniture, there were two tables: one, constructed with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting as many feet as a centipede; the other, most delicately wrought, with four long and slender legs, so apparently frail that it was almost incredible what a length of time the ancient tea-table had stood upon them. Half a dozen chairs stood about the room, straight and stiff, and so ingeniously contrived for the discomfort of the human person that they were irksome even to sight, and conveyed the ugliest possible idea of the state of society to which they could have been adapted. One exception there was, however, in a very antique elbow-chair, with a high back, carved elaborately in oak, and a roomy depth within its arms, that made up, by its spacious comprehensiveness, for the lack of any of those artistic curves which abound in a modern chair. As for ornamental articles of furniture, we recollect but two, if such they may be called. One was a map of the Pyncheon territory at the eastward, not engraved, but the handiwork of some skilful old draughtsman, and grotesquely illuminated with pictures of Indians and wild beasts, among which was seen a lion; the natural history of the region being as little known as its geography, which was put down most fantastically awry. The other adornment was the portrait of old Colonel Pyncheon, at two thirds length, representing the stern features of a Puritanic-looking personage, in a skull-cap, with a laced band and a grizzly beard; holding a Bible with one hand, and in the other uplifting an iron sword-hilt. The latter object, being more successfully depicted by the artist, stood out in far greater prominence than the sacred volume. Face to face with this picture, on entering the apartment, Miss Hepzibah Pyncheon came to a pause; regarding it with a singular scowl,


experiments?” He laughs softly, pressing a kiss on my hair. “I’ve thought more about sex in the last six months than ever before.” “I hope you’ll like it.” I burrow further into him. “With me.” “I will.” “You can’t know.” “I can.” He rubs a hand up and down my back, like I’m a fussy pet in need of soothing. Maybe I am. “Sexual compatibility is a thing. What if we’re not . . .” “Then we’ll work on it.” “I don’t want to be work. I don’t want you to feel that I’m work.” He sighs. “Somewhere along the way your wires got crossed. Your brain decided that you’re not worth people’s time and effort, and that if you ask for anything, they won’t just say no, they’ll also leave you.” He says it matter-offactly, like he’s Archimedes of Syracuse repeating his findings about upward buoyant forces to the acropolis for the tenth time. “That’s not how love works, Elsie. But don’t worry for now. I’ll show you.” “But I—” “Go to sleep.” “What? Why? No!” I try to move up, but his arms cage me tighter. “We should be having all the sex.” “In a minute. For now, just close your eyes and be silent for twenty seconds.” “Why?” “It’s a kink I have.” “You perv.” Yawn. “What happened to anal play and bondage?” “We’ll get there. Are your eyes closed?” I nod into his chest. “Perfect. Now count to twenty in your head.” His breath is a soft, steady rhythm under my ear. I’m warm and safe, and I get only to thirteen before I’m lost to the world. 21 COMPLEX HARMONIC MOTION M Y FIRST THOUGHT IS I’ M GOING TO BUY HIM CURTAINS. My second: I’m going to do without cheese, insulin, and possibly toilet paper for the next six months. To save up. To buy him curtains. Blackout. Rod pocketed. Floor to ceiling. It’s unacceptable, falling asleep that late and then waking up at what— seven thirty? Eight? Nine? Just because some guy doesn’t know that shades exist. Seems like a pretty simple concept to— “I’ll get you a sleep mask.” I open my eyes and I think, Blue. Which—less than one-eighth of his eyes is blue. It makes no sense. “How do you know what I was—?” “Your frown woke me up,” he says, voice rough with sleep. He shifts in a stretching yawn, and it’s like a seismic event, a huge tectonic fault shifting under the crust of the earth. Because during the night, I ended up facedown on top of Jack. “How?” I ask. “You moved around a lot,” he says. “Felt like the easiest way to keep you from kicking my shins.” “Wait—when did you—?” “About five minutes after you fell asleep.” “Wow.” I should move away. But he makes for a good bed, firm and bulky and warm. I’m groggy with sleep that was either not enough or too intense, and don’t want to leave just yet. For once, I feel myself, my body. Jack’s hand is on my lower back,


thought of him saying no? Why did she care so much? Don’t do it. Not worth the sting. Natalie started to back up into the shadows to wait out August’s departure, but in the wake of Teri driving away, he rounded the back bumper of his truck and spied her, doing a double take. “Natalie?” He paused mid-stride, frowning. “What are you doing lurking over there in the dark?” He snapped his fingers. “Let me guess. Sucking the souls from children caught outdoors after eight P.M.?” “That’s right. I wait until they’ve been stuffed full of chicken fingers and ice cream all day. That’s when I strike.” She shrugged. “But you have the IQ of a child, so I guess you’ll do.” “You sucked the soul out of me months ago, princess.” “You must have retained some of it if you made a point to give Teri your wine supply on the way out of town.” He reared back a little at the rare—and accidental—compliment. “I mean . . . a broken clock is correct twice a day, right?” He was still giving her that narrow-eyed look. Nerves jumped in her belly. Turn around and go. She sauntered forward instead and watched his chest muscles tighten, his spine straighten. Did he do that every time she approached? Why was she only recognizing it now? That proof of his awareness pushed Natalie over the border into bad-idea town. Because at least she wasn’t an afterthought to him. Even if he couldn’t stand her, at least her presence had an effect on him. “So I was thinking . . .” “You wish you’d kissed me in the bathroom earlier.” “I’d sooner kiss an active lawnmower.” She realized her hands were gesticulating wildly and folded them at her waist. “Actually, I was thinking you could use my help.” He snorted. Leaned back against the truck and crossed his thick arms. “What now?” Natalie kept her features serene, even as the harbinger of rejection hung over her head like a freshly sharpened machete. “You mentioned the bank refusing you a small business loan. For Zelnick Cellar. But if, um . . .” All at once, the ludicrous nature of her idea registered, but she’d said too much to stop now. “If I was an official employee. And attached to . . . you . . . in some way, well, you would almost be guaranteed an approval. As you’ve pointed out on numerous occasions, my last name does carry a lot of weight in this industry.” For several moments, he stared at her in silence. “I’m waiting for the punch line.” “There is no punch line, you baboon. I’m suggesting . . .” She felt like she’d swallowed a fistful of dirt, her stomach beginning to churn. “I’m suggesting that—” “Holy shit.” August pushed off the truck, his arms dropping slowly to his sides. “Earlier. You told me Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t release your trust fund unless you’re married.” His mouth opened and closed. A hand raked through his hair. “You’re not suggesting . . .”


made straight for a party of four men sitting at a table sipping the inevitable absinthe. Shouting in alarm, the four took to their heels, and then the black spied Tarzan. With a roar he charged the ape-man, while half a hundred heads peered from sheltering windows and doorways to witness the butchering of the poor Frenchman by the giant black. Tarzan met the rush with the fighting smile that the joy of battle always brought to his lips. As the Negro closed upon him, steel muscles gripped the black wrist of the uplifted knife-hand, and a single swift wrench left the hand dangling below a broken bone. Chapter 26 146 With the pain and surprise, the madness left the black man, and as Tarzan dropped back into his chair the fellow turned, crying with agony, and dashed wildly toward the native village. On another occasion as Tarzan and D'Arnot sat at dinner with a number of other whites, the talk fell upon lions and lion hunting. Opinion was divided as to the bravery of the king of beasts --some maintaining that he was an arrant coward, but all agreeing that it was with a feeling of greater security that they gripped their express rifles when the monarch of the jungle roared about a camp at night. D'Arnot and Tarzan had agreed that his past be kept secret, and so none other than the French officer knew of the ape-man's familiarity with the beasts of the jungle. "Monsieur Tarzan has not expressed himself," said one of the party. "A man of his prowess who has spent some time in Africa, as I understand Monsieur Tarzan has, must have had experiences with lions--yes?" "Some," replied Tarzan, dryly. "Enough to know that each of you are right in your judgment of the characteristics of the lions--you have met. But one might as well judge all blacks by the fellow who ran amuck last week, or decide that all whites are cowards because one has met a cowardly white. "There is as much individuality among the lower orders, gentlemen, as there is among ourselves. Today we may go out and stumble upon a lion which is over-timid--he runs away from us. To-morrow we may meet his uncle or his twin brother, and our friends wonder why we do not return from the jungle. For myself, I always assume that a lion is ferocious, and so I am never caught off my guard." "There would be little pleasure in hunting," retorted the first speaker, "if one is afraid of the thing he hunts." D'Arnot smiled. Tarzan afraid! "I do not exactly understand what you mean by fear," said Tarzan. "Like lions, fear is a different thing in different men, but to me the only pleasure in the hunt is the knowledge that the hunted thing has power to harm me as much as I have to harm him. If I went out with a couple of rifles and a gun bearer, and twenty or thirty beaters, to hunt a lion, I should not feel that the


