Carts Of Darkness Quotes

If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war's perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war's consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining… The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war's refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism, and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless.

I’m only doing this,” he said, “because I really love hiding in haunted Eldren buildings on dark and creepy nights.” “You’re a liar,” said Jean, slowly. “I’m only doing this because I’ve always wanted to see Bug get eaten by an Eldren ghost.” “Liar,” said Calo. “I’m only doing this because I fucking love hauling half a ton of bloody coins up out of a vault and packing them away on a cart.” “Liar!” Galdo chuckled. “I’m only doing this because while you’re all busy elsewhere, I’m going to go pawn all the furniture in the burrow at No-Hope Harza’s.” “You’re all liars,” said Locke as their eyes turned expectantly to him. “We’re only doing this because nobody else in Camorr is good enough to pull this off, and nobody else is dumb enough to get stuck doing it in the first place.” “Bastard!” They shouted in unison, forgetting their surroundings for a bare moment.

God forbid I should bleed to death, eh? Then you'd have to cart around my rotting corpse. (Kyrian) Could you be any more morbid? Jeez, who was your idol growing up? Boris Karloff? (Amanda) Hannibal, actually. (Kyrian) You're trying to scare me, aren't you? Well, it won't work. I grew up in a house with an angry poltergeist and two sisters who used to conjure demons just to fight them. Buster, I've seen it all and your gallows humor isn't working on me. (Amanda)

boys don't like smart girls they like push-around-in-a-cart kinda girls target-for-their-dart kinda girls meat-for-their-shark kinda girls

Sometimes it’s better to let a wheel squeak than break the cart trying to fix it.

How do you make a living if you’re writing a book?” Joshua asked. The boy was getting a bike for Christmas that’s all there was to it. David squirmed in his seat. “It doesn’t pay anything yet.” “So, then what do you do to pay the bills?” Joshua asked. Forget the bike, he was getting a go-cart.

Okay, calm down, we'll pay,"said Vee, reaching into her back pocket. She stuffed a wad of cash into the bowl, but it was dark and I couldn´t tell how much. "You owe me big-time," she told me. "You're supposed to let me count the money first," Marcie said, digging through the bowl, trying to recapture Vee´s donation. "I just assumed twenty was too high for you to count," Vee said. "My apologies." Marcie's eyes went slitty again, then she turned on her heel and carted the bowl back into the house. "How much did you give her?" I asked Vee. "I didn't. I tossed in a condom." I lifted my eyebrows."Since when do you carry condoms?" "I picked one up off the lawn on our way up the walk. Who knows, maybe Marcie'll use it. Then I'll have done my part to keep her genetic material out of the gene pool.

The cloth overlay of Billy’s cart clucks, and a brown chicken pokes her head out from under the covering, stepping out of the basket she was riding in. “There is a chicken in your cart.” “I know,” Billy snaps, and slaps his napkin across his lap. “Why is there a chicken in your cart?” “Because this was supposed to be chicken stew,” he says. “I’ve been hand-feeding this bird for days to be sure it was not poisoned before the fact. And now . . .” He pours Mirabella some water and drinks from her cup. The hen clucks, and Billy tosses down a chunk of bread. “Now her name is Harriet,” he says quietly. Mirabella laughs.

The abiding western dominology can with religion sanction identify anything dark, profound, or fluid with a revolting chaos, an evil to be mastered, a nothing to be ignored. 'God had made us master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns. He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savages and senile peoples.' From the vantage point of the colonizing episteme, the evil is always disorder rather than unjust order; anarchy rather than control, darkness rather than pallor. To plead otherwise is to write 'carte blanche for chaos.' Yet those who wear the mark of chaos, the skins of darkness, the genders of unspeakable openings -- those Others of Order keep finding voice. But they continue to be muted by the bellowing of the dominant discourse.

Faelan stuffed his mouth with the granola bar like a starving toddler and moved down the aisle with the loaded cart. Bree grabbed an empty one and squeaked back. She rounded the corner and stopped. Faelan wasn't chewing. That was a good sign. The package he was reading wasn't. He glanced up, mouth parted, eyes dark, and the hand holding the box of extra large condoms darted behind his back.

He felt a twinge in his chest, and with a disturbing jolt, he realised it was panic. She'd been the one to wake him from his stupor in the cart. Her voice had brought him back from the dark;it had been the tether he gripped and used to drag himself back to some semblance of sanity

Suddenly he smiled, and the sadness was vanquished by whisky heat. “Aye, Jessica, I like you. And I’m not just stuck with you. You fit me here, woman.” He thumped his chest with his fist. Then he shook her hand from his forearm and pushed off with the cart again. Jessi watched him move down the aisle, all sleek animal muscle and dark grace. Wow. He wasn’t a man of many words, but when he used them, he certainly used the right ones. You fit me here. You are the exception to everything. Crimeny. It was how she’d always thought a relationship should be. People should fit each other: some days like sexy, strappy high-heeled shoes, other days like comfortable loafers—but always a good fit. And if you cared about someone, they should be the exception to everything; the number-one priority, the one who came before all others. He was halfway down the aisle from her now, plucking a can from the shelf—her primal hunter/gatherer procuring food by modern means, she thought, with a soft snort of amusement.

As she watched, he examined the can intently, read the ingredients, then returned it to the shelf and chose another, repeating his thorough study of it. The contrast between his rough, tough-guy appearance and the domestic act he was performing did funny things to her head. She had a sudden, breathtaking vision of a dark-haired little boy sitting in the seat of the cart, laughing up at Cian, grabbing at his swinging braids with chubby little fists, while his daddy inspected the ingredients on a jar of baby food. Her mind’s eye picture of sexy, strong man with beautiful, helpless child made something soft and warm blossom behind her chest.

The Mania Speaks You clumsy bootlegger. Little daffodil. I watered you with an ocean and you plucked one little vein? Downed a couple bottles of pills and got yourself carted off to the ER? I gifted you the will of gunpowder, a matchstick tongue, and all you managed was a shredded sweater and a police warning? You should be legend by now. Girl in an orange jumpsuit, a headline. I built you from the purest napalm, fed you wine and bourbon. Preened you in the dark, hammered lullabies into your thin skull. I painted over the walls, wrote the poems. I shook your goddamn boots. Now you want out? Think you’ll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions? A good man’s good love and some breathing exercises? You think I can’t tame that? I always come home. Always. Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody: I’m bigger than God.

And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes” says the man with a cart of empty bottles at the corner of church and lincoln while I stare into my phone and I say I know oh I know while trying to find the specific filter that will make the sun’s near-flawless descent look the way I might describe it in a poem and the man says the moment is already right in front of you and I say I know but everyone I love is not here and I mean here like on this street corner with me while I turn the sky a darker shade of red on my phone and I mean here like everyone I love who I can still touch and not pass my fingers through like the wind in a dream but I look up at the man and he is a kaleidoscope of shadows I mean his shadows have shadows and they are small and trailing behind him and I know then that everyone he loves is also not here and the man doesn’t ask but I still say hey man I’ve got nothing I’ve got nothing even though I have plenty to go home to and the sun is still hot even in its endless flirt with submission and the man’s palm has a small river inside I mean he has taken my hand now and here we are tethered and unmoving and the man says what color are you making the sky and I say what I might say in a poem I say all surrender ends in blood and he says what color are you making the sky and I say something bright enough to make people wish they were here and he squints towards the dancing shrapnel of dying light along a rooftop and he says I love things only as they are and I’m sure I did once too but I can’t prove it to anyone these days and he says the end isn’t always about what dies and I know I know or I knew once and now I write about beautiful things like I will never touch a beautiful thing again and the man looks me in the eyes and he points to the blue-orange vault over heaven’s gates and he says the face of everyone you miss is up there and I know I know I can’t see them but I know and he turns my face to the horizon and he says we don’t have much time left and I get that he means the time before the sun is finally through with its daily work or I think I get that but I still can’t stop trembling and I close my eyes and I am sobbing on the corner of church and lincoln and when I open my eyes the sun is plucking everyone who has chosen to love me from the clouds and carrying them into the light-drunk horizon and I am seeing this and I know I am seeing this the girl who kissed me as a boy in the dairy aisle of meijer while our parents shopped and the older boy on the basketball team who taught me how to make a good fist and swing it into the jaw of a bully and the friends who crawled to my porch in the summer of any year I have been alive they were all there I saw their faces and it was like I was given the eyes of a newborn again and once you know what it is to be lonely it is hard to unsee that which serves as a reminder that you were not always empty and I am gasping into the now-dark air and I pull my shirt up to wipe whatever tears are left and I see the man walking in the other direction and I chase him down and tap his arm and I say did you see it did you see it like I did and he turns and leans into the glow of a streetlamp and he is anchored by a single shadow now and he sneers and he says have we met and he scoffs and pushes his cart off into the night and I can hear the glass rattling even as I watch him become small and vanish and I look down at my phone and the sky on the screen is still blood red.

So here we are, in the family planning aisle with a cart full of sports drinks and our hands full of . . . “Trojans, Ramses, Magnum . . . Jeez, these are worse than names for muscle cars,” Jase observes, sliding his finger along the display. “They do sound sorta, well, forceful.” I flip over the box I’m holding to read the instructions. Jase glances up to smile at me. “Don’t worry, Sam. It’s just us.” “I don’t get what half these descriptions mean . . . What’s a vibrating ring?” “Sounds like the part that breaks on the washing machine. What’s extra-sensitive? That sounds like how we describe George.” I’m giggling. “Okay, would that be better or worse than ‘ultimate feeling’—and look—there’s ‘shared pleasure’ condoms and ‘her pleasure’ condoms. But there’s no ‘his pleasure.’” “I’m pretty sure that comes with the territory,” Jase says dryly. “Put down those Technicolor ones. No freaking way.” “But blue’s my favorite color,” I say, batting my eyelashes at him. “Put them down. The glow-in-the-dark ones too. Jesus. Why do they even make those?” “For the visually impaired?” I ask, reshelving the boxes. We move to the checkout line. “Enjoy the rest of your evening,” the clerk calls as we leave. “Do you think he knew?” I ask. “You’re blushing again,” Jase mutters absently. “Did who know what?” “The sales guy. Why we were buying these?” A smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “Of course not. I’m sure it never occurred to him that we were actually buying birth control for ourselves. I bet he thought it was a . . . a . . . housewarming gift.” Okay, I’m ridiculous. “Or party favors,” I laugh. “Or”—he scrutinized the receipt—“supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight.” “Visual aids for health class?” I slip my hand into the back pocket of Jase’s jeans. “Or little raincoats for . . .” He pauses, stumped. “Barbie dolls,” I suggest. “G.I. Joes,” he corrects, and slips his free hand into the back pocket of my jeans, bumping his hip against mine as we head back to the car.

