Backing The Wrong Horse Quotes

Do Stones Feel? Do stones feel? Do they love their life? Or does their patience drown out everything else? When I walk on the beach I gather a few white ones, dark ones, the multiple colors. Don’t worry, I say, I’ll bring you back, and I do. Is the tree as it rises delighted with its many branches, each one like a poem? Are the clouds glad to unburden their bundles of rain? Most of the world says no, no, it’s not possible. I refuse to think to such a conclusion. Too terrible it would be, to be wrong.

I used to pinch those pages closed when I read the book to keep from having to see Joan [of Arc] fail. But now I love that picture. I love it so much. I love how Joan kept going right up to the end. It reminds me that sometimes defeat is the price of taking action. If you do something, you become a target. People want to take you down. That's a risk. But it's better to do too much, better to try to hard, better to have a crisis of faith and get thrown and climb back up on your horse and keep riding, than to see something wrong in the world and not do anything at all.

Get Comfortable Not Knowing There once was a village that had among its people a very wise old man. The villagers trusted this man to provide them answers to their questions and concerns. One day, a farmer from the village went to the wise man and said in a frantic tone, “Wise man, help me. A horrible thing has happened. My ox has died and I have no animal to help me plow my field! Isn’t this the worst thing that could have possibly happened?” The wise old man replied, “Maybe so, maybe not.” The man hurried back to the village and reported to his neighbors that the wise man had gone mad. Surely this was the worst thing that could have happened. Why couldn’t he see this? The very next day, however, a strong, young horse was seen near the man’s farm. Because the man had no ox to rely on, he had the idea to catch the horse to replace his ox—and he did. How joyful the farmer was. Plowing the field had never been easier. He went back to the wise man to apologize. “You were right, wise man. Losing my ox wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened. It was a blessing in disguise! I never would have captured my new horse had that not happened. You must agree that this is the best thing that could have happened.” The wise man replied once again, “Maybe so, maybe not.” Not again, thought the farmer. Surely the wise man had gone mad now. But, once again, the farmer did not know what was to happen. A few days later the farmer’s son was riding the horse and was thrown off. He broke his leg and would not be able to help with the crop. Oh no, thought the man. Now we will starve to death. Once again, the farmer went to the wise man. This time he said, “How did you know that capturing my horse was not a good thing? You were right again. My son is injured and won’t be able to help with the crop. This time I’m sure that this is the worst thing that could have possibly happened. You must agree this time.” But, just as he had done before, the wise man calmly looked at the farmer and in a compassionate tone replied once again, “Maybe so, maybe not.” Enraged that the wise man could be so ignorant, the farmer stormed back to the village. The next day troops arrived to take every able-bodied man to the war that had just broken out. The farmer’s son was the only young man in the village who didn’t have to go. He would live, while the others would surely die. The moral of this story provides a powerful lesson. The truth is, we don’t know what’s going to happen—we just think we do. Often we make a big deal out of something. We blow up scenarios in our minds about all the terrible things that are going to happen. Most of the time we are wrong. If we keep our cool and stay open to possibilities, we can be reasonably certain that, eventually, all will be well. Remember: maybe so, maybe not.

The metaphor I use when I lecture on Freud is to think of the mind as a horse and buggy (a Victorian chariot) in which the driver (the ego) struggles frantically to control a hungry, lustful, and disobedient horse (the id) while the driver’s father (the superego) sits in the back seat lecturing the driver on what he is doing wrong.

Confident that cast-iron walls separate our nature and situation from theirs, comfortable in the well-broken-in saddle of our high horse, we have exchanged our capacity to be tolerant for detachment and derision. It is the tragedian's task, then, to force us to confront an almost unbearable truth: every folly or myopia of which any human being in history has been guilty may be traced back to some aspect of our collective nature. Because we each bear within ourselves the whole of the human condition, in its worst and best aspects, any one of us might be capable of doing anything at all, or nothing, under the right—or rather the most horribly wrong—conditions.

Frank grabbed a tourist brochure stuck under the napkin dispenser. He began to read it. Piper patted Leo’s arm, like she couldn’t believe he was really here. Nico stood at the edge of the group, eyeing the passing pedestrians as if they might be enemies. Coach Hedge munched on the salt and pepper shakers. Despite the happy reunion, everybody seemed more subdued than usual—like they were picking up on Leo’s mood. Jason had never really considered how important Leo’s sense of humor was to the group. Even when things were super serious, they could always depend on Leo to lighten things up. Now, it felt like the whole team had dropped anchor. “So then Jason harnessed the venti,” Hazel finished. “And here we are.” Leo whistled. “Hot-air horses? Dang, Jason. So basically, you held a bunch of gas together all the way to Malta, and then you let it loose.” Jason frowned. “You know, it doesn’t sound so heroic when you put it that way.” “Yeah, well. I’m an expert on hot air. I’m still wondering, why Malta? I just kind of ended up here on the raft, but was that a random thing, or—” “Maybe because of this.” Frank tapped his brochure. “Says here Malta was where Calypso lived.” A pint of blood drained from Leo’s face. “W-what now?” Frank shrugged. “According to this, her original home was an island called Gozo just north of here. Calypso’s a Greek myth thingie, right?” “Ah, a Greek myth thingie!” Coach Hedge rubbed his hands together. “Maybe we get to fight her! Do we get to fight her? ’Cause I’m ready.” “No,” Leo murmured. “No, we don’t have to fight her, Coach.” Piper frowned. “Leo, what’s wrong? You look—” “Nothing’s wrong!” Leo shot to his feet. “Hey, we should get going. We’ve got work to do!” “But…where did you go?” Hazel asked. “Where did you get those clothes? How—” “Jeez, ladies!” Leo said. “I appreciate the concern, but I don’t need two extra moms!” Piper smiled uncertainly. “Okay, but—” “Ships to fix!” Leo said. “Festus to check! Earth goddesses to punch in the face! What are we waiting for? Leo’s back!” He spread his arms and grinned. He was making a brave attempt, but Jason could see the sadness lingering in his eyes. Something had happened to him…something to do with Calypso.

Now he was the one who was incredulous. He drew his knife from its sheath, but he was too weak to step forward, and it spilled from his hand. His sword remained useless at his side. He looked back at me in disbelief and slid to the ground, his face twisted in pain. I walked closer and stood over him, kicking his knife away. “You were wrong, Komizar. It’s much easier to kill a man than a horse.

Last night I dreamed of the "happy hunting ground." I passed through a place of bones that looked human, but weren't--the skulls were wrong. Then I came to a place where the days were the best of every season, the sweetest air and water in spring, then the dry heat where deer make dust in the road, the fog of fall with good leaves. And you could shoot without a gun, never kill, but the rabbits would do a little dance, all as if it were a game, and they were playing it too. Then winter came with heavy powder-snow, and big deer, horses, goats and buffaloes--all white--snorted, tossed their heads, and I lay down with my Army blanket, made my bed in the snow, then dreamed within the dream. I dreamed I was at Fleety's, and she told me the bones were poor people killed by bandits, and she took me back to the place, and under a huge rock where no light should have shown, a cave almost, was a dogwood tree. It glowed the kind of red those trees get at sundown, the buds were purple in that weird light, and a madman came out with an axe and chopped at the skulls, trying to make them human-looking. Then I went back to the other side of both dreams. --from a letter to his mother, Helen Pancake, where he describes a dream that seems to encapsulate the play between violence and gentleness in his life.

Later, still pale and weak-kneed, I told Marcia and Steenie that they didn’t need to help me walk and they let go of my arms and stood back. “A real sport,” Steenie said. “Just threw himself on that horse and hugged him like a brother.” “I didn’t realize until now that we’ve been playing the game wrong all this time,” Marcia said. “It doesn’t mean a thing until you crawl right into the horse.” “I’d throw up some more if I had anything left to throw,” I said.

I had recently read to my dismay that they have started hunting moose again in New England. Goodness knows why anyone would want to shoot an animal as harmless and retiring as the moose, but thousands of people do—so many, in fact, that states now hold lotteries to decide who gets a permit. Maine in 1996 received 82,000 applications for just 1,500 permits. Over 12,000 outof-staters happily parted with a nonrefundable $20 just to be allowed to take part in the draw. Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old. That’s all there is to it. Without doubt, the moose is the most improbable, endearingly hopeless creature ever to live in the wilds. Every bit of it—its spindly legs, its chronically puzzled expression, its comical oven-mitt antlers—looks like some droll evolutionary joke. It is wondrously ungainly: it runs as if its legs have never been introduced to each other. Above all, what distinguishes the moose is its almost boundless lack of intelligence. If you are driving down a highway and a moose steps from the woods ahead of you, he will stare at you for a long minute (moose are notoriously shortsighted), then abruptly try to run away from you, legs flailing in eight directions at once. Never mind that there are several thousand square miles of forest on either side of the highway. The moose does not think of this. Clueless as to what exactly is going on, he runs halfway to New Brunswick before his peculiar gait inadvertently steers him back into the woods, where he immediately stops and takes on a startled expression that says, “Hey—woods. Now how the heck did I get here?” Moose are so monumentally muddle-headed, in fact, that when they hear a car or truck approaching they will often bolt out of the woods and onto the highway in the curious hope that this will bring them to safety. Amazingly, given the moose’s lack of cunning and peculiarly-blunted survival instincts, it is one of the longest-surviving creatures in North America. Mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, wolves, caribou, wild horses, and even camels all once thrived in eastern North America alongside the moose but gradually stumbled into extinction, while the moose just plodded on. It hasn’t always been so. At the turn of this century, it was estimated that there were no more than a dozen moose in New Hampshire and probably none at all in Vermont. Today New Hampshire has an estimated 5,000 moose, Vermont 1,000, and Maine anywhere up to 30,000. It is because of these robust and growing numbers that hunting has been reintroduced as a way of keeping them from getting out of hand. There are, however, two problems with this that I can think of. First, the numbers are really just guesses. Moose clearly don’t line up for censuses. Some naturalists think the population may have been overstated by as much as 20 percent, which means that the moose aren’t being so much culled as slaughtered. No less pertinent is that there is just something deeply and unquestionably wrong about killing an animal that is so sweetly and dopily unassuming as a moose. I could have slain this one with a slingshot, with a rock or stick—with a folded newspaper, I’d almost bet—and all it wanted was a drink of water. You might as well hunt cows.

At the heart of Galatians 2 is not an abstract individualized salvation, but a common meal. Paul does not want the Galatians to wait until they have agreed on all doctrinal arguments before they can sit down and eat together. Not to eat together is already to get the answer wrong. The whole point of his argument is that all those who belong to Christ belong at the same table with one another. The relevance of this today should be obvious. The differences between us, as twentieth-century Christians, all too often reflect cultural, philosophical and tribal divides, rather than anything that should keep us apart from full and glad eucharistic fellowship. I believe the church should recognize, as a matter of biblical and Christian obedience, that it is time to put the horse back before the cart, and that we are far, far more likely to reach doctrinal agreement between our different churches if we do so within the context of that common meal which belongs equally to us all because it is the meal of the Lord whom we all worship. Intercommunion, in other words, is not something we should regard as the prize to be gained at the end of the ecumenical road; it is the very paving of the road itself. If we wonder why we haven't been travelling very fast down the road of late, maybe it's because, without the proper paving, we've got stuck in the mud.