tight and come in strong waves, and when I do, he pushes inside me again, something delicious to clench around, something beautiful and grounding, and when we fall asleep like that, I think that wherever it is that we’re going, maybe, just maybe, it might turn out to be a place I never want to leave. 22 CRITICAL MASS W HEN I WAKE UP , THE SUN IS HIGH IN THE SKY , AND shadows have shortened to little stumps. It’s the latest I’ve been in bed since that time I got the flu during freshman year and spent forty-eight hours hallucinating that my skin was an eggshell and my skeleton had finally grown enough to hatch out of it. There are no nightmares today. Just a feeling of bone-deep rest and Jack’s big body curved behind me, arms wrapped around my torso like a cross, securing me to him. It’s not unlike the way I awoke exactly two weeks ago. Except that we’re naked, our skin tacky. This time he is going to have to change the sheets. Something nags at the back of my skull, telling me that I can’t afford to waste time, that I should get out of bed and be productive—answer emails, clean the oven, buy a cemetery plot. I shush it and stretch in Jack’s arms. He stays asleep, hard once again. I wonder if it’s another peerection. If— “A what?” Oh shit. “Nothing.” Did I say it out loud? Jack’s voice is a deep rumble. “Did you just—” “No. Nope. I—” I hide my face in my pillow. This is why I don’t sleep in—if I get the amount of rest I actually need, my head-to-mouth filter stops working and— Jack’s hand slides down past my stomach. He starts grinding drowsily against my ass, and my mind blanks. “Okay?” he asks, half-asleep. “Please.” I hook my foot behind his shin. He presses an open-mouthed kiss on the curve of my shoulder. “You did say that we might have to work on the sex.” I stiffen. If it wasn’t good, I said. Was it not good? I thought it was, but— what do I know? He’s the expert here. “I’m sorry, I—” “Elsie. Work on how little I last.” He bites the spot where he kissed me, and then his cock is rubbing against me, breaching my entrance. He makes a few soft, grunt-like noises next to my ear, then presses to the hilt in one single push. I spasm around him, and the drag against my muscles is sunextinguishingly good. It’s still a snug fit, but I’m wet from his come, soft from sleep, and he slides inside like a dream. He pinches my hard nipple, like he knows exactly what my body wants, even when I don’t. His palm presses against my abdomen, and I wonder if he can feel himself move within me, if he can tell how full I am. His thrusts are long and slow, at once leisurely and forceful enough to shift my entire body closer to the headboard. “Okay,


recognizing the vixen that stares back at me. Kate has gone all out and played Barbie with me this evening, styling my hair and makeup. My hair is full and straight, my eyes ringed with kohl, my lips scarlet red. I look . . . hot. I’m all legs, especially in the high-heeled Manolos and my indecently short dress. I need Christian to approve, though I have a horrible feeling he won’t like so much of my flesh exposed. In view of our entente cordiale, I decide I should ask him. I pick up my BlackBerry. 280/551 From: Anastasia Grey Subject: Does My Butt Look Big In This? Date: August 27, 2011 18:53 MST To: Christian Grey Mr. Grey I need your sartorial advice. Yours Mrs. G x From: Christian Grey Subject: Peachy Date: August 27, 2011 18:55 MST To: Anastasia Grey Mrs. Grey I seriously doubt it. But I will come and give your butt a thorough examination just to make sure. Yours in anticipation Mr. G x Christian Grey, CEO Grey Enterprises Holdings and Butt Inspectorate Inc. As I read his e-mail, the bedroom door opens, and Christian freezes on the threshold. His mouth pops open and his eyes widen. Holy crap . . . this could go either way. “Well?” I whisper. “Ana, you look . . . Wow.” “You like it?” “Yes, I guess so.” He’s a little hoarse. Slowly he steps into the room and closes the door. He’s wearing black jeans and a white shirt, but with a black jack- et. He looks divine. He stalks slowly toward me, but as soon as he reaches me, he puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me around to face the full-length mirror, 281/551 while he stands behind me. My gaze finds his in the glass, then he glances down, fascinated by my naked back. His finger glides down my spine and reaches the edge of my dress at the small of my back, where pale flesh meets silver cloth. “This is very revealing,” he murmurs. His hand skims lower, over my backside and down to my naked thigh. He pauses, gray eyes burning intently into blue. Then slowly he trails his fingers back up to the hem of my skirt. Watching his long fingers move lightly, teasingly across my skin, feeling the tingles they leave in their wake, my mouth forms a perfect O. “It’s not far from here.” He touches the hem, then moves his fingers higher. “To here,” he whispers. I gasp as his fingers stroke my sex, moving tantalizingly over my panties, feeling me, teasing me. “And your point is?” I whisper. “My point is . . . it’s not far from here”—his fingers glide over my panties, then one is inside, against my soft dampened flesh—“to here. And then . . . to here.” He slips a finger inside me. I gasp and make a soft mewling sound. “This is mine,” he murmurs in my ear. Closing his eyes, he moves his finger slowly in and out of me. “I don’t want


done. The carcases of both whales had dropped astern; and the head-laden ship not a little resembled a mule carrying a pair of overburdening panniers. Meantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale's head, and ever and anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the .. <p 327 > lines in his own hand. And Ahab chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his shadow; while, if the Parsee's shadow was there at all it seemed only to blend with, and lengthen Ahab's. As the crew toiled on, Laplandish speculations were bandied among them, concerning all these passing things. .. <p 327 > .. < chapter lxxiv 7 THE SPERM WHALE'S HEAD--CONTRASTED VIEW > Here, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us join them, and lay together our own. Of the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales regularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two extremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external difference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a head of each is this moment hanging from the Pequod's side; and as we may freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across the deck: --where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better chance to study practical cetology than here? In the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between these heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a certain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale's which the Right Whale's sadly lacks. There is more character in the Sperm Whale's head. As you behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiority to him, in point of pervading dignity. In the present instance, too, this dignity is heightened by the pepper and salt color of his head at the summit, giving token of advanced age and large experience. In short, he is what the fishermen technically call a grey-headed whale. Let us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads -- namely, the two most important organs, the eye and the ear. .. <p 328 > Far back on the side of the head, and low down, near the angle of either whale's jaw, if you narrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you would fancy to be a young colt's eye; so out of all proportion is it to the magnitude of the head. Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale's eyes, it is plain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more than he can one exactly astern. in a word, the position of the whale's eyes corresponds to that of a man's ears; and you may fancy, for yourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects through your ears. You would find that you could only command some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight


