Chill Morning Quotes

So fair, so cold; like a morning of pale spring still clinging to winter's chill.

When We Two Parted When we two parted In silence and tears, Half broken-hearted To sever for years, Pale grew thy cheek and cold, Colder thy kiss; Truly that hour foretold Sorrow to this. The dew of the morning Sunk chill on my brow— It felt like the warning Of what I feel now. Thy vows are all broken, And light is thy fame: I hear thy name spoken, And share in its shame. They name thee before me, A knell to mine ear; A shudder comes o'er me— Why wert thou so dear? They know not I knew thee, Who knew thee too well: Long, long shall I rue thee, Too deeply to tell. In secret we met— In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee? With silence and tears.

I am made for autumn. Summer and I have a fickle relationship, but everything about autumn is perfect to me. Wooly jumpers, Wellington boot, scarves, thin first, then thick, socks. The low slanting light, the crisp mornings, the chill in my fingers, those last warm sunny days before the rain and the wind. Her moody hues and subdued palate punctuated every now and again by a brilliant orange, scarlet or copper goodbye. She is my true love.

London The Institute Year of Our Lord 1878 “Mother, Father, my chwaer fach, It’s my seventeenth birthday today. I know that to write to you is to break the law, I know that I will likely tear this letter into pieces when it is finished. As I have done on all my birthdays past since I was twelve. But I write anyway, to commemorate the occasion - the way some make yearly pilgrimages to a grave, to remember the death of a loved one. For are we not dead to each other? I wonder if when you woke this morning you remembered that today, seventeen years ago, you had a son? I wonder if you think of me and imagine my life here in the Institute in London? I doubt you could imagine it. It is so very different from our house surrounded by mountains, and the great clear blue sky and the endless green. Here, everything is black and gray and brown, and the sunsets are painted in smoke and blood. I wonder if you worry that I am lonely or, as Mother always used to, that I am cold, that I have gone out into the rain again without a hat? No one here worries about those details. There are so many things that could kill us at any moment; catching a chill hardly seems important. I wonder if you knew that I could hear you that day you came for me, when I was twelve. I crawled under the bed to block out the sound of you crying my name, but I heard you. I heard mother call for her fach, her little one. I bit my hands until they bled but I did not come down. And, eventually, Charlotte convinced you to go away. I thought you might come again but you never did. Herondales are stubborn like that. I remember the great sighs of relief you would both give each time the Council came to ask me if I wished to join the Nephilim and leave my family, and each time I said no and I send them away. I wonder if you knew I was tempted by the idea of a life of glory, of fighting, of killing to protect as a man should. It is in our blood - the call to the seraph and the stele, to marks and to monsters. I wonder why you left the Nephilim, Father? I wonder why Mother chose not to Ascend and to become a Shadowhunter? Is it because you found them cruel or cold? I have no fathom side. Charlotte, especially, is kind to me, little knowing how much I do not deserve it. Henry is mad as a brush, but a good man. He would have made Ella laugh. There is little good to be said about Jessamine, but she is harmless. As little as there is good to say about her, there is as much good to say about Jem: He is the brother Father always thought I should have. Blood of my blood - though we are no relation. Though I might have lost everything else, at least I have gained one thing in his friendship. And we have a new addition to our household too. Her name is Tessa. A pretty name, is it not? When the clouds used to roll over the mountains from the ocean? That gray is the color of her eyes. And now I will tell you a terrible truth, since I never intend to send this letter. I came here to the Institute because I had nowhere else to go. I did not expect it to ever be home, but in the time I have been here I have discovered that I am a true Shadowhunter. In some way my blood tells me that this is what I was born to do.If only I had known before and gone with the Clave the first time they asked me, perhaps I could have saved Ella’s life. Perhaps I could have saved my own. Your Son, Will

So the days slipped away, as each morning dawned bright and fair, and each evening followed cool and clear. But autumn was waning fast; slowly the golden light faded to pale silver, and the lingering leaves fell from the naked trees. A wind began to blow chill from the Misty Mountains to the east. The Hunter's Moon waxed round in the night sky, and put to flight all the lesser stars. But low in the South one star shone red. Every night, as the Moon waned again, it shone brighter and brighter. Frodo could see it from his window, deep in the heavens, burning like a watchful eye that glared above the trees on the brink of the valley.

The summer has ended. The garden withers. The mornings become chill. I am thirty, I am thirty-four–the years turn dry as leaves.

He grimaced and went after her. “I’m not a trainer. Just spent a lot of time working out.”  “Misspent youth, clearly.” She held the door open, standing just outside.  “My application to princess school was rejected.” Callan exited the building and fell into step alongside her. “Working out was how I coped.” Sunlight peeked out from behind striped clouds and lit the early-morning sky. Autumn weather chilled the perspiration on his skin.  “Such a shame.” Meridian glanced up at him out of the corner of her eye.  “What is?”  “That you didn’t go to princess school. Could have learned some manners.” Her blue-green eyes sparked in the sunlight. And her mouth . . . Her lips set in some smart-looking, lopsided grin, with a small dimple.  I should definitely kiss that look off her face. “Overrated. Inefficient. And I look terrible in a tiara.

Chrysanthemum Silence - monk Sips his morning tea.

The tomatoes and string beans were but chilled shadows. Tasteless shadows. Nor was there any taste to the coffee or crackers. Maybe because of the morning sun? The light of morning decomposes everything.

A chill December morning dawned, with rags and tatters of mist hanging on the trees like poor people’s washing.

Beautiful sunrise in the far away mountains, painting the wide horizon with vibrant warm colors, among the chill from the morning breeze. ☥

The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Classira pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion.

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?"—was that it?—"I prefer men to cauliflowers"—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished—how strange it was!—a few sayings like this about cabbages.