XII. If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk Above its mates, the head was chopped, the bents Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk All hope of greenness? Tis a brute must walk Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents. XIII. As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood. One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare, Stood stupified, however he came there: Thrust out past service from the devil's stud! XIV. Alive? he might be dead for aught I knew, With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain. And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane; Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe; I never saw a brute I hated so; He must be wicked to deserve such pain. XV. I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart, As a man calls for wine before he fights, I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights, Ere fitly I could hope to play my part. Think first, fight afterwards, the soldier's art: One taste of the old time sets all to rights. XVI. Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face Beneath its garniture of curly gold, Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold An arm to mine to fix me to the place, The way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace! Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold. XVII. Giles then, the soul of honour - there he stands Frank as ten years ago when knighted first, What honest man should dare (he said) he durst. Good - but the scene shifts - faugh! what hangman hands Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst! XVIII. Better this present than a past like that: Back therefore to my darkening path again! No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain. Will the night send a howlet or a bat? I asked: when something on the dismal flat Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train. XIX. A sudden little river crossed my path As unexpected as a serpent comes. No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms; This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend's glowing hoof - to see the wrath Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes. XX. So petty yet so spiteful! All along, Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it; Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit Of mute despair, a suicidal throng: The river which had done them all the wrong, Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit. XXI. Which, while I forded - good saints, how I feared To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek, Each step, of feel the spear I thrust to seek For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard! - It may have been a water-rat I speared, But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek. XXII. Glad was I when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage - XXIII. The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque, What penned them there, with all the plain to choose? No footprint leading to that horrid mews, None out of it. Mad brewage set to work Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

Den we git hurtee again. Somebody call hisself a deputy sheriff kill de baby boy now. (Over)1 “He say he de law, but he doan come ’rest him. If my boy done something wrong, it his place come ’rest him lak a man. If he mad wid my Cudjo ’bout something den he oughter come fight him face to face lak a man. He doan come ’rest him lak no sheriff and he doan come fight him lak no man. He have words wid my boy, but he skeered face him. Derefo’, you unnerstand me, he hidee hisself in de butcher wagon and when it gittee to my boy’s store, Cudjo walk straight to talk business. Dis man, he hidin’ hisself in de back of de wagon, an’ shootee my boy. Oh, Lor’! He shootee my boy in de throat. He got no right shootee my boy. He make out he skeered my boy goin’ shoot him and shootee my boy down in de store. Oh, Lor’! De people run come tellee me my boy hurtee. We tookee him home and lay him in de bed. De big hole in de neck. He try so hard to ketchee breath. Oh, Lor’! It hurtee me see my baby boy lak dat. It hurtee his mama so her breast swell up so. It make me cry ’cause it hurt Seely so much. She keep standin’ at de foot of de bed, you unnerstand me, an’ lookee all de time in his face. She keep telling him all de time, ‘Cudjo, Cudjo, Cudjo, baby, put whip to yo’ horse!’ “He hurtee so hard, but he answer her de best he kin, you unnerstand me. He tellee her, ‘Mama, thass whut I been doin’!’ “Two days and two nights my boy lay in de bed wid de noise in de throat. His mama never leave him. She lookee at his face and tellee him, ‘Put whip to yo’ horse, baby.’ “He pray all he could. His mama pray. I pray so hard, but he die. I so sad I wish I could die in place of my Cudjo. Maybe, I doan pray right, you unnerstand me, ’cause he die while I was prayin’ dat de Lor’ spare my boy life. “De man dat killee my boy, he de paster of Hay Chapel in Plateau today. I try forgive him.

One day there came from the South a stranger who was unlike any man that Shasta had seen before. He rode upon a strong dappled horse with flowing mane and tail, and his stirrups and bridle were inlaid with silver. The spike of a helmet projected from the middle of his silken turban and he wore a shirt of chain mail. By his side hung a curving scimitar; a round shield studded with bosses of brass hung at his back, and his right hand grasped a lance. His face was dark, but this did not surprise Shasta because all the people of Calormen are like that; what did surprise him was the man’s beard which was dyed crimson, and curled and gleaming with scented oil. But Arsheesh knew by the gold on the stranger’s bare arm that he was a Tarkaan or great lord, and he bowed kneeling before him till his beard touched the earth, and made signs to Shasta to kneel also. The stranger demanded hospitality for the night which of course the fisherman dared not refuse. All the best they had was set before the Tarkaan for supper (and he didn’t think much of it) and Shasta, as always happened when the fisherman had company, was given a hunk of bread and turned out of the cottage. On these occasions he usually slept with the donkey in its little thatched stable. But it was much too early to go to sleep yet, and Shasta, who had never learned that it is wrong to listen behind doors, sat down with his ear to a crack in the wooden wall of the cottage to hear what the grown-ups were talking about.

Women and horses have a lot in common. Would you like to know what? Fine. Well, if a horse refuses, you've phrased your question wrongly. It's the same with women. Don't ask them: 'Shall we go out to dinner?' Ask: 'What can I cook for you?' Can she say no to that? No, she can't. Instead of whispering instructions to them like you would to a horse - lie down, woman, put your harness on - you should listen to them. Listen to what they want. In fact, they want to be free and to sail across the sky. It takes only one word to hurt a woman, a matter of seconds, one stupid, impatient blow of the crop. But winning back her trust takes years. And sometimes there isn't the time. It's amazing how unimpressed people are by being loved when it doesn't fit in with their plans. Love irks them so much that they change the locks or leave without warning. And when a horse leaves us, Jeanno, we deserve that love as little as when a woman does. They are superior beings to us men. When they love us, then they are being gracious, for only rarely do we give them reason to love us. And that's why it hurts so much. When women stop loving, men fall into a void of their own making.

When they finally made it back to England, they didn’t realize they had violated a whole slew of British customs regulations. Kevin and Rick came to work as usual, blissfully unaware of any wrong doing, until customs officials dragged them away and swarmed over their boat searching every nook and cranny for contraband. On another occasion, during a surprise dorm inspection, their rooms were discovered devoid of all beds and other furniture but stacked floor-to ceiling with sheep and horse pelts they had bought in Iceland. They planned to sell the hides for a profit, but the inspection short circuited their scheme.

And then she wondered: Could she get his attention, without saying a word? If she needed his help or wanted to stop, could she call to him in his mind? It must be possible; if a person within his range wanted to communicate with him, he must know it. She looked at him, riding before her, his back straight and his arms steady; his white shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows, as always. She looked at the trees then, and at her horse’s ears, and at the ground before her. She cleared her mind of anything to do with Po. I’ll hunt down a goose for dinner, she thought. The leaves on these trees are just beginning to change color. The weather is so lovely and cool. And then, with all her might, she focused her attention on the back of Po’s head and screamed his name, inside her mind. He pulled on his reins so hard that his horse screeched and staggered and almost sat down. Her own horse nearly collided with his. And he looked so startled and flabbergasted—and irritated—that she couldn’t help it: She exploded with laughter. “What in the name of Lienid is wrong with you? Are you trying to scare me out of my wits? Is it not enough to ruin your own horse, but you must ruin mine as well?” She knew he was angry, but she couldn’t stop laughing. “Forgive me, Po. I was only trying to get your attention.

The cross, we note, already had a symbolic meaning throughout the Roman world, long before it had a new one for the Christians. It meant: we Romans run this place, and if you get in our way we’ll obliterate you—and do it pretty nastily too. Crucifixion meant that the kingdom hadn’t come, not that it had. Crucifixion of a would-be Messiah meant that he wasn’t the Messiah, not that he was. When Jesus was crucified, every single disciple knew what it meant: we backed the wrong horse. The game is over. Whatever their expectations, and however Jesus had been trying to redefine those expectations, as far as they were concerned hope had crumbled into ashes. They knew they were lucky to escape with their own lives.

Gary Hallet is getting leg cramps sitting in the Honda, but he’s not going anywhere yet. His grandfather used to tell him that most folks had it all wrong: The truth of the matter was, you could lead a horse to water, and if the water was cool enough, if it was truly clear and sweet, you wouldn’t have to force him to drink. Tonight Gary feels a whole lot more like the horse than the rider. He has stumbled into love, and now he’s stuck there. He’s fairly used to not getting what he wants, and he’s dealt with it, yet he can’t help but wonder if that’s only because he didn’t want anything too badly. Well, he does now. He looks out at the parking lot. By afternoon he’ll be back where he belongs; his dogs will go crazy when they see him, his mail will be waiting outside his front door, the milk in his refrigerator will still be fresh enough to use in his coffee. The hitch is, he doesn’t want to go. He’d rather be here, crammed into this tiny Honda, his stomach growling with hunger, his desire so bad he doesn’t know if he could stand up straight. His eyes are burning hot, and he knows he can never stop himself when he’s going to cry. He’d better not even try. “Oh, don’t,” Sally says. She moves closer to him, pulled by gravity, pulled by forces she couldn’t begin to control. “I just do this,” Gary says in that sad, deep voice. He shakes his head, disgusted with himself. This time he’d prefer to do almost anything but cry. “Pay no attention.” But she does. She can’t help herself. She shifts toward him, meaning to wipe at his tears, but instead she loops her arms around his neck, and once she does that, he holds her closer. “Sally,” he says. It’s music, it’s a sound that is absurdly beautiful in his mouth, but she won’t pay attention. She knows from the time she spent on the back stairs of the aunts’ house that most things men say are lies. Don’t listen, she tells herself. None of it’s true and none of it matters, because he’s whispering that he’s been looking for her forever. She’s halfway onto his lap, facing him, and when he touches her, his hands are so hot on her skin she can’t believe it. She can’t listen to anything he tells her and she certainly can’t think, because if she did she might just think she’d better stop.

And I know it scares you through and through No one knows you like I do Try to tell me that ain’t true Oh, we could be lovely If this could get ugly C’mon now, honey Let yourself think about it Can you really live without it? Oh, we could be lovely If this could get ugly IMPOSSIBLE WOMAN Impossible woman Let her hold you Let her ease your soul Sand through fingers Wild horse, but she’s just a colt Dancing barefoot in the snow Cold can’t touch her, high or low She’s blues dressed up like rock ’n’ roll Untouchable, she’ll never fold She’ll have you running In the wrong direction Have you coming For the wrong obsessions Oh, she’s gunning For your redemption Have you headed Back to confession Sand through fingers Wild horse, but she’s just a colt Dancing barefoot in the snow Cold can’t touch her, high or low She’s blues dressed up like rock ’n’ roll Untouchable, she’ll never fold Walk away from the impossible

Before she could study the damage, Zane grabbed her by her arm and pulled her to her feet. He took her hand in his and examined the injury. Several things occurred to her at once. First--that they’d never stood this close together before. He was so big, tall and broad that he made her feel positively delicate by comparison. Second--for a man who had spent his morning on a horse, he smelled really good. All clean and woodsy. Third--the instant his fingers touched her, the pain miraculously vanished. Talk about amazing. “Skin’s not broken,” he said as he turned over her hand. “Tell me if this hurts.” He bent her fingers back and forth. His warmth sent sizzling jolts of awareness slip-sliding all through her body. Despite the heat filling her, something was wrong with her lungs because it was impossible to breathe. He touched her gently, as if he didn’t want to hurt her. The logical part of her brain turned cynical, announcing that he was simply concerned about a lawsuit by a goat-bitten city girl. The romantic side of her suddenly understood all those country songs about cowboys. What was it that country star Lacey Mills had sung? “Go ahead, cowboy. Rope me in.” It was a brief battle, with romance emerging victorious.

1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation

The girls seemed unconcerned and went about their days, each as lovely in their own way as the flowers they tended. Sorrel's black hair became streaked with premature white, which gave her an exotic air, although the elegance was somewhat ruined by the muddy jeans and shorts she practically lived in. Nettie, on the other hand, had a head of baby-fine blonde hair that she wore short, thinking, wrongly, that it would look less childlike. Nettie wouldn't dream of being caught in dirty jeans and was always crisply turned out in khaki capris or a skirt and a white shirt. She considered her legs to be her finest feature. She was not wrong. Patience was the sole Sparrow redhead, although her hair had deepened from its childhood ginger and was now closer to the color of a chestnut. It was heavy and glossy as a horse's mane, and she paid absolutely no attention to it or to much else about her appearance, nor did she have to. In the summer her wide-legged linen trousers and cut-off shorts were speckled with dirt and greenery, her camisoles tatty and damp. The broad-brimmed hat she wore to pick was most often dangling from a cord down her back. As a result, the freckles that feathered across her shoulders and chest were the color of caramel and resistant to her own buttermilk lotion (Nettie smoothed it on Patience whenever she could make her stand still). When it was terribly hot, Patience wore the sundresses she'd found packed away in the attic. She knew they were her mother's, and she liked to imagine how happy Honor had been in them.

