Bark At The Moon Quotes

Funeral Blues Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead, Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one, Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood; For nothing now can ever come to any good.

How can one person be more real than any other? Well, some people do hide and others seek. Maybe those who are in hiding - escaping encounters, avoiding surprises, protecting their property, ignoring their fantasies, restricting their feelings, sitting out the pan pipe hootchy-kootch of experience - maybe those people, people who won't talk to rednecks, or if they're rednecks won't talk to intellectuals, people who're afraid to get their shoes muddy or their noses wet, afraid to eat what they crave, afraid to drink Mexican water, afraid to bet a long shot to win, afraid to hitchhike, jaywalk, honky-tonk, cogitate, osculate, levitate, rock it, bop it, sock it, or bark at the moon, maybe such people are simply inauthentic, and maybe the jacklet humanist who says differently is due to have his tongue fried on the hot slabs of Liar's Hell. Some folks hide, and some folk's seek, and seeking, when it's mindless, neurotic, desperate, or pusillanimous can be a form of hiding. But there are folks who want to know and aren't afraid to look and won't turn tail should they find it - and if they never do, they'll have a good time anyway because nothing, neither the terrible truth nor the absence of it, is going to cheat them out of one honest breath of Earth's sweet gas.

Leave it to a naive world-saver like you to view our love as a Sacred Cause when in actual fact all it was was some barking at the moon.

Luke rose to his feet. "I'm taking five minutes for some air. I'll be back. " He felt them watching him as he made his way to the front doorsall of them, even Amatis. Senhor Monteverde whispered something to his wife in Portuguese; Luke caught "lobo", the word for "wolf", in the stream of words. They probably think I'm going outside to run in circles and bark at the moon.

The worst part of it is you don't know if he's barking at an owl, the moon or a burglar!" "That's one of the drawbacks of a limited vocabulary!

We got to the moon and built the pyramids without email and Facebook.

Live and laugh like there is no tomorrow. Bark at the moon frequently, but never alone...

A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one.

The old oak, utterly transformed, draped in a tent of sappy dark green, basked faintly, undulating in the rays of the evening sun. Of the knotted fingers, the gnarled excrecenses, the aged grief and mistrust- nothing was to be seen. Through the rough, century-old bark, where there were no twigs, leaves had burst out so sappy, so young, that is was hard to believe that the aged creature had borne them. "Yes, that is the same tree," thought Prince Andrey, and all at once there came upon him an irrational, spring feeling of joy and renewal. All the best moments of his life rose to his memory at once. Austerlitz, with that lofty sky, and the dead, reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and the girl, thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night and that moon- it all rushed at once into his mind.

I remember coming to in white room, with white walls, and people all around me covered in white sheets and thinking, F**k, I’m in the morgue. Then I heard a hissing noise next to my bed. Pssst, pssst. I looked down and there was this kid holding up a pen and a copy of „Bark at the Moon“. ‘Will you sign this for me?’ he asked. ‘F**k off,’ I told him. ‘I’m dead.’

There were frogs all right, thousands of them. Their voices beat the night, they boomed and barked and croaked and rattled. They sang to the stars, to the waning moon, to the waving grasses. They bellowed long songs and challenges.

Don't expect to sit next to the moon unless you are a star!

I imagined that my own life was simple and sweet, and sometimes it was, but there were odd things going around town. There were rumors. There were stories. Everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable. This mystical flirtation with the idea of “sin"–this sense that it was possible to go "too far”, and that many people were doing it–this was very much with us in Los Angeles in 1968 and 1969. A demented and seductive vortical tension was building in the community. The jitters were setting in. I recall a time when the dogs barked every night and the moon was always full.

If you are in the mountains alone for some time, many days at minimum, & it helps if you are fasting. The forest grows tired of its weariness towards you; it resumes its inner life and allows you to see it. Near dusk the faces in tree bark cease hiding, and stare out at you. The welcoming ones and also the malevolent, open in their curiosity. In your camp at night you are able to pick out a distinct word now and then from the muddled voices in creek water, sometimes an entire sentence of deep import. The ghosts of animals reveal themselves to you without prejudice to your humanity. You see them receding before you as you walk the trail their shapes beautiful and sad.

Flowers were blooming, withered soon.. Rains kept falling, wasn't forever.. Dogs were barking, just for sometime.. Sun, moon & stars were invisible at times, but they kept watching you.. Let them shine for you, before it’s too late..

Live... More than your neighbors. Unleash yourself upon the world and go places. Go now. Giggle, no, laugh. No... stay out past dark, And bark at the moon like the wild dog that you are. Understand that this is not a dress rehearsal. This is it... your life. Face your fears and live your dreams. Take it in. Yes, every chance you get... come close. And, by all means, whatever you do... Get it on film.

Blow on, ye death fraught whirlwinds! blow, Around the rocks, and rifted caves; Ye demons of the gulf below! I hear you, in the troubled waves. High on this cliff, which darkness shrouds In night's impenetrable clouds, My solitary watch I keep, And listen, while the turbid deep Groans to the raging tempests, as they roll Their desolating force, to thunder at the pole. Eternal world of waters, hail! Within thy caves my Lover lies; And day and night alike shall fail Ere slumber lock my streaming eyes. Along this wild untrodden coast, Heap'd by the gelid' hand of frost; Thro' this unbounded waste of seas, Where never sigh'd the vernal breeze; Mine was the choice, in this terrific form, To brave the icy surge, to shiver in the storm. Yes! I am chang'd - My heart, my soul, Retain no more their former glow. Hence, ere the black'ning tempests roll, I watch the bark, in murmurs low, (While darker low'rs the thick'ning' gloom) To lure the sailor to his doom; Soft from some pile of frozen snow I pour the syren-song of woe; Like the sad mariner's expiring cry, As, faint and worn with toil, he lays him down to die. Then, while the dark and angry deep Hangs his huge billows high in air ; And the wild wind with awful sweep, Howls in each fitful swell - beware! Firm on the rent and crashing mast, I lend new fury to the blast; I mark each hardy cheek grow pale, And the proud sons of courage fail; Till the torn vessel drinks the surging waves, Yawns the disparted main, and opes its shelving graves. When Vengeance bears along the wave The spell, which heav'n and earth appals; Alone, by night, in darksome cave, On me the gifted wizard calls. Above the ocean's boiling flood Thro' vapour glares the moon in blood: Low sounds along the waters die, And shrieks of anguish fill the' sky; Convulsive powers the solid rocks divide, While, o'er the heaving surge, the embodied spirits glide. Thrice welcome to my weary sight, Avenging ministers of Wrath! Ye heard, amid the realms of night, The spell that wakes the sleep of death. Where Hecla's flames the snows dissolve, Or storms, the polar skies involve; Where, o'er the tempest-beaten wreck, The raging winds and billows break; On the sad earth, and in the stormy sea, All, all shall shudd'ring own your potent agency. To aid your toils, to scatter death, Swift, as the sheeted lightning's force, When the keen north-wind's freezing breath Spreads desolation in its course, My soul within this icy sea, Fulfils her fearful destiny. Thro' Time's long ages I shall wait To lead the victims to their fate; With callous heart, to hidden rocks decoy, And lure, in seraph-strains, unpitying, to destroy.

If I spelled out the Principles of Faith I would be barking on the moon.

I have become an isolationist. I isolate in my room, the names of men on my tongue I can no longer pronounce, my memory of them unraveled by time. I look out my bedroom window onto the velveted backyard that expands into forever, my pigeons silent and content behind hexwire, the moon hooked in the limbs of my favorite peach tree, its purple bark the color of my lover’s skin.

You see, at that juncture in my life I wasn’t evolved enough to understand the fluid nature of romantic love (its indifference to human cravings for permanence and certainty); its uncivilized, undomesticated nature (less like a pretty melody than a foxish barking at the moon), or, more importantly perhaps, that it’s a privilege to love someone, to truly love them; and while it’s paradisiacal if she or he loves you back, it’s unfair to demand or expect reciprocity. We should consider ourselves lucky, honored, blessed that we possess the capacity to feel tenderness of such magnitude and be grateful even when that love is not returned. Love is the only game in which we win even when we lose.

Nothing in the world has tentacles or fins or paws or claws. Nothing in the world soars. Nothing swims. Nothing purrs, barks, growls, roars, chitters, trills, or cries repeatedly two notes, a descending fourth, for three months of the year. There are no months of the year. There is no moon. There is no year.

To what a world does the illustrious bard carry me! To wander over pathless wilds, surrounded by impetuous whirlwinds, where, by the feeble light of the moon, we see the spirits of our ancestors; to hear from the mountain-tops, mid the roar of torrents, their plaintive sounds issuing from deep caverns, and the sorrowful lamentations of a maiden who sighs and expires on the mossy tomb of the warrior by whom she was adored. I meet this bard with silver hair; he wanders in the valley; he seeks the footsteps of his fathers, and, alas! he finds only their tombs. Then, contemplating the pale moon, as she sinks beneath the waves of the rolling sea, the memory of bygone days strikes the mind of the hero, days when approaching danger invigorated the brave, and the moon shone upon his bark laden with spoils, and returning in triumph. When I read in his countenance deep sorrow, when I see his dying glory sink exhausted into the grave, as he inhales new and heart-thrilling delight from his approaching union with his beloved, and he casts a look on the cold earth and the tall grass which is so soon to cover him, and then exclaims, "The traveller will come, -- he will come who has seen my beauty, and he will ask, 'Where is the bard, where is the illustrious son of Fingal?' He will walk over my tomb, and will seek me in vain!

Three Haiku, Two Tanka (Kyoto) CONFIDENCE (after Bashō) Clouds murmur darkly, it is a blinding habit— gazing at the moon. TIME OF JOY (after Buson) Spring means plum blossoms and spotless new kimonos for holiday whores. RENDEZVOUS (after Shiki) Once more as I wait for you, night and icy wind melt into cold rain. FOR SATORI In the spring of joy, when even the mud chuckles, my soul runs rabid, snaps at its own bleeding heels, and barks: “What is happiness?” SOMBER GIRL She never saw fire from heaven or hotly fought with God; but her eyes smolder for Hiroshima and the cold death of Buddha.