possible for both Colin and Mary to do more of them each time they tried, and such appetites were the results that but for the basket Dickon put down behind the bush each morning when he arrived they would have been lost. But the little oven in the hollow and Mrs. Sowerby's bounties were so satisfying that Mrs. Medlock and the nurse and Dr. Craven became mystified again. You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and richly frothed new milk and oatcakes and buns and heather honey and clotted cream. "They are eating next to nothing," said the nurse. "They'll die of starvation if they can't be persuaded to take some nourishment. And yet see how they look." "Look!" exclaimed Mrs. Medlock indignantly. "Eh! I'm moithered to death with them. They're a pair of young Satans. Bursting their jackets one day and the next turning up their noses at the best meals Cook can tempt them with. Not a mouthful of that lovely young fowl and bread sauce did they set a fork into yesterday--and the poor woman fair invented a pudding for them--and back it's sent. She almost cried. She's afraid she'll be blamed if they starve themselves into their graves." Dr. Craven came and looked at Colin long and carefully, He wore an extremely worried expression when the nurse talked with him and showed him the almost untouched tray of breakfast she had saved for him to look at--but it was even more worried when he sat down by Colin's sofa and examined him. He had been called to London on business and had not seen the boy for nearly two weeks. When young things begin to gain health they gain it rapidly. The waxen tinge had left, Colins skin and a warm rose showed through it; his beautiful eyes were clear and the hollows under them and in his cheeks and temples had filled out. His once dark, heavy locks had begun to look as if they sprang healthily from his forehead and were soft and warm with life. His lips were fuller and of a normal color. In fact as an imitation of a boy who was a confirmed invalid he was a disgraceful sight. Dr. Craven held his chin in his hand and thought him over. "I am sorry to hear that you do not eat any- thing," he said. "That will not do. You will lose all you have gained --and you have gained amazingly. You ate so well a short time ago." "I told you it was an unnatural appetite," answered Colin. Mary was sitting on her stool nearby and she suddenly made a very queer sound which she tried so violently to repress that she ended by almost choking. "What is the matter?" said Dr. Craven, turning to look at her. Mary became quite severe in her manner. "It was something between a sneeze and a cough," she replied with reproachful dignity, "and it got into my


This is it.’ Dumai stared at the writing. ‘Tonra speaks of a comet that will come in the twelfth year of the fifth century – next year – to cool the risen fire. This must be the answer.’ ‘A comet.’ His expression changed. ‘A comet is what keeps the balance in check.’ ‘Father might know of it – but if this is true, this time of fire will not last for ever, just as Master Kiprun said. It is a wheel, always circling. It means we only need survive until this coming spring.’ ‘Easier said than done.’ Kanifa coughed. ‘Dumai, we’ve stayed too long.’ She stood without argument. Great one, we are ready to leave, she called, but Furtia did not reply. While Kanifa gathered the old papers into a sack, Dumai combed the cave once more, searching every crevice, trying to ignore how fast her heart was beating. She returned to Tonra, and noticed, on her second look, that the body was curled around something. A box. She thought it was of Lacustrine design, hammered silver with gilding, its surface beautifully engraved. Its shape put her in mind of fruit. With care, she took it and removed its lid – and there it was, the stone. Big as a plum and smooth as a pearl, it was darkest blue, with a white glimmer at its core. Dumai gazed into those depths, finding herself entranced. ‘Kanifa.’ He crouched beside her. ‘This must be what she was protecting,’ he rasped. ‘What is it?’ ‘I don’t know. Should we take it?’ Kanifa considered, then nodded. ‘She can’t look after it any more. We should try to find out what it is, and why she banished herself with it.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Is Furtia coming?’ ‘I called her.’ Dumai cupped a hand under the gemstone, hesitating as she did it. She felt as low as a graverobber – but they needed any clue they could find. Even through a padded gauntlet, the stone was cold to the touch. She wrapped it in a length of wool and stowed it in the pouch at her hip, pulling the cords tight before she knotted them. An ominous sound came from outside. She joined Kanifa on the balcony to see a storm gathering over the Collar, where dusk had already fallen. As clouds enwheeled Golümtan, the whole city became a weave of burning threads, and Dumai saw a flash of gold. ‘Wyrms,’ she breathed. ‘The gods must have summoned a storm to weaken them. We have to start climbing, Mai, to get below the ceiling.’ ‘We won’t make it that far in this state.’ ‘We can try.’ Shivering, Dumai blinked against an icy blaze of wind. The sun, already tarnished, was turning red. ‘All right,’ she ground out. ‘We go as far as we can and find shelter.’ With the rope between them, they angled themselves over the balcony and picked their way back down the ice. Descending a mountain could be far more dangerous than scaling it, and while every instinct told her


when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive? The telescreen struck fourteen. He must leave in ten minutes. He had to be back at work by fourteen-thirty. Curiously, the chiming of the hour seemed to have put new heart into him. He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage. He went back to the table, dipped his pen, and wrote: To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone--to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink--greetings! He was already dead, he reflected. It seemed to him that it was only now, when he had begun to be able to formulate his thoughts, that he had taken the decisive step. The consequences of every act are included in the act itself. He wrote: Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death. Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible. Two fingers of his right hand were inkstained. It was exactly the kind of detail that might betray you. Some nosing zealot in the Ministry (a woman, probably: someone like the little sandy-haired woman or the dark-haired girl from the Fiction Department) might start wondering why he had been writing during the lunch interval, why he had used an old-fashioned pen, WHAT he had been writing--and then drop a hint in the appropriate quarter. He went to the bathroom and carefully scrubbed the ink away with the gritty dark-brown soap which rasped your skin like sandpaper and was therefore well adapted for this purpose. He put the diary away in the drawer. It was quite useless to think of hiding it, but he could at least make sure whether or not its existence had been discovered. A hair laid across the page-ends was too obvious. With the tip of his finger he picked up an identifiable grain of whitish dust and deposited it on the corner of the cover, where it was bound to be shaken off if the book was moved. file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (18 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:51 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt Chapter 3 Winston was dreaming of his mother. He must, he thought, have been ten or eleven years old when his mother had disappeared. She was a tall, statuesque, rather silent woman with slow movements and magnificent fair hair. His father he remembered more vaguely as dark and thin, dressed always in neat dark clothes (Winston remembered especially the very thin soles of his father's shoes) and wearing spectacles. The two of them must evidently have been swallowed up


word.” She’d caught sight of the family oil paintings stacked against the garbage cans. “Is that you?” she asked Louise. “What happened to your skin?” “Mom was learning how to paint,” Louise said, feeling inexplicably defensive. “Isn’t that the big lesson?” Mercy said. “We’re all holding on to too much junk.” “You want to go in the front?” Louise asked. “Let’s go!” Mercy said. “You coming with us, Mark?” “I’ve got to patch this window,” he said, but Louise knew he wanted to stay outside. She didn’t push it. Right now, she had to keep up with Mercy, who was already on the front porch. “I’m so excited!” she cheered, disappearing inside. Louise caught up with her in the living room as she framed a shot with her phone. “It really does look so much better”—she lowered her voice to a stage whisper—“without all those creepy dolls.” Mercy snapped another picture. “This living room is precious,” she said and pressed her fingertips against the wall it shared with the kitchen. “I wonder if this is a supporting wall. A lot of people want to go open plan.” The Booger Blanket lay on the floor. The Mark and Louise dolls were gone. A shriek ripped through the house from the garage as Mark started chopping plywood again. Mercy’s flash flickered and the dim room strobed white. Louise felt a sickening pressure in her gut. “I love the light this house gets,” Mercy said. “Once all the old things go and it gets repainted, you’re going to think we added a window.” All along, Louise had assumed Mark was moving things, but Mark had been with her all morning. Maybe she’d turned her back for a minute and he’d moved the dolls, but where? She hadn’t seen them in the garage. And he was the one who draped the Booger Blanket over them because he didn’t want to touch them. She thought about the Mark and Louise dolls watching TV, about Pupkin watching TV, about Pupkin vanishing from the garbage can. About dead squirrels squirming beneath her shirt. “Lulu?” Mercy said from behind her. “I asked if you knew what was under here.” Mercy crouched in the hall, one palm pressed to the wall-to-wall carpet. Louise tried to focus on Mercy’s question, but she kept looking in every corner for the dolls, for squirrels, for Pupkin. “Lulu,” Mercy said, snapping her fingers. “Hello?” don’t you feel the vibes the house doesn’t feel empty i feel like we’re doing something wrong Louise felt herself getting sucked into Mark’s world of vibes and gut feelings and intuition. She forced herself to focus on Mercy. She forced herself to focus on what mattered: getting the house on the market, getting back to San Francisco, getting Poppy back to normal. “Wood?” Louise said. “I think?” “Good,” Mercy said. “We can tear this ugly old carpet right out. Everyone does hardwood in high-traffic areas now.” Mercy strode into the dining room. “I thought whoever bought it would just tear the whole place down,” Louise said, following, trying to focus