Well," Eddie said, "I don't know how hard it'll seem to you, but it struck me as a toughie." Nor did he know the answer, since that section of Riddle-De-Dum! had been torn out, but he didn't think that made any difference; their knowing the answers hadn't been part of the ground-rules. "I SHALL HEAR AND ANSWER." "No sooner spoken than broken. What is it?" "SILENCE, A THING YOU KNOW LITTLE ABOUT, EDDIE OF NEW YORK," Blaine said with no pause at all, and Eddie felt his heart drop a little. There was no need to consult with the others; the answer was self-evident. And having it come back at him so quickly was the real bummer. Eddie never would have said so, but he had harbored the hope-almost a secret surety-of bringing Blaine down with a single riddle, ker-smash, all the King's horses and all the King's men couldn't put Blaine together again. The same secret surety, he supposed, that he had harbored every time he picked up a pair of dice in some sharpie's back-bedroom crap game, every time he called for a hit on seventeen while playing blackjack. That feeling that you couldn't go wrong because you were you, the best, the one and only. "Yeah," he said, sighing. "Silence, a thing I know little about. Thankee-sai, Blaine, you speak truth." "I HOPE YOU HAVE DISCOVERED SOMETHING WHICH WILL HELP YOU," Blaine said, and Eddie thought: You fucking mechanical liar. The complacent tone had returned to Blaine's voice, and Eddie found it of some passing interest that a machine could express such a range of emotion. Had the Great Old Ones built them in, or had Blaine created an emotional rainbow for himself at some point? A little dipolar pretty with which to pass the long decades and centuries? "DO YOU WISH ME TO GO AWAY AGAIN SO YOU MAY CONSULT?" "Yes," Roland said.

I'm unaccustomed to being cooped up all day-I really must insist that you permit me to enjoy a short walk." "Not on your life," Fletcher growled. From the sound, Breckenridge realized the group had moved closer to the tap. "You don't need to think you're going to give us the slip so easily," Fletcher said again. "My dear good man"-Heather with her nose in the air; Breckenridge could tell by her tone-"just where in this landscape of empty fields do you imagine I'm going to slip to?" Cobbins opined that she might try to steal a horse and ride off. "Oh,yes-in a round gown and evening slippers," Heather jeered. "But I wasn't suggesting you let me ramble on my own-Martha can come with me." That was Martha's cue to enter the fray, but Heather stuck to her guns, refusing to back down through the ensuing, increasingly heated verbal stoush. Until Fletcher intervened, aggravated frustration resonating in his voice. "Look you-we're under strict orders to keep you safe, not to let you wander off to fall prey to the first shiftless rake who rides past and takes a fancy to you." Silence reigned for half a minute, then Heather audibly sniffed. "I'll have you know that shiftless rakes know better than to take a fancy to me." Not true, Breckenridge thought, but that wasn't the startling information contained in Fletcher's outburst. "Come on, Heather-follow up." As if she'd heard his muttered exhortation, she blithely swept on. "But if rather than standing there arguing, you instead treated me like a sensible adult and told me what your so strict orders with respect to me were, I might see my way to complying-or at least to helping you comply with them." Breckenridge blinked as he sorted through that pronouncement; he could almost feel for Fletcher when he hissed out a sigh. "All right," Fletcher's frustration had reached breaking point. "If you must know, we're to keep you safe from all harm. We're not to let a bloody pigeon pluck so much as a hair from your head. We're to deliver you up in prime condition, exactly as you were when he grabbed you." From the change in Fletcher's tone, Breckenridge could visualize him moving closer to tower over Heather to intimidate her into backing down; he could have told him it wouldn't work. "So now you see," Fletcher went on, voice low and forceful, "that it's entirely out of the question for you to go out for any ramble." "Hmm." Heather's tone was tellingly mild. Fletcher was about to get floored by an uppercut. For once not being on the receiving end, Breckenridge grinned and waited for it to land. "If, as you say, your orders are to-do correct me if I'm wrong-keep me in my customary excellent health until you hand me over to your employer, then, my dear Fletcher, that will absolutely necessitate me going for a walk. Being cooped up all day in a carriage has never agreed with me-if you don't wish me to weaken or develop some unhealthy affliction, I will require fresh air and gentle exercise to recoup." She paused, then went on, her tone one of utmost reasonableness, "A short excursion along the river at the rear of the inn, and back, should restore my constitution." Breckenridge was certain he could hear Fletcher breathing in and out through clenched teeth. A fraught moment passed on, then, "Oh, very well! Martha-go with her. Twenty minutes, do you hear? Not a minute more." "Thank you, Fletcher. Come, Martha-we don't want to waste the light." Breckenridge heard Heather, with the rather slower Martha, leave the inn by the main door. He sipped his ale, waited. Eventually, Fletcher and Cobbins climbed the stairs, Cobbins grumbling, Fletcher ominously silent. The instant they passed out of hearing, Breckenridge stood, stretched, then walked out of the tap and into the foyer. Seconds later, he slipped out of the front door.

The air grew colder and thinner as they rode through the mountain passes.  The sun was high and bright, but Martise wrapped her shawl tightly around her and pressed against Silhara’s back.  Gnat kept a steady pace, breathing harder in the thin air.  Unlike him, the mountain ponies suffered no effects from the rising elevation and clipped ahead at a swift pace.  Patches of snow spilled from embankments onto the rutted paths.  A brisk wind moaned a soft dirge as it whipped through the towering evergreens cloaking the mountainside. Silhara called a sudden halt.  Martise peered around his arm, expecting to see some obstacle in their path.  The way was clear, with only the Kurmans watching them curiously. “What’s wrong?” “You’re quaking hard enough to make my teeth rattle.”  He moved his leg back and untied one of the packs strapped to the saddle.  “Get down.” She slid off Gnat’s back.  Silhara followed and pulled one of their blankets from the packet.  “Here.  Wrap this around you.” She had only pulled the blanket over her shoulders when he picked her up and tossed her onto Gnat’s back once more, this time in the front of the flat saddle.  She clutched the horse’s mane with one hand and held on to her blanket with the other.  Silhara vaulted up behind her, scooted her back against him and took up the reins. “Better,” he said and whistled to the waiting Kurmans he was ready. Martise couldn’t agree more.  The blanket’s warmth and Silhara’s body heat soaked through her clothing and into her bones.  She leaned into his chest.  “This is nice.” An amused rumble vibrated near her ear.  “So glad you approve.”  His hand slipped under the blanket, wandered over her belly and cupped her breast.  Martise sucked in a breath as his fingers teased her nipple through her shawl and tunic.  The heat surrounding her turned scorching.  “I agree,” he murmured in her ear.  “This is nice.” He stopped his teasing when she squirmed hard enough in the saddle to nearly unseat them both, but left his hand on her breast, content to just hold her.  Martise was ready to toss off the blanket and her shawl.  Silhara’s touch had left her with a throbbing ache between her thighs.  She smiled a little at the feel of him hard against her back.  She wasn’t the only one affected by his teasing.

He shortened up the rope a couple of reaches and dragged the wolf through the bar ditch and stood by the fence and watched the truck come over the hill and approach in its attendant dust and clatter. The old man slowed and peered. The wolf was jerking and twisting and the boy stood behind her and held her with both hands. By the time the truck had pulled abreast of them he was lying on the ground with his legs scissored about her midriff and his arms around her neck. The old man stopped and sat the idling truck and leaned across and rolled down the window. What in the hell, he said. What in the hell. You reckon you could turn that thing off? the boy said. That's a damn wolf. Yessir it is. What in the hell. The truck's scarin her. Scarin her? Yessir. Boy what's wrong with you? That thing comes out of that riggin it'll eat you alive. Yessir. What are you doin with him? It's a she. It's a what? A she. It's a she. Hell fire, it dont make a damn he or she. What are you doin with it? Fixin to take it home. Home? Yessir. Whatever in the contumacious hell for? Can you not turn that thing off? It aint all that easy to start again. Well could I maybe get you to drive down there and catch my horse for me and bring him back. I'd tie her up but she gets all fuzzled up in the fencewire. What I'd liketo do is to try and save you the trouble of bein eat, the old man said. What are you takin it home for? It's kindly a long story. Well I'd sure like to hear it. The boy looked down the road where the horse stood grazing. He looked at the old man. Well, he said. My daddy wanted me to come and get him if I caught her but I didnt want to leave her cause they's been some vaqueros takin their dinner over yonder and I figured they'd probably shoot her so I just decided to take her on home with me. Have you always been crazy? I dont know. I never was much put to the test before today. How old are you? Sixteen. Sixteen. Yessir. Well you aint got the sense God give a goose. Did you know that? You may be right. How do you expect your horse to tolerate a bunch of nonsense such as this. If I can get him caught he wont have a whole lot of say about it. You plan on leadin that thing behind a horse? Yessir. How you expect to get her to do that? She aint got a whole lot of choice either.

five commandments: 1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.

Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics.

Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.

Nope. Look. The Raft is a media event. But in a much more profound, general sense than you can possibly imagine." "Huh?" "It's created by the media in that without the media, people wouldn't know it was here, Refus wouldn't come out and glom onto it the way they do. And it sustains the media. It creates a lot of information flow-movies, news reports - - you know." "So you're creating your own news event to make money off the information flow that it creates?" says the journalist, desperately trying to follow. His tone of voice says that this is all a waste of videotape. His weary attitude suggests that this is not the first time Rife has flown off on a bizarre tangent. "Partly. But that's only a very crude explanation. It really goes a lot deeper than that. You've probably heard the expression that the Industry feeds off of biomass, like a whale straining krill from the ocean." "I've heard the expression, yes." "That's my expression. I made it up. An expression like that is just like a virus, you know -- it's a piece of information -- data -- that spreads from one person to the next. Well, the function of the Raft is to bring more biomass. To renew America. Most countries are static, all they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking, smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight. Leaves behind a trail of garbage a mile wide. Always needs more fuel... "Now I have a different perspective on it. America must look, to those poor little buggers down there, about the same as Crete looked to those poor Greek suckers. Except that there's no coercion involved. Those people down there give up their children willingly. Send them into the labyrinth by the millions to be eaten up. The Industry feeds on them and spits back images, sends out movies and TV programs, over my networks, images of wealth and exotic things beyond their wildest dreams, back to those people, and it gives them something to dream about, something to aspire to. And that is the function of the Raft. It's just a big old krill carrier." Finally the journalist gives up on being a journalist, just starts to slag L. Bob Rife openly. He's had it with this guy. "That's disgusting. I can't believe you can think about people that way." "Shit, boy, get down off your high horse. Nobody really gets eaten. It's just a figure of speech. They come here, they get decent jobs, find Christ, buy a Weber grill, and live happily ever after. What's wrong with that?

I became a broken record on the algorithm,” Musk says. “But I think it’s helpful to say it to an annoying degree.” It had five commandments: 1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.

You okay?” Marlboro Man called out. I didn’t answer. I just kept on walking, determined to get the hell out of Dodge. It took him about five seconds to catch up with me; I wasn’t a very fast walker. “Hey,” he said, grabbing me around the waist and whipping me around so I was facing him. “Aww, it’s okay. It happens.” I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted him to let go of me and I wanted to keep on walking. I wanted to walk back down the hillside, start my car, and get out of there. I didn’t know where I’d go, I just knew I wanted to go. I wanted away from all of it--riding horses, saddles, reins, bridles--I didn’t want it anymore. I hated everything on that ranch. It was all stupid, dumb…and stupid. Wriggling loose of his consoling embrace, I squealed, “I seriously can’t do this!” My hands trembled wildly and my voice quivered. The tip of my nose began to sting, and tears welled up in my eyes. It wasn’t like me to display such hysteria in the presence of a man. But being driven to the brink of death had brought me to this place. I felt like a wild animal. I was powerless to restrain myself. “I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life!” I cried. I turned to leave again but decided instead to give up, choosing to sit down on the ground and slump over in defeat. It was all so humiliating--not just my rigid, freakish riding style or my near collision with the ground, but also my crazy, emotional reaction after the fact. This wasn’t me. I was a strong, confident woman, for Lord’s sake; I don’t slump on the ground in the middle of a pasture and cry. What was I doing in a pasture, anyway? Knowing my luck, I was probably sitting on a pile of manure. But I couldn’t even walk anymore; my knees were even trembling by now, and I’d lost all feeling in my fingertips. My heart pounded in my cheeks. If Marlboro Man had any sense, he would have taken the horses and gotten the hell out of there, leaving me, the hysterical female, sobbing on the ground by myself. She’s obviously in the throes of some hormonal fit, he probably thought. There’s nothing you can say to her when she gets like this. I don’t have time for this crap. She’s just gonna have to learn to deal with it if she’s going to marry me. But he didn’t get the hell out of there. He didn’t leave me sobbing on the ground by myself. Instead he joined me on the grass, sitting beside me and putting his hand on my leg, reassuring me that this kind of thing happens, and there wasn’t anything I did wrong, even though he was probably lying. “Now, did you really mean that about not wanting to do this the rest of your life?” he asked. That familiar, playful grin appeared in the corner of his mouth. I blinked a couple of times and took a deep breath, smiling back at him and reassuring him with my eyes that no, I hadn’t meant it, but I did hate his horse. Then I took a deep breath, stood up, and dusted off my Anne Klein straight-leg jeans. “Hey, we don’t have to do this now,” Marlboro Man said, standing back up. “I’ll just do it later.” “No, I’m fine,” I answered, walking back toward my horse with newfound resolve.