Morning Poem" I've got to tell you how I love you always I think of it on grey mornings with death in my mouth the tea is never hot enough then and the cigarette dry the maroon robe chills me I need you and look out the window at the noiseless snow At night on the dock the buses glow like clouds and I am lonely thinking of flutes I miss you always when I go to the beach the sand is wet with tears that seem mine although I never weep and hold you in my heart with a very real humor you'd be proud of the parking lot is crowded and I stand rattling my keys the car is empty as a bicycle what are you doing now where did you eat your lunch and were there lots of anchovies it is difficult to think of you without me in the sentence you depress me when you are alone Last night the stars were numerous and today snow is their calling card I'll not be cordial there is nothing that distracts me music is only a crossword puzzle do you know how it is when you are the only passenger if there is a place further from me I beg you do not go

Aelin smiled at the thought as she slipped on her dressing robe, shuffling her feet into her shearling-lined slippers. Even with spring fully upon them, the mornings were chill. Indeed, Fleetfoot lay beside the fire on her little cushioned bed, curled up tightly. And as equally exhausted as Rowan, apparently. The hound didn’t bother to crack open an eye.

The air was cold and wet, and if you stood still for a moment the chilling damp would creep into your bones. I could tell the temperature was taking a deep dive, and the bright sky of the morning was a fond memory. It was an appropriate day to dump a body.

It was a bright spring morning, full of promise. Most travelers are familiar with this kind of weather- when the wind blows westward and warm but the ground still chills the soles of your feet, when the tree buds have begun to unfurl and scent the air with secret springtime madness- and they know those days are made for leaving.

The mist, the rain, and cold, low clouds gave the train a feeling of early morning, a chill and predawn dimness that lasted until noon.

Matt Murdock is blind -- so he misses the prettiest morning of the year. All he gets is hissing pipes and an East Coast chill that goes straight for the bones

It was long before they moved, and when they moved it was with great reluctance. They stood together in front of the looking-glass, and with a brush tried to make themselves look as if they had been feeling nothing all the morning, neither pain nor happiness. But it chilled them to see themselves in the glass, for instead of being vast and indivisible they were really very small and separate, the size of the glass leaving a large space for the reflection of other things.

The moon grew plump and pale as a peeled apple, waned into the passing nights, then showed itself again as a thin silver crescent in the twilit western sky. The shed of leaves became a cascade of red and gold and after a time the trees stood skeletal against a sky of weathered tin. The land lay bled of its colors. The nights lengthened, went darker, brightened in their clustered stars. The chilled air smelled of woodsmoke, of distances and passing time. Frost glimmered on the morning fields. Crows called across the pewter afternoons. The first hard freeze cast the countryside in ice and trees split open with sounds like whipcracks. Came a snow flurry one night and then a heavy falling the next day, and that evening the land lay white and still under a high ivory moon.

He appreciates mornings not for their effect on him, but for themselves. Even smack in the middle of a temperamental Chicago neighborhood, dawn sounds rose up with a startling delicacy, and the air had a lemony, clean-scoured tinge that made you breathe deeper and wider. Here, the first light spreads across the fields like something holy is happening, striking sparks off a million dewdrops and turning the spiderwebs on the hedge to rainbows; mist curls off the grass, and the first calls of birds and sheep seem to arc effortless miles. Whenever he can make himself, Cal gets up early and eats his breakfast sitting on his back step, enjoying the chill and the earthy tang of the air.

As if, with beasts' eyes, angels led The way, I slip back to your bed, Quiet as a hooded light, Hushed by the shadows of the night. And then, my dark one, you shall soon Embrace the cold beams of the moon, Around a fresh grave, the chilling hiss Of serpent coiled shall be my kiss. When morning shows his livid face Your bed shall feel my empty place, As cold as death, till fall of night. Others take tenderness to wife: Dread gives away your youth and life To me, to be the bride of fright.

When the inky blackness above shades to a deep blue and the stars lose their hard edge and begin to seem unreal, she rises, wrapping the thin sheet about herself, and steps outside into the morning chill.

From the time I woke up in the morning until the time I went to bed at night, I was unbearably miserable and seemingly incapable of any kind of joy or enthusiasm. Everything--every thought, word, movement--was an effort. Everything that once was sparkling now was flat. I seemed to myself to be dull, boring, inadequate, thick brained, unlit, unresponsive, chill skinned, bloodless, and sparrow drab. I doubted, completely, my ability to do anything well..... And always, everything was an effort. Washing my hair took hours to do, and it drained me for hours afterward; filling the ice-cute tray was beyond my capacity, and I occasionally slept in the same clothes I had worn during the day because I was too exhausted to undress.

In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around her, she awoke--not with any amazed wondering where she was or what had happened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking into the eyes of sorrow. She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, and seated herself in a great chair where she had often watched before. She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feeling ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked to a new condition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.

His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind. "An albino," Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. "This one will die even faster than the others." Jon Snow gave his father's ward a long, chilling look. "I think not, Greyjoy," he said. "This one belongs to me.

Gospel The new grass rising in the hills, the cows loitering in the morning chill, a dozen or more old browns hidden in the shadows of the cottonwoods beside the streambed. I go higher to where the road gives up and there’s only a faint path strewn with lupine between the mountain oaks. I don’t ask myself what I’m looking for. I didn’t come for answers to a place like this, I came to walk on the earth, still cold, still silent. Still ungiving, I’ve said to myself, although it greets me with last year’s dead thistles and this year’s hard spines, early blooming wild onions, the curling remains of spider’s cloth. What did I bring to the dance? In my back pocket a crushed letter from a woman I’ve never met bearing bad news I can do nothing about. So I wander these woods half sightless while a west wind picks up in the trees clustered above. The pines make a music like no other, rising and falling like a distant surf at night that calms the darkness before first light. “Soughing” we call it, from Old English, no less. How weightless words are when nothing will do.