407 > Captain Coffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that subject. for at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day, the precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem to the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound for grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber, though at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far inland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea. Besides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance, used for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris is soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely used in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and pomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it. Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's pills, and then running out of harm's way, as laborers do in blasting rocks. I have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris, certain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Stubb thought might be sailors' trousers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were nothing more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner. Now that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be found in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that saying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption; how that we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory. And likewise call to mind that saying of paracelsus about what it is that maketh the best musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of ill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is the worst. I should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but cannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made .. <p 408 > against whalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds, might be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said of the Frenchman's two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous aspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is throughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to rebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this odious stigma originate? I opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the Greenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because those whalemen did not then,


this degree of genetic experimentation had once been forbidden. The adapted creatures were as startling as they were dangerous, as wondrous as they were terrifying, some resembling visions from medieval hellscapes, while a few were a muddle of so many different animals they had no cohesive form, an impressionistic mess of limbs and eyes. None of them could ever collaborate with people. Yet there was value in studying every life, even these mutants, to observe how they matured, to scrutinize what had gone wrong with their bodies and minds. Uncontrollable and occasionally immensely strong, they regularly tried to escape. Heavily armed guards were housed inside a fortress in the centre of the Asylum, protected by walls of spikes, in a state of constant alert, armed with powerful sniper rifles, grenades and shotguns. Some of the cells had been destroyed by their occupants, doors kicked free. From other cells came a chorus of sounds strange and familiar, reverberating around the dome, a religious ceremony of monsters – hisses and howls overlapping with the unmistakably human sounds of anguish. Zariffa walked up to one of the cell doors, peering through the grate, searching for the ice-adapted species inside. Adjusting to the gloom, she saw the creature in the corner standing upright on two muscular lizard legs, its back against the wall, arms crossed, as though patiently waiting for a commuter train. Its hexagonal scale-skin was the colour of the shadows it lurked within. Its eyes were yellow soap bubbles bulging out of a smooth round skull. Its pupils seemed to float freely inside these yellow eyes as though not attached to any optic nerve. ‘What is it?’ ‘It’s a Troodon.’ ‘What is a Troodon?’ ‘A species of dinosaur.’ The idea had been to combine two of the planet’s most evolutionary successes – man and dinosaur – in the hope that their strengths would amplify each other. Since neither species was evolved to survive in the extreme cold, the ice adaptations were substantial. The dinosaur selected was the little-known Troodon, a human-sized theropod of the Cretaceous period and considered the most intelligent of all dinosaurs, the species that would’ve evolved to rule the Earth were it not for the asteroid strike. Had they survived, Homo sapiens would never have evolved, but would have been eaten, conquered, subdued and Troodon would’ve ruled instead, inventing different technology, speaking a different language, constructing a different society. Yotam remarked: ‘No limits.’ ‘Sometimes limits are a good idea.’ When Zariffa looked back, the Troodon approached her position. ‘Stay still.’ Moving into the light, its scales changed colour to the most startling reds and purples, a display of power perhaps, its pupils fixed on her, its tail of segmented bone swaying from side to side in prelude to an attack. Zariffa stepped back from the door as it jumped, its arrow tip tail slashing at the bars. In the centre of the chamber the guards readied their weapons. With a trembling hand, she lit her whale-bone pipe. After the crinkle of the lichen burn, and a deep inhalation, she said: ‘I


Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

charge, and quite serene and harmless in all his ways, they had permitted him freely to wander about the prison, and especially in the inclosed grass-platted yard thereof. And so I found him there, standing all alone in the quietest of the yards, his face towards a high wall, while all around, from the narrow slits of the jail windows, I thought I saw peering out upon him the eyes of murderers and thieves. “Bartleby!” “I know you,” he said, without looking round,—”and I want nothing to say to you.” “It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby,” said I, keenly pained at his implied suspicion. “And to you, this should not be so vile a place. Nothing reproachful attaches to you by being here. And see, it is not so sad a place as one might think. Look, there is the sky, and here is the grass.” “I know where I am,” he replied, but would say nothing more, and so I left him. As I entered the corridor again, a broad meat-like man, in an apron, accosted me, and jerking his thumb over his shoulder said—”Is that your friend?” “Yes.” “Does he want to starve? If he does, let him live on the prison fare, that’s all.” “Who are you?” asked I, not knowing what to make of such an unofficially speaking person in such a place. “I am the grub-man. Such gentlemen as have friends here, hire me to provide them with something good to eat.” “Is this so?” said I, turning to the turnkey. He said it was. “Well then,” said I, slipping some silver into the grub-man’s hands (for so they called him). “I want you to give particular attention to my friend there; let him have the best dinner you can get. And you must be as polite to him as possible.” “Introduce me, will you?” said the grub-man, looking at me with an expression which seem to say he was all impatience for an opportunity to give a specimen of his breeding. Thinking it would prove of benefit to the scrivener, I acquiesced; and asking the grub-man his name, went up with him to Bartleby. “Bartleby, this is Mr. Cutlets; you will find him very useful to you.” “Your sarvant, sir, your sarvant,” said the grub-man, making a low salutation behind his apron. “Hope you find it pleasant here, sir;—spacious grounds—cool apartments, sir—hope you’ll stay with us some time—try to make it agreeable. May Mrs. Cutlets and I have the pleasure of your company to dinner, sir, in Mrs. Cutlets’ private room?” “I prefer not to dine to-day,” said Bartleby, turning away. “It would disagree with me; I am unused to dinners.” So saying he slowly moved to the other side of the inclosure, and took up a position fronting the dead-wall. “How’s this?” said the grub-man, addressing me with a stare of astonishment. “He’s odd, aint he?” “I think he is a little deranged,” said I, sadly. “Deranged? deranged is it? Well now, upon my word, I thought that friend of yourn was


The cover read: HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL The Acclaimed International Bestseller Sophie glanced up. "An international bestseller? I've never heard of it." "You were young. This caused quite a stir back in the nineteen eighties. To my taste, the authors made some dubious leaps of faith in their analysis, but their fundamental premise is sound, and to their credit, they finally brought the idea of Christ's bloodline into the mainstream." "What was the Church's reaction to the book?" "Outrage, of course. But that was to be expected. After all, this was a secret the Vatican had tried to bury in the fourth century. That's part of what the Crusades were about. Gathering and destroying information. The threat Mary Magdalene posed to the men of the early Church was potentially ruinous. Not only was she the woman to whom Jesus had assigned the task of founding the Church, but she also had physical proof that the Church's newly proclaimed deity had spawned a mortal bloodline. The Church, in order to defend itself against the Magdalene's power, perpetuated her image as a whore and buried evidence of Christ's marriage to her, thereby defusing any potential claims that Christ had a surviving bloodline and was a mortal prophet." Sophie glanced at Langdon, who nodded. "Sophie, the historical evidence supporting this is substantial." "I admit," Teabing said, "the assertions are dire, but you must understand the Church's powerful motivations to conduct such a cover-up. They could never have survived public knowledge of a bloodline. A child of Jesus would undermine the critical notion of Christ's divinity and therefore the Christian Church, which declared itself the sole vessel through which humanity could access the divine and gain entrance to the kingdom of heaven." 171 "The five-petal rose," Sophie said, pointing suddenly to the spine of one of Teabing's books. The same exact design inlaid on the rosewood box. Teabing glanced at Langdon and grinned. "She has a good eye." He turned back to Sophie. "That is the Priory symbol for the Grail. Mary Magdalene. Because her name was forbidden by the Church, Mary Magdalene became secretly known by many pseudonyms-the Chalice, the Holy Grail, and the Rose." He paused. "The Rose has ties to the five-pointed pentacle of Venus and the guiding Compass Rose. By the way, the word rose is identical in English, French, German, and many other languages." "Rose," Langdon added, "is also an anagram of Eros, the Greek god of sexual love." Sophie gave him a surprised look as Teabing plowed on. "The Rose has always been the premiere symbol of female sexuality. In primitive goddess cults, the five petals represented the five stations of female life-birth, menstruation, motherhood, menopause, and death. And in modern times, the flowering rose's ties to womanhood are considered more visual." He glanced at Robert. "Perhaps the symbologist could explain?" Robert hesitated. A moment too long. "Oh, heavens!" Teabing huffed. "You Americans are such prudes." He looked back at Sophie. "What Robert is fumbling with is the fact that the blossoming flower resembles the female genitalia, the sublime blossom