While their drive is to get a clear round, to jump the highest, turn the tightest, beat the clock and win the class, it’s their horses who are the real stars. They have to be quick and clever and able to get themselves out of trouble, so that if they come in on the wrong stride and scramble over a fence nearly unseated, or if their horse knocks the back rail and it bounces in the cups but doesn’t hit the ground, they can still win. The excitement, the gasping of the crowd, the exhilaration of knowing that anything can happen on the day because every horse is only as good as the round they’ve just jumped. There’s no biased judging here, they either jump clean or they don’t. And nothing beats the exhilaration of a clear round in the jump-off. Riding against the clock, turning as tight as they possibly can around the course without knocking a single fence, then racing for the flags, urging their horses on, nosing through the finish, knowing that every moment counts. They bring the horse slowly back to a walk, straining their ears to hear the announcer tell everyone that theirs is now the time to beat, and then wait through the impossibly long minutes as the rest of the class jumps. Friends become the opposition, and they watch them go, desperately hoping they will take out a rail or miss their striding, anything that will ensure that they take home the win today. I want to join their ranks, to become part of that world. I just need the pony to take me there.

What’s wrong, lass? She’s got more fire in her than she looks. She’ll be a fine ride for ye.” “How do I get on her?”  The question surprised him, but he ignored it as he bent to offer her his assistance in mounting the horse. No sooner had Blaire situated herself on the mare than the mare started whining and trying to pull at the reins that kept her fastened to the edge of the stables.  “What do I do with her, Eoin?” “Just stroke her, lean forward and whisper in her ear, calm her as ye would yer own horse.”  He turned and climbed onto Griffin, leaning forward to untie the reins of both horses so that they could set off toward the village. He rode ahead a short distance, waiting for Blaire and the mare to join him, but when he heard no hooves he turned to see Blaire and the mare sitting at the side of the stables where he’d left them.   Clicking, he steered Griffin back toward the stables. “What’s the matter with ye, lass? Do ye no longer want to go?” “No, I do want to. I just don’t know how to do this.” Eoin frowned as he pulled back on Griffin’s reins, stopping him next to Sheila. He knew Blaire could ride. He’d seen her do it many times, with many different horses. Why was she feigning ignorance now? Perhaps, she was afraid that he’d be angry with her for not wanting to accompany him. Or mayhap she wanted a reason to ride with him on the same horse.  While he wasn’t sure of the reason, he enjoyed the second possibility much more. “Would ye like to ride with me, lass? Griffin may be old, but he can carry ye and me together, easily.” “Aye, I think that would be best.” Ah, so she did want to ride next to him. He smiled inwardly at himself, pleased at the notion, as he lifted her from Sheila’s back and placed her snugly in between his legs astride Griffin.

She turned sideways to maneuver the three steps. No matter how she turned, though, she couldn’t find a way to lower herself without bending or putting weight on her right leg. She finally let out a little frustrated huff. She was so blasted cute, he hated to deny her. But still… “It’s probably better you stay on the porch anyway.” He was about to turn back to Rosie, when Leah looked up at him with the saddest puppy eyes he’d ever seen. Drifter at his hungriest moment had nothing on her beseeching expression. Something fractured in his chest, breaking the ties that held him in place. His hands moved of their own volition as he wrapped them around Leah’s so-tiny waist, lifted her from the stairs, and gently lowered her to the ground. He had the insane urge to pull her close and wrap his arms around her. He caught himself just in time, jerked his hands away, and turned back to face the horses. His breathing was strong as he fought to bring himself under control. What was wrong with him?

There is nothing wrong with you,” they all said. The last one said: “You are strong as a horse. Just keep trying – and enjoy it.” She thought she must have imagined the wink-wink that accompanied the last rejoinder. She reported back to Ntsimane and suggested that maybe, maybe he should be tested. A sperm count, something, just to make sure. “No,” he barked. Perhaps his mother and aunts were right, he thought. He should have married a simple woman, one who knew how to make babies. Sethunya

When we reached the street that branched off into the western section of the city, I expected Saadi to conintue north, but he did not. We dismounted and walked side by side, leading our horses, until my house came into view. “You should leave,” I said to him, hoping I didn’t sound rude. “Let me help you take King to your stable.” I hesitated, unsure of the idea, then motioned for him to follow me as I cut across the property to approach the barn from the rear. After putting King in his private stall at the back of the building, sectioned off from the mares, I lit a lantern and grabbed a bucket. While Saadi watched me from the open door of the building, I went to the well to fill it. “You should really go now,” I murmured upon my return, not wanting anyone to see us or the light. He nodded and hung the lantern on its hook, but he did not leave. Instead, he took the bucket from me, placing it in King’s stall, and I noticed he had tossed in some hay. Brushing off his hands, he approached me. “Tell your family I returned the horse to your care, that our stable master found him too unruly and disruptive to serve us other than to sire an occasional foal.” “Yes, I will,” I mumbled, grateful for the lie he had provided. I had been so focused on recovering the stallion that explaining his reappearance had not yet entered my mind. Then an image of Rava, standing outside the barn tapping the scroll against her palm, surfaced. What was to prevent her return? “And your sister? What will you tell her?” He smirked. “You seem to think Rava is in charge of everything. Well, she’s not in charge of our stables. And our stable master will be content as long as we can still use the stallion for breeding. As for Rava, keep the horse out of sight and she’ll likely never know he’s back in your hands.” “But what if you’re wrong and she does find out?” “Then I’ll tell her that I have been currying a friendship with you. That you have unwittingly become an informant. That the return of the stallion, while retaining Cokyrian breeding rights, furthered that goal.” I gaped at him, for his words flowed so easily, I wondered if there was truth behind them. “And is that what this is really all about?” I studied his blue eyes, almost afraid of what they might reveal. But they were remarkably sincere when he addressed the question. “In a way, I suppose, for I am learning much from you.” He smiled and reached out to push my hair back from my face. “But it is not the sort of information that would be of interest to Rava.” His hand caressed my cheek, and he slowly leaned toward me until his lips met mine. I moved my mouth against his, following his lead, and a tingle went down my spine. With my knees threatening to buckle, I put my hands on his chest for balance, feeling his heart beating beneath my palms. Then he was gone. I stood dumbfounded, not knowing what to do, then traced my still-moist lips, the taste of him lingering. This was the first time I’d been kissed, and the experience, I could not deny, had been a good one. I no longer cared that Saadi was Cokyrian, for my feelings on the matter were clear. I’d kiss him again if given the chance.

Colin and Edmund were here. How embarrassing. “She’s alive. Conscious too,” Edmund said in the bluff pretend-nothing’s-really-wrong tone she’d only heard him take about horses and hounds before. Colin said something rough. He said it in a foreign tongue—not French or German—and it had a number of syllables, but Reggie knew an oath when she heard one. “. . . gonna hope,” she managed, though her tongue was as swollen as her brain from the feel of it, “you’re not mad ’m alive.” “For the love of God, woman,” said Colin, “don’t talk.” Close up—and he was close up now—his voice didn’t sound normal. His accent was very thick now. More to the point, his voice had dropped at least an octave, and it sounded almost sibilant. Reggie heard more swishing grass and felt a shadow fall over her, then a hand on her arm. It was Colin’s, she thought, but even hotter than he normally was. “…’s wrong w’ you?” she asked. She didn’t want to open her eyes to find out, because of the light needles. “A damned fine question” he said. “Do not move. Do what I say this time.” As Reggie wasn’t inclined to move anyhow, she held still while an equally warm set of fingers travelled gently but urgently over her head, at first avoiding the sticky place on one side and then probing lightly around its edges. No amount of gentleness could have made that not hurt, and she couldn’t manage to control herself. She cried out and batted at Colin’s arm. “Stoppit. Go ’way.” “Damned if I will.” He caught her fingers in his free hand. “There’s a bloody great lump here,” he said, not to her, “but nothing feels broken. But she’s bleeding. Quite a bit, and would you for the love of God go get a doctor? Make yourself useful, man!” “I—” Edmund started to retort angrily, and Reggie wondered if she’d have to get up and deal with the two of them, because she’d quite cheerfully kill both if so. Moving hurt. Thinking hurt. Edmund and Colin shouting hurt. Luckily for everyone, she heard Edmund take a long breath. “I’ll go down to the village and get Dr. Brant if you take Reggie back to the house. We can’t bring him out here, and I don’t want to leave you both waiting—not when she might come back.” She? Reggie was puzzled for a moment, then remembered: Janet Morgan. Ghost, witch, and generally unpleasant person. Quite possibly the reason she was lying on the ground with spikes in her brain. “Stupid cow,” she said. “Stupid? I’d love it if she were,” said Edmund.

It’s only an hour later that a servant comes to my room. And when she tells me the duke has invited me out for a horseback ride, I’m flooded with the strangest mix of emotions. I can’t believe that after running off like that, he still wants to hang out. What is going on between us? And why do I want so desperately for it to be something? I shouldn’t want anything. Not with a guy like him. I mean, yeah, I might have been wrong about the illegitimate kid and Lord Brimmon, but the dude still thinks I don’t have opinions or options because I’m a girl. He thinks I have a “place, my place” and that it’s behind a guy. And worse, I keep thinking about our kiss. The part where I bash into the wall in my haste to get away is a particular highlight on the reel I keep playing over and over again in my head. When I walk out the back of the house and he turns to look at me, it’s impossible to fight the burn in my cheeks as he steps up beside me and the horse. I can’t look at him. I’m so embarrassed I stare at the stirrup as if it will take all concentration to get my foot into it. Is he going to say anything? Is he going to apologize for just…kissing me like that? Maybe if he brings it up…Maybe if he apologizes, I can apologize too. For running off. It was so sudden all I could do was react. But he says nothing. He just steps up beside me and gives me a boost. I’m up on the first try and feeling rather proud of myself as I situate my pretty skirts so they drape over my ankles. Until, that is, I see him swing aboard and am reminded of how graceful and easy he makes it look, even when his horse swings away from him when he’s only halfway on. We ride past the stable, and when I glance in, I see one of the stable boys showing the other how to do the robot, his arms stuck out at odd angles, his hands dangling. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing when I see Alex’s eyebrows shoot up so high they’re nearly to his hairline. It’s nice seeing him caught off-guard. I like it. It makes me want to do something totally crazy, just to see his expression.

Charles?  What is wrong?" That rueful little smile still in place, he bent his head, looking down as though he could see the beautiful animal whose broad forehead was pressed to his chest, and whose ears were only a few inches from his nose.  "I cannot ride him," he said softly, with one of his long, slow, blinks that lent him an air of studied sadness.  "As much as he means to me, as much as I've missed him, he is nothing more to me than a pet, now —" He never finished the sentence.  As though he'd taken violent offense at his master's words, the stallion flung up his head, the blow catching Charles squarely beneath the jaw, snapping his head back and sending him reeling backwards into Amy's arms. She staggered under his weight. "Will, help me!" Her brother rushed forward, and together they eased the captain down onto his back in the straw.  He lay unmoving, his lashes still against his cheeks.  Blood gushed from his nose. "Charles!" Amy slid a hand beneath his nape and lifted his head just as his eyes fluttered open. "Oh-h-h-h," he moaned, covering his nose with one hand and trying to stop the bleeding.  "Damn." "Will, get some cold water, quick!" Amy urged.  As her brother ran out of the barn toward the well, Amy helped Charles to sit up.  Cradling him against her body and tipping his head back over her arm, she tore off her neckerchief and pressed it to his nose. "You silly man," she said, in gentle admonishment.  "I would've thought you knew your horse well enough to realize he doesn't take kindly to insults, either to himself or to his master." "I didn't insult him. "  His voice sounded nasally and thick. "You insulted yourself." "I did not." "You did.  You said you couldn't ride him." "I damn well can't." "You damn well will.  My brother didn't go to all the trouble of bringing him back just so you could do nothing more than groom and feed him." "My dear Amy, please be realistic.  I cannot ride him." "Why not?" "Because I can't see." "So you can't.  But there's nothing wrong with your legs —" she blushed hotly, remembering the feel of them hard and strong against her own — "or your balance, or anything else about you.  You simply can't see where you're going.  But Contender can." "I shall not be able to guide him where I wish to go, pull him up when he needs pulling up, anticipate possible dangers to both himself and I." "Then you can go out riding with Mira and me, and we'll anticipate those things for you." "But I shall look the fool, up there on his back." "You shall look splendid." "Amy," he said in a patient, controlled voice, "you do not understand.  If something cannot be done the proper way, it should not be done at all.  Since I cannot ride him the proper way, I should not —" "No, Charles, you don't understand.  Sometimes there is no right way to do something, but a whole parcel of varying ways.  So you can't ride him the way you used to.  You find a different way." "But —" "You're doing it again," she scolded. "Doing what?" "Trying to be perfect.  And taking yourself far too seriously.  Stop it." He began to protest, then grinned and gave her a half-hearted salute.  "Yes, ma'm." At

She’s ready to come back to the living.” But my daughter was wrong. I wasn’t. I liked living in the dream world of Morpheus, believing I was safe, knowing that in real time, tragedy cannot be undone. Tragedy was a bucking horse. Sometimes you were able to stay in the saddle and ride it out–sometimes not.