Alaine frowned at him for a moment. "Are you asking me if I need feminine products?" "I'm telling you to plan ahead," Nova said with a deliberate look at her. "Anything you think you're gonna need, I'll pick up." "Wow"-Alaine pulled back in surprise- "I'm sort of impressed right now. You ARE a progressive gangster." "Just text me," Nova said as he threw up his hand. "I'm leaving." "She's not going to need feminine products," Tino said with a bark of laughter. "I guarantee you she's pregnant after last night.

You told her I was gay." "Yes, but see--" "And she BELIEVED you!" he asked with horror. "Yes, of course. Why would she think I'd lie about something like that?" she asked with exasperation. "Julius," Marguerite chastised gently when his father muffled a guffaw. "Sorry, darling, but he gave me such grief over wooing you that I can't help but think this is funny," Julius said, slipping his arm around Marguerite. "It isn't funny," Christian growled. "She told my lifemate I'm gay." Zanipolo gave a bark of laughter. "And she BELIEVED it." Christian scowled at the man, considering violence until Gia said, "Actually, at first I just said my cugino was gay and didn't tell her which one. She thought it must be you before I said it was Christian.." "What?" Zanipolo cried. "Why would she think that? Do I look gay?" Christian growled impatiently, and turned on Gia. "I don't see how her thinking I am gay is supposed to help." "Is it my hair that made her pick me for the gay one, do you think?" Zanipolo asked suddenly. "Maybe I should cut it." "It could be," Santo said, eyeing him consideringly. "Nah. Christian has long hair too," Raffeale pointed out.

They are living, growing, reproducing, pushing and pulling in the ground all around us at all times. We accept that without even noticing. Open your eyes, people. This is amazing. If plants made sounds, it would all be different. But they communicate with color and shape and size and texture. They don’t meow or bark or tweet. We think they don’t have eyes, but they see the angle of the sun and the rise of the moon. They don’t just feel the wind; they change directions because of it.

(How many years does it take, she’ll wonder two nights later, lying in bed alone in her substandard motel room and listening to dogs bark beneath a hot orange moon, before the simple stupid weight of accumulating days finally sucks all the wow out of a marriage? How lucky do you have to be for your love to outrace your time?)

Then someone within closed the door, shutting Norah out into the howling dust of the night. The clouds parted briefly to reveal the full moon's cold eye, then closed again. Wind seared over the pavilion's double roof, its voice rising to a shriek. Distantly, among the maze of walls, came the frenzied barking of hundreds of tiny dogs. As she drifted towards wakefulness, Norah could not tell whether it was the wind that she heard just at the end, or whether, within the dark hall, the girl had begun to scream.

And at night the river flows, it bears pale stars on the holy water, some sink like veils, some show like fish, the great moon that once was rose now high like a blazing milk flails its white reflection vertical and deep in the dark surgey mass wall river's grinding bed push. As in a sad dream, under the streetlamp, by pocky unpaved holes in dirt, the father James Cassidy comes home with lunchpail and lantern, limping, redfaced, and turns in for supper and sleep. Now a door slams. The kids have rushed out for the last play, the mothers are planning and slamming in kitchens, you can hear it out in swish leaf orchards, on popcorn swings, in the million-foliaged sweet wafted night of sighs, songs, shushes. A thousand things up and down the street, deep, lovely, dangerous, aureating, breathing, throbbing like stars; a whistle, a faint yell; the flow of Lowell over rooftops beyond; the bark on the river, the wild goose of the night yakking, ducking in the sand and sparkle; the ululating lap and purl and lovely mystery on the shore, dark, always dark the river's cunning unseen lips, murmuring kisses, eating night, stealing sand, sneaky. 'Mag-gie!' the kids are calling under the railroad bridge where they've been swimming. The freight train still rumbles over a hundred cars long, the engine threw the flare on little white bathers, little Picasso horses of the night as dense and tragic in the gloom comes my soul looking for what was there that disappeared and left, lost, down a path--the gloom of love. Maggie, the girl I loved.

They said he used to cackle and bark in his crib after dark. They said he walked at two months and sat staring at the moon whenever it shone. Those were things that people said. His parents were always worried about him. An only child, they noticed his flaws quickly. They thought he was blind until the doctor told them it was just a vacuous stare.

The reign of Christ has been established. The nations who object to this settlement trouble the decrees of God about as much as dogs barking at the moon trouble the moon.

We got to the moon and built the pyramids without email and Facebook. You can go a couple of hours without checking them.

And what does a cow say?” Carter yelled. “Mooooooooo!” The kids shouted. Except for Katie Bell, who barked.

Ancient World" Orange sunset in the deep shell of summer a long silence reaching across the dry pastures in the distance a dog barks at the sound of a door closing and at once I am older.

How can you say that?' he barked. 'It is they who have forced you out of your homes, turning you into refugees.' I looked him in the eye and said: 'General, I've lost my home, not my humanity.

Beowulf’s picture was far more elaborate than those of his siblings, and it did need a bit more work coloring in the background, but the gist of it was on full, frightening view. In the sky: a full moon, its eerie glow partially obscured by dark, swirling clouds. In the foreground: the dense, ferny undergrowth of a forest, bordered by a few gnarled tree trunks rising upward. In the center of the page: an old woman, wrapped in a cloak. Her mouth hung open in a leering smile, and her teeth were large and razor sharp, with a prominent set of gleaming white incisors. From the back of her shroudlike garments poked a long, wolfish tail. Cassiopeia and Alexander clapped and barked with admiration, but Penelope’s skin went cold.

Get over yourself,” Tino barked. “In case you missed the memo, you’re famous now, dickhead. People cross the street to get your autograph. You got two UFC Light-Heavyweight belts. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, you switched weight classes and just killed it like a boss and won a Heavyweight belt too. Me, I look like some asshole from Jersey Shore.” He winced and then added, “Except I have better hair…and better style.” Tino shook his head. “Just completely forget I ever compared myself to them

And they say, if ever a traveler plucks the wild parsley, and takes the bark of the hazel tree, and the secret toadstools, and mixes them with crocus from the patch of forest where the hero's last bones lie, a powerful spell will come to life. The hero will be reborn, not as he was before his destruction, but many times stronger in body and spirit; for he will be filled with the strength of earth, sea, and air. I think of the seven of us as the parts of one body. We may be torn asunder, and it may seem as if there is no tomorrow for us. We may each travel our own path, and we may fall and be broken and mend again. But in the end, as surely as the sun and moon make their way across the arch of the heavens, the strength of one is the strength of seven.

I suppose you know the meaning of the pyramids." "I do." She halfway believed him. "Then will you please enlighten me? How come you found the meaning when so many others have failed?" "Simple. It's because others—like you yourself—have looked at pyramids wrong." "Looked at them wrong?" "Yep. You've looked at a pyramid as if it were a finished product, the whole item, the thing itself. But a pyramid is just a part of the thing, and the bottom part at that. Pyramids are pedestals, babe. A pyramid is merely a base for something else to stand on." "Are you serious?" "I am." "Well, Jesus, Bernard. What stood on the pyramids?" "Souls. Souls like you and me. And we have to stand on them now. The pyramid is the bottom, and the top is us. The top is all of us. All of us who're crazy enough and brave enough and in love enough. The pyramids were built as pedestals that the souls of the truly alive and the truly in love could stand upon and bark at the moon. And I believe that our souls, yours and mine, will stand together atop the pyramids forever.

The bluish, pale face of the house rises above me like a wall of ice and the distant, solitary barking of an owl floats toward me. I half close my eyes. Over the damp dark of the garden flowers swing back and forth like small balloons. The solemn trees, each buried in a cloud of leaves, seem lost in sleep. It is late. I like in the grass, smoking, feeling at ease, pretending the end will be like this. Moonlight falls on my flesh. A breeze circles my wrist. I drift. I shiver. I know that soon the day will come to wash away the moon's white stain, that I shall walk in the morning sun invisible as anyone.

The old oak, quite transfigured, spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old veteran could have produced. ‘Yes, it is the same oak,’ thought Prince Andrei, and all at once he was seized by an unreasoning spring-time feeling of joy and renewal. All the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory. Austerlitz with the lofty heavens, his wife’s dead reproachful face, Pierre at the ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night, and that night itself and the moon, and … all this rushed suddenly to his mind. ‘No, life is not over at thirty-one!’ Prince Andrei suddenly decided finally and decisively. ‘It is not enough for me to know what I have in me—everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may not be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it, but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live in harmony.

On those walks, he tried very hard not to think of anything in particular. He concentrated instead on what he saw before him, noticing at night what had eluded him by day: how the dirt was so fine it was almost sand, and puffed up into little plumes as he stepped in it, how skinny threads of bark-brown snakes whipsawed silently beneath the brush as he passed. He walked to the ocean and above him the moon disappeared, concealed by tattered rags of clouds, and for a few moments he could only hear the water, not see it, and the sky was thick and warm with moisture, as if the very air here were denser, more significant. Maybe this is what it is to be dead, he thought, and realized it wasn’t so bad after all, and felt better.