Brah, chill. I’m easy like Sunday morning. I’m just going to be picking away for the rest of the day. I ain’t gonna play, so you don’t have to flay. Cool?

She tried to calm herself, to still the drift of her body, but the lack of gravity made it difficult to remain stationary. Her shoulder bumped one of the speakers, her hip nudged a screen, and the more she fought to be still, the more she drifted. She was fighting an absence instead of a presence, and it suddenly chilled her. Which way was up? As the floor dropped away to become the ceiling, she felt the thread of logic she'd followed throughout the mission, throughout her entire life, snap. Hard work and intelligence could not keep her safe−there was nothing she could have done, no amount of effort or foresight or skill could have kept any of this from happening. Nothing in this universe could possibly keep any of them safe.

One brisk morning I stood in a field chilled frosty by autumn’s touch. Suddenly, the hordes of geese that surrounded me lifted off into the sky in a thunderous roar of nature on a grand mission. Standing stunned and awed in a field now fallen silent, it dawned on me that something is most powerful when it believes in its mission and rises without hesitation to achieve it.

The Pilgrim Queen (A Song) There sat a Lady all on the ground, Rays of the morning circled her round, Save thee, and hail to thee, Gracious and Fair, In the chill twilight what wouldst thou there? 'Here I sit desolate,' sweetly said she, 'Though I'm a queen, and my name is Marie: Robbers have rifled my garden and store, Foes they have stolen my heir from my bower. 'They said they could keep Him far better than I, In a palace all His, planted deep and raised high. 'Twas a palace of ice, hard and cold as were they, And when summer came, it all melted away. 'Next would they barter Him, Him the Supreme, For the spice of the desert, and gold of the stream; And me they bid wander in weeds and alone, In this green merry land which once was my own.' I look'd on that Lady, and out from her eyes Came the deep glowing blue of Italy's skies; And she raised up her head and she smiled, as a Queen On the day of her crowning, so bland and serene. 'A moment,' she said, 'and the dead shall revive; The giants are failing, the Saints are alive; I am coming to rescue my home and my reign, And Peter and Philip are close in my train.

There is a phenomenon that occurs in the minds of many manic depressives when entering into either a manic or a depressive state that nobody claims to understand, but that bipolars from the far corners of the world can attest to: the consistent waking up at four o’clock in the morning. And when I say four o’clock, I mean four o’clock on the fucking dot. How many times have I given myself chills, waking up yet again after only two hours of sleep and looking over at the blinking red of a digital alarm clock only to see that number staring back at me? I’ve lost count. And the thing is, you don’t just wake up. You wake up with your mind racing, music churning over and over inside your head, the internal noise, words, pictures, absolutely unbearable, and it is absolutely impossible to go back to sleep.

Life can be long or short, it is impossible to know, but every once in a while an entire life is spent in one night, the night when the windows are open and you can hear the last of the crickets’ call, when there is a chill in the air and the stars are bright, when nothing else matters, when a single kiss lasts longer than a lifetime, when you do not think about the future or the past, or whether or not you are walking through a dream rather than the real world, when everything you have always wanted and everything you are fated to mourn forever are tied together with black thread and then sewn with your own hand, when in the morning, as you wake and see the mountain in the distance, you will understand that whether or not you’ve made a mistake, whether or not you will lose all that you have, this is what it means to be human.

Finally, as the sky began to grow light in the morning, I’d feel that I might be drifting off. But that wasn’t sleep. My fingertips were just barely brushing against the outermost edge of sleep. And all the while, my mind was awake. I would feel a hint of drowsiness, but my mind was there, in its own room, on the other side of a transparent wall, watching me. My physical self was drifting through the feeble morning light, and all the while it could feel my mind staring, breathing, close beside it. I was both a body on the verge of sleep and a mind determined to stay awake. The incomplete drowsiness would continue on and off all day. My head was always foggy. I couldn’t get an accurate fix on the things around me—their distance or mass or texture. The drowsiness would overtake me at regular, wavelike intervals: on the subway, in the classroom, at the dinner table. My mind would slip away from my body. The world would sway soundlessly. I would drop things. My pencil or my purse or my fork would clatter to the floor. All I wanted was to throw myself down and sleep. But I couldn’t. The wakefulness was always there beside me. I could feel its chilling shadow. It was the shadow of myself. Weird, I would think as the drowsiness overtook me, I’m in my own shadow. I would walk and eat and talk to people inside my drowsiness. And the strangest thing was that no one noticed. I lost fifteen pounds that month, and no one noticed. No one in my family, not one of my friends or classmates, realized that I was going through life asleep. It was literally true: I was going through life asleep. My body had no more feeling than a drowned corpse. My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think that my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. Hold tight, I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.

of urgency I was feeling. “Tonight, Zoeybird? I can’t wait a few hours until morning?” “Tonight.” As if to punctuate my request through the phone, Aphrodite and I heard the chilling sound of a raven’s deep, creepy, croaking

Love is how the other person likes their coffee on a morning. How long they put their toast in the toaster for. How they like their throw pillows on the sofa to be arranged. How hot they have their shower water. How many bubbles in the bath. How they always leave empty glasses on the bar in the kitchen, and how they know exactly how you take your coffee. How they know how many candles to light around a bathtub before you get in, and how chilled your wine has to be before it’s an acceptable drinking temperature. We still have so much to learn about each other, and while I know there’s no rush, I want to know these things. I want to know if he prefers butter or jelly on his toast on a morning and if really he prefers tea over coffee, which I suspect he does. I want to know if he changes the temperature of the shower water to my preference of red hot instead of a normal hot. I want to know every little thing I don’t. Because at the end of the day, when it gets hard and you’re in the middle of the room shouting at each other over something trivial, you won’t remember the huge declarations of love. When you’re sitting against your bedroom door crying because you hate fighting, you’ll remember the way he smiles at you over breakfast and the way he trails his thumb down your spine to make you shiver. You’ll remember all the crazy little things that remind you that, no matter what, no matter how difficult or impossible it may seem, there’s no one else in this world more perfect for you than he is.