Chapter II: Morning   The morning came and it was time for Steve to leave for Snowland. He got ready by putting all his his potions, weapons, and food in his inventory. When he opened the door, there were two guards waiting for him out there. "Are you ready?" They were holding a back pack on their hand. "Here, take this, you are going to have to carry a ton of stuff." Steve took the backpack and put it on his back. "Follow us," The soldiers started walking toward the wooden door at the end of the hallway.   They opened the door and there was a horse waiting outside. One of the guards patted the horse and said, "This is yours, take care of him." Steve nodded and said, "He'll be safe with me." The guard reached into his pocket and took out a compass and map. "Here, let me show you how to get to Snowland. I have the location marked on the map here. Don't get too attached to the compass, there's something weird going on down there that makes compasses mark North the wrong way, so pay attention to the map. The trip will take you about three days if you travel most of the day, and you don't lose your horse. If you lose your horse, the trip will take about a week so make sure you tie him well when you dismount. About one and a half of traveling days should be easy. The rest of the way is going to be challenging because of the fact that it begins to get freezing cold. Now get on the horse and be on your way. I wish you luck."   Steve jumped on the horse and said, "Thank you, but I don't need luck." He gave the horse a slight kick with his heel and said, "Walk." The horse obeyed his command and began walking through the trail until he stopped at the end of Springfield where the gate to the exit was. The guard at the door pointed his diamond sword at Steve and said, "Hold it right there! Where do you think you are going?" Steve took out a scroll with the king’s seal on it, showed it to the guard, and said, "I am traveling to Snowland by the king’s orders." The guard at the gate stepped back and put down his sword. "I'm sorry, sir, let me get the gate for you.

The lone man gave thanks to Elohim for the couple who had raised him. It was Abram and he was now forty-eight years old. He finished his prayer. He laid a pack of his life’s belongings on the back of a donkey. It would accompany him and his horse to the city of Ur. Abram had lived in seclusion with Noah and Emzara since he had been an infant. They had raised him to know the Creator Elohim as El Shaddai, God Almighty, protector of the chosen seedline. They had poured their lives into their descendant because they believed he was new life for their promised hope. They had not foreseen the potential danger of a child raised in solitude seeing himself as God’s special progenitor. That was the disadvantage of living as an only child. Abram had been pampered, given total attention, and told over and over again that he was God’s special instrument. He had gotten the impression that he could do no wrong. He had developed an overconfidence that lacked humility and almost presumed invincibility. After all, if El Shaddai was his guard and protector,

The Black Clouds He had trudged through tangles and trailed in steeps for two days scratching his face and extremities into blood. The sun was near to setting and he was not able to overcome the plumb rocks. He had hunger collywobles in his stomach. “Tomorrow I will easily reach the troops…” – he entered a familiar cave with these thoughts and emptying the pockets full of mushrooms picked on the road burnt a flame. He took from the internal pocket a flat bottle of moonshine and swallowed – it removed the fatigue and helped him to rid himself of remorse. He felt stick in his mouth – “As is, I have drunk of bile and smell like lathery horse…» His tousled beard hid all light lines on his face making him more terrible. His large shoulders and brawny arms proved him as a strong person. He almost had no neck – as though, his head was stuck into shoulders. His old and narrow dress fitted close to his body – under it he had military officer’s shirt. Although he avoided twists and turns of war, he was accustomed to the smell of blood and death – he was bright, fearless and volitional like a real fighter. “I could become a good fighter,” – he was sure in it and sometimes expressed this thought loudly watching the fighting troops. Besides everything, the war is ugly also because of the fact that pillagers not wasting the time pillage the dead fighters. When the fights get calm, the Sun illuminates the naked corpses – it is qiute common phenomenon. The most of people think that this action is done by the winner figthers. But they are wrong because the day-time heroes cannot turn into night hyenas. This action is done by pillagers wearing military dress and hang around the attacking troops and, some of them do it with entire family in horse carts. He also was fed by the war – he also wandered following the troops like dark shadow and emtied the dead fighters’ pockets. He often sold the robbed things to fighters. His accomplices robbed in dream even own fellow travellers. But he was more compassionate and never robbed the wounded fighters thinking that it would moderate his sins. He never took the dead figthers’ dress but emptied only their pockets. But the pillagers following him stripped the dead fighters naked. “Thy say that there is a lame necrophiliac pillager among them raping the dead people.” Once, checking the laying fighter’s pockets he saw that the fighter is alive but his leg is torn off and suspended on the skin. Sitting close he started to frankly speak to the fighter consoling him. The fighter asked him to cut his leg off and bury it. He implicitly fulfilled the fighter’s request; coming to consciousness in the evening the fighter cheerfully said that his leg called him to the beyond. At that moment he tried to think about the world above but immediately shook his hand thinking «That’s load of rubbish!» The fighter died in the night and, taking the fighters ring off his finger, he put into sack. The fighters didn’t think about them in the heat of the battle. However, if the fighter caught any of them they unreservedly killed them. Once he always was near to death – however, he could save his life saying that he was carrying the army’s battle to the troops and furthermore, tearfully implored a little reward from officer. Coming back, he emptied his killed accomplices’ pockets ad collected a lot of money and valuables. He hated retreating troops. “Troops should either self-destruct or destroy the enemies!" Rivers of blood, ditches full of human corpses, mothers’ tears – all of these notions were nonsensical rot in his comprehension. Both the victory and defeat also were considered by him as nonsense – he was interested only in trophies. The days when he succeeded to collect rich trophies he could neither sleep in nights nor eat for sake of protecting the robbed values from pillagers but it didn’t weaken him. He willingly studied information about bloody wars and was mostly amazed by the fight of Waterloo: «It

She blinked up at him in confusion. “What happened?” “The horse reared and fell.” Christopher’s voice came out in a rasp. “Tell me your name.” “Why are you asking me that?” “Your name,” he insisted. “Beatrix Heloise Hathaway.” She looked at him with round blue eyes. “Now that we know who I am…who are you?” At Christopher’s expression, Beatrix snickered and wrinkled her nose impishly. “I’m teasing. Really. I know who you are. I’m perfectly all right.” Over Christopher’s shoulder, Beatrix caught sight of Leo shaking his head in warning, drawing a finger across his throat. She realized too late that it probably hadn’t been an appropriate moment for teasing. What to a Hathaway would have been a good chuckle was positively infuriating to Christopher. He glared at her with incredulous wrath. It was only then that she realized he was shaking in the aftermath of his terror for her. Definitely not the time for humor. “I’m sorry--” she began contritely. “I asked you not to train that horse,” Christopher snapped, “and you agreed.” Beatrix felt instantly defensive. She was accustomed to doing as she pleased. This was certainly not the first time she’d ever fallen from a horse, nor the last. “You didn’t ask that specifically,” she said reasonably, “you asked me not to do anything dangerous. And in my opinion, it wasn’t.” Instead of calming Christopher, that seemed to enrage him even further. “In light of the fact that you were nearly flattened like a pikelet just now, I’d say you were wrong.” Beatrix was intent on winning the argument. “Well, it doesn’t matter in any case, because the promise I made was for after we married. And we’re not married yet.” Leo covered his eyes with his hand, shook his head, and retreated from her vision. Christopher gave her an incinerating glare, opened his mouth to speak, and closed it again. Without another word, he lifted himself away from her and went to the stable in a long, ground-eating stride. Sitting up, Beatrix stared after him in perplexed annoyance. “He’s leaving.” “It would appear so.” Leo came to her, extended a hand down, and pulled her up. “Why did he leave right in the middle of a quarrel?” Beatrix demanded, dusting off her breeches with short, aggravated whacks. “One can’t just leave, one has to finish it.” “If he had stayed, sweetheart,” Leo said, “there’s every chance I would have had to pry his hands from around your neck.” Their conversation paused as they saw Christopher riding from the stables, his form straight as a blade as he spurred his horse into a swift graceful canter. Beatrix sighed. “I was trying to score points rather than consider how he was feeling,” she admitted. “He was probably frightened for me, seeing the horse topple over like that.” “Probably?” Leo repeated. “He looked like he had just seen Death. I believe it may have touched off one of his bad spells, or whatever it is you call them.” “I must go to him.” “Not dressed like that.” “For heaven’s sake, Leo, just this one time--” “No exceptions, darling. I know my sisters. Give any one of you an inch, and you’ll take a mile.” He reached out and pushed back her tumbling hair. “Also…don’t go without a chaperone.” “I don’t want a chaperone. That’s never any fun.” “Yes, Beatrix, that’s the purpose of a chaperone.” “Well, in our family, anyone who chaperoned me would probably need a chaperone more than I do.” Leo opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. Rare was the occasion when her brother was unable to argue a point. Repressing a grin, Beatrix strode toward the house.

Steve about this… ever!   I got home just before Steve and had enough time to put Charlie back into his pen, and the saddle back in Steve’s chest. Over dinner, I told Steve I had a present for him -- his very own donkey to ride. I said I found it in the woods by our place while looking for mushrooms for soup.   He seemed to love the present. He said he could use the donkey to carry loads to and from the mines. I hadn’t even thought of that, but I said that was exactly why I brought him the donkey. He just had to comment, though, that a horse would have been better. Why can’t he just be nice and grateful?   6:15pm Steve is lazy. He didn’t even collect and restack the bowls from dinner.  I wish I lived with anyone else.   8:00pm The house is finally clean. I went around and picked up everything and put it back in its place and it took forever. Steve didn’t even say thank you. He just corrected me when I tried to put things in the “wrong” chests. I can’t wait for tomorrow.   10:30pm I can’t sleep. I’m too excited. I guess I’ll spend the night practicing my donkey laugh.

Kestrel had forgotten. She had thought that she remembered only too well the lines of his face. The restless quality to how he would stand still. The way he looked fully into her eyes as if each glance was an irrevocable choice. Her blood felt laced with black powder. How could she have forgotten what it was like to burn on a fuse before him? He looked at her, and she knew that she had remembered nothing at all. “I can’t be seen with you,” she said. Arin’s eyes flashed. He raked the curtain shut behind him. The closed-off balcony became deeply dark. “Better?” he said. Kestrel backed away until the heel of her shoe met the balustrade and her bare shoulder blades touched the glass. The air had changed. It was warm now. And scented, strangely, with brine. “The sea,” she managed to say. “You came by sea.” “It seemed wiser than riding my horse to death through the mountains.” “My horse.” “If you want Javelin, come home and claim him.” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you sailed here.” “Technically, the ship’s captain did, cursing me the entire time. Except when I got sick. Then he just laughed.” “I thought you weren’t coming.” “I changed my mind.” Arin came to lean against the balustrade beside her. It was too much. He was too close. “I’ll thank you to keep your distance.” “Ah, the empress speaks. Well, I must obey.” Yet he didn’t move except to turn his head toward her. Light from the curtain’s seam cut a thin line down his cheek in a bright scar. “I saw you. With the prince. He seems bitter medicine to swallow, even for the sweets of the empire.” “You know nothing of him.” “I know you helped him cheat. Yes, I watched you. I saw you play at Borderlands. Others might not have noticed, but I know you.” His voice grew rough. “Gods, how can you respect someone like that? You’ll make a fool of him.” “I wouldn’t.” “You’re a bad liar.” “I won’t.” Arin went quiet. “Maybe you won’t mean to.” He edged away, and that line of light no longer touched him. His form was pure shadow. But her sight had adjusted, and she saw him tip his head back against the window. “Kestrel…” An emotion clamped down on her heart. It squeezed her into a terrible silence. But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that wasn’t how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she’d heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer. Something was tugging inside her. It yanked at her soul. Tell him, that part of her said. He needs to know. Yet those words had a quality of horror to them. Her mind was sluggish to understand why, so caught it was in the temptation to tell Arin that her engagement had been the bargain for Herran’s freedom.