PAPER TOWERS The library was on the second floor of the House, not far from my room. It had two floors—the first held the majority of the books and a balcony wrapped in a wrought-iron railing held another set. It was a cavalcade of tomes, all in immaculate rows, and with study carrels and tables thrown in for good measure. It was my home away from home(away from home. I walked inside and paused for a moment to breathe in the scent of paper and dust—the perfumes of knowledge. The library was empty of patrons as far as I could tell, but I could hear the rhythmic squeal of a library cart somewhere in the rows. I followed them down until I found the dark-haired vampire shelving books with mechanical precision. I knew him only as “the librarian.” He was a fount of information, and he had a penchant for leaving books outside my door.

Nothing is as it was before, after the screen has gone to black. Darkness lies on the soul. To use Beckett's phrase, "what cowers behind it begins to seep through." With her new shopping cart Hekabe, queen of Troy, will be prowling the aisled for dog biscuits.

She went to the window and looked out. The ground fell away to a branch where willows burned lime green in the sunset. Dark little birds kept crossing the fields to the west like heralds of some coming dread. Below the branch stood the frame of an outhouse from which the planks had been stripped for firewood and there hung from the ceiling a hornetnest like a gross paper egg. The tinker returned from the cart with a lantern

Stepping forward, Girl stares out the doorway, into the sun. “I used to tread the world freely in Mira,” she smiles gently. “My feet would feel the bare earth sifting its way between my toes. I’d push a cart full of wares, hearing it roll along the bumpy terrain, catching stones and flicking them up into the air.

So," V'Aidan said as she thumped a cantaloupe, "what are you listening for?" She held it up to his ear and thumped. "This one is to ripe." Then she held up another one and let him hear the difference. "This one isn't." She put the good cantaloupe in the cart, then turned around to catch him thumping bananas. Erin quickly grabbed them away from him. "We don't thump those." "Why?" "It'll bruise them." "Oh." He looked around, then paused. "What about those?" She turned to see the grapes. "Only thump if you want to turn them into whine." He pulled her into his arms. "What about if I thump you?" She smiled. "I'd probably make all kinds of interesting noises.

When I change I change fast. The moon drags the whatever-it-is up from the earth and it goes through me with crazy wriggling impatience. I picture it as an electrical discharge, entering at my soles and racing upwards in haywire detonations that shock the bones and explode the neurons. The magic's dark red, violent, compressed. I get random flashes of mundane memory-- pushing a shopping cart around Met Foods; opening my apartment window; standing on a subway platform; saying to someone, No, that's carbohydrates in the evenings-- intercut with images of the kills; a white male body on an oil-stained warehouse floor; a solitary trailer with a storm lamp burning; a female thigh releasing a dark arc of blood; my clawed hand scooping out a still-hot heart. This is the Curse's neatest trick: one type of memory doesn't destroy the other. It's still you. It's still all you. You wouldn't think you were built to bear such opposites, but you are. You'd think the system would crash, but it doesn't.

In the cool dark basement, she whispers, "It's not Ralph, is it?" Cabel's quiet for a moment, as if he's thinking, "You mean like Forever Ralph? Uh, no." "You've read Forever?" Janie is incredulous. "There wasn't much else to chose from on the hospital library cart, and Deenie was always checked out," Cable says sarcastically. "Did you like it?" Cabel laughs softly, "Um...well, it wasn't the wisest thing to read for a fourteen-year-old guy with fresh skin grafts in the general area down there, if you know what I mean.

Along the way, there were minor tweaks. Sylvan Goldman, an Oklahoma City grocer, introduced the shopping cart in 1937.

Some nights he sat up late on his front porch with a glass of Jack and listened to the trucks heading south on 220, carrying crates of live chickens to the slaughterhouses—always under cover of darkness, like a vast and shameful trafficking—chickens pumped full of hormones that left them too big to walk—and he thought how these same chickens might return from their destination as pieces of meat to the floodlit Bojangles’ up the hill from his house, and that meat would be drowned in the bubbling fryers by employees whose hatred of the job would leak into the cooked food, and that food would be served up and eaten by customers who would grow obese and end up in the hospital in Greensboro with diabetes or heart failure, a burden to the public, and later Dean would see them riding around the Mayodan Wal-Mart in electric carts because they were too heavy to walk the aisles of a Supercenter, just like hormone-fed chickens.

Old, yet beloved to my family, the cart is marked with the prints and sweat of our ancestors, who began our journeys in trade. I carry our world in this cart, wares we have taken ages to create. Foraging through earth and trees to source our natural ingredients. Wares I push with deep pride, along the sloping, uneven terrain. I can travel further with the cart and expand my avenues for trade.

The Jumblies I They went to sea in a Sieve, they did, In a Sieve they went to sea: In spite of all their friends could say, On a winter's morn, on a stormy day, In a Sieve they went to sea! And when the Sieve turned round and round, And every one cried, 'You'll all be drowned!' They called aloud, 'Our Sieve ain't big, But we don't care a button! we don't care a fig! In a Sieve we'll go to sea!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. II They sailed away in a Sieve, they did, In a Sieve they sailed so fast, With only a beautiful pea-green veil Tied with a riband by way of a sail, To a small tobacco-pipe mast; And every one said, who saw them go, 'O won't they be soon upset, you know! For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long, And happen what may, it's extremely wrong In a Sieve to sail so fast!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. III The water it soon came in, it did, The water it soon came in; So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet In a pinky paper all folded neat, And they fastened it down with a pin. And they passed the night in a crockery-jar, And each of them said, 'How wise we are! Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long, Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong, While round in our Sieve we spin!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. IV And all night long they sailed away; And when the sun went down, They whistled and warbled a moony song To the echoing sound of a coppery gong, In the shade of the mountains brown. 'O Timballo! How happy we are, When we live in a Sieve and a crockery-jar, And all night long in the moonlight pale, We sail away with a pea-green sail, In the shade of the mountains brown!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. V They sailed to the Western Sea, they did, To a land all covered with trees, And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart, And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart, And a hive of silvery Bees. And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws, And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws, And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree, And no end of Stilton Cheese. Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve. VI And in twenty years they all came back, In twenty years or more, And every one said, 'How tall they've grown! For they've been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone, And the hills of the Chankly Bore!' And they drank their health, and gave them a feast Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast; And every one said, 'If we only live, We too will go to sea in a Sieve,--- To the hills of the Chankly Bore!' Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve.

Outside the internet café a gypsy kid and his girl sold punnets of chestnuts from a roasting cart and kissed. They looked like the year 1583. The air was dark blue and had the smoke of old poetry at dusklight.

The tinker jerked his arm away. He leaned his face toward her. Give, he said. I give a lifetime wanderin in a country where I was despised. Can you give that? I give forty years strapped in front of a cart like a mule till I couldn’t stand straight to be hanged. I’ve not got soul one in this world save a old halfcrazy sister that nobody never would have like they never would me. I been rocked and shot at and whipped and kicked and dogbit from one end of this state to the other and you cain’t pay that back. You ain’t got nothin to pay it with. Them accounts is in blood and they ain’t nothin in this world to pay em out with.

Roses climbed the shed, entwined with dark purple clematis, leaves as glossy as satin. There were no thorns. Patience's cupboard was overflowing with remedies, and the little barn was often crowded with seekers. The half acre of meadow was wild with cosmos and lupine, coreopsis, and sweet William. Basil, thyme, coriander, and broad leaf parsley grew in billowing clouds of green; the smell so fresh your mouth watered and you began to plan the next meal. Cucumbers spilled out of the raised beds, fighting for space with the peas and beans, lettuce, tomatoes, and bright yellow peppers. The cart was righted out by the road and was soon bowed under glass jars and tin pails of sunflowers, zinnias, dahlias, and salvia. Pears, apples, and out-of-season apricots sat in balsa wood baskets in the shade, and watermelons, some with pink flesh, some with yellow, all sweet and seedless, lined the willow fence.

the minibar cart, even church clocks tolling the hour, de Westertoren, Krijtberg, a dark edge to the clangor, an inwrought fairy-tale sense of doom. By day I sat on the foot of the bed straining to puzzle out the Dutch-language

Refreshed, delighted, invigorated, I walked along, forgetting all my cares, feeling as if I had wings to my feet, and could go at least forty miles without fatigue, and experiencing a sense of exhilaration to which I had been an entire stranger since the days of early youth. About half–past six, however, the grooms began to come down to air their masters’ horses—first one, and then another, till there were some dozen horses and five or six riders: but that need not trouble me, for they would not come as far as the low rocks which I was now approaching. When I had reached these, and walked over the moist, slippery sea–weed (at the risk of floundering into one of the numerous pools of clear, salt water that lay between them), to a little mossy promontory with the sea splashing round it, I looked back again to see who next was stirring. Still, there were only the early grooms with their horses, and one gentleman with a little dark speck of a dog running before him, and one water–cart coming out of the town to get water for the baths. In another minute or two, the distant bathing machines would begin to move, and then the elderly gentlemen of regular habits and sober quaker ladies would be coming to take their salutary morning walks. But however interesting such a scene might be, I could not wait to witness it, for the sun and the sea so dazzled my eyes in that direction, that I could but afford one glance; and then I turned again to delight myself with the sight and the sound of the sea, dashing against my promontory—with no prodigious force, for the swell was broken by the tangled sea–weed and the unseen rocks beneath; otherwise I should soon have been deluged with spray. But the tide was coming in; the water was rising; the gulfs and lakes were filling; the straits were widening: it was time to seek some safer footing; so I walked, skipped, and stumbled back to the smooth, wide sands, and resolved to proceed to a certain bold projection in the cliffs, and then return.

As the dawn was just breaking he found himself close to Covent Garden. The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty street.

With dark, Jun Do made his way down the fish-cart paths that led to the new cannery. The old cannery had had a bad batch of tins and many citizens were lost to botulism. The problem proved impossible to locate, so they built a new cannery next to the old one.