a voice on the telescreen. We may be reasonably sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was born. Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization. Below Big Brother comes the Inner Party. Its numbers limited to six millions, or something less than 2 per cent of the population of Oceania. Below the Inner Party comes the Outer Party, which, if the Inner Party is described as the brain of the State, may be justly likened to the hands. Below that come the dumb masses whom we habitually refer to as 'the proles', numbering perhaps 85 per cent of the population. In the terms file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (113 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:52 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt of our earlier classification, the proles are the Low: for the slave population of the equatorial lands who pass constantly from conqueror to conqueror, are not a permanent or necessary part of the structure. In principle, membership of these three groups is not hereditary. The child of Inner Party parents is in theory not born into the Inner Party. Admission to either branch of the Party is by examination, taken at the age of sixteen. Nor is there any racial discrimination, or any marked domination of one province by another. Jews, Negroes, South Americans of pure Indian blood are to be found in the highest ranks of the Party, and the administrators of any area are always drawn from the inhabitants of that area. In no part of Oceania do the inhabitants have the feeling that they are a colonial population ruled from a distant capital. Oceania has no capital, and its titular head is a person whose whereabouts nobody knows. Except that English is its chief LINGUA FRANCA and Newspeak its official language, it is not centralized in any way. Its rulers are not held together by blood-ties but by adherence to a common doctrine. It is true that our society is stratified, and very rigidly stratified, on what at first sight appear to be hereditary lines. There is far less to-and-fro movement between the different groups than happened under capitalism or even in the pre-industrial age. Between the two branches of the Party there is a certain amount of interchange, but only so much as will ensure that weaklings are excluded from the Inner Party and that ambitious members of the Outer Party are made harmless by allowing them to rise. Proletarians, in practice, are not allowed to graduate into the Party. The most gifted among them, who might possibly become nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the Thought Police and eliminated. But this state of affairs is not necessarily permanent, nor is it a matter of principle. The Party is not a class in the old sense of the word. It does not aim at transmitting power to its own children,


there was a wide range of makeup shades for ~diverse skin tones~ or whatever marketing girlies are calling black and brown people now. Second, I didn’t know—and still don’t, honestly—how to advocate for myself. Specifically, I didn’t know that you are allowed to say no when someone is slathering wet putty two shades lighter than your face across your chin in an attempt to “sculpt” it. I was only there in the first place to pick up an elusive bottle of Chanel Vamp nail polish for this rich lady, someone I was working for part-time as a personal assistant, to take to her manicurist. “They don’t have nail polish there?” said me, a dumb sack of potatoes stuffed into an ill-fitting buffalo plaid flannel and scuffed Doc Martens, fiddling nervously with the constrictive velvet choker cinched around my neck as my boss counted hundred-dollar bills into my other palm. “Of course they do, but it isn’t Chanel.” Her, disgusted. “Do you need anything else?” I asked, already dreaming about how I was going to waste all that leftover change. “Grab me a jar of [Swiss neck cream that costs more than my rent at the time], and hurry back. I have a nail appointment at six,” she snipped, shoving a homeless man into the oven for her dinner. I bought the nail polish and the neck cream, and as I was lurching my way toward the exit, a lady who thought I was rich waved me over to her counter and offered to “refresh [my] look.” I don’t know how to put on eyeshadow or what to do with highlighter, so of course I said yes. I had literally never had anyone even touch my face before, let alone carve cheekbones into it. I climbed up onto one of those awkward square stool-seats with the little lip that does absolutely nothing in terms of lumbar support, and my feet didn’t reach the footrest that is meant to help stabilize your body as you tremble atop what is essentially a pogo stick. So I clenched my body tight to keep from tipping over as this liberally perfumed stranger made observations like, “Wow, this is a lot of blackheads,” and “You’ve never heard of exfoliation, huh?” while pressing her fingers into the skin around my nose. After twenty minutes of painting and poking and manipulating my post-puberty oil-slicked T zone, she held me at arm’s length and chirped, “You look great! Anything else besides the foundation, setting powder, bronzer, eye shadow quad, and lip pencil for you today?” I felt around the cluttered countertop for my glasses, then put them on and squinted at my reflection in the mirror. I looked seventy-five years old, and that’s being generous. I looked like I’d tripped and fallen face-first into a child’s crusty fingerpaints they haven’t used in a year. I looked like I had been embalmed and the mortician fell asleep in the middle of doing my makeup, then woke up five minutes before my funeral and did a rush job on me before wheeling me


in disgust? God, in pity, made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid even from the very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow devils, to admire and encourage him, but I am solitary and abhorred.' "These were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude; but when I contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, their amiable and benevolent dispositions, I persuaded myself that when they should become acquainted with my admiration of their virtues they would compassionate me and overlook my personal deformity. Could they turn from their door one, however monstrous, who solicited their compassion and friendship? I resolved, at least, not to despair, but in every way to fit myself for an interview with them which would decide my fate. I postponed this attempt for some months longer, for the importance attached to its success inspired me with a dread lest I should fail. Besides, I found that my understanding improved so much with every day's experience that I was unwilling to commence this undertaking until a few more months should have added to my sagacity. "Several changes, in the meantime, took place in the cottage. The presence of Safie diffused happiness among its inhabitants, and I also found that a greater degree of plenty reigned there. Felix and Agatha spent more time in amusement and conversation, and were assisted in their labours by servants. They did not appear rich, but they were contented and happy; their feelings were serene and peaceful, while mine became every day more tumultuous. Increase of knowledge only discovered to me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. I cherished hope, it is true, but it vanished when I beheld my person reflected in water or my shadow in the moonshine, even as that frail image and that inconstant shade. "I endeavoured to crush these fears and to fortify myself for the trial which in a few months I resolved to undergo; and sometimes I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed smiles of consolation. But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam's supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him. "Autumn passed thus. I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay and fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had worn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon. Yet I did not heed the bleakness of the weather; I was better fitted by my conformation for the endurance of cold than heat. But my chief delights were the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay apparel of summer; when those deserted me, I turned with more attention towards the cottagers. Their happiness was not decreased by


A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

that in itself it is a torment greater than all the others. Saint Thomas, the greatest doctor of the church, the angelic doctor, as he is called, says that the worst damnation consists in this, that the understanding of man is totally deprived of divine light and his affection obstinately turned away from the goodness of God. God, remember, is a being infinitely good, and therefore the loss of such a being must be a loss infinitely painful. In this life we have not a very clear idea of what such a loss must be, but the damned in hell, for their greater torment, have a full understanding of that which they have lost, and understand that they have lost it through their own sins and have lost it for ever. At the very instant of death the bonds of the flesh are broken asunder and the soul at once flies towards God as towards the centre of her existence. Remember, my dear little boys, our souls long to be with God. We come from God, we live by God, we belong to God: we are His, inalienably His. God loves with a divine love every human soul, and every human soul lives in that love. How could it be otherwise? Every breath that we draw, every thought of our brain, every instant of life proceeds from God's inexhaustible goodness. And if it be pain for a mother to be parted from her child, for a man to be exiled from hearth and home, for friend to be sundered from friend, O think what pain, what anguish it must be for the poor soul to be spurned from the presence of the supremely good and loving Creator Who has called that soul into existence from nothingness and sustained it in life and loved it with an immeasurable love. This, then, to be separated for ever from its greatest good, from God, and to feel the anguish of that separation, knowing full well that it is unchangeable: this is the greatest torment which the created soul is capable of bearing, POENA DAMNI, the pain of loss. The second pain which will afflict the souls of the damned in hell is the pain of conscience. Just as in dead bodies worms are engendered by putrefaction, so in the souls of the lost there arises a perpetual remorse from the putrefaction of sin, the sting of conscience, the worm, as Pope Innocent the Third calls it, of the triple sting. The first sting inflicted by this cruel worm will be the memory of past pleasures. O what a dreadful memory will that be! In the lake of all-devouring flame the proud king will remember the pomps of his court, the wise but wicked man his libraries and instruments of research, the lover of artistic pleasures his marbles and pictures and other art treasures, he who delighted in the pleasures of the table his gorgeous feasts, his dishes prepared with such delicacy, his choice wines; the miser will remember his hoard of gold, the robber his