Every generation of children instinctively nests itself in nature, no matter matter how tiny a scrap of it they can grasp. In a tale of one city child, the poet Audre Lord remembers picking tufts of grass which crept up through the paving stones in New York City and giving them as bouquets to her mother. It is a tale of two necessities. The grass must grow, no matter the concrete suppressing it. The child must find her way to the green, no matter the edifice which would crush it. "The Maori word for placenta is the same word for land, so at birth the placenta is buried, put back in the mothering earth. A Hindu baby may receive the sun-showing rite surya-darsana when, with conch shells ringing to the skies, the child is introduced to the sun. A newborn child of the Tonga people 'meets' the moon, dipped in the ocean of Kosi Bay in KwaZulu-Natal. Among some of the tribes of India, the qualities of different aspects of nature are invoked to bless the child, so he or she may have the characteristics of earth, sky and wind, of birds and animals, right down to the earthworm. Nothing is unbelonging to the child. "'My oldest memories have the flavor of earth,' wrote Frederico García Lorca. In the traditions of the Australian deserts, even from its time in the womb, the baby is catscradled in kinship with the world. Born into a sandy hollow, it is cleaned with sand and 'smoked' by fire, and everything -- insects, birds, plants, and animals -- is named to the child, who is told not only what everything is called but also the relationship between the child and each creature. Story and song weave the child into the subtle world of the Dreaming, the nested knowledge of how the child belongs. "The threads which tie the child to the land include its conception site and the significant places of the Dreaming inherited through its parents. Introduced to creatures and land features as to relations, the child is folded into the land, wrapped into country, and the stories press on the child's mind like the making of felt -- soft and often -- storytelling until the feeling of the story of the country is impressed into the landscape of the child's mind. "That the juggernaut of ants belongs to a child, belligerently following its own trail. That the twitch of an animal's tail is part of a child's own tale or storyline, once and now again. That on the papery bark of a tree may be written the songline of a child's name. That the prickles of a thornbush may have dynamic relevance to conscience. That a damp hollow by the riverbank is not an occasional place to visit but a permanent part of who you are. This is the beginning of belonging, the beginning of love. "In the art and myth of Indigenous Australia, the Ancestors seeded the country with its children, so the shimmering, pouring, circling, wheeling, spinning land is lit up with them, cartwheeling into life.... "The human heart's love for nature cannot ultimately be concreted over. Like Audre Lord's tufts of grass, will crack apart paving stones to grasp the sun. Children know they are made of the same stuff as the grass, as Walt Whitman describes nature creating the child who becomes what he sees: There was a child went forth every day And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became... The early lilacs became part of this child... And the song of the phoebe-bird... In Australia, people may talk of the child's conception site as the origin of their selfhood and their picture of themselves. As Whitman wrote of the child becoming aspects of the land, so in Northern Queensland a Kunjen elder describes the conception site as 'the home place for your image.' Land can make someone who they are, giving them fragments of themselves.

A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you see. Roots to leaves, yes—those you can, in part, see. But it is more—it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one.

that the moon was bright, tiny and icy-looking; and that around me for many miles there was nothing but snow and rocks. I had a talk with the St. Bernard, who was making his nightly rounds; he agreed that the night was too quiet and empty, and that solitude, despite its numerous benefits, was really a lousy thing. Still, he refused outright to break the valley’s silence and join me in a howl, or even just a good bark. In response to my request he just shook his head, walked away with a dissatisfied look and lay down by the porch.

There was a fancy came, When somewhere, in the journey with my friend, We stepped into a hovel to get food; And there began a yelp here, a bark there,— Misunderstanding creatures that were wroth And vexed themselves and us till we retired. The hovel is life: no matter what dogs bit Or cats scratched in the hovel I break from, All outside is lone field, moon and such peace— Flowing in, filling up as with a sea Whereon comes Someone, walks fast on the white, Jesus Christ's self, Don Celestine declares, To meet me and calm all things back again.

The Wheel Revolves You were a girl of satin and gauze Now you are my mountain and waterfall companion. Long ago I read those lines of Po Chu I Written in his middle age. Young as I was they touched me. I never thought in my own middle age I would have a beautiful young dancer To wander with me by falling crystal waters, Among mountains of snow and granite, Least of all that unlike Po’s girl She would be my very daughter. The earth turns towards the sun. Summer comes to the mountains. Blue grouse drum in the red fir woods All the bright long days. You put blue jay and flicker feathers In your hair. Two and two violet green swallows Play over the lake. The blue birds have come back To nest on the little island. The swallows sip water on the wing And play at love and dodge and swoop Just like the swallows that swirl Under and over the Ponte Vecchio. Light rain crosses the lake Hissing faintly. After the rain There are giant puffballs with tortoise shell backs At the edge of the meadow. Snows of a thousand winters Melt in the sun of one summer. Wild cyclamen bloom by the stream. Trout veer in the transparent current. In the evening marmots bark in the rocks. The Scorpion curls over the glimmering ice field. A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets. Thunder growls far off. Our campfire is a single light Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls. The manifold voices of falling water Talk all night. Wrapped in your down bag Starlight on your cheeks and eyelids Your breath comes and goes In a tiny cloud in the frosty night. Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise. Ten thousand years revolve without change. All this will never be again.

Who are you?” Luce asked, falling to her knees. “What do you want?” “Show some respect.” The angel’s throat convulsed as if he meant to bark, but his voice came out warbled and faint and old. “Earn my respect,” Luce said. “And I’ll give it to you.” He gave her half an evil smirk and dropped his head low. Then he pulled down the cloak to expose the back of his neck. Luce blinked in the dim light. His neck bore a painted brand, which shimmered gold in the glow of streetlights mingled with the moon. She counted seven points on the star. He was one of the Scale. “Recognize me now?” “Is this how the Throne’s enforcers work? Bludgeoning innocent angels?” “No Outcast is innocent. Nor is anyone else, for that matter, until they are proven to be so.” “You’ve proven yourself innocent of any honor, striking a girl from behind.” “Insolence.” He wrinkled his nose at he. “Won’t get you far with me.” “That’s exactly where I want to be.” Luce’s eyes darted to Olianna, to her pale hand and the starshot clenched in its grip. “But it’s not where you will stay,” the Scale said haltingly, as if having to force himself to commit to heir illogical banter.

In December the first frosts came with the full moon, and then my nights of vigil held a quality harder to bear. There was a sort of beauty to them, cold and clear, that caught at the heart and made me stare in wonder. From my windows the long lawns dipped to the meadows, and the meadows to the sea, and all of them were white with frost, and white too under the moon. The trees that fringed the lawns were black and still. Rabbits came out and pricked about the grass, then scattered to their burrows; and suddenly, from the hush and stillness, I heard that high sharp bark of a vixen, with the little sob that follows it, eerie, unmistakable, unlike any other call that comes by night, and out of the woods I saw the lean low body creep and run out upon the lawn, and hide again where the trees would cover it. Later I heard the call again, away in the distance, in the open park, and now the full moon topped the trees and held the sky, and nothing stirred on the lawns beneath my window. I wondered if Rachel slept, in the blue bedroom; or if, like me, she left her curtains wide. The clock that had driven me to bed at ten struck one, struck two, and I thought that here about me was a wealth of beauty that we might have shared.

I looked up at the moon and stars through the glass roof above and gasped at the stunning sight, like a mural painted by a great artist. No wonder Lady Anna had loved this place. I walked to the orchids and plucked a weed from a small terra-cotta pot that held a speckled pink and white flower. "There you are, beautiful," I whispered, releasing a patch of clover roots from the bark near the orchid's stem. "Is that better?" In the quiet of the night, I could almost hear the flower sigh. I walked to the water spigot and filled a green watering can to the brim, then sprinkled the flower and her comrades. I marveled at how the droplets sparkled in the moonlight.

The chill of his blood that had seamlessly filled every part of his body began to break apart. Flashes of heat, bestial and defiant, ripped through the cold. He threw back his head, the howling reaching his throat. As it broke loose, the Finnest staggered back. Blood of a Hound! Blood no one can enslave – Paran launched himself at the Finnest. His muscles filled with pain as overwhelming strength flowed into them. You dare! He struck the creature, driving it to the ground, battering its oak flesh with his fists, sinking his teeth into the bark of its face. The Finnest tried to push him away, and failed. It screamed, flailing its limbs. Paran began ripping it methodically to pieces.

Now, lad, rinse your mouth wi’ this; ’twill cleanse the cuts and ease the pain. Willow-bark tea,” she explained in an aside to me, “wi’ a bit of ground orrisroot.” I nodded; I recalled vaguely from a long-ago botany lecture hearing that willow bark in fact contained salicylic acid, the active ingredient in aspirin. “Won’t the willow bark increase the chance of bleeding?” I asked. Mrs. Fitz nodded approvingly. “Aye. It do sometimes. That’s why ye follow it wi’ a good handful of St. John’s wort soaked in vinegar; that stops bleedin’, if it’s gathered under a full moon and ground up well.” Jamie obediently swilled his mouth with the astringent solution, eyes watering at the sting of the aromatic vinegar.

There’s no way around August. In the sweltering dog days of summer in the deep South mornings haze with humidity that doesn’t end with the coming of dark. Cuts don’t heal. Grudges fester. Mold grows on damp sheets and dogs don’t bother to come out from under the house and bark. What would be the point? In more cultivated times people closed the shutters midday and sallied forth when the worst was over. The river is a different story. And if you are fortunate enough to have a dock with hammocks hanging under it and boats tied at the end of it and all of Jericho waiting to enfold you, not to mention the Perseid meteor showers to keep you company at night, why would you be anywhere else? Especially if you have peaches.

eyes. She felt the changes shimmer across her scales. The hardest part was the extra horns IceWings had around their heads. She concentrated on making her ruff look like it was made of icicles and hoped that would do. She also couldn’t make her claws ridged like IceWing claws, and her tail wasn’t as whip-thin at the end as an IceWing’s would be. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe there’s no way I’ll get away with it. But it was still pretty dark out . . . and she really, really wanted to know what a NightWing was doing out here. Well, she thought ruefully, if he figures me out, I guess I’ll just kill him. Somehow it didn’t sound as funny as she’d hoped. She leaped into the air and flew back to the spot where she’d seen the strange dragon. For a moment she was afraid she’d lost him, before she realized that he was lying down, his black scales half-hidden in the long shadows. Confidence, she told herself. It’s all about attitude. “Hey!” she barked, landing with a thump beside him. “Who are you, and what are you doing in our territory?” The NightWing leaped up in surprise and stared at her. He was a lot younger and smaller than Morrowseer, wiry and graceful in his movements even when he was startled. The silver scales sparkling under his wings caught the morning light like trapped stars. “Great moons. Where did you come from?” he asked. He looked up at the sky with a puzzled expression. “Where do you think?” she said. “And I’m asking the questions here. What are you doing in the Ice Kingdom?” “Technically this isn’t the Ice Kingdom yet,” he said. “Or didn’t you know that?” It isn’t? she thought. The map she’d memorized didn’t exactly have borders drawn on it, not that those would have helped her out here anyway.