Even now Eros looks at me with tenderness from under dark eyelids, and casts me spellbound into Aphrodite's nets where I lie caught inextricably, for I swear his mere approach makes me tremble like an old champion chariot horse, as he draws a swift cart unwillingly to the race.

It was still pretty dark down here, so I took out my flashlight and headed east, weaving my way through the dark maze, doing my best to remain unseen while being careful to avoid tripping over a shopping cart, engine block, or one of the other pieces of junk littering the narrow alleys between the stacks.

Served her right, really, having sex in a supply closet of the Boston Hyatt. But George had smelled like oranges and leather and he had bent her over one of those carts housekeeping wheeled around with soaps and shower caps and dry-cleaning request forms. That had been fun, and afterward she had pocketed some shampoo and conditioner.

In the parking lot, she drove and parked in a dark area with no other cars around. She reclined her seat, and listened to music. Outside there were trees, a ditch, a bridge; another parking lot. It was very dark. Maybe the Sasquatch would run out from the woods. Chelsea wouldn’t be afraid. She would calmly watch the Sasquatch jog into the ditch then out, hairy and strong and mysterious—to be so large yet so unknown; how could one cope except by running?—smash through some bushes, and sprint, perhaps, behind Wal-Mart, leaping over a shopping cart and barking. Did the Sasquatch bark? It used to alarm Chelsea that this might be all there was to her life, these hours alone each day and night—thinking things and not sharing them and then forgetting—the possibility of that would shock her a bit, trickily, like a three-part realization: that there was a bad idea out there; that that bad idea wasn’t out there, but here; and that she herself was that bad idea. But recently, and now, in her car, she just felt calm and perceiving, and a little consoled, even, by the sad idea of her own life, as if it were someone else’s, already happened, in some other world, placed now in the core of her, like a pillow that was an entire life, of which when she felt exhausted by aloneness she could crumple and fall towards, like a little bed, something she could pretend, and believe, even (truly and unironically believe; why not?), was a real thing that had come from far away, through a place of no people, a place of people, and another place of no people, as a gift, for no occasion, but just because she needed—or perhaps deserved; did the world try in that way? to make things fair?—it.

hawing, let us ask of the starling (who is a more sociable bird than the lark) what he may think on the brink of the dustbin, whence he picks among the sticks combings of scullion’s hair. What’s life, we ask, leaning on the farmyard gate; Life, Life, Life! cries the bird, as if he had heard, and knew precisely, what we meant by this bothering prying habit of ours of asking questions indoors and out and peeping and picking at daisies as the way is of writers when they don’t know what to say next. Then they come here, says the bird, and ask me what life is; Life, Life, Life! We trudge on then by the moor path, to the high brow of the wine-blue purple-dark hill, and fling ourselves down there, and dream there and see there a grasshopper, carting back to his home in the hollow, a straw. And he says (if sawings like his can be given a name so sacred and tender) Life’s labour, or so we interpret the whirr of his dust-choked gullet. And the ant agrees and the bees, but if we lie here long enough to ask the moths, when they come at evening, stealing among the paler heather bells, they will breathe in our ears such wild nonsense as one hears from telegraph wires in snow storms; tee hee, haw haw. Laughter, Laughter! the moths say. Having asked then of man and of bird and the insects, for fish, men tell us, who have lived in green caves, solitary for years to hear them speak, never, never say, and so perhaps know what life is — having asked them all and grown no wiser, but only older and colder (for did we not pray once in a way to wrap up in a book something so hard, so rare, one could swear it was life’s meaning?) back we must go and say straight out to the reader who waits a-tiptoe to hear what life is — alas, we don’t know.

The silence and the empty board sidewalks began to give Eddie the creeps. He remembered Roland’s tale of Susan’s final ride into Mejis in the back of a cart, standing with her hands tied in front of her and a noose around her neck. Her road had been empty, too. At first. Then, not far from the intersection of the Great Road and the Silk Ranch Road, Susan and her captors had passed a single farmer, a man with what Roland had called lamb-slaughterer’s eyes. Later she would be pelted with vegetables and sticks, even with stones, but this lone farmer had been first, standing there with his handful of cornshucks, which he had tossed almost gently at her as she passed on her way to . . . well, on her way to charyou tree, the Reap Fair of the Old People. As

And now there’s another thing you got to learn,” said the Ape. “I hear some of you are saying I’m an Ape. Well, I’m not. I’m a Man. If I look like an Ape, that’s because I’m so very old: hundreds and hundreds of years old. And it’s because I’m so old that I’m so wise. And it’s because I’m so wise that I’m the only one Aslan is ever going to speak to. He can’t be bothered talking to a lot of stupid animals. He’ll tell me what you’ve got to do, and I’ll tell the rest of you. And take my advice, and see you do it in double quick time, for he doesn’t mean to stand any nonsense.” There was dead silence except for the noise of a very young badger crying and its mother trying to make it keep quiet. “And now here’s another thing,” the Ape went on, fitting a fresh nut into its cheek, “I hear some of the horses are saying, Let’s hurry up and get this job of carting timber over as quickly as we can, and then we’ll be free again. Well, you can get that idea out of your heads at once. And not only the Horses either. Everybody who can work is going to be made to work in future. Aslan has it all settled with the King of Calormen—The Tisroc, as our dark faced friends the Calormenes call him. All you Horses and Bulls and Donkeys are to be sent down into Calormen to work for your living—pulling and carrying the way horses and such-like do in other countries. And all you digging animals like Moles and Rabbits and Dwarfs are going down to work in The Tisroc’s mines. And—” “No, no, no,” howled the Beasts. “It can’t be true. Aslan would never sell us into slavery to the King of Calormen.” “None of that! Hold your noise!” said the Ape with a snarl. “Who said anything about slavery? You won’t be slaves. You’ll be paid—very good wages too. That is to say, your pay will be paid into Aslan’s treasury and he will use it all for everybody’s good.” Then he glanced, and almost winked, at the chief Calormene. The Calormene bowed and replied, in the pompous Calormene way: “Most sapient Mouthpiece of Aslan, The Tisroc (may-he-live-forever) is wholly of one mind with your lordship in this judicious plan.” “There! You see!” said the Ape. “It’s all arranged. And all for your own good. We’ll be able, with the money you earn, to make Narnia a country worth living in. There’ll be oranges and bananas pouring in—and roads and big cities and schools and offices and whips and muzzles and saddles and cages and kennels and prisons—Oh, everything.” “But we don’t want all those things,” said an old Bear. “We want to be free. And we want to hear Aslan speak himself.” “Now don’t you start arguing,” said the Ape, “for it’s a thing I won’t stand. I’m a Man: you’re only a fat, stupid old Bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you’re wrong. That isn’t true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you.” “H-n-n-h,” grunted the Bear and scratched its head; it found this sort of thing hard to understand.

He looked sharply towards the pollarded trees. 'Yes, just there,' he said. 'I saw it plainly, and equally plainly I saw it not. And then there's that telephone of yours.' I told him now about the ladder I had seen below the tree where he saw the dangling rope. 'Interesting,' he said, 'because it's so silly and unexpected. It is really tragic that I should be called away just now, for it looks as if the - well, the matter were coming out of the darkness into a shaft of light. But I'll be back, I hope, in thirty-six hours. Meantime, do observe very carefully, and whatever you do, don't make a theory. Darwin says somewhere that you can't observe without theory, but to make a theory is a great danger to an observer. It can't help influencing your imagination; you tend to see or hear what falls in with your hypothesis. So just observe; be as mechanical as a phonograph and a photographic lens.' Presently the dog-cart arrived and I went down to the gate with him. 'Whatever it is that is coming through, is coming through in bits,' he said. 'You heard a telephone; I saw a rope. We both saw a figure, but not simultaneously nor in the same place. I wish I didn't have to go.' I found myself sympathizing strongly with this wish, when after dinner I found myself with a solitary evening in front of me, and the pledge to 'observe' binding me. It was not mainly a scientific ardour that prompted this sympathy and the desire for independent combination, but, quite emphatically, fear of what might be coming out of the huge darkness which lies on all sides of human experience. I could no longer fail to connect together the fancied telephone bell, the rope, and the ladder, for what made the chain between them was the figure that both Philip and I had seen. Already my mind was seething with conjectural theory, but I would not let the ferment of it ascend to my surface consciousness; my business was not to aid but rather stifle my imagination. ("Expiation")

Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. I’d been shut up in my hotel for more than a week, afraid to telephone anybody or go out; and my heart scrambled and floundered at even the most innocent noises: elevator bell, rattle of the minibar cart, even church clocks tolling the hour, de Westertoren, Krijtberg, a dark edge to the clangor, an inwrought fairy-tale sense of doom. By day I sat on the foot of the bed straining to puzzle out the Dutch-language news on television (which was hopeless, since I knew not a word of Dutch) and when I gave up, I sat by the window staring out at the canal with my camel’s-hair coat thrown over my clothes—for I’d left New York in a hurry and the things I’d brought weren’t warm enough, even indoors. Outside, all was activity and cheer. It was Christmas, lights twinkling on the canal bridges at night; red-cheeked dames en heren, scarves flying in the icy wind, clattered down the cobblestones with Christmas trees lashed to the backs of their bicycles. In the afternoons, an amateur band played Christmas carols that hung tinny and fragile in the winter air. Chaotic room-service trays; too many cigarettes; lukewarm vodka from duty free. During those restless, shut-up days, I got to know every inch of the room as a prisoner comes to know his cell. It was my first time in Amsterdam; I’d seen almost nothing

I’m nothing, nothing but a pile of furs, nothing important. You don’t see me. You don’t see anything. “Jitan!” He shouts to his men. “Imir!” The swift footsteps of two men approach, and a moment later, lamplight chases away the darkness beneath the cart. Shikaat rips the fur free, and I find myself staring into his triumphant face. Except his triumph turns to bewilderment almost immediately. He gazes at the fur and then back at me. He holds up the lamp, illuminating me clearly. But he doesn’t look at me. Almost as if he can’t see me. As if I’m invisible. Which is impossible. The second I think it, he blinks and grabs me. “You disappeared,” he whispers. “And now you’re here. Did you magick me?” He shakes me hard, rattling my teeth in my head. “How did you do it?” “Piss

driving through the park I notice men and women playing golf driving in their powered carts over billiard table lawns, they are my age but their bodies are fat their hair grey their faces waffle batter, and I remember being startled by my own face scarred, and mean as red ants looking at me from a department store mirror and the eyes mad mad mad I drive on and start singing making up the sound a war chant and there is the sun and the sun says, good, I know you, and the steering wheel is humorous and the dashboard laughs, see, the whole sky knows I have not lied to anything even death will have exits like a dark theatre. I stop at a stop sign and as fire burns the trees and the people and the city I know that there will be a place to go and a way to go and nothing need ever be lost.