Morning now—theirs to add up the checks cashed here and there in clubs, stores, restaurants. Theirs to air the dank staleness of wine and cigarettes out of the tall blue front room, to pick up the broken glass and brush at the stained fabric of chairs and sofas; to give Bounds suits and dresses for the cleaners; finally, to take their smothery half-feverish bodies and faded depressed spirits out into the chill air of February, that life might go on and Wilson, Hiemer and Hardy obtain the services of a vigorous man at nine next morning. "Do

Here is what I do on the first day of snowfall every year: I step out of the house early in the morning, still in my pajamas, hugging my arms against the chill. I find the driveway, my father’s car, the walls, the trees, the rooftops, and the hills buried under a foot of snow. I smile. The sky is seamless and blue, the snow so white my eyes burn. I shovel a handful of the fresh snow into my mouth, listen to the muffled stillness broken only by the cawing of crows. I walk down the front steps, barefoot, and call for Hassan to come out and see.

He shrugged his big shoulders. 'If my uncle wants me to ride to the edge of the world after something that doesn't exist...' He turned his face to the sky and inhaled deeply of the chill morning air. 'It's not like I have a wife waiting for me or anywhere else to be.' 'Well, we are honoured that the courageous and indomitable Prince Gawain ap Lot of Lyonesse chose to save Britain with us, rather than drink and whore himself to death in some harbourside tavern,' Merlin said, lifting his staff as though Gawain's very presence was a gift from the Gods.

Jacob remembered it distinctly because it was his twenty-second birthday, and he was annoyed at being awakened by his uncle at 1:17 in the morning. But Avi had no time to be sentimental. He ordered Jacob to hightail it with him through a bone-chilling winter night to get to some safe house they’d never been to before and make it there by the top of the hour. Jacob had been hoping to sleep in a little and maybe eat a half-decent meal before sitting down to plan the sabotage of a radio tower near Antwerp, an operation scheduled for the coming weekend. But none of that was to be.

So, for many young men in South Africa’s townships, freedom looks like this: Every morning they wake up, maybe their parents go to work or maybe not. Then they go outside and chill on the corner the whole day, talking shit. They’re free, they’ve been taught how to fish, but no one will give them a fishing rod.

As they entered November, the weather turned very cold. The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake like chilled steel. Every morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch field, bundled up in a long moleskin overcoat, rabbit fur gloves, and enormous beaverskin boots. The Quidditch season had begun. On Saturday, Harry would be playing in his first match after weeks of training: Gryffindor versus Slytherin. If Gryffindor won, they would move up into second place in the House Championship. Hardly anyone had seen Harry play because Wood had decided that, as their secret weapon, Harry should be kept, well, secret. But the news that he was playing Seeker had leaked out somehow, and Harry didn’t know which was worse — people telling him he’d be brilliant or people telling him they’d be running around underneath him holding a mattress. It was really lucky that Harry now had Hermione as a friend. He didn’t know how he’d have gotten through all his homework without her, what with all the last-minute Quidditch practice Wood was making them do. She had also lent him Quidditch Through the Ages, which turned out to be a very interesting read.

It was a dark day. A chill wind blew snowflakes against the window of Mr Norrell's library where Childermass sat writing business letters. Though it was only ten o'clock in the morning the candles were already lit. The only sounds were the coals being consumed in the grate and the scratch of Childermass's pen against the paper.

481 I went into the barbershop as usual, with the pleasant sensation of entering a familiar place, easily and naturally. New things are distressing to my sensibility; I’m at ease only in places where I’ve already been. After I’d sat down in the chair, I happened to ask the young barber, occupied in fastening a clean, cool cloth around my neck, about his older colleague from the chair to the right, a spry fellow who had been sick. I didn’t ask this because I felt obliged to ask something; it was the place and my memory that sparked the question. ‘He passed away yesterday,’ flatly answered the barber’s voice behind me and the linen cloth as his fingers withdrew from the final tuck of the cloth in between my shirt collar and my neck. The whole of my irrational good mood abruptly died, like the eternally missing barber from the adjacent chair. A chill swept over all my thoughts. I said nothing. Nostalgia! I even feel it for people and things that were nothing to me, because time’s fleeing is for me an anguish, and life’s mystery is a torture. Faces I habitually see on my habitual streets – if I stop seeing them I become sad. And they were nothing to me, except perhaps the symbol of all of life. The nondescript old man with dirty gaiters who often crossed my path at nine-thirty in the morning… The crippled seller of lottery tickets who would pester me in vain… The round and ruddy old man smoking a cigar at the door of the tobacco shop… The pale tobacco shop owner… What has happened to them all, who because I regularly saw them were a part of my life? Tomorrow I too will vanish from the Rua da Prata, the Rua dos Douradores, the Rua dos Fanqueiros. Tomorrow I too – I this soul that feels and thinks, this universe I am for myself – yes, tomorrow I too will be the one who no longer walks these streets, whom others will vaguely evoke with a ‘What’s become of him?’. And everything I’ve done, everything I’ve felt and everything I’ve lived will amount merely to one less passer-by on the everyday streets of some city or other.