Hymn to Mercury : Continued 11. ... Seized with a sudden fancy for fresh meat, He in his sacred crib deposited The hollow lyre, and from the cavern sweet Rushed with great leaps up to the mountain's head, Revolving in his mind some subtle feat Of thievish craft, such as a swindler might Devise in the lone season of dun night. 12. Lo! the great Sun under the ocean's bed has Driven steeds and chariot—the child meanwhile strode O'er the Pierian mountains clothed in shadows, Where the immortal oxen of the God Are pastured in the flowering unmown meadows, And safely stalled in a remote abode.— The archer Argicide, elate and proud, Drove fifty from the herd, lowing aloud. 13. He drove them wandering o'er the sandy way, But, being ever mindful of his craft, Backward and forward drove he them astray, So that the tracks which seemed before, were aft; His sandals then he threw to the ocean spray, And for each foot he wrought a kind of raft Of tamarisk, and tamarisk-like sprigs, And bound them in a lump with withy twigs. 14. And on his feet he tied these sandals light, The trail of whose wide leaves might not betray His track; and then, a self-sufficing wight, Like a man hastening on some distant way, He from Pieria's mountain bent his flight; But an old man perceived the infant pass Down green Onchestus heaped like beds with grass. 15. The old man stood dressing his sunny vine: 'Halloo! old fellow with the crooked shoulder! You grub those stumps? before they will bear wine Methinks even you must grow a little older: Attend, I pray, to this advice of mine, As you would 'scape what might appal a bolder— Seeing, see not—and hearing, hear not—and— If you have understanding—understand.' 16. So saying, Hermes roused the oxen vast; O'er shadowy mountain and resounding dell, And flower-paven plains, great Hermes passed; Till the black night divine, which favouring fell Around his steps, grew gray, and morning fast Wakened the world to work, and from her cell Sea-strewn, the Pallantean Moon sublime Into her watch-tower just began to climb. 17. Now to Alpheus he had driven all The broad-foreheaded oxen of the Sun; They came unwearied to the lofty stall And to the water-troughs which ever run Through the fresh fields—and when with rushgrass tall, Lotus and all sweet herbage, every one Had pastured been, the great God made them move Towards the stall in a collected drove. 18. A mighty pile of wood the God then heaped, And having soon conceived the mystery Of fire, from two smooth laurel branches stripped The bark, and rubbed them in his palms;—on high Suddenly forth the burning vapour leaped And the divine child saw delightedly.— Mercury first found out for human weal Tinder-box, matches, fire-irons, flint and steel. 19. And fine dry logs and roots innumerous He gathered in a delve upon the ground— And kindled them—and instantaneous The strength of the fierce flame was breathed around: And whilst the might of glorious Vulcan thus Wrapped the great pile with glare and roaring sound, Hermes dragged forth two heifers, lowing loud, Close to the fire—such might was in the God. 20. And on the earth upon their backs he threw The panting beasts, and rolled them o'er and o'er, And bored their lives out. Without more ado He cut up fat and flesh, and down before The fire, on spits of wood he placed the two, Toasting their flesh and ribs, and all the gore Pursed in the bowels; and while this was done He stretched their hides over a craggy stone.

Dog Talk … I have seen Ben place his nose meticulously into the shallow dampness of a deer’s hoofprint and shut his eyes as if listening. But it is smell he is listening to. The wild, high music of smell, that we know so little about. Tonight Ben charges up the yard; Bear follows. They run into the field and are gone. A soft wind, like a belt of silk, wraps the house. I follow them to the end of the field where I hear the long-eared owl, at wood’s edge, in one of the tall pines. All night the owl will sit there inventing his catty racket, except when he opens pale wings and drifts moth-like over the grass. I have seen both dogs look up as the bird floats by, and I suppose the field mouse hears it too, in the pebble of his tiny heart. Though I hear nothing. Bear is small and white with a curly tail. He was meant to be idle and pretty but learned instead to love the world, and to romp roughly with the big dogs. The brotherliness of the two, Ben and Bear, increases with each year. They have their separate habits, their own favorite sleeping places, for example, yet each worries without letup if the other is missing. They both bark rapturously and in support of each other. They both sneeze to express plea- sure, and yawn in humorous admittance of embarrassment. In the car, when we are getting close to home and the smell of the ocean begins to surround them, they both sit bolt upright and hum. With what vigor and intention to please himself the little white dog flings himself into every puddle on the muddy road. Somethings are unchangeably wild, others are stolid tame. The tiger is wild, the coyote, and the owl. I am tame, you are tame. The wild things that have been altered, but only into a semblance of tameness, it is no real change. But the dog lives in both worlds. Ben is devoted, he hates the door between us, is afraid of separation. But he had, for a number of years, a dog friend to whom he was also loyal. Every day they and a few others gathered into a noisy gang, and some of their games were bloody. Dog is docile, and then forgets. Dog promises then forgets. Voices call him. Wolf faces appear in dreams. He finds himself running over incredible lush or barren stretches of land, nothing any of us has ever seen. Deep in the dream, his paws twitch, his lip lifts. The dreaming dog leaps through the underbrush, enters the earth through a narrow tunnel, and is home. The dog wakes and the disturbance in his eyes when you say his name is a recognizable cloud. How glad he is to see you, and he sneezes a little to tell you so. But ah! the falling-back, fading dream where he was almost there again, in the pure, rocky weather-ruled beginning. Where he was almost wild again, and knew nothing else but that life, no other possibility. A world of trees and dogs and the white moon, the nest, the breast, the heart-warming milk! The thick-mantled ferocity at the end of the tunnel, known as father, a warrior he himself would grow to be. …

The wind was blustering again, whipping the curtains. Peter went over to close the window. The moon was now high on the eastern rise, radiant above the church where small water-cart clouds raced across the sky. About to fasten the window latch, his eye was drawn down to the garden. The fox stood under the apple tree looking up at him. The animal began to bark. Each monosyllabic yip and yap seemed to mimic human speech. By some strange power or spell, Peter could understand what the animal was saying. He heard the words loud and clear. ‘I-am Si-on,’ the fox barked. Man and beast looked unwaveringly at one another, neither moving a muscle. The wind stopped blowing, the curtains hung at rest. Peter leaned out the window. ‘What do you want from me?’ he called down. ‘Save-us-from-the-stea-lers,’ barked Sion. Peter’s mind reeled. It would be madness to believe he could understand what the fox was saying—lunacy to think he could commune with it! ‘I must still be asleep,’ he reasoned, closing the window. He sat down on the bed, folding his hands in his lap. But this is not a dream. Lying down, he pulled the bedcovers over himself. ‘Save-us! Save-us! Save-us!’ the fox kept barking from the garden.

I always had trouble with the feet of Jón the First, or Pre-Jón, as I called him later. He would frequently put them in front of me in the evening and tell me to take off his socks and rub his toes, soles, heels and calves. It was quite impossible for me to love these Icelandic men's feet that were shaped like birch stumps, hard and chunky, and screaming white as the wood when the bark is stripped from it. Yes, and as cold and damp, too. The toes had horny nails that resembled dead buds in a frosty spring. Nor can I forget the smell, for malodorous feet were very common in the post-war years when men wore nylon socks and practically slept in their shoes. How was it possible to love these Icelandic men? Who belched at the meal table and farted constantly. After four Icelandic husbands and a whole load of casual lovers I had become a vrai connaisseur of flatulence, could describe its species and varieties in the way that a wine-taster knows his wines. The howling backfire, the load, the gas bomb and the Luftwaffe were names I used most. The coffee belch and the silencer were also well-known quantities, but the worst were the date farts, a speciality of Bæring of Westfjord. Icelandic men don’t know how to behave: they never have and never will, but they are generally good fun. At least, Icelandic women think so. They seem to come with this inner emergency box, filled with humour and irony, which they always carry around with them and can open for useful items if things get too rough, and it must be a hereditary gift of the generations. Anyone who loses their way in the mountains and gets snowed in or spends the whole weekend stuck in a lift can always open this special Icelandic emergency box and get out of the situation with a good story. After wandering the world and living on the Continent I had long tired of well-behaved, fart-free gentlemen who opened the door and paid the bills but never had a story to tell and were either completely asexual or demanded skin-burning action until the morning light. Swiss watch salesmen who only knew of “sechs” as their wake-up hour, or hairy French apes who always required their twelve rounds of screwing after the six-course meal. I suppose I liked German men the best. They were a suitable mixture of belching northerner and cultivated southerner, of orderly westerner and crazy easterner, but in the post-war years they were of course broken men. There was little you could do with them except try to put them right first. And who had the time for that? Londoners are positive and jolly, but their famous irony struck me as mechanical and wearisome in the long run. As if that irony machine had eaten away their real essence. The French machine, on the other hand, is fuelled by seriousness alone, and the Frogs can drive you beyond the limit when they get going with their philosophical noun-dropping. The Italian worships every woman like a queen until he gets her home, when she suddenly turns into a slut. The Yank is one hell of a guy who thinks big: he always wants to take you the moon. At the same time, however, he is as smug and petty as the meanest seamstress, and has a fit if someone eats his peanut butter sandwich aboard the space shuttle. I found Russians interesting. In fact they were the most Icelandic of all: drank every glass to the bottom and threw themselves into any jollity, knew countless stories and never talked seriously unless at the bottom of the bottle, when they began to wail for their mother who lived a thousand miles away but came on foot to bring them their clean laundry once a month. They were completely crazy and were better athletes in bed than my dear countrymen, but in the end I had enough of all their pommel-horse routines. Nordic men are all as tactless as Icelanders. They get drunk over dinner, laugh loudly and fart, eventually start “singing” even in public restaurants where people have paid to escape the tumult of

Secondly," he went on, "a Chief Magistrate is about as far beneath a marquess's daughter as a tree is beneath the moon." A mutinous look crossed his aunt's face. "Sir Richard started out as a saddler's apprentice. He got himself a knighthood partly because he married a wife with good connections." "A wealthy baker's daughter. That's a far cry from a lady of rank." "That doesn't mean it can't happen. You're a fine man, a handsome man, if I do say so myself. You're young and strong, with a good education and gentlemanly manners-better manners than Sir Richard, anyway. And now that you own this house-" "She lives in a mansion!" Snatching his arm free, he rose. "Do you really think she'd be happy here in Cheapside, with the butchers and merchants and tradesmen?" Her aunt looked wounded. "I thought you liked this neighborhood." Damn. "I do, but..." There was nothing for it but to tell her the truth. "She can't stand me, all right? I'd be the last person on earth she'd want to marry." Snatching up the report, he headed for the door. "I have to go." "Jackson?" "What?" he barked. "If that's true, she's a fool." Lady Celia was no fool. She simply knew better than to take up with a man who didn't know the identity of his own father. He managed a curt nod. "I'll see you tonight, Aunt." As he left the house, an age-old anger weighed him down. He wouldn't hurt Aunt Ada for the world, but she didn't understand. Ever since he'd started working for the Sharpes, she'd hoped that his association with them would raise him up in the world, and nothing he said dampened that hope. No doubt she believed that his father's supposedly noble blood made him somehow superior to every other bastard. But one day she would learn. An unclaimed bastard was an unclaimed bastard, no matter who his father was.