The big color television set was on, glowing eerily over the bottles of rye and bourbon, and that was how I happened to witness the event. I saw the two padded figures take their first steps in that airless world, bouncing like toys over the landscape, driving a golf cart through the dust, planting a flag in the eye of what had once been the goddess of love and lunacy. Radiant Diana, I thought, image of what is dark within us. Then the president spoke. In a solemn, deadpan voice he declared this to be the greatest event since the creation of man. The old-timers at the bar laughed when they heard this, and I believe I managed to crack a smile or two myself. But for all the absurdity of that remark, there was one thing no one could challenge: since the day he was expelled from Paradise, Adam had never been this far from home.

Consider the roots of a simple and mundane action, for instance, buying bread for your breakfast. A farmer has grown the grain in a field carved from wilderness by his ancestors; in the ancient city a miller has ground the flour and a baker prepared the loaf; the vendor has transported it to your house in a cart built by a cartwright and his apprentices. Even the donkey that draws the cart, what stories could she not tell if you could decipher her braying? And then you yourself hand over a coin of copper dug from the very heart of the earth, you who have risen from a bed of dreams and darkness to stand in the light of the vast and terrifying sun. Are there not a thousand strands woven together into this tapestry of a morning meal? How then can you expect that the omens of great events should be easy to unravel? The Pseudo-Iamblichus Scroll

As the dawn was just breaking he found himself close to Covent Garden. The darkness lifted, and, flushed with faint fires, the sky hollowed itself into a perfect pearl. Huge carts filled with nodding lilies rumbled slowly down the polished empty street. The air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers, and their beauty seemed to bring him an anodyne for his pain. He followed into the market, and watched the men unloading their wagons. A white-smocked carter offered him some cherries. He thanked him, and wondered why he refused to accept any money for them, and began to eat them listlessly. They had been plucked at midnight, and the coldness of the moon had entered into them. A long line of boys carrying crates of striped tulips, and of yellow and red roses, defiled in front of him, threading their way through the huge, jade-green piles of vegetables.

I am crawling like one of those children who pulled coal wagons in the depths of the earth. I am on my hands and knees and listening to the boom boom above, or is it my pulse, my heart? I don’t know. I must pull this weight strapped behind me, this cart filled with my own fears and inadequacies, and if there is a way out, perhaps I will find it, but not until my hands and knees have worn away the sadness in me, sadness so deep that a whale could swim in its waters and never be found. I do not know anymore what is inside and what is outside. Am I inside the whale or is the whale inside me? He is the largest mammal on the planet. He is a mammal, not a fish. He is a mammal like me. He is me, this whale. Wait. Slowly I stopped thinking of bus-stops and supermarket check-outs and I began to think of spring waiting until winter has done its work, its dark underground work.

The day was sunny, fine for walking, brisk, and getting brisker—and in fact, as I cut a diagonal through a little plaza somewhere above Fortieth Street, the last autumn leaves leapt up from the pavement and swirled around our heads, and a sudden misty quality in the atmosphere above seemed to solidify into a ceiling both dark and luminous, and the passersby hunched into their collars, and two minutes later the gusts had settled into a wind, not hard, but steady and cold, and my hands dove into my coat pockets. A bit of rain speckled the pavement. Random snowflakes spiraled in the air. All around me, people seemed to be evacuating the scene, while across the square a vendor shouted that he was closing his cart and you could have his wares for practically nothing, and for no reason I could have named I bought two of his rat-dogs with everything and a cup of doubtful coffee and then learned the reason—they were wonderful. I nearly ate the napkin. New York!

Isn't it surprising what an array of things a woman can drag forth, burrowing into attics, rooms and nooks! Things long out of mind; an old thing; a worn-out thing; but it has lain in that room, nook or bag until just such a riot of soap and scrubbing brush brings it out. And, as I think of it, a human mind could, and should go through just such a ransacking, occasionally; for you don’t know half of what an accumulation of rubbish is kicking about, in its dark, musty corridors. Old fashions in thoughts; bigotry; vanity; all lying stagnant. So why not drag out and sort all that stuff, discarding all which is of no valuation? About half of us will find, in our minds, a room, having on its door a card, saying: “It Was Not So In My Day.” Go at that room, right off. That “My Day” is long past. “Today” is boss, now. If that “My Day” could crawl up on “Today,” what a mix-up in World affairs would occur! Ox cart against aircraft; oil lamps against arc lights! Slow, mail information against radio! But, as all this stuff is laid out, what will you do with it? Nobody wants it. So I say, burn it, and tomorrow morning, how happy you will find that musty old mind!

Probably, we should all hate you,” he was saying to Cade. “Illinois played against Northwestern that year for our homecoming, and you totally slaughtered us—” He broke off at the sound of a knock on the interior door to the suite. A woman in her early twenties, dressed in a skirt and a black T-shirt with “Sterling Restaurants” in red letters, walked into the suite pushing a three-tiered dessert cart. “Sweet Jesus, it’s here,” Charlie whispered reverently. Brooke fought back a smile. The dessert cart was something Sterling Restaurants had introduced a year ago, as a perk for all of the skyboxes and luxury suites at the sports arenas they collaborated with. Needless to say, it had been a huge success. Four kinds of cake (chocolate with toffee glaze, carrot cake, traditional cheesecake, and a pineapple-raspberry tart), three types of cookies (chocolate chip, M&M, and oatmeal raisin), blond brownies, dark chocolate brownies, lemon squares, peach cobbler, four kinds of dessert liquors, taffy apples, and, on the third tier, a make-your-own sundae bar with all the fixings. “Wow. That is some spread,” Vaughn said, wide-eyed. Simultaneously, the men sprang forward, bulldozed their way through the suite door, and attacked the cart like a pack of starving Survivor contestants. All except for one. Cade stayed right there, on the terrace. He leaned back against the railing, stretching out his tall, broad-shouldered frame. “Whew. I thought they’d never leave

Motor-scooter riders with big beards and girl friends who bounce on the back of the scooters and wear their hair long in front of their faces as well as behind, drunks who follow the advice of the Hat Council and are always turned out in hats, but not hats the Council would approve. Mr. Lacey, the locksmith,, shups up his shop for a while and goes to exchange time of day with Mr. Slube at the cigar store. Mr. Koochagian, the tailor, waters luxuriant jungle of plants in his window, gives them a critical look from the outside, accepts compliments on them from two passers-by, fingers the leaves on the plane tree in front of our house with a thoughtful gardener's appraisal, and crosses the street for a bite at the Ideal where he can keep an eye on customers and wigwag across the message that he is coming. The baby carriages come out, and clusters of everyone from toddlers with dolls to teenagers with homework gather at the stoops. When I get home from work, the ballet is reaching its cresendo. This is the time roller skates and stilts and tricycles and games in the lee of the stoop with bottletops and plastic cowboys, this is the time of bundles and packages, zigzagging from the drug store to the fruit stand and back over to the butcher's; this is the time when teenagers, all dressed up, are pausing to ask if their slips shows or their collars look right; this is the time when beautiful girls get out of MG's; this is the time when the fire engines go through; this is the time when anybody you know on Hudson street will go by. As the darkness thickens and Mr. Halpert moors the laundry cart to the cellar door again, the ballet goes under lights, eddying back nad forth but intensifying at the bright spotlight pools of Joe's sidewalk pizza, the bars, the delicatessen, the restaurant and the drug store. The night workers stop now at the delicatessen, to pick up salami and a container of milk. Things have settled down for the evening but the street and its ballet have not come to a stop. I know the deep night ballet and its seasons best from waking long after midnight to tend a baby and, sitting in the dark, seeing the shadows and hearing sounds of the sidewalk. Mostly it is a sound like infinitely patterning snatches of party conversation, and, about three in the morning, singing, very good singing. Sometimes their is a sharpness and anger or sad, sad weeping, or a flurry of search for a string of beads broken. One night a young man came roaring along, bellowing terrible language at two girls whom he had apparently picked up and who were disappointing him. Doors opened, a wary semicircle formed around him, not too close, until police came. Out came the heads, too, along the Hudsons street, offering opinion, "Drunk...Crazy...A wild kid from the suburbs" Deep in the night, I am almost unaware of how many people are on the street unless someone calls the together. Like the bagpipe. Who the piper is and why he favored our street I have no idea.

The cart slowed as they came to a place so dark and quiet that it seemed as if they had entered some remote forest. Peeking beneath the hem of the cart's canvas covering, Garrett saw towering gates covered with ivy, and ghostly sculptures of angels, and solemn figures of men, women, and children with their arms crossed in resignation upon their breasts. Graveyard sculptures. A stab of horror went through her, and she crawled to the front of the cart to where West Ravenel was sitting with the driver. "Where the devil are you taking us, Mr. Ravenel?" He glanced at her over his shoulder, his brows raised. "I told you before- a private railway station." "It looks like a cemetery." "It's a cemetery station," he admitted. "With a dedicated line that runs funeral trains out to the burial grounds. It also happens to connect to the main lines and branches of the London Ironstone Railroad, owned by our mutual friend Tom Severin." "You told Mr. Severin about all this? Dear God. Can we trust him?" West grimaced slightly. "One never wants to be in the position of having to trust Severin," he admitted. "But he's the only one who could obtain clearances for a special train so quickly." They approached a massive brick and stone building housing a railway platform. A ponderous stone sign adorned the top of the carriage entrance: Silent Gardens. Just below it, the shape of an open book emblazoned with words had been carved in the stone. Ad Meliora. "Toward better things," Garrett translated beneath her breath.