Few things are harder to visualise than that a cold snowbound landscape, so marrow-chillingly quiet and lifeless, will, within mere months, be green and lush and warm, quivering with all manner of life, from birds warbling and flying through the trees to swarms of insects hanging in scattered clusters in the air. Nothing in the winter landscape presages the scent of sun-warmed heather and moss, trees bursting with sap and thawed lakes ready for spring and summer, nothing presages the feeling of freedom that can come over you when the only white that can be seen is the clouds gliding across the blue sky above the blue water of the rivers gently flowing down to the sea, the perfect, smooth, cool surface, broken now and then by rocks, rapids and bathing bodies. It is not there, it does not exist, everything is white and still, and if the silence is broken it is by a cold wind or a lone crow caw-cawing. But it is coming ... it is coming... One evening in March the snow turns to rain, and the piles of snow collapse. One morning in April there are buds on the trees, and there is a trace of green in the yellow grass. Daffodils appear, white and blue anemones too. Then the warm air stands like a pillar among the trees on the slopes. On sunny inclines buds have burst, here and there cherry trees are in blossom. If you are sixteen years old all of this makes an impression, all of this leaves its mark, for this is the first spring you know is spring, with all your sense you know this is spring, and it is the last, for all coming springs pale in comparison with your first. If, moreover, you are in love, well, then ... then it is merely a question of holding on. Holding on to all the happiness, all the beauty, all the future that resides in everything.

I had heard the Sergeant’s words and understood them thoroughly but they were no more significant than the clear sounds that infest the air at all times — the far cry of gulls, the disturbance a breeze will make in its blowing and water falling headlong down a hill. Down into the earth where dead men go I would go soon and maybe come out of it again in some healthy way, free and innocent of all human perplexity. I would perhaps be the chill of an April wind, an essential part of some indomitable river or be personally concerned in the ageless perfection of some rank mountain bearing down upon the mind by occupying forever a position in the blue easy distance. Or perhaps a smaller thing like movement in the grass on an unbearable breathless yellow day, some hidden creature going about its business — I might well be responsible for that or for some important part of it. Or even those unaccountable distinctions that make an evening recognisable from its own morning, the smells and sounds and sights of the perfected and matured essences of the day, these might not be innocent of my meddling and my abiding presence.

The shed of leaves became a cascade of red and gold and after a time the trees stood skeletal against a sky of weathered tin. The land lay bled of its colors. The nights lengthened, went darker, brightened in their clustered stars. The chilled air smelled of woodsmoke, of distances and passing time. Frost glimmered on the morning fields. Crows called across the pewter afternoons.

This was to be my first experience with it, and like any first experience, the feeling stays with you forever. What this was exactly I can’t say, but it drove into my soul and made a home there. Everyone was watching me; everyone was listening to me. The words coming out of my mouth — the words I’d conceived and given birth to — were making time null and void; they were bringing together a roomful of people into a journey of common sights, sounds, and thoughts; they were leaving me and traveling into the minds and memories of people who had never been at Saxon’s Lake that chill, early morning in March. I could tell when I looked at them that those people were following me. And the greatest thing — the very greatest thing — is that they wanted to go where I led them.

When I see Peter at the bus the next morning, he’s standing around with all this lacrosse friends, and at first I feel shy and nervous, but then he sees me, and his face breaks into a grin. “C’mere, Covey,” he says, so I go to him and he throws my tote over his shoulder. In my ear he says, “You’re sitting with me, right?” I nod. As we make our way onto the bus, somebody wolf whistles. It seems like people are staring at us, and at first I think it’s just my imagination, but then I see Genevieve look right at me and whisper to Emily Nussbaum. It sends a chill down my spine. “Genevieve keeps staring at me,” I whisper to Peter. “It’s because you’re so adorably quirky,” he says, and he rests his hands on my shoulders and gives me a kiss on the cheek, and I forget all about Genevieve.

Finally, as the sky began to grow light in the morning, I’d feel that I might be drifting off. But that wasn’t sleep. My fingertips were just barely brushing against the outermost edge of sleep. And all the while, my mind was awake. I would feel a hint of drowsiness, but my mind was there, in its own room, on the other side of a transparent wall, watching me. My physical self was drifting through the feeble morning light, and all the while it could feel my mind staring, breathing, close beside it. I was both a body on the verge of sleep and a mind determined to stay awake. The incomplete drowsiness would continue on and off all day. My head was always foggy. I couldn’t get an accurate fix on the things around me—their distance or mass or texture. The drowsiness would overtake me at regular, wavelike intervals: on the subway, in the classroom, at the diner table. My mind would slip away from my body. The world would sway soundlessly. I would drop things. My pencil or my purse or my fork would clatter to the floor. All I wanted was to throw myself down and sleep. But I couldn’t. The wakefulness was always there beside me. I could feel its chilling shadow. It was the shadow of myself. Weird, I would think as the drowsiness overtook me, I’m in my own shadow. I would walk and eat and talk to people inside my drowsiness. And the strangest thing was that no one noticed. I lost fifteen pounds that month, and no one noticed. No one in my family, not one of my friends or classmates, realized that I was going through life asleep. It was literally true: I was going through life asleep. My body had no more feeling than a drowned corpse. My very existence, my life in the world, seemed like a hallucination. A strong wind would make me think that my body was about to be blown to the end of the earth, to some land I had never seen or heard of, where my mind and body would separate forever. Hold tight, I would tell myself, but there was nothing for me to hold on to.