Springs and summers full of song and revolution. The Popular Front, demonstrations and confrontations, time that takes you away from yourself and your poetry, so that you could see them as if from cosmic space, a way of looking that changes everything into stars, our Earth, you and me, Estonia and Eritrea, blue anemones and the Pacific Ocean. Even the belief that you will write more poems. Something that was breathing into you, as May wind blows into a house bringing smells of mown grass and dogs' barks, - this something has dissipated, become invisible like stars in daylight. For quite a time I haven't permitted myself to hope it would come back. I know I am not free, I am nothing without this breathing, inspiration, wind that comes through the window. Let God be free, whether he exist or no. And then, it comes once again. At dusk in the countryside when I go to an outhouse, a little white moth flies out of the door. That's it, now. And the dusk around me begins little by little to breathe in words and syllables. * In the morning, I was presented to President Mitterrand, in the evening, I was weeding nettles from under the currant bushes. A lot happened inbetween, the ride from Tallinn to Tartu and to our country home through the spring that we had waited for so long, and that came, as always, unexpectedly, changing serious greyish Estonia at once into a primary school child's drawing in pale green, into a play-landscape where mayflies, mayors and cars are all somewhat tiny and ridiculous... In the evening I saw the full moon rising above the alder grove. Two bats circled over the courtyard. The President's hand was soft and warm. As were his eyes, where fatigue was, in a curious way, mingled with force, and depth with banality. He had bottomless night eyes with something mysterious in them like the paths of moles underground or the places where bats hibernate and sleep.

Blaine: ONE MOMENT. I MUST ADJUST THE VOLUME FOR YOU TO ENJOY THE FULL EFFECT. There was a brief, whispery hooting sound (a kind of mechanical throat-clearing) and then they were assaulted by a vast roar. It was water (a billion gallons a minute, for all Jake knew) pouring over the lip of the chasm and falling perhaps two thousand feet into the deep stone basin at the base of the falls. Streamers of mist floated past the blunt almost-faces of the jutting dogs like steam from the vents of hell. The level of sound kept climbing. Now Jake's whole head vibrated with it, and as he clapped his hands over his ears, he saw Roland, Eddie, and Susannah doing the same. Oy was barking, but Jake couldn't hear him. Susannah's lips were moving again, and again he could read the words (STOP IT, BLAINE, STOP IT!) but he couldn't hear them any more than he could hear Oy's barks, although he was sure Susannah was screaming at the top of her lungs. And still Blaine increased the sound of the waterfall, until Jake could feel his eyes shaking in their sockets and he was sure his ears were going to short out like overstressed stereo speakers. Then it was over. They still hung above the moon-misty drop, the moonbows still made their slow and dreamlike revolutions before the curtain of endlessly falling water, the wet and brutal stone faces of the dog-guardians continued to jut out of the torrent, but that world-ending thunder was gone. For a moment Jake thought what he'd feared had happened, that he had gone deaf. Then he realized that he could hear Oy, still barking, and Susannah crying. At first these sounds seemed distant and flat, as if his ears had been packed with cracker-crumbs, but then they began to clarify. Eddie put his arm around Susannah's shoulders and looked toward the route map. Eddie: Nice guy, Blaine. Blaine: (his booming voice sounds laughing and injured simultaneously) I MERELY THOUGHT YOU WOULD ENJOY HEARING THE SOUND OF THE FALLS AT FULL VOLUME. I THOUGHT IT MIGHT HELP YOU TO FORGET MY REGRETTABLE MISTAKE IN THE MATTER OF EDITH BUNKER. My fault, Jake thought. Blaine may just be a machine, and a suicidal one at that, but he still doesn't like to be laughed at. He sat beside Susannah and put his own arm around her. He could still hear the Falls of the Hounds, but the sound was now distant.

Dear Mom and Dad How are you? If you are reading this it means your back from the wonderful cruise my brothers and I sent you on for your anniversary. We’re sure you both had a wonderful time. We want you to know that, while you were away, we did almost everything you asked. All but one thing, that is. We killed the lawn. We killed it dead. You asked us not to and we killed it. We killed it with extreme prejudice and no regard for its planty life. We killed the lawn. Now we know what you’re thinking: “But sons, whom we love ever so much, how can this be so? We expressly asked you to care for the lawn? The exactly opposite of what you are now conveying to us in an open digital forum.” True enough. We cannot dispute this. However, we have killed the lawn. We have killed it good. We threw a party and it was quite a good time. We had a moon bounce and beer and games and pirate costumes, oh it was a good time. Were it anyone else’s party that probably would have been enough but, hey, you know us. So we got a foam machine. A frothy, wet, quite fun yet evidently deadly, foam machine. Now this dastardly devise didn’t kill the lawn per se. We hypothesize it was more that it made the lawn very wet and that dancing in said area for a great many hours over the course of several days did the deed. Our jubilant frolicking simply beat the poor grass into submission. We collected every beer cap, bottle, and can. There is not a single cigarette butt or cigar to be found. The house is still standing, the dog is still barking, Grandma is still grandmaing but the lawn is no longer lawning. Now we’re sure, as you return from your wonderful vacation, that you’re quite upset but lets put this in perspective. For one thing whose idea was it for you to leave us alone in the first place? Not your best parenting decision right there. We’re little better than baboons. The mere fact that we haven’t killed each other in years past is, at best, luck. Secondly, let us not forget, you raised us to be this way. Always pushing out limits, making sure we thought creatively. This is really as much your fault as it is ours, if not more so. If anything we should be very disappointed in you. Finally lets not forget your cruise was our present to you. We paid for it. If you look at how much that cost and subtract the cost of reseeding the lawn you still came out ahead so, really, what position are you in to complain? So let’s review; we love you, you enjoyed a week on a cruise because of us, the lawn is dead, and it’s partially your fault. Glad that’s all out in the open. Can you have dinner ready for us by 6 tonight? We’d like macaroni and cheese. Love always Peter, James & Carmine

These Claudines, then…they want to know because they believe they already do know, the way one who loves fruit knows, when offered a mango from the moon, what to expect; and they expect the loyal tender teasing affection of the schoolgirl crush to continue: the close and confiding companionship, the pleasure of the undemanding caress, the cuddle which consummates only closeness; yet in addition they want motherly putting right, fatherly forgiveness and almost papal indulgence; they expect that the sights and sounds, the glorious affairs of the world which their husbands will now bring before them gleaming like bolts of silk, will belong to the same happy activities as catching toads, peeling back tree bark, or powdering the cheeks with dandelions and oranging the nose; that music will ravish the ear the way the trill of the blackbird does; that literature will hold the mind in sweet suspense the way fairy tales once did; that paintings will crowd the eye with the delights of a colorful garden, and the city streets will be filled with the same cool dew-moist country morning air they fed on as children. But they shall not receive what they expect; the tongue will be about other business; one will hear in masterpieces only pride and bitter contention; buildings will have grandeur but no flowerpots or chickens; and these Claudines will exchange the flushed cheek for the swollen vein, and instead of companionship, they will get sex and absurd games composed of pinch, leer, and giggle—that’s what will happen to “let’s pretend.” 'The great male will disappear into the jungle like the back of an elusive ape, and Claudine shall see little of his strength again, his intelligence or industry, his heroics on the Bourse like Horatio at the bridge (didn’t Colette see Henri de Jouvenel, editor and diplomat and duelist and hero of the war, away to work each day, and didn’t he often bring his mistress home with him, as Willy had when he was husband number one?); the great affairs of the world will turn into tawdry liaisons, important meetings into assignations, deals into vulgar dealings, and the en famille hero will be weary and whining and weak, reminding her of all those dumb boys she knew as a child, selfish, full of fat and vanity like patrons waiting to be served and humored, admired and not observed. 'Is the occasional orgasm sufficient compensation? Is it the prize of pure surrender, what’s gained from all that giving up? There’ll be silk stockings and velvet sofas maybe, the customary caviar, tasting at first of frog water but later of money and the secretions of sex, then divine champagne, the supreme soda, and rubber-tired rides through the Bois de Boulogne; perhaps there’ll be rich ugly friends, ritzy at homes, a few young men with whom one may flirt, a homosexual confidant with long fingers, soft skin, and a beautiful cravat, perfumes and powders of an unimaginable subtlety with which to dust and wet the body, many deep baths, bonbons filled with sweet liqueurs, a procession of mildly salacious and sentimental books by Paul de Kock and company—good heavens, what’s the problem?—new uses for the limbs, a tantalizing glimpse of the abyss, the latest sins, envy certainly, a little spite, jealousy like a vaginal itch, and perfect boredom. 'And the mirror, like justice, is your aid but never your friend.' -- From "Three Photos of Colette," The World Within the Word, reprinted from NYRB April 1977

Dusk settled down into this neck of the great valley. Coyotes barked out in the open. From the heights pealed down the mournful blood-curdling, yet beautiful, bay of a wolf. The rosy afterglow of sunset lingered a long time. The place was shut in, closed about by brushy steeps, redolent of sage. A tiny stream of swift water sang faintly down over rocks. And before darkness had time to enfold hollow and slope and horizon, the moon slid up to defeat the encroaching night and blanch the hills with silvery light.