Did you see which way he went?” I asked, casting my eyes across the field. “No,” he answered finally. “I was too busy watching you fall.” “I rode for a while before that,” I answered defensively. “We cleared two fences.” “Is that normal for you?” “What?” “Riding without a saddle, full out, on a horse that obviously doesn’t want to be ridden?” “He gave me his head . . . I thought he was ready. I was wrong.” “He gave you his head?” “Yeah . . . never mind. It’s horse speak. When a horse lets you control his head, pull it all the way back along his body, move it this way and that, he’s yours. But Lucky’s never been ridden. I needed to court him a little more.” Moses’s lips were pursed and his eyebrows quirked and I thought for a minute he was going to laugh. I seemed to have that effect on him. “Shut up,” I said. He laughed, just as I predicted. “I didn’t say anything!” “But you’re thinking it.” “What am I thinking?” “Something dirty. I can see it all over your face.” “Nah. That’s not dirt. I’m just black.” “Har, har.

My teeth clatter in my mouth as everything ripples and shudders in the storm of shells, whining, whizzing. The kid on the bicycle rolls out of sight. Untouched. A miracle. A dream. The shells abruptly cease and there is only the settling creak of the car seat, a scatter of twittering birds in the shrubs and trees. I could use some gum. Where do you buy gum so early besides the service station? It seems wrong to go there since we don't need any gasoline. We don't drive enough. A tank of gas lasts us forever. I get behind the wheel and in the mirror I can see my eyelids fluttering. I sit squeezing the steering wheel until I realize I haven't started the engine. The garage conceals me. I don't want to go out into the open. A horse whinnys – are they bringing up the artillery? It's the farm field where old Wallam tills a little garden, his yard is the biggest and runs alongside the back of ours to the farm where his family has their orchards. What's wrong with me? Sounds of explosions, bullets, voices of men. Volleys. I smell smoke. Burning things, festering ruptured corpses with maggots pulsing under horrible skin and the shells, the horse, it's hit, it shrieks, explodes apart – can we pull the gun by hand? The crew is dead too, bullets are making their bodies jump even after they have broken apart like smashed holiday nuts. I want to scream. Maybe I am? I begin breathing rapidly. I don't know how long I am there but I hear the screen door open and I key the ignition. “Car troubles?” Mr. Kincaid calls out to me from the front porch. “No troubles,” I say setting my arm out the window and holding the mirror to keep my hand steady. “Lovely day.” The sun was really rising, taking the temperature up with it, hot shards of searing light coming over the treetops to stab at everything that couldn't find the shade. I couldn't find the shade.

She has touched me. My hatred for her has gone the way of the wind. She saved my life.” He quickly related the tale about the rattlesnake and how she had broken her silence to warn him. “You would prefer that she live for always away from you?” Hunter’s gut contracted. In that instant he realized how much he wanted the woman beside him. “I would prefer that my eyes never again fall upon her than to see her die.” His mouth twisted. “She has great heart for one so small. She makes war with nothing, and wins.” Many Horses nodded. “Huh, yes, Warrior and Swift Antelope have already told me.” “I would take my woman back to her land,” Hunter said. “I know the words of the prophecy, eh? And I would not displease the Great Ones, but I see no other path I might walk.” Hunter’s mother rose to her knees. “My husband, I request permission to speak.” Many Horses squinted into the shadows. “Then do it, woman.” She moved forward into the light, her brown eyes fathomless in the flickering amber. “I would but sing part of the song, so we might hear the words and listen.” She tipped her head back and clasped her hands before her. In a singsong voice, she recited, “‘When his hatred for the White Eyes is hot like the summer sun and cold like the winter snow, there will come to him a gentle maiden from tosi tivo land.’” “Yes, wife, I know the words,” Many Horses said impatiently. “But do you listen?” Woman with Many Robes fixed her all-seeing gaze on her eldest son. “Hunter, she did not come to you, as the prophecy foretold. You took her by force.” “Pia, what is it you’re saying? That she would have come freely?” A breath of laughter escaped Hunter’s lips. “The little blue-eyes? Never.” His mother held up a hand. “I say she would have, and that she shall. You must take her to her wooden walls. The Great Ones will lead her in a circle back to you.” Hunter glanced at his father. Many Horses set his pipe aside and gazed for a long while into the flames. “Your mother may be right. Perhaps we have acted wrongly, sending you to fetch her. Perhaps it was meant for her to come of her own free will.” Hunter swallowed back an argument. Though he didn’t believe his little blue-eyes would ever return to Comancheria freely, his parents had agreed that he should take her home, and that was enough. “What will lead her back to me, pia?” Woman with Many Robes smiled. “Fate, Hunter. It guides our footsteps. It will guide hers.

Pressing a hand to her chest, Loretta glanced down in bewilderment. She had been so sure…Laughter bubbled up her throat. Aunt Rachel had missed? She never missed when she could draw a steady bead on a still target. Loretta’s throat tightened. The Comanche. She looked up, confusion clouding her blue eyes. He had shielded her with his own body? Waving his friends away, Hunter hunkered down and scooped a handful of dirt, pressing it to the shallow cut on his shoulder. Loretta stared at the blood trailing down his arm. If not for his quick thinking, it could have been her own. Survival instinct and common sense warred within her. She knew death might be preferable to what was in store for her, but she couldn’t help being glad she was alive. As if he felt her staring at him, the Comanche lifted his head. When his eyes met hers, the fury and loathing in them chilled her. He stood and jerked the feathers from his braid, wrapping them in his shirt. Never taking his gaze off her, he stuffed the bundle into a parfleche hanging from his surcingle. “Keemah,” he growled. Uncertain what he wanted and afraid of doing the wrong thing, Loretta stayed where she was. He caught her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. “Keemah, come!” He gave her a shake for emphasis, his eyes glittering. “Listen good, and learn quick. I have little patience with stupid women.” Grasping her waist, he tossed her on the horse and scooted her to the back of the blanket saddle. The hem of her nightgown rode high. She could feel all the men staring at her. Had he no decency? With trembling hands, she tugged at the gown and tried to cover her thighs. There wasn’t enough material to stretch. And it was so thin from years of wear, it was nearly transparent. The morning breeze raised gooseflesh on her naked arms and back. With a grim set to his mouth, her captor opened a second parfleche, withdrawing a length of braided wool and a leather thong. Before she realized what he was about to do, he knotted the wool around one of her ankles, looped it under his horse’s belly, and swiftly bound her other foot. “We must ride like the wind!” he yelled to the others. “Meadro! Let’s go!” The other men ran for their horses. Grasping the stallion’s mane, Hunter vaulted to its back and settled himself in front of her. When he reached for her arms and pulled them around him, she couldn’t stifle a gasp. Her breasts were flattened against his back. “Your woman does not like you, cousin,” someone called in English. Loretta turned to see who spoke and immediately recognized the brave who had encouraged Hunter to kill her that first day. His scarred face was unforgettable. He flashed her a twisted smile that seemed more a leer, his black eyes sliding insolently down her body to rest on her naked thighs. Then he laughed and wheeled his chestnut horse. “She won’t be worth the trouble she will make for you.” Hunter glanced over his shoulder at her. The fiery heat of his anger glowed like banked embers in his eyes. “She will learn.” With an expertise born of long practice, he lashed her wrists together with the leather. “She will learn quick.

Don’t shoot,” Tom cautioned again. “That brave in the lead has a crooked lance with a white flag. Whatever it is they’re wantin’, it ain’t a fight. You speak any Comanch’?” “Not a word,” Henry replied. “I don’t know much. If they do a lot of tradin’, they can probably talk English, but if they don’t--all we can do is hope my Injun will get us by.” Tom spat a glob of chew onto Rachel’s bleached floor. Then he bellowed, “What do you want?” Loretta’s nerves were strung so taut, she leaped. Nausea surged into her throat as the brown tobacco juice soaked into the floor. Was she losing her mind? Who cared if the puncheon got stained? Before this was over, the house might be burned to the ground. She heard Rachel crying, a soft, irregular whimpering. Terror. The metallic taste of it shriveled her tongue. “What brings you here?” Tom cried again. “Hites!” a deep voice called back. “We come as friends, White-Eyes.” The lead warrior moved some twenty feet in front of his comrades, holding the crooked lance high so the dusty white rag was clearly visible. He sat proudly on his black stallion, gleaming brown shoulders straight, leather-sheathed legs pressed snugly to his mount. A rush of wind lifted his mahogany hair, wisping it across his bronzed, sharply chiseled face. Loretta’s first thought when she saw him was that he seemed different from the others. A closer look told her why. He was unquestionably a half-breed, taller on horseback than the rest, lighter-skinned. If not for his sun-darkened complexion and long hair, he might have passed for a white man. Everything else about him was savage, though, from the cruel sneer on his mouth to the expert way he balanced on his horse, as if he and the animal were one entity. Tom Weaver stiffened. “Son of a--Henry, you know who that is?” “I was hopin’ I was wrong.” Loretta inched closer to get a better look. Then it hit her. Hunter. She had heard his name whispered with dread, heard tales. But until this moment she hadn’t believed he existed. A blue-eyed half-breed, one of the most cunning and treacherous adversaries the U.S. Army had run across. Now that the war had pitted North against South, the homesteaders had no cavalry to keep Hunter and his marauders at bay, and his raiders struck ever deeper into settled country, advancing east. Some claimed he was far more dangerous than a full-blooded Comanche because he had a white man’s intelligence. As vicious as he was, there were stories that he spared women and children. Whether that was coincidence, design, or a lie some Indian lover had dreamed up, no one knew. Loretta opted for the latter.

Do you deny that your song says your yellow-hair must come to you? You took me home and taught me how to walk back to you in your footsteps!” Her voice rose, turning shrill. “You gave me a fine horse to ride! Do you deny that?” Confusion welled inside him. “You are angry because I teach you and give you gifts?” At last she wrenched her head around, her tear-filled eyes sparkling with contempt. “Like your medallion? ‘Wear it for always,’ you said. But it wasn’t as a remembrance! It was to mark me, so your filthy friend Santos wouldn’t steal the wrong yellow-hair. You knew how much I love Amy. You struck where I was most vulnerable, knowing I’d do anything to save her. I trusted you. You spoke of songs in our hearts and remembering for always. And I--” Her voice broke and trailed off into a squeak. For a moment he thought she might strike him, so deep went her pain, but then her face crumpled and the fight drained from her. She looked so forsaken, so frightened, that all he wanted was to hold her and soothe away her hurts. “I believed you, Hunter. Do you know how difficult that was for me? After what Comanches did to my parents? I betrayed their memory, trusting you. I turned my back on everything.” Hunter’s heart caught at the bruised, aching intensity he heard in her voice. Two large tears slipped over her bottom lashes and washed onto her cheeks, trailing in silver ribbons to her chin. He ran his hand into her cloud of tangled hair and drew her toward him, ignoring her resistance, pressing her face into the curve of his neck. She lay rigid against him, shaking violently. He dipped his head, the last traces of his anger dying.

Over the next few weeks, the Comanches attacked with a vengeance. News came that the mercenaries, en route to attack another village, were all killed. Tales of Hunter filtered to the Masters farm, some horrible, some heartbreakingly familiar. As fiercely as the Indians waged war, Hunter still spared women and children. Loretta’s eyes filled with tears when she was told by the border patrol from Fort Belknap that somewhere along the Red River, Hunter had ridden up to a yellow-haired woman and saluted her. Loretta knew Hunter hoped she would somehow hear the tale and understand the message he sent to her. She did understand, and she grieved for what might have been. With every Indian attack, the chasm between her and Hunter grew wider. When the horror of it became too much, she found herself justifying the Indians’ actions by remembering the attack on the village. She recalled Many Horses, a frail old man, trying to rescue a child and dying as a result. She thought of the terrified young squaw, running for her life ad her child’s, cut down from behind. She realized now that there was no good or bad, no right or wrong, just people fighting for their lives. Wonderful people, who lived and loved and laughed. She thought of Red Buffalo often, finally accepting what Hunter had tried so desperately to explain, that good men can be driven to do horrible things. Red Buffalo had committed some unforgivable acts, but at long last Loretta could look deeper into the man and come closer to understanding why. She thanked God that she had saved Red Buffalo’s life during the tosi tivo attack, knowing that Red Buffalo guarded Hunter’s back against the tosi tivo with the same ferocity that he had once tried to guard Hunter’s future against one tosi woman.