Though small, the shrine has a long history. In 1333—the Third Year of the Genko era—Lord Takeshigé Kikuchi ascended to it in order to implore the divine favor before going into battle. Victory was his, and in gratitude he had the shrine rebuilt. According to tradition, he himself carved the Worship Image, reciting a triple prayer after each stroke. This represented the god as standing on the mountain peak with one hand raised, gazing at the armed host he had blessed. It was an image of victory. Now, however, the morning after the rising, early on the auspicious Ninth Day of the Ninth Month, the time of the Chrysanthemum Festival, there were gathered around the shrine forty-six hunted survivors of a defeated force. Some standing, some sitting, they stared blankly about them, though the penetrating autumn chill made their wounds sting. The clear light of the rising sun cast a striped pattern as it shone down through the branches of the few old cedars that surrounded the shrine. Birds were singing. The air was fresh and clear. As for signs of last night’s sanguinary combat, these were visible in the soiled and bloodstained garments, the haggard visages, and the eyes that burned like live embers. Among the forty-six were Unshiro Ishihara, Kageki Abé, Kisou Onimaru, Juro Furuta, Tsunetaro Kobayashi, the brothers Gitaro and Gigoro Tashiro, Tateki Ura, Mitsuo Noguchi, Mikao Kashima, and Kango Hayami. Every man was silent, sunk deep in thought, looking off at the sea, or at the mountains, or at the smoke still rising from Kumamoto. Such were the men of the League at rest on the slope of Kimpo, some with fingers yellowed from brushing the petals of wild chrysanthemums that they had plucked while staring across the water at Shimabara Peninsula.

The wind rushed between the branches of the zelkova tree, making a piercing howl, like the coldhearted breath leaking out between the teeth of a person who has lost all hope. Tengo gazed at the moons, not paying much attention to the sound of the wind, sitting there until his whole body was chilled to the bone. It must have been around fifteen minutes. No, maybe more. His sense of time had left him. His body, initially warmed by the whiskey, now felt hard and cold, like a lonely boulder at the bottom of the sea. The clouds continued to scud off toward the south. No matter how many were blown away, others appeared to take their place. There was an inexhaustible source of clouds in some land far to the north. Decisive people, minds fixed on the task, clothed in thick, gray uniforms, working silently from morning to night to make clouds, like bees make honey, spiders make webs, and war makes widows.

This is one other thing I know: without autumn, there is no end. Without red and gold and orange there is no finality, no conclusion. Without the sudden shift in the air, without the scent of apples and the crisp chill of morning, summer could go on forever. Without fall, summer lingers. There is a marvelous limbo where I live now, without the changing of seasons. No blazing display to signify the end of everything good. Perhaps this is what drew me to California. A place where time is suspended.

Or been driven away,” their father said, looking at the sixth pup. His fur was white, where the rest of the litter was grey. His eyes were as red as the blood of the ragged man who had died that morning. Bran thought it curious that this pup alone would have opened his eyes while the others were still blind. “An albino,” Theon Greyjoy said with wry amusement. “This one will die even faster than the others.” Jon Snow gave his father’s ward a long, chilling look. “I think not, Greyjoy,” he said. “This one belongs to me.

Even reading the words ‘snow hotel’ can shoot a shiver up your spine, but spending a night in one of these ethereally beautiful, extravagantly artistic icy buildings is a marvellous, though expensive, experience. There are several to choose from in Lapland, including Lumihotelli in Kemi. Heavy-duty sleeping bags ensure a relatively cosy slumber, and a morning sauna banishes any lingering chills. If you don’t fancy spending the night inside, you can visit the complexes, maybe pausing for a well-chilled vodka cocktail in the bar.

SHRIMP LOUIE SPREAD Hannah’s Note: This is best served well chilled with a basket of crackers on the side. 8 ounces softened cream cheese ½ cup mayonnaise ¼ cup chili sauce (I used Heinz) 1 Tablespoon horseradish (I used Silver Springs) 1/8 teaspoon pepper 6 green onions 2 cups finely chopped cooked salad shrimp*** (measure AFTER chopping) Salt to taste Mix the cream cheese with the mayonnaise. Add the chili sauce, horseradish, and pepper. Mix it up into a smooth sauce.   Clean the green onions and cut off the bottoms. Use all of the white part and up to an inch of the green part. Throw the tops away.   Mince the onions as finely as you can and add them to the sauce. Stir them in well.   Chop the salad shrimp into fine bits. You can do this with a sharp knife, or in the food processor using the steel blade and an on-and-off motion.   Mix in the shrimp and check to see how salty the spread is. Add salt if needed.   Chill the spread in a covered bowl in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours. You can make it in the morning if you plan to serve it that night.   Yield: Makes approximately 3 cups.

But amid all the peace, I couldn’t entirely escape my sadness. One morning I was out walking and suddenly felt as if I were being pushed down into a hole. My friend’s adult daughter happened to see me and asked what was wrong. “I just realized that Chris doesn’t really belong to me anymore,” I told her. Tears were rolling down my face. “He belongs to everyone, and I’ve lost that part of him that was mine.” “I have chills all over my body,” she said. “This has never happened to me before, but I feel Chris wants me to tell you something. He’ll always be yours.

..I followed her out the door and watched her walk down the road towards home, hers, and the bright yard light, and her own bed, and our parents, and I stood there for a long time because I didn't know where else to go. I stood there long enough to feel the chill of the night. The sky was a blanket of stars.Indifferent. I repeated the ancient song of Nezahualcoytl. I stood there long enough to hear my family singing. Why were they singing at two in the morning? I heard the hight, creaky voice of my mother and the off-key but persistent voices of my little brothers.

The innumerable trees she's seen over the course of all her life, the undulating forests that blanket the continents like a heartless sea, envelop her exhausted body and lift her up. Only fragments of cities, small towns and roads are visible, floating on the roof of the forest like islands or bridges, slowly being swept away somewhere, borne on those warm waves. There's no way for In-hye to know what on earth those waves are saying. Or what those trees she'd seen at the end of the narrow mountain path, clustered together like green flames in the early-morning half-light, had been saying. Whatever it was, there had been no warmth in it. Whatever the words were, they hadn't been words of comfort, words that would help her pick herself up. Instead they were merciless, and the trees that had spoken them were a frighteningly chill form of life. Even when she turned about on the spot and searched in all directions, In-hye hadn't been able to find a tree that would take her life from her. Some of the trees had refused to accept her. They'd just stood there, stubborn and solemn yet alive as animals, bearing up the weight of their own massive bodies.