1 A STRANGER IN THE NIGHT The moon shone in the rocking horse’s eye, and in the mouse’s eye, too, when Tolly fetched it out from under his pillow to see. The clock went tick-tock, and in the stillness he thought he heard little bare feet running across the floor, then laughter and whispering, and a sound like the pages of a big book being turned over. L. M. Boston, The Children of Green Knowe Rain fell that night, a fine, whispering rain. Many years later, Meggie had only to close her eyes and she could still hear it, like tiny fingers tapping on the windowpane. A dog barked somewhere in the darkness, and however often she tossed and turned Meggie couldn’t get to sleep. The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages. “I’m sure it must be very comfortable sleeping with a hard, rectangular thing like that under your head,” her father had teased the first time he found a book under her pillow. “Go on, admit it, the book whispers its story to you at night.” “Sometimes, yes,” Meggie had said. “But it only works for children.” Which made Mo tweak her nose. Mo. Meggie had never called her father anything else. That night—when so much began and so many things changed forever—Meggie had one of her favorite books under her pillow, and since the rain wouldn’t let her sleep she

Dianna looked at the moon. That night it was barely a crescent cradling earthshine, a white wisp of silk or a sliver of creamy birch bark. Incomplete, but there. It would grow, as night-blooming jasmine would grow, or a blot of spilled milk, or a hillside gathering snow.

Patty whipping more of his weapons from his shoulder holster: a pink heart, yellow moon, orange star, and more green clovers. I bark a laugh at Patty being a Lucky Charms warrior.

Precisely three days after Christopher and Audrey had left for London, Beatrix went to the Phelans’ house to ask after Albert. As she had expected, the dog had set the household into chaos, having barked and howled incessantly, ripped carpeting and upholstery to shreds, and bitten footman’s hand. “And in addition,” the housekeeper, Mrs. Clocker, told Beatrix, “he won’t eat. One can already see his ribs. And the master will be furious if we let anything happen to him. Oh, this is the most trying dog, the most detestable creature I’ve ever encountered.” A housemaid who was busy polishing the banister couldn’t seem to resist commenting, “He scares me witless. I can’t sleep at night, because he howls fit to wake the dead.” The housekeeper looked aggrieved. “So he does. However, the master said we mustn’t let anyone take Albert. And as much as I long to be rid of the vicious beast, I fear the master’s displeasure even more.” “I can help him,” Beatrix said softly. “I know I can.” “The master or the dog?” Mrs. Clocker asked, as if she couldn’t help herself. Her tone was wry and despairing. “I can start with the dog,” Beatrix said in a low undertone. They exchanged a glance. “I wish you could be given the chance,” Mrs. Clocker murmured. “This household doesn’t seem like a place where anyone could get better. It feels like a place where things wane and are extinguished.” This, more than anything, spurred Beatrix into a decision. “Mrs. Clocker, I would never ask you to disobey Captain Phelan’s instructions. However…if I were to overhear you telling one of the housemaids where Albert is being kept at the moment, that’s hardly your fault, is it? And if Albert manages to escape and run off…and if some unknown person were to take Albert in and care for him but did not tell you about it immediately, you could not be blamed, could you?” Mrs. Clocker beamed at her. “You are devious, Miss Hathaway.” Beatrix smiled. “Yes, I know.” The housekeeper turned to the housemaid. “Nellie,” she said clearly and distinctly. “I want to remind you that we’re keeping Albert in the little blue shed next to the kitchen garden.” “Yes, mum.” The housemaid didn’t even glance at Beatrix. “And I should remind you, mum, that his leash is on the half-moon table in the entrance hall.” “Very good, Nellie. Perhaps you should run and tell the other servants and the gardener not to notice if anyone goes out to visit the blue shed.” “Yes, mum.” As the housemaid hurried away, Mrs. Clocker gave Beatrix a grateful glance. “I’ve heard that you work miracles with animals, Miss Hathaway. And that’s indeed what it will take, to tame that flea-ridden fiend.” “I offer no miracles,” Beatrix said with a smile. “Merely persistence.” “God bless you, miss. He’s a savage creature. If dog is man’s best friend, I worry for Captain Phelan.” “So do I,” Beatrix said sincerely.

I imagined that my own life was simple and sweet, and sometimes it was, but there were odd things going on around town. There were rumors. There were stories. Everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable. This mystical flirtation was the idea of “sin”—this sense that it was possible to go “too far,” and that many people were doing it—was very much with us in Los Angeles in 1968 and 1969. A demented and vortical tension was building in the community. The jitters were setting in. I recall a time when the dogs barked every night and the moon was always full.

There are just too many coincidences for me. Combined with too many things that don’t add up.” “Maybe I’m just a woman of mystery,” I said. He gave a sudden bark of laughter. “Maybe, but I doubt it. I’ll say this, though. You’re full of surprises.” I took a step, closing the distance between us, and saw emotion flare back into his eyes. This time, surprise. “Leave me alone, Mark,” I said, using his first name for the very first time. “Stop following me. I don’t have anything to hide.” “Prove it,” he said. “How?” “Take me to the prom.” “You have it backward,” I said, my tone condescending and patient. “You’re supposed to say, Claire, may I please take you to the prom.” “Not the Royer prom,” Mark said impatiently. “The Beacon prom.” “I can’t do that,” I said, giving my head a toss to cover the fact that he’d totally caught me off guard. I really liked the way Claire’s hair moved when I did that. “I’m already going with Alex Crawford.” For just an instant, Mark’s face became absolutely unreadable. “I don’t mean as a date,” he said, his tone ever so slightly snide. “You’ll need a staff photographer.” “Forget it,” I said. Without warning, he leaned down until our faces were close. Omigod, he’s going to kiss me, I thought. “Make me,” he said. “You want me to back off, fine. Prove to me you’re not Jo O’Connor and I’ll do whatever you say. I’ll flap my arms and fly to the moon.” “That won’t be necessary,” I said. “The other side of the room will be just fine.” He gave a breathy laugh, the air of it moving across my face, and eased back.

Hunter crouched beside the fire, a cup of coffee cradled in his palms, his gaze fixed on the shifting flames. He could see his yellow-hair from the corner of his eye and knew every time she moved, every time she looked at him. Somehow she had managed to stay covered with the fur while she pulled on his shirt and her ruffled breeches. His brother, Warrior, squatted next to him and began tossing chips of bark onto the coals, watching them ignite. “The tosi tivo must be very poor lovers.” Hunter glanced up, more than a little bewildered by his brother’s observation. Warrior was like that, though, the thoughts in his heart darting here and there like autumn leaves caught up in the wind. “You don’t agree?” Warrior pressed. Warrior’s voice and the musical cadence of the Comanche language fell sweetly on Hunter’s ears. Talking tosi tivo talk to the yellow-hair had left a dirty taste on his tongue. “The tosi tivo are very poor at everything.” Warrior glanced toward the yellow-hair, squinting as a trail of smoke got in his face. “She still hides beneath the buffalo robe. Your shirt and her ruffles are not enough.” Hunter searched his brother’s dark eyes. “I think the tosi tivo teach their women such foolishness because they are afraid.” “Hm. And what would they be afraid of?” Warrior grinned. “A woman who isn’t well loved will seek solace elsewhere.” Hunter huffed at that idea. “With as many children as their women bear, how can you think they need solace? The trouble with the tosi tivo is that they have no honor. They will call a man friend, then borrow his woman when his back is turned. The many clothes make the wife borrowing a little more tricky, eh?” A thoughtful frown settled on Warrior’s forehead. He dumped the remainder of the wood chips he had collected onto the fire. The flames hissed hungrily and flared brighter. “This is the truth? And what of the females? Don’t they spurn the men who try to shame them?” “The females have no honor, either.” Brushing his hands clean on his leggings, Warrior shot a worried look at the white woman. “You must teach her, eh? If you go down in battle and I have to take her into my lodge circle, I want to know her children are yours.” “She will learn. I will teach her honor if I kill her doing it.

Leaning her head back, she began her nightly ritual, wringing the rag to trickle the scented water along her throat and over her breasts. In summer, the customary week between tub baths seemed like an eternity. Running the cloth slowly over her body, she closed her eyes. Lands, it was so hot. A female could cook in this country, wearing al those clothes. She had finished bathing and was rinsing her drawers in the leftover water when a coyote wailed. She poked her head out the window to watch the full moon. A wisp of cloud drifted across the moon’s milky face, casting ghostly shadows on the ground. A Comanche moon. Uncle Henry said it was called that because the Indians often raided on moonlit nights. Good light to murder by, she guessed. Comanches. She backed from the window and clasped her soppy bloomers to her chest. Was she insane, flitting around naked? “Loretta Jane Simpson!” Henry yelled. “Damn, girl, you’re pourin’ water through the ceilin’ like it’s a bloomin’ sieve!” Leaping back to the window, Loretta knocked the bowl over as she held her underwear out the opening. Oh, blast! She watched the bowl go bumpety-bump down the bark slabs. And stop. Right at the edge of the roof. “What in hell?” Footsteps thumped. “Quiet it down up there, or I’ll come up and shush you good.” Loretta swallowed. The pitch of the roof was steep. How could she retrieve the bowl without telling Henry? He’d be a wretch about it. She just knew he would. Amy moaned and murmured. Tomorrow, she’d find a way to get the bowl tomorrow.

To her horror, the man lifted the edge of the robe to look at her shoulder. Frantic, she jerked at the leather that held her hand behind her. This was her worst nightmare. Comanches. Not one, but two. And she couldn’t even fight them. If he yanked the robe off her, there would be nothing she could do but lie there in shame. Hunter stirred and yawned, then rose up on one elbow to bark in Comanche, “What is it, tah-mah? Can’t you see I’m trying to sleep?” “I just came to check the woman.” Hunter squinted at the sun and sighed. “So, how does she look?” He sat up and drew the robe further down her shoulder, taking care not to uncover her breast, laughing softly at the horrified expression on her face. Of all the men, his brother, Warrior, would be least likely to harm her. He was a fierce fighter but otherwise gentle, more apt to defend her than attack her. “It seems better to me. The grease, maybe. Not such a deep red. Old Man was right about the cold water chasing away the fever, too. She’s hot, but nothing like she was.” Warrior pressed a palm to her skin. “Old Man says if you don’t keep her cool, the fever will come upon her again.” “Not another bath?” Hunter propped an elbow on his upraised knee and rubbed his forehead. All trace of laughter fled. He didn’t relish the thought of the battle he’d have with her. “Don’t wake me with news like that. Bring me coffee first.” “Not another bath, but no traveling in the heat. We’ll have to stay here a few days.” “You’re willing to risk that? What about the tosi tivo?” Breaking open a mullein leaf, Warrior laved his fingertips with healing juice and applied it to the frightened girl’s cheeks. She shrank back--only to run into Hunter, which made her flinch. “We’re probably safer here, right under their noses, than we would be miles away. When we circled back, we covered our trail well. You have to remember how stupid the tosi tivo are. They will follow the trails the others laid and never even think to look for us here, so close.” “Yes, but--” “She’s your woman. If the situation were reversed, you would risk it.” Hunter grew impatient with his struggling captive and caught a handful of her braid to hold her still. “There, I’ve got her. The nose is worst. On the end where it curves up. Her forehead, too, tah-mah.” Warrior dabbed juice and smiled. “She doesn’t like me. Come to think of it, she doesn’t seem any too fond of you.