Spring was a long time unfolding. During the last weeks of Lent the weather was clear and frosty. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night it went down to seven below; there was such a crust that carts could go over it where there was no road. There was still snow at Easter. Then suddenly, on Easter Monday, a warm wind began to blow, dark clouds gathered, and for three days and nights warm, heavy rain poured down. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick grey mist gathered, as if concealing the mysteries of the changes taking place in nature. Under the mist waters flowed, ice blocks cracked and moved off, the muddy, foaming streams ran quicker, and on the eve of Krasnaya Gorka the mist scattered, the dark clouds broke up into fleecy white ones, the sky cleared, and real spring unfolded. In the morning the bright sun rose and quickly ate up the thin ice covering the water, and the warm air was all atremble, filled with the vapours of the reviving earth. The old grass and the sprouting needles of new grass greened, the buds on the guelder-rose, the currants and the sticky, spiritous birches swelled, and on the willow, all sprinkled with golden catkins, the flitting, newly hatched bee buzzed. Invisible larks poured trills over the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble, the peewit wept over the hollows and marshes still filled with brown water; high up the cranes and geese flew with their spring honking. Cattle, patchy, moulted in all but a few places, lowed in the meadows, bow-legged lambs played around their bleating, shedding mothers, fleet-footed children ran over the drying paths covered with the prints of bare feet, the merry voices of women with their linen chattered by the pond, and from the yards came the knock of the peasants’ axes, repairing ploughs and harrows. The real spring had come.

He embraced her. And touched her. And found her. Yennefer, in some astonishing way hard and soft at the same time, sighed loudly. The words they had uttered broke off, perished among the sighs and quickened breaths, ceased to have any meaning and were dissipated. So they remained silent, and focused on the search for one another, on the search for the truth. They searched for a long time, lovingly and very thoroughly, fearful of needless haste, recklessness and nonchalance. They searched vigorously, intensively and passionately, fearful of needless self-doubt and indecision. They searched cautiously, fearful of needless tactlessness. They found one another, conquered their fear and, a moment later, found the truth, which exploded under their eyelids with a terrible, blinding clarity, tore apart the lips pursed in determination with a moan. Then time shuddered spasmodically and froze, everything vanished, and touch became the only functioning sense. An eternity passed, reality returned and time shuddered once more and set off again, slowly, ponderously, like a great, fully laden cart. Geralt looked through the window. The moon was still hanging in the sky, although what had just happened ought in principle to have struck it down from the sky. ‘Oh heavens, oh heavens,’ said Yennefer much later, slowly wiping a tear from her cheek. They lay still among the dishevelled sheets, among thrills, among steaming warmth and waning happiness and among silence, and all around whirled vague darkness, permeated by the scent of the night and the voices of cicadas. Geralt knew that, in moments like this, the enchantress’s telepathic abilities were sharpened and very powerful, so he thought about beautiful matters and beautiful things. About things which would give her joy. About the exploding brightness of the sunrise. About fog suspended over a mountain lake at dawn. About crystal waterfalls, with salmon leaping up them, gleaming as though made of solid silver. About warm drops of rain hitting burdock leaves, heavy with dew. He thought for her and Yennefer smiled, listening to his thoughts. The smile quivered on her cheek along with the crescent shadows of her eyelashes.

Show me." He looks at her, his eyes darker than the air. "If you draw me a map I think I'll understand better." "Do you have paper?" She looks over the empty sweep of the car's interior. "I don't have anything to write with." He holds up his hands, side to side as if they were hinged. "That's okay. You can just use my hands." She smiles, a little confused. He leans forward and the streetlight gives him yellow-brown cat eyes. A car rolling down the street toward them fills the interior with light, then an aftermath of prickling black waves. "All right." She takes his hands, runs her finger along one edge. "Is this what you mean? Like, if the ocean was here on the side and these knuckles are mountains and here on the back it's Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, West L.A., West Hollywood, and X marks the spot." She traces her fingertips over the backs of his hands, her other hand pressing into the soft pads of his palm. "This is where we are- X." "Right now? In this car?" He leans back; his eyes are black marble, dark lamps. She holds his gaze a moment, hears a rush of pulse in her ears like ocean surf. Her breath goes high and tight and shallow; she hopes he can't see her clearly in the car- her translucent skin so vulnerable to the slightest emotion. He turns her hands over, palms up, and says, "Now you." He draws one finger down one side of her palm and says, "This is the Tigris River Valley. In this section there's the desert, and in this point it's plains. The Euphrates runs along there. This is Baghdad here. And here is Tahrir Square." He touches the center of her palm. "At the foot of the Jumhurriya Bridge. The center of everything. All the main streets run out from this spot. In this direction and that direction, there are wide busy sidewalks and apartments piled up on top of shops, men in business suits, women with strollers, street vendors selling kabobs, eggs, fruit drinks. There's the man with his cart who sold me rolls sprinkled with thyme and sesame every morning and then saluted me like a soldier. And there's this one street...." He holds her palm cradled in one hand and traces his finger up along the inside of her arm to the inner crease of her elbow, then up to her shoulder. Everywhere he touches her it feels like it must be glowing, as if he were drawing warm butter all over her skin. "It just goes and goes, all the way from Baghdad to Paris." He circles her shoulder. "And here"- he touches the inner crease of her elbow-"is the home of the Nile crocodile with the beautiful speaking voice. And here"- his fingers return to her shoulder, dip along their clavicle-"is the dangerous singing forest." "The dangerous singing forest?" she whispers. He frowns and looks thoughtful. "Or is that in Madagascar?" His hand slips behind her neck and he inches toward her on the seat. "There's a savanna. Chameleons like emeralds and limes and saffron and rubies. Red cinnamon trees filled with lemurs." "I've always wanted to see Madagascar," she murmurs: his breath is on her face. Their foreheads touch. His hand rises to her face and she can feel that he's trembling and she realizes that she's trembling too. "I'll take you," he whispers.

The occult town was vibrant, busy with fiddles playing themselves on street corners, and enchanted paper lanterns hanging mysteriously string-less in the dead of night. Lycanthropes chattered with each other in alleyways between the hotels and inns. Fairies stalked in the shadows, preying on unfortunate cats and mice. Hearty Elves with round bellies and rosy smiles worked late into the night, pushing their wooden carts filled with baked goods and meats.

Nothing is as it was before, after the screen has gone to black. Darkness lies on the soul. To use Beckett's phrase, "what cowers behind it begins to seep through." With her new shopping cart Hekabe, queen of Troy, will be prowling the aisle for dog biscuits.

It's fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork,‘ he said. "We've got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon's about to break and we're wearing... we're wearing... sort of things, like glass, only dark... dark glass things on our eyes...

He was twenty-eight years old with no family or partner to help make ends meet, and certainly no savings to allow him to pursue higher education in hope of finding a better career. When he wasn’t unclogging toilets and mopping up spills, he worked at a local tech-support call center. He delivered flyers. He bagged groceries and retrieved wayward carts and cleaned yet more spills at the local grocery store closest to his one-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood that shouldn’t cost as much to live in as it did. And it still wasn’t enough. Still Hero struggled to pay all his bills and afford the little luxuries of life like food and clothing and deeply necessary medication.

For eternity she seemed to float, unanchored to the real world of the immense creaking wooded cart with its high wheels, the taunting guards, the paling sky arching high over the soft dark hills and the dim prospect of the village lying under a blue mist far below them.

one of Mr. Boyden’s devices is riding around the Deerfield campus in a horse-drawn buggy. There have been dark hints that other headmasters, to compete, have had to dream up devices or eccentricities or “trademarks” of their own. Seymour St. John at Choate, for instance, has been seen with a pet otter flopping at his heels, and the Reverend Matthew Warren, headmaster of St. Paul’s, was given a red-and-white golf cart by an appreciative alumnus in which to tool around the campus.

After their short stop at the tavern, Nubia took her turn beside Feles at the front, and Flavia joined Caudex in the back. The road was climbing more steeply now, and the line of the aqueduct guided Flavia’s eye back down to Ostia and the red brick lighthouse – minuscule at this distance – with its dark plume of smoke rising straight into the dirty blue sky. They passed through woods of poplar, ash and alder. Presently Ostia was hidden from view. On any other day the tree-shaded road would have been deliciously cool. But today Flavia’s blue tunic was soaked with perspiration and clinging to her back. ‘Caudex?’ Flavia whispered because the big slave’s eyes were closed. He didn’t reply and presently she too dozed fitfully, occasionally jolted out of sleep when the cart left the deep ruts in the stone road and rocked from side to side. The rumble of the cart was louder back here

The cacophony of county jail is deafening: That's what hap- pens when you jam thousands of women into concrete rooms that were intended to house a population half our size. We sleep in bunk beds in the common areas, feet away from the tables where we play cards and read all day. We urinate in overwhelmed toilets that clog and overflow. We stand in lines for showers, meals, hair- cuts, telephones, meds. At all hours of the day and night, the con- crete echoes with screams and prayers and tears and laughter and curses. There is nothing to do here but wait. I mill around the common room in my canary-yellow prison suit, watching the hands of the clock in the cage on the wall slowly ticking away the minutes of the days. I wait for mealtime, though I have no interest in eating the gray slurry that slides around tray. I wait for the library cart to come around, so I can pick out the least offensive romance novel on offer. I wait for lights-out, so that I can lie in my upper bunk in the semi-dark, listening to the snores and whispers of my fellow inmates while I wait for sleep to come. my It hardly ever does. But mostly, I wait for someone to come help me.

Roland: Blaine, where may you find roads without carts, forests without trees, cities without houses? Blaine: ON A MAP. Roland: You say true. Next. I have a hundred legs but cannot stand, a long neck but no head; I eat the maid's life. What am I? Blaine: A BROOM, GUNSLINGER. ANOTHER VARIATION ENDS, 'I EASE THE MAID'S LIFE.' I LIKE YOURS BETTER. Roland: (ignoring Blaine's response) Cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be heard, cannot be smelt. It lies behind the stars and beneath the hills. Ends life and kills laughter. What is it, Blaine? Blaine: THE DARK.

Why, for instance, were we going to the grocery store en famille, when it made Tom tense and Sylvie antsy? As I mentioned earlier, I happen to love grocery shopping—so now if I need to do it on the weekends, Tom drops me off and takes Sylvie to a nearby park. They kick a soccer ball around while I obsessively inspect every new granola flavor (“Ooh, coffee–dark chocolate–hazelnut? Into the cart it goes!”). Doo-de-doo. I text Tom when I’m done and they help load the car.