Hunter slowed as he drew near and held out the line to her, his dark eyes gleaming in that way she had once found so unsettling. Now she realized the gleam was only a smile that had not yet touched his lips. As her fingers curled around the rope, she looked up. “He’s beautiful.” “When the sun rises, we will ride for your wooden walls. He will carry you.” Taking her hand, Hunter stepped to the stallion’s head and lifted her palm to his velvety muzzle. “Give him your smell.” The stallion snuffled and nibbled her fingers, grunting a greeting. “He’s so beautiful, but after what happened to…I can’t ride him. I’d never forgive myself if something went wrong. I felt so--” She broke off and licked her lips. It hit her that she had never apologized to him for killing his horse. She should now, but so much time had passed, and she wasn’t sure what to say. “My heart is still sad about your stallion. I wouldn’t want something to happen to this one.” “It is finished.” His face tightened as he spoke. “This stallion says hi, hites, how are you, my friend.” He ran a muscular arm around the black’s neck, moving in close to his shoulder. “He is son to my friend who is dead. Breathe into him so he will know your smell and remember with no horizon.” The thought of kissing a horse wasn’t particularly appealing, but after witnessing the Comanche’s rapport with his other stallion, she couldn’t argue that he knew better than she how to communicate with them. She bent over and exhaled close to the black’s muzzle. The horse sniffed and nibbled her face, nickering and blowing. Loretta gave a startled laugh and reared back, scrubbing her mouth with her sleeve. She glanced up to find the Comanche smiling. Her laughter trailed away, and she felt suddenly self-conscious. His large, sandpapery palm still enfolded hers, and the contact made her heart skitter.

Would you like to hack out with me, Eve?” The smile disappeared. “I’m not dressed appropriately. Thank you for the invitation, nonetheless.” He hadn’t expected her to accept, though he had wanted to hear her reply. He shifted closer to her in the stall, close enough that he could stretch out a hand to his horse and not be overheard by the lads. “I’d put you up on Willy here. He’s gentle as a lamb under saddle.” “You’d let me ride your prize racing stud?” The longing in her voice was palpable. “I don’t think he’s going to hear, see, or obey anybody else when you’re in the vicinity. Willy’s in love.” The blighted beast nickered deep in its chest as if in agreement. “What a charming fellow.” Eve’s bare hand scratched right behind Willy’s ear, and if he’d been a dog, the stallion’s back leg would have twitched with pleasure. What was wrong with a man when he wanted to tell his horse: She petted me first, so don’t get any ideas? “I’d love to see you on him, Lucas. I’ll bet he has marvelous paces.” Now the smile was aimed at Deene, and even the horse seemed to be looking at him beseechingly. “I cannot disappoint a guest. We’ll have some luncheon up at the house, and the lads can saddle him up.” As Deene escorted the lady from the loose box, Willy managed to look crestfallen before he went back to desultorily lipping at his hay. “Some

He loves you. It’s plain for anyone to see. He came after you, didn’t he? Admitted he was wrong to abandon you?” I shrugged. “We’ve been friends since I was born, or almost.” “He doesn’t look at you like he thinks you’re just his friend.” “It doesn’t matter,” I insisted. The doubts that Melaina had stirred up, that I had had so long to contemplate in her cell, flared inside me again. “What can come of him loving me? He’s still an earl’s son and I’m…a scribe girl. His family would never let him marry me. They were lining up girls at court for him to pick through before we left. Girls with titles and land…noble girls. It doesn’t make any difference if he loves me. We can’t be together.” Mika pushed herself back as she blew a breath upward to stir the hair on her forehead. “What makes you think he’ll ask their permission?” I gaped at her. Kiernan, not marry who his family wanted? It wasn’t done, not in the noble families of Thorvaldor. You married to create ties to other nobles, to strengthen your family’s position. Sometimes you got love as well, but that was just luck thrown into the bargain. “And you. You’re willing to fight an impossible battle to get me on the throne, but you won’t fight for him?” “I never said that,” I said, stung. “I just--” But I could go no further, because just then I heard the jingle of horse tack, and then Kiernan rode into view.

So, what do you do when you’ve invested heavily in an endeavor and then begin to realize that you may have backed the wrong horse? Simple. What did Rhodes and Oppenheimer of De Beers do after they cornered the market on diamonds, then realized they’d found so many that the stones were practically worthless? Lie. You lie and you try to make that lie real by making everyone else believe it. It’s called PR. Whether the story is about the alleged scarcity of diamonds or the boundless treasures of the New World, it’s all about good old-fashioned spin.

Zoki walks into the classroom, puts a piece of paper down on the teacher’s desk, and shouts: “Everyone write your name.” There are three columns: Muslim / Serb / Croat. We all gather round, we all hesitate. “Come on, guys.” Zoki writes his name under Serb. Kenan takes the pen from Zoki and writes his name under Muslim. Both Gorans put their names under Serb. Edin puts his name under Muslim. Alen puts his name under Muslim. Marica puts her name under Serb. Goca puts her name under Serb. Kule asks what this is all about. Zoki says: “So we know.” Kule says: “Fuck you.” Zoki says: “Anyway, you’re Muslim.” “What I am is Fuck you,” Kule says. Elvira makes a new column, writes Don’t know at the top, and puts her name there. Alen takes the pen back and crosses his name out and writes it again under Don’t know. Goca too. Marko puts his name under Serb. Ana puts her name under Don’t know, thinks for a second, crosses it out, adds Yugoslav as a fifth heading, and puts her name there. Zoki writes Kule under Muslim. Kule says: “Zoki, you dumb horse, I’ll fuck your mother.” The Gorans plant themselves in front of Kule and the one with the long incisors says: “What’s wrong, Kule? Shoes too tight?” Kule grabs the pen out of Zoki’s hand and tries to scribble something on Goran’s forehead. Goran shoves him, Kule shoves back, and we move between them. Everyone’s shouting all at once until Kule raises his arm—the gesture says, Everything’s cool, I’m cool. He goes up to the desk and makes a sixth column. On top it says, Fuck all of you. Kule writes Kule in that column, stomps on the pen, which breaks, and leaves the classroom. No one follows Kule. The list disappears. A couple months later, Muslims in several cities are ordered to wear white armbands. An Eskimo family lived in Višegrad at the time, above the supermarket on Tito Street. Actually they had no connection with the Inuit—it was just a joke answer on the 1991 census, which was included in the actual statistics and then recognized by the state. The father repeated it during the Serbian occupation, but no one laughed. So he left the city, with his wife and baby daughter. Today they live closer to the North Pole and speak decent Swedish.

Some of us are born to live lives on an exaggerated scale. Even as children we have a larger suitcase in which to carry all the things that will one day be on our backs. We are cumbersome, beautiful and ugly, fistfighters and bug savers. We are the living words of poems, we little kids who are abused, and we have cut-out rainbows hidden where only we can make wishes upon them. I mean to say, we have imagination, and maybe mine was always active; while others were shining their Sunday shoes, I was capturing a herd of wild horses in my backyard. I must have seemed very . . . wrong.

Marry me," he said. Her eyes widened. "What?" She nearly fell off the horse. "Marry me, Kate," he repeated. He swallowed hard. "I need you in my life. Please. Say you'll be my duchess." "Rohan..." He took a step closer. "I know I said some boorish, stupid things that day in the music room. You were right. I was scared. I didn't know how it could be between us, but I see it now. And that night on your father's ship, I acted like a brute, telling you to prove your love by sleeping with me. It was wrong." She shook her head. "You needed me." "I did. I still do. I always will. I don't know what I'll do if you say no." He lowered his head. "I know you've reason to be wary. That I can be a thoroughgoing bastard sometimes. I've had too many women in the past, but, God, I don't want that anymore. And it is true, I, er, kill people now and then, but just to safeguard England. And if you can live with that---" He shook his head with a tempestuous fire in his eyes. "On my word, I will be true to you, and I will love you until the end of time." Kate had lost the power of speech. Indeed, she could barely breathe. Tears rushed into her eyes. Lord Byron himself could not have uttered more romantic sentiments. "There can be no other for me, Kate, but you." The Beast walked over and stared hard into the depths of her eyes; sitting on the pony's back, she was on eye level with him for once, and the whole tumult of his soul was there in his eyes, discovering love for the first time, setting his heart free at last. "You... make me feel things I've never experienced before. You've been so patient, and I've been such a fool." "No, you haven't," she breathed, wonder-struck by him. Was this just a dream? "Stay with me always," he implored her in a confidential whisper. "And love me... as I love you." "You---love me?" she echoed, her chin trembling in the most embarrassing fashion. "With all my heart," he vowed in a soft but fierce tone, looking as deeply moved as she. He touched her hair, tucking a windblown lock of it behind her ear. "Kate, you and I were meant to be together. I'm still superstitious enough to know when I have found my destiny. It's you. You're the one who broke the curse.

Despite the ubiquity of government-organized trans pageants in the Philippines, trans people themselves are not politically recognized. We are culturally visible but legally erased. To this day, trans Filipinas have M gender markers on their documents and cannot change their names in court. We don't have robust antidiscrimination protections. No amount of pageant glory can make up for the fact that our government still doesn't see and treat trans people as full citizens able to participate in society as we truly are. In a country of over 100 million people, only a few dozen certified endocrinologists offer gender-affirming care. Growing up, I relied on other trans people to find hormones, figuring out the right dosages through hearsay, transitioning entirely without proper medical supervision. There was no other choice back then - and for many today, DIY is still the only option. My community is littered with stories of injections gone horribly wrong. Even worse, when someone dies from an overdose or an unsupervised medical treatment, it's shrugged off as a sad fact of life. 'That's what happens,' the emergency techs will say, our lives stripped of value by the very institutions that ought to care for us. I will never forget when one of my Garcia clan sisters succumbed to death from a botched medical procedure, a victim of all the intersecting forces trans Filipinas have to navigate to get treatment.

Most people would rather cop to being tricked than admit they’d backed the wrong and extremely vile horse, or that they’d been wrong and extremely vile themselves.

Hosea 14 Come Back! Return to Your GOD! 1-3 O Israel, come back! Return to your GOD! You’re down but you’re not out. Prepare your confession and come back to GOD. Pray to him, “Take away our sin, accept our confession. Receive as restitution our repentant prayers. Assyria won’t save us; horses won’t get us where we want to go. We’ll never again say ‘our god’ to something we’ve made or made up. You’re our last hope. Is it not true that in you the orphan finds mercy?” + + + 4-8 “I will heal their waywardness. I will love them lavishly. My anger is played out. I will make a fresh start with Israel. He’ll burst into bloom like a crocus in the spring. He’ll put down deep oak tree roots, he’ll become a forest of oaks! He’ll become splendid—like a giant sequoia, his fragrance like a grove of cedars! Those who live near him will be blessed by him, be blessed and prosper like golden grain. Everyone will be talking about them, spreading their fame as the vintage children of God. Ephraim is finished with gods that are no-gods. From now on I’m the one who answers and satisfies him. I am like a luxuriant fruit tree. Everything you need is to be found in me.” + + + 9 If you want to live well, make sure you understand all of this. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll learn this inside and out. GOD’s paths get you where you want to go. Right-living people walk them easily; wrong-living people are always tripping and stumbling.