it struck him as a little absurd to allude to the matter. He knew that May most particularly wanted him to be kind to her cousin; was it not that wish which had hastened the announcement of their engagement? It gave him an odd sensation to reflect that, but for the Countess's arrival, he might have been, if not still a free man, at least a man less irrevocably pledged. But May had willed it so, and he felt himself somehow relieved of further responsibility--and therefore at liberty, if he chose, to call on her cousin without telling her. As he stood on Madame Olenska's threshold curiosity was his uppermost feeling. He was puzzled by the tone in which she had summoned him; he concluded that she was less simple than she seemed. The door was opened by a swarthy foreign-looking maid, with a prominent bosom under a gay neckerchief, whom he vaguely fancied to be Sicilian. She welcomed him with all her white teeth, and answering his enquiries by a head-shake of incomprehension led him through the narrow hall into a low firelit drawing- room. The room was empty, and she left him, for an appreciable time, to wonder whether she had gone to find her mistress, or whether she had not understood what he was there for, and thought it might be to wind the clock--of which he perceived that the only visible specimen had stopped. He knew that the southern races communicated with each other in the language of pantomime, and was mortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible. At length she returned with a lamp; and Archer, having meanwhile put together a phrase out of Dante and Petrarch, evoked the answer: "La signora e fuori; ma verra subito"; which he took to mean: "She's out--but you'll soon see." What he saw, meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded shadowy charm of a room unlike any room he had known. He knew that the Countess Olenska had brought some of her possessions with her--bits of wreckage, she called them--and these, he supposed, were represented by some small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze on the chimney- piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on the discoloured wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in old frames. Newland Archer prided himself on his knowledge of Italian art. His boyhood had been saturated with Ruskin, and he had read all the latest books: John Addington Symonds, Vernon Lee's "Euphorion," the essays of P. G. Hamerton, and a wonderful new volume called "The Renaissance" by Walter Pater. He talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of Fra Angelico with a faint condescension. But these pictures bewildered him, for they were like nothing that he was accustomed to look at (and therefore able to see) when he travelled in Italy; and perhaps, also, his powers of observation were impaired by the oddness of finding himself in this strange empty house, where apparently no one expected him. He was sorry that he had not told


worth of bills for taking the phone into the bathroom to call 1-900-909-5KIDS several times a day and listening to recordings from the boys that I thought were tailored specifically to me. Those calls cost two dollars a minute, which seemed like a bargain for access to Jordan Knight’s most secret thoughts and feelings. That sleepover, we ended up watching a video of Earth Girls Are Easy, which was maybe not the coolest thing to screen for a bunch of fifth-grade girls, but it was the only tape we had in the house, then collectively slept the fitful sleep of the extremely disappointed. The next morning, I woke up before everyone else and found my mom in the kitchen drinking Folgers instant coffee crystals and chain-smoking cigarettes. I was about to ask her if she’d bought good (read: sugary) cereal to serve for breakfast, my only hope for rectifying the events of the night before. I spotted the canister of grits next to the stove and steeled myself. I would have to explain to the sleeping girls in the other room what those were, and why we were expected to eat them, but then the front door opened and in walked my sister Jane, a recent graduate of Hamburger University, carrying boxes stuffed with Egg McMuffins and stacks of Styrofoam hotcakes clamshells. It was like if Santa Claus was a black woman with a dyed-blond mushroom cut in a red-and-white-striped shirt and one of those ribbon-looking lady neckties they had to wear in the nineties. She saved my whole stupid party! Everybody loves McDonald’s breakfast, and I was a legend at school the next day, for approximately seven minutes, but who cares. Thank goodness for that degree in Hamburgerology (this is real), the only college diploma between the four of us. Our mother was so proud. What is your Starbucks order? I like to listen to people’s complicated coffee orders, because walking a person through the seventeen steps it takes to make your optimal morning coffee while a line of pissed-off people who are already late for work doubles in on itself before wrapping around an entire city block takes the kind of bravery I have never and will never possess. It is remarkable to me. Thrilling, really. I live every single day in fear that a stranger might yell at me for some normal community thing I am doing wrong, like pulling up to the gas pump at a weird angle or exiting out of the wrong door. So, I cannot imagine being brave enough to take my time giving explicit instructions about my latte while people who are close enough to touch me get mad at me. All that hot, concentrated rage aimed at my back? During the morning rush?? Absolutely not, babe! Sometimes in the drive-thru I’ll roll down my window and listen in total amazement to the person ahead of me rattle off all the modifications they want for their drink, because how do they even know all that stuff ? How did you know to say “blended-in


through. I don’t have time for this. She calculated in her head if she’d really need the case anyway. She had a full hour before viability would be considered compromised. Viv glanced up. “Sir Calvin, I need some help.” I AM AT YOUR SERVICE, DOCTOR. HOW MAY I ASSIST YOU? The ship AI’s voice boomed from above, a male voice speaking in the now-familiar highbrow British accent. It didn’t annoy her nearly as much as it had when they’d first come aboard. “I need you to contact Arrow pilot Christy Selleck. She’s here in HealthBay …” Viv walked and talked, grabbing two doctor’s satchels and a handful of syringes from a nearby closet. She placed the cartons and needles into the bags. “Tell her to meet me at Flight Bay, stat.” Flight Bay, You Say? “Yes, that’s right. And I need you to contact Bay Chief Mintz. Tell him to find me an Arrow. Make sure it is fueled up and ready to go.” I Believe All The Arrows Are Currently: Engaged, Dr. Leigh. “Just do what I asked. Mintz will just need to figure it out. Oh, and this needs to happen in the next three minutes.” I Will Make The Call … “OH. Also make sure we have the coordinates to USS Lincoln.” YES, DOCTOR. CONSIDER IT DONE. She stopped what she was doing and took a breath. Am I really doing this? Her satchel strapped over one shoulder, she left the pharma-hold and spoke to the attending counter nurse, letting her know she’d be gone for several hours, then quick- walked toward HealthBay’s exit. She knew that quansporting was not operational, so she sprinted down the corridor toward the bank of GravLifts. Hurrying into the first available car, she barked to the hover lift bot attendant, “Flight Bay.” Selleck was standing there, looking apprehensive, as Viv scurried out of the lift. “Good, you got here quick,” Viv said, somewhat out of breath. “Yes, ma’am, I ran to get here. Um, it sounded urgent.” Selleck’s eyes were red, but she looked to be holding it together. “Come on, no time to waste.” Side by side they sprinted down the corridor toward Flight Bay. “Ma’am, can I ask what this is about?” “Please, knock off the ma’am crap. I’m Doc Viv, or simply Viv.” Entering Flight Bay, Viv’s ears were jarringly accosted by the sounds of loud clangs, yelling voices overhead on the PA system, and the high-pitched revving of multiple Arrow drives. This was not Viv’s environment, and it had taken her off guard. “This way, Doc Viv,” Selleck said. “Already spoke to the chief. Uh … he’s not real happy with you. Bit perturbed to have had the ship’s AI barking off orders to him.” Before she could answer, a sleek candy-apple-red Arrow fighter rolled up beside the two of them. “Our ride’s here. You ready for this?” Selleck said with a crooked smile. “Sure, I am,” she said unconvincingly. “And thank you for trusting me. I really need this right now.” Selleck’s big brown eyes conveyed just how