The night wind whispered, rattling the bark on the roof. She strained her ears. A footstep? A rustle of leather? She set her rosary aside and crawled to the window. Silver light shifted in the swaying trees along the river, and she felt a cool breeze. Oh, Lordy, her pantalets were gone! She clutched the sill and eased her head through the square. What she saw didn’t surprise her. Hunter sat astride his horse, right out in the open, bold and challenging. The wind caught his hair, whipping it about his carved features. He lifted a powerfully muscled arm to her in silent salute, his fist clutching her wet drawers. For several endless seconds they stared at one another, then he wheeled his horse, his arm still held high, her ruffled underwear fluttering like a flag of glory behind him. Loretta watched long after he rode from sight. I’m dreaming. He wasn’t really there. I’ve just been dreaming. She had nearly convinced herself when her gaze fell to the edge of the roof. Where was her bowl? Had the heathen lowlife swiped that as well? Then she spotted it sitting under the window. She knew then that the Comanche had been there and had stared at her while she dreamed of him. She couldn’t make herself touch the bowl. He had touched it. Oh, mercy. And now he had her drawers. Had he spied on her while she bathed? The thought made her feel naked as sin.

On the eighth day of Hunter’s absence, along toward dusk, Loretta heard a distant yodeling sound and glanced up from Maiden’s cooking fire to see men riding in. It wasn’t difficult to spot Hunter, several horse lengths ahead of the others, leading what looked like a mule carrying a priest. Loretta rose on her tiptoe, frowning. Surely she couldn’t be seeing what she thought she was seeing. What priest in his right mind would visit a Comanche village? Glancing around at Maiden’s neighbors, Loretta saw her bewilderment mirrored on every face. Then she looked at Warrior, who had been reclining nearby, guarding her. He had leaped to his feet upon hearing the men ride in. He slid a wary glance toward her and cocked an eyebrow. “My brother brings a Black Robe?” It was a priest. Loretta craned her neck to see. Hunter rode directly to the central fire, which had already been lit in preparation for nightfall, and dragged the priest off the mule. After barking a command at the poor man, he spun on his heel and came directly toward Maiden’s lodge, his stride purposeful, his jaw clenched in determination. Loretta drew a deep breath. Suddenly, incredulously, she knew why Hunter had brought a priest into the village. His footsteps slowed as he drew close, the muscles in his thighs bunching and drawing the leather of his pants taut. Loretta stiffened at the challenge his eyes issued. Lifting her chin, she waited for him to reach her, riveting her gaze on his broad shoulders, resisting the urge to run. Those long, powerful legs of his would easily outdistance her. “I have brought you a Black Robe,” he said tersely, and nodded toward the waiting priest. “He will pray your God words over us, yes?” With that, Hunter grasped her firmly by the arm and drew her toward the central fire, never breaking stride despite Loretta’s attempts to slow him down. “I won’t marry you!” she cried frantically. He threw her a look charged with martial arrogance. “You will be my wife, little one. My way or yours, in the end, it will be so.

I know you don’t owe me a damn thing,” she said at length, “but I’m going to ask a favor anyway.” “Ask,” he replied, simply. She didn’t glance at him, keeping her eyes on the rocks as they began to crowd out most of the seafloor and the kelp beds, which were strewn over and in between them. “Please tell Sadie that my being a total shite of a friend was not in any way about her.” “What was it about, then?” he asked, the barest hint of amusement in his tone, when she’d expected--and earned--censure. Or worse. She sent him a quick, sideways glance, but his gaze was fixed downward, as hers had been, as he navigated the exposed seafloor under their feet. “I meant to,” she said. “Write her,” she added. “I know she was upset that I left.” “She’s a tough little sheila,” he said. Kerry glanced at him again, not missing the barest hint of an edge in his voice this time. More like it, she thought. More like what she deserved. “I know. She has to be, living with the likes of the rest of her family.” That got a quick look from Cooper, and maybe the first bare hint of a smile from her. He caught that, looked back, and this time their glances caught and held. Her smile faded, but the honest affection came through in her tone when she said, “She shouldn’t have had to be where I was concerned.” Kerry was surprised at the bark of laughter that comment earned her. She merely lifted her eyebrows in response. “Says the woman who made it as hard as humanly possible for Sadie to connect in the first place. That girl could make friends with the meanest croc alive with little more than a smile and a laugh. You, on the other hand, made her work for it.” “Did you just compare me to a mean old croc?” Kerry asked, the thread of amusement back in her tone. “If the tough hide fits,” he said, but not unkindly. Kerry nodded, gave him a considering look. “True that,” she said.

He’d slide his hands around her waist, cup that beautiful backside of hers, and pull her in close so he could lean down and taste each perfectly tight, plump nipple, taking his time to savor them, until her head tipped back and she offered herself up to him, pressing her hips into his, and-- “Cooper? You feeling okay?” At Kerry’s shouted query, he blinked his eyes open and found himself staring straight up at the sky, his hands gripping the rail so tight his knuckles were likely white. “If you’re feeling queasy--” “No,” he said, choking back a bark of a laugh. About ready to climb out of my skin and on top of yours, maybe. “Just enjoying the moment,” he called back over the rumbling engine, speaking truthfully enough. He subtly tried to clear the gravel from his throat, looking anywhere but directly at her, and added, “I can see why you love it out here.

You’re a wonder, Kerry McCrae,” he said, dipping his head, kissing each warm cheek, her nose, then her mouth. The first kisses were sweet, the last one utterly carnal. He did that to her. Made her feel cherished one moment and utterly desirable the next. She might have been breathing just a bit unevenly when he lifted his head, a gleam of an entirely different sort in his eyes now. “I’d ask when I could see you again, but I suppose I need to let Fergus have at least a bit of your time. And I don’t want to press.” She barked out a short laugh at that. “You? Press? No,” she said in mock surprise. He chuckled, too, his grin not remotely sheepish, then leaned down to scoop up hamper and cooler, leaving the lighter laundry bundle for her to grab. They stopped at his car first, stowing his load in the trunk. “I’m happy to take the laundry,” he said. “I’m sure I can find somewhere to--” “No, I’ll take care of it,” she said, maybe too quickly, just imagining Delia and Grace’s faces when he asked them where he could find a good Laundromat. The gossip mill would get all this juicy new grist soon enough but no need to willingly feed it. “Well, I’ll be happy to return them to Thomas, spare you the trip.” “The walk of shame, you mean?” she said, then laughed as they paused by the passenger’s side of her truck so she could stow the laundry bundle on the front seat. “Actually, I plan to get them washed and back on the boat before he comes to move it tomorrow.” Cooper considered that, then nodded. “Sound plan.” He smiled. “Need a ride? Maybe a sunrise breakfast?” Smiling, she nudged him as they walked around to the driver’s side. “Look at you, making it a whole five minutes before pressing.” She wiped a pretend tear from the corner of her eye. “I’m so proud.” Chuckling, he snatched her up close to him and kissed her senseless before she knew what was happening, turning her squeal of surprise into a soft moan of need in a matter of seconds. “You forget,” he said moments later, his voice a bit gruff, too, “I know how to handle that saucy lip of yours now.” “I should be so affronted by your smug machismo,” she scolded, then let him pull her in for a nice, tight hug as she rested her cheek on his shoulder. “And yet…” She sighed, smiled, and slid her arms around his waist. “And yet indeed,” he said quietly, rubbing her back. “We’re a pair, we are, Starfish.

Kid, this is October you can make the maples blaze just by stopping to look, you can set your clock to the barks of geese. Somewhere the grandfathers who own this town lean down to iron crisp blue shirts, their faces bathing in steam, and blackbirds clamor in packs, make plans behind corn. You know this, you were born whistling at crackling stars, you snap your fingers and big turtles slide out of rivers to answer. You can swim one more time in the puddle of sun in your water glass, taste icicles already in the white crunch of your lunch apple. Go to sleep. I’ll put on my silver suit and chase the sky into the moon.

The night around them had become thick with blue shadows and unnatural breezes, and the sounds of scavengers and lost things. There were scurrying movements and distant dogs barking, the shouts of faraway humans using indistinguishable words. It sounded like neither the city nor the country to Kit. It sounded like a long way from home.

The wolf-dog shakes his head and the lady-dog glares at you and gives you three sharp barks before leaving the gallery. You hear her parting words. 'If I am ever reborn human, I will swallow my umbilical.

You have to leave, " Severus repeats, trying to push the wolf away and only meeting firm shoulder muscles littered with scars. Lupin has lost a cardigan. And a shirt. Severus does not remember removing them but he is currently holding the sleeve of a ripped shirt which he drops, dazedly, lowering his lips to brush against a large, puckered wound across his bicep. Terrible idea. Best fucking idea I have ever had. "Then tell me to," Lupin has a fist full of Severus' hair and yanks his face up. Lupin's pupils are blown wide, dark moons with a ring of amber. There is no regret there. And tomorrow he shall be gone. "I will." Severus pushes the half naked wolf away and brushes past him, grabbing his wrist at the last minute to pull him along to the bedroom. Lupin's thin torso is robed in wounds and marks like an ancient tree with names carved into the bark. Cartography of scars. I shall map every single fucking one. "Later.