The unemployment rate for young black men post-apartheid shot up, sometimes as high as 50 percent. What happens to a lot of guys is they finish high school and they can’t afford university, and even little retail jobs can be hard to come by when you’re from the hood and you look and talk a certain way. So, for many young men in South Africa’s townships, freedom looks like this: Every morning they wake up, maybe their parents go to work or maybe not. Then they go outside and chill on the corner the whole day, talking shit. They’re free, they’ve been taught how to fish, but no one will give them a fishing rod.

How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, “Musing among the vegetables?”—was that it?—“I prefer men to cauliflowers”—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh.

In the morning we shed our blue sheep’s clothing. Our border shirts came out of satchels and onto our backs. We preferred this means of dress for it was more flatout and honest. The shirts were large with pistol pockets, and usually colored red or dun. Many had been embroidered with ornate stitching by loving women some were blessed enough to have. Mine was plain, but well broken in. I can think of no more chilling a sight than that of myself all astride my big bay horse with six or eight pistols dangling from my saddle, my rebel locks aloft on the breeze and a whoopish yell on my lips. When my awful costume was multiplied by that of my comrades, we stopped feint hearts just by our mode of dread stylishness.

We were, as I have said, returning from a dip, and half-way up the High Street a cat darted out from one of the houses in front of us, and began to trot across the road. Montmorency gave a cry of joy – the cry of a stern warrior who sees his enemy given over to his hands – the sort of cry Cromwell might have uttered when the Scots came down the hill – and flew after his prey. His victim was a large black Tom. I never saw a larger cat, nor a more disreputable-looking cat. It had lost half its tail, one of its ears, and a fairly appreciable proportion of its nose. It was a long, sinewy- looking animal. It had a calm, contented air about it. Montmorency went for that poor cat at the rate of twenty miles an hour; but the cat did not hurry up – did not seem to have grasped the idea that its life was in danger. It trotted quietly on until its would-be assassin was within a yard of it, and then it turned round and sat down in the middle of the road, and looked at Montmorency with a gentle, inquiring expression, that said: “Yes! You want me?” Montmorency does not lack pluck; but there was something about the look of that cat that might have chilled the heart of the boldest dog. He stopped abruptly, and looked back at Tom. Neither spoke; but the conversation that one could imagine was clearly as follows:- THE CAT: “Can I do anything for you?” MONTMORENCY: “No – no, thanks.” THE CAT: “Don’t you mind speaking, if you really want anything, you know.” MONTMORENCY (BACKING DOWN THE HIGH STREET): “Oh, no – not at all – certainly – don’t you trouble. I – I am afraid I’ve made a mistake. I thought I knew you. Sorry I disturbed you.” THE CAT: “Not at all – quite a pleasure. Sure you don’t want anything, now?” MONTMORENCY (STILL BACKING): “Not at all, thanks – not at all – very kind of you. Good morning.” THE CAT: “Good-morning.” Then the cat rose, and continued his trot; and Montmorency, fitting what he calls his tail carefully into its groove, came back to us, and took up an unimportant position in the rear. To this day, if you say the word “Cats!” to Montmorency, he will visibly shrink and look up piteously at you, as if to say: “Please don’t.

Steve Harmon, thirty-six, had esophageal cancer growing at the inlet of his stomach. For six months, he had soldiered through chemotherapy as if caught in a mythical punishment cycle devised by the Greeks. He was debilitated by perhaps the severest forms of nausea that I had ever encountered in a patient, but he had to keep eating to avoid losing weight. As the tumor whittled him down week by week, he became fixated, absurdly, on the measurement of his weight down to a fraction of an ounce, as if gripped by the fear that he might vanish altogether by reaching zero. Meanwhile, a growing retinue of family members accompanied him to his clinic visits: three children who came with games and books and watched, unbearably, as their father shook with chills one morning; a brother who hovered suspiciously, then accusingly, as we shuffled and reshuffled medicines to keep Steve from throwing up; a wife who bravely shepherded the entire retinue through the whole affair as if it were a family trip gone horribly wrong. One morning, finding Steve alone on one of the reclining chairs of the infusion room, I asked him whether he would rather have the chemotherapy alone, in a private room. Was it, perhaps, too much for his family—for his children? He looked away with a flicker of irritation. “I know what the statistics are.” His voice was strained, as if tightening against a harness. “Left to myself, I would not even try. I’m doing this because of the kids.

To a Jilted Lover Cold on my narrow cot I lie and in sorrow look through my window-square of black: figured in the midnight sky, a mosaic of stars diagrams the falling years, while from the moon, my lover’s eye chills me to death with radiance of his frozen faith. Once I wounded him with so small a thorn I never thought his flesh would burn or that the heat within would grow until he stood incandescent as a god; now there is nowhere I can go to hide from him: moon and sun reflect his flame. In the morning all shall be the same again: stars pale before the angry dawn; the gilded cock will turn for me the rack of time until the peak of noon has come and by that glare, my love will see how I am still blazing in my golden hell.

Each morning the twin gremlins of fear and lethargy sit at the foot of our bed and smirk. Fear of further departure, fear of the unknown, fear of the challenge of largeness intimidates us back into our convenient rituals, conventional thinking, and familiar surroundings. To be recurrently intimidated by the task of life is a form of spiritual annihilation. On the other front, lethargy seduces us with sibilant whispers: kick back, chill out, numb out, take it easy for a while . . . sometimes for a long while, sometimes a lifetime, sometimes a spiritual oblivion. (As a friend advised me in Zurich, “When in doubt, administer chocolate.”) Yet the way forward threatens death—at the very least, the death of what has been familiar, the death of whomever we have been.