I have carted mangolds many times since then, and it is an occasion that always marks for me the beginning of winter. I recall those twilights, the gaunt yet tender-coloured sky, the still air, pheasants calling in the distance, or a hunting-horn sounding for home. The last of summer's wealth is housed, and ahead lies frost and early dark, shooting, hunting, forelight; ploughing and cross-ploughing, the breaking of ice for the creatures' drink, the carting of straw for their warmth.

It’s fifteen hundred miles to Ankh-Morpork,” he said. “We’ve got three hundred and sixty-three elephants, fifty carts of forage, the monsoon’s about to break and we’re wearing…we’re wearing…sort of things, like glass, only dark…dark glass things on our eyes…” His voice trailed off. His brow furrowed, as if he’d just been listening to his own voice and hadn’t understood it. The air seemed to glitter. He saw M’Bu staring at him. He shrugged. “Let’s go,” he said.

THERE is a place in front of the Royal Exchange where the wide pavement reaches out like a promontory. It is in the shape of a triangle with a rounded apex. A stream of traffic runs on either side, and other streets send their currents down into the open space before it. Like the spokes of a wheel converging streams of human life flow into this agitated pool. Horses and carriages, carts, vans, omnibuses, cabs, every kind of conveyance cross each other's course in every possible direction. Twisting in and out by the wheels and under the horses' heads, working a devious way, men and women of all conditions wind a path over. They fill the interstices between the carriages and blacken the surface, till the vans almost float on human beings. Now the streams slacken, and now they rush amain, but never cease; dark waves are always rolling down the incline opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, all London converges into this focus. There is an indistinguishable noise—it is not clatter, hum, or roar, it is not resolvable; made up of a thousand thousand footsteps, from a thousand hoofs, a thousand wheels—of haste, and shuffle, and quick movements, and ponderous loads; no attention can resolve it into a fixed sound. Blue carts and yellow omnibuses, varnished carriages and brown vans, green omnibuses and red cabs, pale loads of yellow straw, rusty-red iron cluking on pointless carts, high white wool- packs, grey horses, bay horses, black teams; sunlight sparkling on brass harness, gleaming from carriage panels; jingle, jingle, jingle! An intermixed and intertangled, ceaselessly changing jingle, too,of colour; flecks of colour champed, as it were, like bits in the horses' teeth, frothed and strewn about, and a surface always of dark-dressed people winding like the curves on fast-flowing water. This is the vortex and whirlpool, the centre of human life today on the earth. Now the tide rises and now it sinks, but the flow of these rivers always continues. Here it seethes and whirls, not for an hour only, but for all present time, hour by hour, day by day, year by year.

The papal decree would give Opus Dei carte blanche to ignore canon law for the next forty years.

faster but the picture remained entirely static. The stillness of a deserted office descended and held steady as time rushed by. “When do the cleaners come in?” Reacher asked. “Just before midnight,” Froelich said. “That late?” “They’re night workers. This is a round-the-clock operation.” “And there’s nothing else visible before then?” “Nothing at all.” “So spool ahead. We get the picture.” Froelich operated the buttons and shuttled between fast-forward with snow on the screen and regular-speed playback with a picture to check the timecode. At eleven-fifty P.M. she let the tape run. The counter clicked ahead, a second at a time. At eleven fifty-two there was motion at the far end of the corridor. A team of three people emerged from the gloom. There were two women and a man, all of them wearing dark overalls. They looked Hispanic. They were all short and compact, dark-haired, stoic. The man was pushing a cart. It had a black garbage bag locked into a hoop at the front, and trays stacked with cloths and spray bottles on shelves at the rear. One of the women was carrying a vacuum cleaner. It rode on

Everything happened too fast for Daisy to comprehend. She gripped the ribbons as Hubert jerked forward with a panicked whinny, the cart rattling and bouncing as if it were a child’s toy. Daisy tried in vain to keep her seat, but as the cart hit a deep rut she was thrown clear of the vehicle. Hubert continued racing pell-mell down the lane while Daisy landed on the hard-packed earth with stunning force. The breath was knocked from her, and she choked and wheezed. She had the impression of a massive creature, a monster rushing toward her, but the sound of a gunshot rent the air and caused her ears to ring. A bone-chilling animal squeal… then nothing. Daisy tried to sit up, then flopped weakly on her stomach as her lungs spasmed. Her chest felt as if it had been caught in a vise. There was a good chance she was going to cast up her crumpets, but the thought of how much that would hurt was enough to keep her gorge down. In a moment the thundering of hooves— several sets— vibrated the ground beneath Daisy’s cheek. Finally able to draw a shallow breath, she pushed up on her elbows and lifted her chin. Three riders— no, four— were galloping toward her, hooves thrasing up clouds of dust in the lane. One of the men swung off his horse before it had even stopped and rushed to her in a few ground-eating strides. Daisy blinked in surprise as he dropped to his knees and gathered her up in the same motion. Her head fell back on his arm, and she found herself staring hazily up into Matthew Swift’s dark face. “Daisy.” It was a tone she had never heard from him before, rough and urgent. Cradling her in one arm, he ran his free hand over her body in a rapid search for injuries. “Are you hurt?” Daisy tried to explain that she’d just gotten the wind knocked out of her, and he seemed to understand her incoherent sounds. “All right,” he said. “Don’t try to talk. Breathe slowly.” Feeling her stir against him, he resettled her in his arms. “Rest against me.” His hand passed over her hair, smoothing it back from her face. Tiny shivers of reaction ran through her limbs, and he gathered her closer. “Slowly, sweetheart. Easy. You’re safe now.” Daisy closed her eyes to hide her astonishment. Matthew Swift was murmuring endearments and holding her in hard, strong arms, and her bones seemed to have melted like boiling sugar. Years of uncivilized rough-and-tumble with her siblings had taught Daisy to recover quickly from a fall. In any other circumstances she would have sprung up and dusted herself off by now. But every pleasure-saturated cell in her body sought to preserve the moment for as long as possible.

The tumult of soldiers marching and barging into homes at random broke the quiet. They held fathers and sons at spear point while companions dragged the females of the households and chained them by the neck to the backs of carts drawn by oxen. Screams cracked the darkness throughout the city, awakening families with fright. They could do nothing to protect themselves, only wait and hope they might be overlooked. They could not even pray to the gods, since it was the gods who were kidnapping their women and girls.

Only love can dispel hate From Satsang with Giten on Buddha, November 12, 2015, in Stockholm Buddha says: SPEAK OR ACT WITH AN IMPURE MINDAND TROUBLE WILL FOLLOW YOUAS THE WHEEL FOLLOWS THE OX THAT DRIVES THE CART When Buddha uses the concept "impure mind", he means mind. Mind is impure, and no-mind is pure. SPEAK OR ACT WITH AN IMPURE MIND means to speak or act from the mind. AND TROUBLE WILL FOLLOW YOU means that misery and suffering is the result of the mind, because the mind means unawareness. Mind will bring trouble and suffering as certain AS THE WHEEL FOLLOWS THE OX THAT DRIVES THE CART. WE ARE WHAT WE THINK ALL THAT WE ARE ARISES WITH OUR THOUGHTS SPEAK OR ACT WITH A PURE MIND AND HAPPINESS WILL FOLLOW YOU AS YOUR SHADOW, UNSHAKABLE When Buddha says "pure mind", he means no-mind, awareness. Happiness will follow you if you have a pure mind or no-mind. Suffering is a result of mind, of unawareness, happiness is a result of no-mind, of awareness. Happiness cannot be searched for directly, happiness can only be found if you do not search it directly. On the contrary, you have to search for awareness. When awareness comes, happiness comes of its own accord. "LOOK HOW HE ABUSED ME AND BEAT ME, HOW HE THREW ME DOWN AND ROBBED ME" LIVE WITH SUCH THOUGHTS AND YOU LIVE IN HATE "LOOK HOW HE ABUSED ME AND BEAT ME HOW HE THREW ME DOWN AND ROBBED ME" ABANDON SUCH THOUGHTS AND LIVE IN LOVE Fear and hate exists in the past and the future, love exists in the moment, in the here and now. Love exists in the present moment. Fear and hate has a reference in the past. Somebody has abused you in the past, and you are carrying it like a wound. Fear and hate is a limitation. If you hate somebody, you also create a hate in the heart of that person towards you. The world lives in fear, hate, destructiveness and violence. Hate creates hell on earth, love creates a paradise on earth. True love comes from your inner being. It is spontaneously welling up of joy, which has nothing to do with the past or the future. True love is in the moment. IN THIS WORLDHATE NEVER YET DISPELLED HATE ONLY LOVE DISPELS HATE THIS IS THE LAW ANCIENT AND INEXHAUSTIBLE Hate never dispels hate, darkness cannot dispel darkness. Only love can dispel hate. The eternal law is that only love dispels hate, only light dispels darkness. Bring light into a room and the darkness disappears by itself. How can you bring light into your own being? Through becoming silent, aware, awake and conscious. That is how to bring the light in. The moment you are aware and awake, hate will not be found. It is not possible to hate somebody with awareness. You can only hate somebody in unawareness. When you are conscious, hate disappears, when you are not conscious, then hate is there. Love and hate, light and darkness, cannot exist together, because hate is the absence of love, darkness is the absence of light. YOU TOO SHALL PASS AWAY KNOWING THIS, HOW CAN YOU QUARREL We waste our life in quarreling, in conflict, when life is so short. Use your whole energy for awareness and meditation. Then you can become a light. Meditation will make you awake, because you will discover your inner being. Meditation brings an awakening. For the first time you will feel the truth of your own being.