An alpha’s bark brought betas and omegas to heel. An omega’s whine demanded an alpha do whatever necessary to fix, destroy, or satisfy whatever ailed us.

Shh,” I murmur, taking care to keep my voice low. “It is only a dream. You’re safe. I’ve got you.” [...] "A dream,” she repeats, pupils dilated as she stares up at me. She licks her lips, and I follow the movement with my eyes, a heat pulsing low at the base of my spine. “It was just a dream.” I nod, trying to angle my hips away from her in a futile attempt to hide my thickening cock. But her body is pressed close to mine, tucked beside me under my and Jadi’s wool traveling blankets. I see the moment she realizes, my preternatural vision able to take in the details of her shock. I see the way her pale eyes go wide, cheeks flushing pink. Hear her breath hitch in surprise. I feel my own cheeks heat in response, a flush of shame tightening in my chest. Shame at how much I want her. At how I’ve treated her. Shame at how jealously I guarded Jadi’s affections. At the way I cruelly tried to drive him away from her. “Asterion?” My name is barely a whisper on her lips, but she doesn’t pull away from me. Instead, her thigh presses against my hardening length. Almost like she’s seeking me out. But of course, that can’t be right. No woman would seek me out. Not after the way I’ve treated her. “Yes?” My voice catches in my throat, but I don’t dare look away. “Do you – are you…” her voice trails off, but she keeps her eyes locked on mine. Guilt tightens its hold behind my ribs, but I nod. There’s no point in denying it. No point in lying to her. Not when she can feel the proof of my attraction to her pressing against her. “I’m sorry,” I grit out, pulling my hand away from her face. “I don’t mean to… Please, just ignore it.” I roll away until I’m lying on my back, my erection almost painful as it pushes against the weight of the blankets. “Because of Jadi?” she asks, her voice thready and uncertain. I furrow my brow, glaring with irritation into the darkness. “Jadi? What does Jadi have to do with it?” “I mean – just that you and Jadi are together. Lovers? I not know word,” she babbles. “And I know that. Respect that. I not want come between you and Jadi. At party, he asked if he could court me,” she confesses. “I sorry if I…” I cut her off with a frustrated hiss, hating myself even more for this proof of how I’ve hurt Jadi. How successfully I have pushed her away from him. “You have nothing to apologize for,” I grind out. “Jadi has every right to court you. Every right. The only one who could deny him that is you.” “But you and Jadi…” “Are lovers? Intertwined as closely as two threads woven into the same cloth? Yes.” I bark out a bitter, mirthless laugh. “Which makes my treatment of him – of you – even worse.” The words are spilling out now, like water into the hull of a ship once the wood has cracked. Now that I’ve started, there is no stopping it. “I’ve known for moon cycles that he cares for you, and I hurt him for it. I was cruel to him and tried to chase you away. Because I was afraid you would steal him away from me, and he’s all I have. He’s everything to me. He’s my heart. My heart.” I clutch my fist against my chest in emphasis, still staring at the ceiling, not daring to turn and meet her eyes with my own. “I was jealous, and it was wrong, and now the gods are probably laughing at me. Because I want you. I want you. After trying to drive Jadi away from you, now I want you for myself. But I don’t deserve you. Not after the way I’ve treated you. And even then, even if I hadn’t…” [...] “I want you too.” Her words are no more than a whisper, and I tense, my first instinct to dismiss them the moment I register what she’s said. “I want you. And Jadi,” she admits, and there’s a raw vulnerability in those simple words that I don’t understand. “I shouldn’t, should I? Want you both, I mean? Like that?” I roll to my side to stare at her in disbelief.

An alpha’s bark brought betas and omegas to heel. An omega’s whine demanded an alpha do whatever necessary to fix, destroy, or satisfy whatever ailed us.

Alfred released a short, ambiguous spurt of sound somewhere between a moan and a bark. Even Kristen, attuned by now to his screaming and well past the point of finding it charming, wasn’t entirely sure he’d been the source. Only when she saw his face—the single face devoid of curiosity—did her blue eyes contract into a threat. But Alfred was already savoring the two opposing forces at work in his fellow passengers: a collective wish to shrug off the unaccountable sound, and a contrary intimation of dread. Thus the Suspension Phase, when everyone floated together on a tide of mystery whose solution Alfred alone possessed. He could have stopped there—had, on rare occasions when mystery and power alone had felt like enough. But not today. When mystery deliquesced into renewed bitching over the cramped ride, Alfred issued a second moan-bark: longer, louder, and impossible to ignore. Now came the Questioning Phase, when everyone within range (except Kristen, who stared fixedly ahead) tried, discreetly, to assess the nature of his complaint. Had the sound been inadvertent, best met with polite oblivion? Or was it a cry of distress? Thus preoccupied, his fellow passengers fell into a childlike state of reception that was breathtaking to behold. They forgot that they could be seen. Alfred basked in their unselfconscious wonderment while also sucking in breath to the brink of explosion; then he disgorged the contents of his lungs in an earsplitting emission that was part roar, part shriek, which he drove like a stake into the unguarded faces around him. He howled like a wolf howling at the moon, except he wasn’t looking up, he was looking out at his fellow travelers, whose panic, horror, and attempts to escape evoked the hysterics of passengers on an airplane plunging nose-first into the sea. To observe such extremes in the absence of any real threat was not a delight. It was not a pleasure. It was a revelation. And once a person had had that revelation, he returned to daily life awakened to the fact that beneath its bland surface there gushed a hidden tumult.

And there had even been room in his head for the rustling of leaves, the light of the moon, millet porridge with milk, the sound of flames in the stove, snatches of tunes, the barking of dogs, the Roman Senate, Soviet Information Bureau bulletins, a hatred of slavery, and a love of melon seeds.

As I walked toward it, and the street became more and more familiar, till the dogs that slept on the porches only lifted their heads as I passed (since Sylvie was not with me), each particular tree, and its season, and its shadow, were utterly known to me, likewise the small desolations of forgotten lilies and irises, likewise the silence of the railroad tracks in the sunlight. I had seen two of the apple trees in my grandmother’s orchard die where they stood. One spring there were no leaves, but they stood there as if expectantly, their limbs almost to the ground, miming their perished fruitfulness. Every winter the orchard is flooded with snow, and every spring the waters are parted, death is undone, and every Lazarus rises, except these two. They have lost their bark and blanched white, and a wind will snap their bones, but if ever a leaf does appear, it should be no great wonder. It would be a small change, as it would be, say, for the moon to begin turning on its axis. It seemed to me that what perished need not also be lost. At Sylvie’s house, my grandmother’s house, so much of what I remembered I could hold in my hand—like a china cup, or a windfall apple, sour and cold from its affinity with deep earth, with only a trace of the perfume of its blossoming. Sylvie, I knew, felt the life of perished things.

You see, at that juncture in my life I wasn’t evolved enough to understand the fluid nature of romantic love (its indifference to human cravings for permanence and certainty); its uncivilized, undomesticated nature (less like a pretty melody than a foxish barking at the moon), or, more importantly perhaps, that it’s a privilege to love someone, to truly love them; and while it’s paradisiacal if she or he loves you back, it’s unfair to demand or expect reciprocity.

I nearly dropped my fork. “Say that again?” “Human servants, so we can go where—” “No, not that, the second part. The stupid part. You guys are actually Satanists? Like real, no-kidding, play your heavy metal album backward and bark at the moon Satanists?” Mack blinked. Zeke looked like he was fantasizing about killing me. “It’s not stupid,” Mack said. “We have a place of high honor awaiting us—” “Yeah, it is. It really is. So this is how Prince Malphas ropes you dopes in. Don’t suppose he’s told you that nobody’s even seen Lucifer in over a thousand years? He took a walkabout and never came back. Hell had a civil war when he left, geniuses. How do you think the whole feuding-courts thing came about?” “That’s not true,” Mack said.

An invisible inquisition stands armed with canons outside the house gates of every person awakening to their destiny. Yet God is a playful guard pup, a magnificent constellation with a massive pair of brass balls called the Sun and the Moon. Visibly excited and panting at the game, this gigantic guard pup wags a tail of stars back and forth then lifts his hind leg like a radiant sequoia tree uprooted from the earth. After blinding them and spraying them with bright yellow doggie urination, he towers over the marked territory of tiny toy soldier figurines, barking, panting, kicking up dust, and doing all those playful doggie things. Hosed down with blinding misfortune, and standing there dripping with dishonor, the army finally begins to discover the depths of the unbreakable bond between a person and their pup. However, at daybreak, the big-eyed and floppy-eared puppy happily scurries back through the gate slides on the loose gravel at the corner of the house, darts through the doggie door, up the stairs, and leaps into the bed of his awakening master or mistress, jumping upon them and licking them all over, with the warmth of puppy love.

On the mountain tonight the full moon faces the full sun. Now could be the moment when we fall apart or we become whole. Our time seems to be up—I think I even hear it stopping. Then why have we kept up the singing for so long? Because that’s the sort of determined creature we are. Before us, our first task is to astonish, And then, harder by far, to be astonished. —Galway Kinnell

She doesn’t scream, but she groans and the sounds she makes are beyond the pain and work of labor, beyond human—or even animal—life. They are the sounds that move the earth, the sounds that give voice to the deep, violent fissures in the bark of the redwoods. They are the sounds of splitting cells, of bonding atoms, the sounds of the waxing moon and the forming stars.

We’re magical fuckbuddies,” they snapped.  Laughter barked from him. “Is that right?”  “What the hell would you call it?”  He crossed the room in a puff of smoke and placed his lips close to their ear. “The start of a really sexy cult.

That’s not right.” Her teeth danced, and Cerise bit down, sending her knees into an uncontrollable shiver. “It’s going to g-g-get worse, isn’t it?” He leaned to her and peered into her eyes. “Do you see small red dots floating?” “No.” He grimaced. “Then it’s going to get worse.” Awesome. “W-w-w ... w-w-w ... w-w-w ...” “Take your time,” he told her. “W-w-w-weird assholes.” He barked a short laugh.

William!” Cerise barked. William’s fingers slid under the band of her panties, teasing their way down. “Stop!” Someone’s steps approached the door. She punched him in the head. William startled, as if shaken awake, and rolled off her. She jerked her jeans back in place. The door swung open.