back his shaft. Chapter 25 144 "You must not, Tarzan!" cried D'Arnot. "White men do not kill wantonly. MON DIEU! but you have much to learn. "I pity the ruffian who crosses you, my wild man, when I take you to Paris. I will have my hands full keeping your neck from beneath the guillotine." Tarzan lowered his bow and smiled. "I do not know why I should kill the blacks back there in my jungle, yet not kill them here. Suppose Numa, the lion, should spring out upon us, I should say, then, I presume: Good morning, Monsieur Numa, how is Madame Numa; eh?" "Wait until the blacks spring upon you," replied D'Arnot, "then you may kill them. Do not assume that men are your enemies until they prove it." "Come," said Tarzan, "let us go and present ourselves to be killed," and he started straight across the field, his head high held and the tropical sun beating upon his smooth, brown skin. Behind him came D'Arnot, clothed in some garments which had been discarded at the cabin by Clayton when the officers of the French cruiser had fitted him out in more presentable fashion. Presently one of the blacks looked up, and beholding Tarzan, turned, shrieking, toward the palisade. In an instant the air was filled with cries of terror from the fleeing gardeners, but before any had reached the palisade a white man emerged from the enclosure, rifle in hand, to discover the cause of the commotion. What he saw brought his rifle to his shoulder, and Tarzan of the Apes would have felt cold lead once again had not D'Arnot cried loudly to the man with the leveled gun: "Do not fire! We are friends!" "Halt, then!" was the reply. "Stop, Tarzan!" cried D'Arnot. "He thinks we are enemies." Tarzan dropped into a walk, and together he and D'Arnot advanced toward the white man by the gate. The latter eyed them in puzzled bewilderment. "What manner of men are you?" he asked, in French. "White men," replied D'Arnot. "We have been lost in the jungle for a long time." The man had lowered his rifle and now advanced with outstretched hand. "I am Father Constantine of the French Mission here," he said, "and I am glad to welcome you." "This is Monsieur Tarzan, Father Constantine," replied D'Arnot, indicating the ape-man; and as the priest extended his hand to Tarzan, D'Arnot added: "and I am Paul D'Arnot, of the French Navy." Father Constantine took the hand which Tarzan extended in imitation of the priest's act, while the latter took in the superb physique and handsome face in one quick, keen glance. Chapter 26 145 And thus came Tarzan of the Apes to the first outpost of civilization. For a week they remained there, and the ape-man, keenly observant, learned much of the ways of men; meanwhile black women sewed white duck garments for himself and D'Arnot so that they might continue their journey properly clothed. Chapter 26 The Height of Civilization Another month brought them to a little group


up Jim Hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning. Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom of Huckleberry Finn and was received with a Scriptural quotation, his heart broke and he crept home and to bed realizing that he alone of all the town was lost, forever and forever. And that night there came on a terrific storm, with driving rain, awful claps of thunder and blinding sheets of lightning. He covered his head with the bedclothes and waited in a horror of suspense for his doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt that all this hubbub was about him. He believed he had taxed the forbearance of the powers above to the extremity of endurance and that this was the result. It might have seemed to him a waste of pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a battery of artillery, but there seemed nothing incongruous about the getting up such an expensive thunder-storm as this to knock the turf from under an insect like himself. By and by the tempest spent itself and died without accomplishing its object. The boy's first impulse was to be grateful, and reform. His second was to wait -- for there might not be any more storms. The next day the doctors were back; Tom had relapsed. The three weeks he spent on his back --------------------------------------------------------- -215- this time seemed an entire age. When he got abroad at last he was hardly grateful that he had been spared, remembering how lonely was his estate, how companionless and forlorn he was. He drifted listlessly down the street and found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a juvenile court that was trying a cat for murder, in the presence of her victim, a bird. He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an alley eating a stolen melon. Poor lads! they -- like Tom -- had suffered a relapse. --------------------------------------------------------- -216- Chapter XXIII AT last the sleepy atmosphere was stirred -- and vigorously: the murder trial came on in the court. It became the absorbing topic of village talk immediately. Tom could not get away from it. Every reference to the murder sent a shudder to his heart, for his troubled conscience and fears almost persuaded him that these remarks were put forth in his hearing as "feelers"; he did not see how he could be suspected of knowing anything about the murder, but still he could not be comfortable in the midst of this gossip. It kept him in a cold shiver all the time. He took Huck to a lonely place to have a talk with him. It would be some relief to unseal his tongue for a little while; to divide his burden of distress with another sufferer. Moreover, he wanted to assure himself that Huck had remained discreet. "Huck, have you ever told anybody about -- that?" "'Bout what?" "You know what." "Oh --


the Cornucopia at the 213 onset of the Games. A canopy of netting that, aside from dis- couraging birds, seems to be useless shelters the pyramid it- self. The whole setup is completely perplexing. The distance, the netting, and the presence of the boy from District 3. One thing’s for sure, destroying those supplies is not going to be as simple as it looks. Some other factor is at play here, and I’d better stay put until I figure out what it is. My guess is the py- ramid is booby-trapped in some manner. I think of concealed pits, descending nets, a thread that when broken sends a poi- sonous dart into your heart. Really, the possibilities are end- less. While I am mulling over my options, I hear Cato shout out. He’s pointing up to the woods, far beyond me, and without turning I know that Rue must have set the first campfire. We’d made sure to gather enough green wood to make the smoke noticeable. The Careers begin to arm themselves at once. An argument breaks out. It’s loud enough for me to hear that it concerns whether or not the boy from District 3 should stay or accompany them. “He’s coming. We need him in the woods, and his job’s done here anyway. No one can touch those supplies,” says Cato. “What about Lover Boy?” says the boy from District 1. “I keep telling you, forget about him. I know where I cut him. It’s a miracle he hasn’t bled to death yet. At any rate, he’s in no shape to raid us,” says Cato. So Peeta is out there in the woods, wounded badly. But I am still in the dark on what motivated him to betray the Careers. 214 “Come on,” says Cato. He thrusts a spear into the hands of the boy from District 3, and they head off in the direction of the fire. The last thing I hear as they enter the woods is Cato saying, “When we find her, I kill her in my own way, and no one interferes.” Somehow I don’t think he’s talking about Rue. She didn’t drop a nest of tracker jackers on him. I stay put for a half an hour or so, trying to figure out what to do about the supplies. The one advantage I have with the bow and arrow is distance. I could send a flaming arrow into the pyramid easily enough — I’m a good enough shot to get it through those openings in the net — but there’s no guarantee it would catch. More likely it’d just burn itself out and then what? I’d have achieved nothing and given them far too much information about myself. That I was here, that I have an ac- complice, that I can use the bow and arrow with accuracy. There’s no alternative. I’m going to have to get in closer and see if I can’t discover what exactly protects the supplies. In fact, I’m just about to reveal myself when a movement catches my eye.