Instead of the carriage Beatrix had expected, there was a single horse on the drive, Christopher’s large bay gelding. Beatrix turned to give him a questioning look. “Don’t I get a horse? A pony cart? Or am I to trot along behind you?” His lips twitched. “We’ll ride together. If you’re willing. I have a surprise for you.” “How unconventional of you.” “Yes, I thought that would please you.” He helped her to mount the horse, and swung up easily behind her. No matter what the surprise was, Beatrix thought as she leaned back into his cradling arms, this moment was bliss. She savored the feel of him, all his strength around her, his body adjusting easily to every movement of the horse. He bade her to close her eyes as they went into the forest. Beatrix relaxed against his chest. The forest air turned sweeter as it cooled, infused with scents of resin and dark earth. “Where are we going?” she asked against his coat. “We’re almost there. Don’t look.” Soon Christopher reined in the horse and dismounted, helping her down. Viewing their surroundings, Beatrix smiled in perplexity. It was the secret house on Lord Westcliff’s estate. Light glowed through the open windows. “Why are we here?” “Go upstairs and see,” Christopher said, and went to tether the horse. Picking up the skirts of her blue dress, Beatrix ascended the circular staircase, which had been lit with strategically placed lamps in the wall brackets where ancient torches had once hung. Reaching the circular room upstairs, Beatrix crossed the threshold. The room had been transformed.

sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous. In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow- 5 of 670

Excerpted From Chapter One “Rock of Ages” floated lightly down the first floor corridor of the Hollywood Hotel’s west wing. It was Sunday morning, and Hattie Mae couldn’t go to church because she had to work, so she praised the Lord in her own way, but she praised Him softly out of consideration for the “Do Not Disturb” placards hanging from the doors she passed with her wooden cart full of fresh linens and towels. Actually Sundays were Hattie Mae’s favorite of the six days she worked each week. For one thing, her shift ended at noon on Sundays. For another, this was the day Miss Lillian always left a “little something” in her room to thank Hattie Mae for such good maid service. Most of the hotel’s long-term guests left a little change for their room maids, but in Miss Lillian’s case, the tip was usually three crinkly new one dollar bills. It seemed like an awful lot of money to Hattie Mae, whose weekly pay was only nineteen dollars. Still, Miss Lillian Lawrence could afford to be generous because she was a famous actress in the movies. She was also, Hattie Mae thought, a very fine lady. When Hattie Mae reached the end of the corridor, she knocked quietly on Miss Lillian’s door. It was still too early for most guests to be out of their rooms, but Miss Lillian was always up with the sun, not like some lazy folks who laid around in their beds ‘til noon, often making Hattie Mae late for Sunday dinner because she couldn’t leave until all the rooms along her corridor were made up. After knocking twice, Hattie Mae tried Miss Lillian’s door. It opened, so after selecting the softest towels from the stacks on her cart, she walked in. With the curtains drawn the room was dark, but Hattie Mae didn’t stop to switch on the overheard light because her arms were full of towels. The maid’s eyes were on the chest of drawers to her right where Miss Lillian always left her tip, so she didn’t see the handbag on the floor just inside the door. Hattie Mae tripped over the bag and fell headlong to the floor, landing inches from the dead body of Lillian Lawrence. In the dim light Hattie Mae stared into a pale face with a gaping mouth and a trickle of blood from a small red dot above one vacant green eye. Hattie Mae screamed at the top of her lungs and kept on screaming.

I’m furious with you,” he said almost idly. Curled in his arms, warm and safe with his heart beating steadily beneath her cheek, it was difficult to take his displeasure seriously. “Why?” “You left without saying goodbye this afternoon.” In the lightless, confined cabin, his Scottish accent seemed impossibly exotic, so much more noticeable than in the light of day. She buried her face in his brocade waistcoat and felt his hand rest on her coiled hair. If they weren’t careful, all Lise’s hard work would go for nothing and Campion would emerge from the carriage looking like she’d run through a hurricane. The spicy essence of lemon soap and Lachlan’s skin filled her senses. “I couldn’t bear to tell you that it was our last afternoon together.” He tensed against her and his heart kicked into a faster rhythm. “Last?” She raised her head. Her vision had adjusted enough for her to see the glitter of his eyes. “My aunt is sending me back to Sussex tomorrow.” “Damn it, Campion, you should have told me.” His embrace firmed as he pressed her closer. “I had things to say to you today. Important things.” Happiness had fluttered inside her like fledgling birds since she’d seen him. His somber tone pricked at her elation. “I suppose you want me to leave my aunt’s home and stay in London as your mistress,” she said flatly. He thrust her back against the seat so hard that she bounced. She flinched beneath his blistering anger as his hands tightened on her shoulders. “Of course I wasn’t going to say that, you lovely fool.” She hardly heard him. “I know I’m provincial and poor, but I’m proud of the Parnell name. My parents were fine people who loved me. I can’t bring shame upon their memory by accepting your carte blanche.” She blinked away the prickling rush of moisture. For a fleeting instant tonight, she’d imagined that she was done with tears, at least until Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Day. “Whatever else I might choose to do if there were no other considerations.” “So are you saying that you’d like to be my mistress?” he asked slowly, in a tone she couldn’t interpret. She shrugged unhappily and risked the truth. “I don’t want to leave you.” His sigh expressed temper. “Yet you did leave me.” “Lachlan, don’t be angry. Not tonight.” She framed his face with her hands, although it was too dark to see his expression. He’d recently shaved. His skin was smoother than it had been this afternoon. “I know I was a coward, but it seemed easier on both of us if I just disappeared.” “Did it indeed?” The muscles of his cheeks were taut under her palms, but his question sounded merely curious. “I thought that was the last time I’d ever see you.

The traffic was heavy, carriages, cabs, wagons, carts of every description passing by, splashing the water out of the gutters, wheels hissing on the wet road, horses dripping, sodden hides dark. Drivers sat hunched with collars up and hats down in a futile attempt to keep the cold rain from running down their necks, hands clenched on the reins.

Someone’s coming.” Terry McCaleb looked at his wife and then followed her eyes down to the winding road below. He could see the golf cart making its way up the steep and winding road to the

Making brief eye contact with Tristan, Gabriel casually marched around the gazebo and yanked the Ashman back further into the shadowy cover of the dark trees. The Ashman struggled, but Tristan came up beside Gabriel and caught the Ashman’s hands behind his back. Another Ashman appeared in the darkness beyond Tristan. “Watch your back,” Gabriel said, and Tristan whipped around. In one fluid movement, Tristan pulled a dagger from his coat—because, apparently, Tristan carted bloody weapons around in his coat—and cut through the Ashman’s skull with forceful movement. Without missing a beat, Tristan turned back around and helped Gabriel pin the Ashman that was struggling beneath Gabriel’s grasp.Gabriel punched the Ashman in the face, giving Tristan an opportunity to restrain the Ashman’s hands behind his back. Gabriel pulled Scarlet’s butcher knife from his coat—okay, so maybe they both carted weapons around in their jackets—and with silent movement, he thrust the blade directly into the Ashman’s heart and twisted. Stiffness, cracking, crumbling…then ash. Murder accomplished. Gabriel tucked the blade back into his coat and dusted off his hands as he looked at the two piles of ash on the forest floor. “See how simple that was?” He looked at Tristan. “You hold him down, I stab him, end of threat. With Nate it’s all weird battle cries and plastic hammers.” Gabriel shook his head. “Fighting with you is much less dramatic.” “Yeah, well.” Tristan stretched his neck. “We make a good killing team.” Gabriel rolled his eyes as they headed out of the trees and back to the fair. “What is with everyone wanting to be on teams?

It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance.

dragons are nothing more than defective looms or broken carts. As if baby dragons just need a little prodding and fixing to be useful. The shadow again, this time casting them into darkness for long enough that Luna wondered if that was the end of the human story. But at length it lifted again. Now she was in a field of tall green plants. All around her, humans picked interestingly small tomatoes and peapods, filling baskets and chatting as they worked. The blue sky soared overhead, sunlit and peaceful. Dusky lifted his snout and took a deep breath; through their scales, she could feel his heartbeat slow a little bit, despite all the humans around them. Then a terrifying roar split the air, a wordless howl of fury that felt like all of Luna’s worst days rolled together and set on fire. Three dragons burst out of the forest. They flew low to the ground,

On good nights, Winnie managed to glean five nonconsecutive hours of a shallow and unsatisfying slumber. But those nights were rare. Usually, Winnie was wide awake between midnight and dawn and passed the time by staring at the street below the apartment. Her room did not have its own balcony, just one window outfitted with a cage-like lattice designed to keep out burglars. When the afternoon sun came through at the right angle it created shadowy tessellations on her bed, and Winnie would lie down and position herself so that the scales of light would be cast onto her own skin. After dark, she climbed up and perched motionless on the sill for hours with her legs poking out through the bars, until her lower half went numb. She liked the feeling of having nothing beneath her feet while she was three stories high. It allowed her to pretend for a moment that she was no longer a girl, just a hovering, discorporate displacement of night sky. Safely concealed by the treetops, she could clock the nocturnal comings and goings of the trash collectors and grilled-squid carts and irresponsible, drunk revelers driving home from bars, occasionally wobbling off the road and crashing into a utility pole.

Dessert, a rich plum pudding, was warming in the kitchen, but on the sideboard, awaiting their turn, was a tray of jellies and crèmes. Next to those treats stood four miniature silver carts drawn by tiny silver goats. Belle had given me the privilege of burdening them with sweetmeats and dark raisins

It was now, I realized almost with a shock, October; perhaps the most beautiful month of the year in Rome. The trees had changed into a hundred shades of red and gold. Sometimes an unearthly pearly light washed the city, sharp and clear like a spring morning on the Acropolis, and in the evening that curious pinkish flush in the streets, which lasts only from dusk to darkness, seemed to be accentuated. Masses of splendid fat grapes, black and white, filled the street stalls. They reminded me that Bacchic revels made respectable by church processions—a collaboration that would not have surprised Gregory the Great—were taking place in the wine towns of the Castelli Romani, where the grape harvest had now been gathered. Some pungent whiff of this Virgilian moment seemed to enter Rome in the morning with those odd-looking wine carts and their rows of little barrels, the driver sitting up beneath a huge ribbed umbrella, in shape like the shell of some shabby and discredited Aphrodite. They trundled into Trastevere and replenished the tavern cellars with more than usual jollity and it was often in my mind to go out to Frascati and look up my friends of the wine vaults who were, I supposed, now knee deep in the new vintage: but I never did so.

Leave it,” Gwyn said, enough authority lacing her words that Nesta dropped the book onto a dark wood table. The priestess put a hand to Nesta’s back, escorting her up the sloping ramp. “Don’t look behind,” Gwyn muttered out of the corner of her mouth. “What level is your cart on?” “Four.” She began to twist her head to gaze over her shoulder, but Gwyn pinched her. “Don’t look behind,” Gwyn murmured again. “Is it following?” “No, but …” Gwyn’s swallow was audible. “I can feel something. Like a cat. Small and clever and curious. It’s watching.