She nods. “But not right now. We have a fun day of horseback riding ahead of us.” “Yeah, not too thrilled about that. I feel a little bulky to be riding horseback.” “It’s why I can’t wait for this activity. I feel as though watching you on a horse is going to be one of the highlights of this vacation.” “Yeah, I’m sure my balls will appreciate it too.” “Aww, if you need me to massage your balls later, I might be able to be convinced.” “Is that so?” I pull her in and kiss the top of her head. “Then I’ll be sure to ride my balls roughly on the back of the horse.” “There’s something so wrong with that statement.” “Yeah, I heard it as I said it out loud.

had a bet with me. I said, no, Mrs Gandhi is coming back, I haven’t been in India for four years but I can tell you this. They often back the wrong horse. KGB is tougher, but they have

Hidden Halls by Stewart Stafford Hail the dark prince, An apostle of perfidy, Great cull’s architect, Lavish secret funding. Wrong horse backed, Crown shards buried, Knights get sanctuary, Sullied pasts shrouded. Ultra kingdom subjects, Bloody, unwashed hands, Eliminating in full denial, That the bacillus was them. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

William looked at Tyler. “I’m going after her.” “You want us to come with you?” Tyler asked. “My men and I could—” Holding up his hand, William shook his head. “No. We can’t go storming into a Comanche village and not expect things to go horribly wrong. If I show up there with a bunch of soldiers, they aren’t going to take it as a friendly move.” “Going alone isn’t the best idea you’ve ever had, either. What if another band of Comanche or Kiowa come your way?” “That’s why I’m taking the sorrel. He’s the fastest horse we have. He can outrun any Indian mount.” William looked back to Juanita. “Would you pack me some supplies? I’ll head out as soon as they’re ready.” Juanita nodded and hurried with Pepita into the house. “I should have known she’d do something like this,” William said.

How much longer can I get away with being so fucking cute? Not much longer. The shoes with bows, the cunning underwear with slogans on the crotch — Knock Here, and so forth — will have to go, along with the cat suit. After a while you forget what you really look like. You think your mouth is the size it was. You pretend not to care. When I was young I went with my hair hiding one eye, thinking myself daring; off to the movies in my jaunty pencil skirt and elastic cinch-belt, chewed gum, left lipstick imprints the shape of grateful, rubbery sighs on the cigarettes of men I hardly knew and didn’t want to. Men were a skill, you had to have good hands, breathe into their nostrils, as for horses. It was something I did well, like playing the flute, although I don’t. In the forests of grey stems there are standing pools, tarn-coloured, choked with brown leaves. Through them you can see an arm, a shoulder, when the light is right, with the sky clouded. The train goes past silos, through meadows, the winter wheat on the fields like scanty fur. I still get letters, although not many. A man writes me, requesting true-life stories about bad sex. He’s doing an anthology. He got my name off an old calendar, the photo that’s mostly bum and daisies, back when my skin had the golden slick of fresh-spread margarine. Not rape, he says, but disappointment, more like a defeat of expectations. Dear Sir, I reply, I never had any. Bad sex, that is. It was never the sex, it was the other things, the absence of flowers, the death threats, the eating habits at breakfast. I notice I’m using the past tense. Though the vaporous cloud of chemicals that enveloped you like a glowing eggshell, an incense, doesn’t disappear: it just gets larger and takes in more. You grow out of sex like a shrunk dress into your common senses, those you share with whatever’s listening. The way the sun moves through the hours becomes important, the smeared raindrops on the window, buds on the roadside weeds, the sheen of spilled oil on a raw ditch filling with muddy water. Don’t get me wrong: with the lights out I’d still take on anyone, if I had the energy to spare. But after a while these flesh arpeggios get boring, like Bach over and over; too much of one kind of glory. When I was all body I was lazy. I had an easy life, and was not grateful. Now there are more of me. Don’t confuse me with my hen-leg elbows: what you get is no longer what you see.

protests. A wound like that was incredibly dangerous. If he didn’t get her to a healer soon, he knew Mara would die. If anything happened to her, he’d never forgive himself. After a long while, he was too tired to carry her, so he rested for a bit, his breath heaving and stiff arms and legs protesting. Even though it was almost dark, Talis could see that Mara’s face looked white as chalk. He had to keep going, no matter what, no matter how much his legs and back burned from carrying her. By the time he spotted the City of Naru from afar, moonlight sent long, wiry shadows across the hillside leading up to the towering stone walls. He told himself he could do it. No matter how hard it was to continue carrying her, he was determined to bring her home alive. Lights flickered from countless braziers mounted hundreds of feet high on the upper part of the city. Naru stood ominous under the garish light of the four moon sisters and as the evening gong sounded from atop a watchtower, Talis knew he had made it. He stumbled toward the main gates, barely able to stand. A group of soldiers making their rounds noticed and ran over to help. “Young Master Talis, what’s wrong?” said Baratis, the captain of the guard. His eyes blazed in fear at the sight of Mara. “Is she alive?” “I can’t talk now… open the gates… she’s hurt!” “Carem and Jorem! Help them,” Baratis shouted. “You! Ride and fetch a healer. Have them run straightaway to House Lei. Now go!” Two soldiers lifted Mara from Talis' arms and carried her while another raced atop a horse into the city. Massive steel shafts stared down at them from inside the stone walls as they jogged past. If they weren’t quick about it, she would die. Ahead, Talis could see a soldier speed off on horseback. He prayed that the healer would arrive in time. He ran ahead, urging them to run faster. Past the gate was the Arena of the Sej Elders, formed of gigantic white granite blocks, rising over everything in the lower part of the city. Stone towers lined the wide avenue leading up to the arena. They had to move faster. The soldiers’ boots clapped against the cobblestone streets as they marched past the arena, finally winding up and around until they reached the gates of the upper city. Up the snaking rise, they charged past merchant shops and eyes that gawked at the soldiers carrying Mara. They continued on to the highest part of the city, beneath the Temple of the Goddess Nestria, the Goddess of the Sky. To Mara’s house, the House of Viceroy Lei and Lady Malvia, daughter of the king and second in line to the throne. They were going to be furious; Talis knew he was in serious trouble for going with Mara out on the hunt. But he couldn’t think of that, all that mattered was Mara’s life. As the soldiers carried her into the white marble mansion, Talis worried her wounds were too grave to cure. Today was the worst day and he blamed himself. Why hadn’t he stopped Mara from going after the boar? He could have scared it off. She would have been angry at him, but at least she wouldn’t be injured. Two servants ran up and gasped when they noticed Mara. They quickly helped her inside, shouting for help.

As they tramped in, Temo turned from the big stone barbecue with a long grilling fork in his hand. He froze at the sight of Dayna. Once more, it was as though the two of them were alone in the sunny ramada with its roof of woven grass and the light filtering through on their faces. No one else mattered. A short woman with her hair piled on her head hurried from behind the barbecue with a platter of tacos in her hand. “Temo, aren’t you going to introduce me to your new friends?” she asked with a smile. “Temo, what is wrong? Are you sick?” “No, Madre,” Temo muttered, but he still couldn’t take his eyes off Dayna. Dayna’s mother, Brenda Regis, picked that exact moment to stride in from the spa. “Howdy, everybody,” she crooned. “Hope you’re all hungry as coyotes.” She glanced at her daughter, who was still gazing at Temo with lovesick eyes. “Dayna, what’s the matter with you, honey?” She looked Dayna up and down, then her eyes went to Temo, and then to Temo’s mother. The two women stiffened. Say something, Sophie prayed silently to Dayna. Order Temo around in that bossy voice of yours. Quick, before your mother and his mother figure this out. But Dayna stood stunned, incapable of speech. Sophie gave Liv a nudge. “Follow my lead,” she whispered and then in a louder voice shouted, “Hey, is this a good time to break the piñata?” She dived forward to snatch the long fork from Temo’s hand. “Whee!” she shouted. “Fun! Come on, everybody. Let’s see what’s inside!” She poked at the paper horse. Liv grabbed a barbecue brush and bashed at it too. Cheyenne and Hailey joined in with shouts of glee. The paper horse flew to pieces, scattering small objects and cactus candy all over the picnic table. Some fell into the punch bowl with a splash. More landed in the salad plate. Laughter and confusion broke the spell of tension in the air as they all dived for the piñata’s. Dayna snapped out of her trance. “Look what I’ve got!” She held up a plastic whistle, then blew a shrill note. “Time to eat, everybody.” Temo turned back to the barbecue. The spell was broken, the danger past. His mother, Marita, gave him another frightened glance, but went on laying food on the table. Dayna’s mother picked a piece of candy out of her hair and said, “Well! We usually break the piñata after the meal, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

Now I’m no art critic, but in a time seen as a bridge between the late middle ages and the early renaissance, where the church played such a substantial part in the day to day running of people's lives, Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, which is painted on oak with a square middle panel flanked by two doors that close over the centre like shutters, is rather racy. When the outer shutters are folded over they show a grisaille painting of the earth during creation. But it’s the three scenes of the inner triptych that fascinate me. If you’re unfamiliar with the painting, I’ll do my best to describe it for you. Apologies in advance if I miss anything out. It’s regular sort of stuff, you know, naked women being fondled by demons, a bloke being kissed by a pig dressed as a nun, another bloke being eaten by some kind of story book character while loads of blackbirds fly out of his arse, a couple locked in a glass sphere and – let’s not beat about the Bosch here – locked in each other’s embrace as well. There are loads of people feeding each other fruit, doing handstands, hatching out of eggs, climbing up ladders to get inside the bodies of other people and looking at demon’s arses. There’s a couple getting caught shagging by giant birds, and a white bloke and a black Rastafarian with ‘locks (400 years before the Rastafari movement was founded) about to have a snog. You’ve got God giving Eve to a very puny-looking, limp-dicked Adam, and there’s a bunch of people sitting around a table inside the body of another bloke while an old woman fills up on wine from a decent-sized barrel while a kind of giant metal face pukes out loads of naked blokes who go running into a trumpet and another bloke being fed a cherry by a giant bird while a white bloke shows a black lady something in the sky. It’s all going on! There's loads of those ‘living dead’ mateys walking about, and a bloke carrying giant grapes past a topless girl with, it has to be said, pretty decent tits. She’s balancing a giant dice on her head while doing something strange to another bloke’s arse while a rabbit in clothes walks past. You can’t see what she’s doing because there’s a table in the way but beside them is a serpent-type creature with just one massive boob and a pretty pert nipple. One huge tit the size of his chest! Of all things, he’s holding a backgammon board up in the air. I’d say Bosch was a tit man, wouldn’t you? But there’s more. There’s a crowd of naked girls – black & white - in a water pool, all balancing cherries on their heads; read into that what you will. There are just LOADS of naked women in this water pool, including one of the black girls who’s balancing a peacock on her head. There are dozens of nudists riding horses around them in a circle. Some are sharing the same horse, so I must admit that in places it appears to be a little intimate. And now what have we got! There’s a couple cavorting inside a giant shell which is being carried on the back of another bloke. Why doesn’t he just put it down and climb in and have a threes-up? There are people with wings, creatures reading books and just more and more nudists. There’s a naked woman lying back, and this other bloke with his face extremely close to her nether regions! What on earth does the blighter think he’s playing at? There’s loads of grey half men-half fish, some balancing red balls on their heads like seals, and another fellow doing a handstand underwater while holding onto his nuts. You’ve got a ball in a river with people climbing all over it, while a bloke inside the ball is touching a lady in what appears to be a very inappropriate manner! There’s a kind of platypus-type fish reading a book underground and Theresa May triggering Article 50 of Brexit (just kidding about the Theresa May bit).

Browsing among the shelves, Poppy paused to examine a jeweled silver figurine of a horse, its hooves extended in mid-gallop. "How lovely." "A gift from the Crown Prince Yizhu of China," the man behind her said. "A Celestial horse." Fascinated, Poppy ran a fingertip along the figure's back. "Now the prince has been crowned as the Emperor Xianfeng," she said. "A rather ironic ruling name, isn't it?" Coming to stand beside her, the stranger glanced at her alertly. "Why do you say that?" "Because it means 'universal prosperity.' And that is certainly not the case, considering the internal rebellions he is facing." "I'd say the challenges from Europe are an even greater danger to him, at present." "Yes," Poppy said ruefully, nudging the figurine back into place. "One wonders how long Chinese sovereignty can last against such an onslaught." Her companion was standing close enough that she could detect the scents of pressed linen and shaving soap. He stared at her intently. "I know very few women who are able to discuss Far East politics." She felt color rise in her cheeks. "My family has rather unusual conversations around the supper table. At least, they're unusual in that my sisters and I always take part. My companion says it's perfectly all right to do that at home, but she has advised me not to appear too learned when I'm out in society. It tends to drive away suitors." "You'll have to be careful, then" he said softly, smiling. "It would be a shame for some intelligent comment to slip out at the wrong moment.

I have an awful lot of dreams about things, if someone’s troubled. I knew Adrian wasn’t very well this weekend, and I couldn’t get through. But something told me something was wrong, and he had a very, very bad weekend. Instinct. I’ll walk into a room and straight into them. I recall sitting in a Land Rover with my policeman and watching [Prince Charles’s] horse [Alibar] coming along and rearing its head back. I said: ‘That horse is going to have a heart attack and die.’ And it did. It had a heart attack then and there.