microscope, surrounded by test tubes, beakers, and X-rays. CALEB RHODES leans casually against the table while OLIVER HUXLEY waits nervously next to him. PROFESSOR DONOVAN As all of my experiments have shown, there’s nothing that could alter her DNA and completely erase the canine part of herself. It’s simply an irreversible process, I’m sorry to say. CALEB That’s what I’ve been telling him. I’m just not the best with all the sciency stuff. And I don’t mind being a werewolf. In fact, I think I kind of kick ass at it? Caleb attempts to howl, then dissolves into a coughing fit. Well. Most of the time. HUX It’s not for him. It’s . . . for someone else. CALEB Have you even asked her, Hux? Maybe you should start there, huh? HUX Well, no. But you think if she had a choice, this is really what she’d pick? CALEB He moves closer to Hux, jabbing a finger at his chest. We have super strength, super speed, and night vision. I can hear conversations happening a mile away. I can heal myself if I get hurt. And not to brag, but it’s just a fact—we’re more beautiful than the rest of you. Shinier hair, perfect skin, bigger muscles. Who wouldn’t want that? HUX How would you know what she wants? CALEB Because I’m the one who turned her. chapter fourteen MEMPHIS, TN The energy between us is different as dusk falls. Kinetic. My sleeve brushes Finn’s at least a half dozen times, and he forgets to drop his palm when it lands on my lower back for a few extra moments. After a walk to the waterfront, I ask if he’s ready to go back to the hotel and his breathy yes jolts my heart into a new rhythm. The evening is unseasonably warm for late September, the humid air filling my lungs and making me a little unsteady on my feet. No alcohol, just a steady shot of lust straight to my brain. I switch on the lights in my room and empty the bag from the sex shop onto the bed. As nonchalantly as I can, I flip over the mystery novel on my nightstand. I’m not embarrassed of it; The Sourdough Slayer just isn’t the sexiest title. Our next lesson was supposed to be oral sex, but there’s no reason we can’t spice it up. Another deviation from my outline, but an essential one. Based on the way Finn’s eyeing our stash, he’s thinking the same thing. “It would be a shame if we didn’t test all these out,” he says, turning over a textured condom. “Make sure everything works.” “I couldn’t agree more.” He reaches for the vibrator, pulling open the packaging. “Anything I should know before using this?” “Start slow,” I say, even though I’m already eager to get his hands on me. “But otherwise . . . feel free to play around with it.” “I fully intend to.” Then he places it on the nightstand, turning his attention back to me. “Soon,” he promises, sitting down on


days after he died, but she had never told anyone about the dreams. “We should get down before this batch of pounded yam is finished,” Kúnlé said, switching off the engine. They were at Ọlọ́hunwà, right across from the area where Kúnlé’s parents had built their house. People said the Cokers had chosen to build so close to the state capital because Kúnlé’s father was still planning to run for governor. When she asked Kúnlé about it, he had told her it was just a useful coincidence. His mother was the one who had inherited those plots of land from her grandmother. Kúnlé was a newscaster with the Nigerian television authority in the state capital and was working on being transferred to Lagos or Abuja. He was sure the letter would come through any day now and therefore had not bothered to get a flat of his own. Instead, he remodelled his parents’ boys’ quarters and commuted to work every day. Wúràọlá yawned. She wanted to crawl into a bed. “Why don’t we just buy the food and take it to your place?” “My parents are still at home,” he said, and left her in the car. Kúnlé’s parents seemed to expect her to spend all her time in their living room when she came over, as though she was still the little girl who followed her mother to Mothers’ Union meetings when Professor Cordelia Coker hosted them. Whenever the older woman ran into her in their compound, she often gave Wúràọlá a tight-lipped smile that made her wonder if the animal sounds Kúnlé made when he came had somehow carried over the stretch of interlocking tiles between the boys’ quarters and the duplex where his parents lived. It was just easier to spend less time there when his parents were home. She got out of the car and went towards the buka. Outside, men and women pounded yam in wide mortars, the noise muffled, then sharp as pestles hit the white mound before punching through to the mortar’s bottom. Po-ki-po. Kúnlé was already inside the buka. She sat next to him on a bench and reached for the drink he had ordered. He laughed. “You’re so stubborn.” “You’re the one who hasn’t apologised for shouting, but I’m stubborn?” She took a long drag of his stout. He put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her close. “Aren’t your parents attending that funeral in the cathedral?” Wúràọlá asked. Kúnlé glanced at his watch. “Yeah, they should leave in about an hour. We could take the food home if you want to say hello to them.” “Keep making jokes and I’ll go spend the day being the girlfriend of their dreams, let’s see where that leaves you.” “I’ve missed you,” he said into her hair. The waitress came then, and they ordered the same thing they always ate here. Pounded yam with ẹ̀fọ́ rírò. Goat meat for her, bush meat for him. * * * Before that morning, they had not seen each other for two, no, three weeks, and God, she


even acrobatics—had all been in service to the future adventures he’d been sure he would have. But the great invitation had never come. There had been no noble quests or secret missions. There had been rituals, glimpses of the world beyond, schoolwork, reports to write, and that was all. So he had kept honing himself like a blade that would never be tried. Then Dean Sandow had sent him to hell. Darlington shouldn’t have survived, but he’d managed to hold on until at last rescue had come. And now? Was he human enough? He had been able to sit at the table and hold a conversation. He hadn’t growled at anyone or broken any furniture, but it hadn’t been easy. Demons were not thinking creatures. They operated on instinct, driven by their appetites. He had prided himself on being nothing like that. Never rash. Guided by reason. But now he wanted in a way he never had. He had been tempted to bury his face in his soup bowl and lap at it like a greedy animal. He wanted to place himself between Alex’s legs now and do the same to her. Darlington drew a hand over his face and gave himself a little shake, praying for sense to return. He was her mentor. Her Virgil. He owed her his life and he could do better by her. He was not some slavering beast. He would pretend to be human again until he was. Darlington had been surprised by the way that the others had come together to work and plan. He almost hadn’t recognized the command in Alex, the confidence in Dawes, all of it born of his absence. They would have gone on without me. They would have grown stronger. Sitting there, watching them hatch their schemes with Turner and Mercy, he’d felt like a stranger in a place he’d once known he belonged. His understanding of his own lack of consequence had been both slow and sudden in its cruelty. “As for me, I don’t know what I am,” he said at last. “But you can control”—she waved a hand as if casting a spell over him —“whatever that demon shit is.” “I certainly hope so. But I think it would be wise for you and anyone else near me to keep a ready supply of salt at hand. We might consider putting prohibitions on Black Elm too, or wherever I wash up, so that I can’t leave without escort.” How reasonable he sounded. It wasn’t so hard to playact the man he’d been. He considered the strange and terrible girl before him. Her eyes were black in the firelight, her hair shining as if it had been lacquered. Undine the water spirit, risen from the lake in search of a soul. Darlington hated to think of that night at the Halloween party at Manuscript. He’d been out of his mind on whatever they’d used to drug him. But when he had looked into the great mirror, he had seen that Alex was something more than her mortal self.


a mechanism so complex that we can perceive many of its moving parts and how they interact without ever being able to predict with certitude what weather this machine might produce tomorrow, and even less what it will provide next month. When the sun is in an active phase, Shelby said, the Earth warms, and when the sun is in a phase of very low activity, all life on Earth is driven toward the equator to endure the long centuries of an ice age. The sun is the one and only master of the climate, and though its thermonuclear reactions seem chaotic, they are no more so than the weather on Earth that they affect. The truth is, Michael, the only genuinely chaotic thing in the universe is humanity. So it seems as Michael quickens along the interstate, for the heavy traffic moves faster than the weather warrants, as if not only he but also everyone on wheels this night is hurrying somewhere to save a life. Although they lack Michael’s enhanced reflexes, the drivers often follow a mere car length or two behind one another and change lanes without signaling. They jockey recklessly for position, as if nothing is more important than arriving at their destinations ten seconds faster than they might otherwise get there if they drove with any recognition of their mortality. He finds himself mourning Shelby, not for the first time since being resurrected, but more poignantly than before. The big guy was a light in life as surely as the sun. In spite of being the same age as Michael, for thirty-eight years he had filled the role of a big brother. Shelby’s remarkable intelligence ensured he was an outsider from an early age; by middle school, when he became tall and strong, his peaceable nature and humility provided another reason for most kids to ridicule him. In the school they attended and in the streets of their neighborhood, physical power was more honored than wisdom or accomplishment. Any guy as big as Shelby was expected to use his size to intimidate and get his way in all things. Brute strength combined with a determination to dominate was much admired. Shelby’s gentleness invited mockery to which he responded with a smile or a joke. In the small minds of his tormentors, his response confirmed that he was what they mocked him for being—feeb, wimp, coward, loser—even though Shelby frequently broke up fights when a smaller kid was targeted by a bigger one or by a group. On those occasions, he chastised the instigators of the violence and said something that was true but which nevertheless led them to mock him further: What life have you if you have not life together? In childhood and adolescence, Michael had been an outsider for reasons different from those that condemned Shelby to that status. His mother, Beth, had been known throughout the neighborhood as a mental case. Some adults called her “Batty Beth,” but to most kids, she was Bugshit Beth or worse. She earned the names. Because she didn’t