The stone in her hand glimmered. They made another loop upward, and just as they reached the fourth level, that presence—that sensation of something at their backs—eased. They waited until they’d reached Nesta’s cart before Gwyn dumped her books on the ground and flung herself into the nearest tufted armchair. Her hands trembled, but the blue stone had gone dormant again. Nesta had to swallow twice before she could say, “What is that?” “It’s an Invoking Stone.” Gwyn unfurled her fingers, revealing the gem within her hand. “Similar to the Siphons of the Illyrians, except that the power of the Mother flows through it. We cannot use it for harm, only healing and protection. It was shielding us.” “No—I mean, that darkness.” Gwyn’s eyes matched her stone almost perfectly, right down to the shadows that now veiled her expression. “They say the being that dwelled down there is gone. But I believe some piece of it might have lingered. Or at the very least altered the darkness itself.” “It didn’t feel like that. It felt … older.” Gwyn’s brows rose. “Are you an adept in such things?” There was no condescension in the words, only curiosity. “I …” Nesta blinked. “Do you not know who I am?” “I know you are the High Lady’s sister. That you slew the King of Hybern.” Gwyn’s face grew solemn, haunted. “That you, like Lady Feyre, were once mortal. Human.” “I was Made by the Cauldron. At the King of Hybern’s order.

What sorrow for those who drag their sins behind them with ropes made of lies, who drag wickedness behind them like a cart! . . . What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.

Itale was up at four, at the vineyards and the winery all day till dark. He saw nothing at all in the world beyond the vines, the grapes, the boxes, baskets, carts and wagons loaded with the grapes, the pressing tubs in a stone courtyard stained and reeking with must, the brief dark coolness of the storage cellars dug into the hillside, the swing of the sun across the hot September sky. Then that work was done; and other harvests from the fields and orchards were coming in. Silent and absorbed, irascible when pushed past the limit of his strength, otherwise patient, Itale got on with the work and never raised his eyes from it to look back or ahead.

Then though , I look around me at the airport hustle, with its irritable cab honkings and clank of baggage carts, the spit and hiss of bus brakes, the lamplit shades hurrying to and fro in a New York night that is black, raining, and cold, with, ahead of us, the inconceivable press and milling of unseen souls, New York, city of dreams, or so it still sells itself, though for most who walk its canyoned street it is where the dream died, leaving them in graffitied apartments with bad heating and dark stairwells, riding the treadmill of two part-time jobs, or even three, the unending, mean struggle for survival…

Fundamentals of Esperanto The grammatical rules of this language can be learned in one sitting. Nouns have no gender & end in -o; the plural terminates in -oj & the accusative, -on Amiko, friend; amikoj, friends; amikon & amikojn, accusative friend & friends. Ma amiko is my friend. A new book appears in Esperanto every week. Radio stations in Europe, the United States, China, Russia & Brazil broadcast in Esperanto, as does Vatican Radio. In 1959, UNESCO declared the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers to be in accord with its mission & granted this body consultative status. The youth branch of the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers, UTA, has offices in 80 different countries & organizes social events where young people curious about the movement may dance to recordings by Esperanto artists, enjoy complimentary soft drinks & take home Esperanto versions of major literary works including the Old Testament & A Midsummer Night’s Dream. William Shatner’s first feature-length vehicle was a horror film shot entirely in Esperanto. Esperanto is among the languages currently sailing into deep space on board the Voyager spacecraft. - Esperanto is an artificial language constructed in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, a polish oculist. following a somewhat difficult period in my life. It was twilight & snowing on the railway platform just outside Warsaw where I had missed my connection. A man in a crumpled track suit & dark glasses pushed a cart piled high with ripped & weathered volumes— sex manuals, detective stories, yellowing musical scores & outdated physics textbooks, old copies of Life, new smut, an atlas translated, a grammar, The Mirror, Soviet-bloc comics, a guide to the rivers & mountains, thesauri, inscrutable musical scores & mimeographed physics books, defective stories, obsolete sex manuals— one of which caught my notice (Dr. Esperanto since I had time, I traded my used Leaves of Grass for a copy. I’m afraid I will never be lonely enough. There’s a man from Quebec in my head, a friend to the purple martins. Purple martins are the Cadillac of swallows. All purple martins are dying or dead. Brainscans of grown purple martins suggest these creatures feel the same levels of doubt & bliss as an eight-year-old girl in captivity. While driving home from the brewery one night this man from Quebec heard a radio program about purple martins & the next day he set out to build them a house in his own back yard. I’ve never built anything, let alone a house, not to mention a home for somebody else. Never put in aluminum floors to smooth over the waiting. Never piped sugar water through colored tubes to each empty nest lined with newspaper shredded with strong, tired hands. Never dismantled the entire affair & put it back together again. Still no swallows. I never installed the big light that stays on through the night to keep owls away. Never installed lesser lights, never rested on Sunday with a beer on the deck surveying what I had done & what yet remained to be done, listening to Styx while the neighbor kids ran through my sprinklers. I have never collapsed in abandon. Never prayed. But enough about the purple martins. Every line of the work is a first & a last line & this is the spring of its action. Of course, there’s a journey & inside that journey, an implicit voyage through the underworld. There’s a bridge made of boats; a carp stuffed with flowers; a comic dispute among sweetmeat vendors; a digression on shadows; That’s how we finally learn who the hero was all along. Weary & old, he sits on a rock & watches his friends fly by one by one out of the song, then turns back to the journey they all began long ago, keeping the river to his right.

Trump stepped off a golf cart in a dark-blue blazer, his make america great again hat splitting the masses like the Red Sea. He’d hardly taken a step before Hillary was a distant afterthought.

Jasmine stopped at the entrance of Sutton Place Gourmet and sniffed. Pumpkin. She could smell the gourds from where she stood. A good start. Let's see. She sniffed again. A bit of thyme. Not sage. Thyme. Her brain stretched and shook the cobwebs away. Ummm, pumpkin braised until meltingly soft, mashed with mascarpone and spread between thin layers of fresh pasta... a delicate cream sauce infused with thyme. Would it work? A touch of very, very slowly cooked and mellow garlic. That would be the trick. Dash of nutmeg. Yes. Jasmine was salivating as she pushed her cart toward the vegetable section. Freshly spritzed vegetables lay glistening in brightly colored rows. Cabbage of cobalt blue, fern-green fresh dill, and cut pumpkin the color of riotous caramel. Jasmine rubbed her hands together. Autumn was a favorite season for her. Most cooks preferred spring and summer, yearning for fresh bites of flavor after a dark, heavy winter. The fragrant tomatoes, the bright bursting berries, the new spring vegetables as lively and adorable as new lambs. But Jasmine yearned for the rich tastes of the earth. She was a glutton for root vegetables, simmered in stocks, enriched with butter and dark leafy herbs. She imagined them creamy, melting on her tongue, the nutrients of the rich soil infusing her blood.

See--she forced laughter into her thoughts--I took care of the problem all by my little feminine self. Amazing, isn’t it? From the other side of a grove of trees, out of her sight, Jacob suddenly screamed in terror, the sound fading to a thin wail. The roar of an enraged bear mingled with Jacob’s second scream. Something heavy crashed through the underbrush in the opposite direction of Raven. She felt Mikhail’s laughter, low, amused, very male. Very funny, Mikhail. Jacob was broadcasting fear, but not pain. You have a questionable sense of humor. I need sleep. Quit getting into trouble, woman. If you wouldn’t stay up all night, you might not need to sleep the day away, she reprimanded. How do you get work done? A computer. He said it with a note of pride in his voice. A computer? So you are one of the lucky few. Yes. It takes up the entire desk but is quite handy. Now for certain she knew he was bragging. She found herself laughing at the thought of him with a computer. He didn’t seem to belong in an era with cars or computers. He seemed more like the villagers with their carts and horses, yet he knew more of the modern world than she did. Go back to sleep, you big baby. I can handle things just fine, thank you very much, without any great big he-man to protect me. I would much prefer that you return to the safety of the inn until I rise. There was the merest hint of command in his voice. He was trying to soften his manner with her, and she found herself smiling at his efforts. It isn’t going to happen, so learn to live with it. American women are very difficult. She continued on her way up the mountain, his laughter still playing softly in her head.

For Mrs. Hungerford had been born in 1897, the daughter of an English country house, and when she had attended her first home nursing lectures in Went Town Hall, in August 1914, an ex-nurserymaid had accompanied her in the dog-cart on this dark and dangerous expedition. She had been brought up distinctly on what used to be called “pre-war” lines.

After bidding her family good-bye, Beatrix went out to the front drive with Christopher. He had changed from his uniform, with its gleaming jangle of medals, and wore simple tweed and broadcloth, with a simple white cravat tied at his neck. She much preferred him this way, in rougher, simpler clothing- the splendor of Christopher in military dress was nearly too dazzling to bear. The sun was a rich autumn gold, lowering into the black nest of treetops. Instead of the carriage Beatrix had expected, there was a single horse on the drive, Christopher's large bay gelding. Beatrix turned to give him a questioning look. "Don't I get a horse? A pony cart? Or am I to trot along behind you?" His lips twitched. "We'll ride together, if you're willing. I have a surprise for you." "How unconventional of you." "Yes, I thought that would please you." He helped her to mount the horse, and swung up easily behind her. No matter what the surprise was, Beatrix thought as she leaned back into his cradling arms, this moment was bliss. She savored the feel of him, all his strength around her, his body adjusting easily to every movement of the horse. He bade her to close her eyes as they went into the forest. Beatrix relaxed against his chest. The forest air turned sweeter as it cooled, infused with scents of resin and dark earth.

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

FLORENCE DURING THE Renaissance was not green and airy; it was crowded and noisy. Oxcarts, mules, and passersby pushed their way through narrow, foul-smelling streets, which were as dark as tunnels, because many of the householders had added oriel windows to the upper floors. Buildings were going up everywhere. Workmen pulled down old, cramped dwellings and carted in building materials for palaces until these became a scarce commodity. Many of these new houses were as big as castles. One could lose one’s way for hours in their suites of brightly painted rooms. During the fifteenth century rich Florentines grew even richer, while the poor became even poorer. 1 Wealthy families also cut themselves off from the city. Where their palazzi would once have opened on to the city with a loggia, they now looked inward over magnificent interior courtyards where social events took place.