What should I wear?” I said. I was still in my pajamas, drinking coffee and reading the New York Times while Mary fried some eggs for me. It was already ten thirty in the morning. It made more sense to go early the next day. “Just wear normal clothes,” Carl said. I appreciated that he no longer tried to hide his impatience with me. It meant that I didn’t have to hide my irritation with him. “Okay, okay. Chill out,” I told him. “After I eat my eggs, we’ll leave.” “I have some granola bars and a thermos of coffee. We need to get going. I already let you sleep in,” he said. “Mary is already making the eggs,” I said. “I don’t want to waste them.” Carl sat down on the bench next to me and leaned forward, whispering, “Do you think Mary cares if you don’t eat those eggs? Do you think you would hurt her feelings?

cabin for a long moment. Just looking at it made her smile. It was tiny and whimsical – a cedar sided A-frame with a bright green roof and purple trim, complete with a purple star at the point of the A-frame. It sat in a small open area amongst spruce and alder. The hill tumbled down behind it, offering a wide-open view of Kachemak Bay. She’d been in Diamond Creek, Alaska for almost three years. The sun was rising behind the mountains across the bay, streaks of gold and pink reaching into the sky and filtering through the wispy clouds that sat above the mountains this morning. The air was cool and crisp, typical for an Alaskan summer morning. When the sun was high, the chill would dissipate. A faded blue Subaru pulled into the driveway. Susie climbed out of her car, grabbed some fishing gear and walked to Emma’s truck. “Morning! Sorry I’m late,” Susie said. Emma reached over and took a fishing rod out of Susie’s hands.

Despite incessant disappointment, he doggedly pursued a position. Each morning, he left his boardinghouse at eight o’clock, clothed in a dark suit with a high collar and black tie, to make his rounds of appointed firms. This grimly determined trek went on each day—six days a week for six consecutive weeks—until late in the afternoon. The streets were so hot and hard that he grew footsore from pacing them. His perseverance surely owed something to his desire to end his reliance upon his fickle father. At one point, Bill suggested that if John didn’t find work he might have to return to the country; the thought of such dependence upon his father made “a cold chill” run down his spine, Rockefeller later said.27 Because he approached his job hunt devoid of any doubt or self-pity, he could stare down all discouragement. “I was working every day at my business—the business of looking for work. I put in my full time at this every day.”28 He was a confirmed exponent of positive thinking.

You could see the future right away here,” Hu Renzhong, a pig and poultry producer, told me. “Food was expensive and people didn’t have enough meat to eat. They couldn’t afford it. The land was good, though, and back then it was still cheap.” Hu received me one morning at his mansion farmhouse on the outskirts of Lusaka, offering me a seat in the marble chill of his enormous living room, before taking me on a long walking tour of his acres and acres of hog-breeding pens and sprawling, temperature-controlled chicken hatcheries, all impressively modern and minutely organized. He had come to Zambia from China’s Jiangxi province in 1995 as a twenty-two-year-old simple laborer, but soon got into business for himself, raising chickens at first with another Chinese immigrant. It wasn’t long before the two had struck it rich, buying land and building ever-bigger houses. “Things had started developing really fast back home, and a lot of people tried to tell me I’d made a mistake,” he said. “But I’ve never really looked back.” I

ONCE it smiled a silent dell         Where the people did not dwell;         They had gone unto the wars,         Trusting to the mild-eyed stars,         Nightly, from their azure towers,         To keep watch above the flowers,         In the midst of which all day         The red sunlight lazily lay.         Now each visitor shall confess         The sad valley’s restlessness.         Nothing there is motionless—         Nothing save the airs that brood         Over the magic solitude.         Ah, by no wind are stirred those trees         That palpitate like the chill seas         Around the misty Hebrides!         Ah, by no wind those clouds are driven         That rustle through the unquiet Heaven         Unceasingly, from morn till even,         Over the violets there that lie         In myriad types of the human eye—         Over the lilies there that wave         And weep above a nameless grave!         They wave:—from out their fragrant tops         Eternal dews come down in drops.         They weep:—from off their delicate stems         Perennial tears descend in gems.

Darkness: I had a dream, which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation; and all hearts Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light: And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones, The palaces of crowned kings—the huts, The habitations of all things which dwell, Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd, And men were gather'd round their blazing homes To look once more into each other's face; Happy were those who dwelt within the eye Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch: A fearful hope was all the world contain'd; Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black. The brows of men by the despairing light Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits The flashes fell upon them; some lay down And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd; And others hurried to and fro, and fed Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up With mad disquietude on the dull sky, The pall of a past world; and then again With curses cast them down upon the dust, And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd And, terrified, did flutter on the ground, And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd And twin'd themselves among the multitude, Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food. And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again: a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was death Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devour'd, Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay, Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food, But with a piteous and perpetual moan, And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand Which answer'd not with a caress—he died. The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two Of an enormous city did survive, And they were enemies: they met beside The dying embers of an altar-place Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things For an unholy usage; they rak'd up, And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath Blew for a little life, and made a flame Which was a mockery; then they lifted up Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died— Even of their mutual hideousness they died, Unknowing who he was upon whose brow Famine had written Fiend. The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay. The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still, And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths; Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea, And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd They slept on the abyss without a surge— The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave, The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before; The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air, And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need Of aid from them—She was the Universe.

He opened her door, grabbed a quilt from the back of the truck, and pulled her toward the beach. When he found a spot covered with thick sand, he stopped and spread out the blanket. “It’s a little early for sunbathing,” she said. “I don’t remember you being so grumpy in the morning,” he teased. “I didn’t have time for coffee.” He lowered himself to the blanket and pulled her down in front of him. She settled against his chest, his warmth driving away the chill in the air. “Madam . . .” He handed her a thermos she hadn’t noticed before. “Oh, bless you.” She poured the hot brew into the lid, took a sip, and shared with him. Much better. The smell of the brew mingled with the tangy scent of sea air. The cool breeze fanned her skin, pushing her hair from her face, and the water lapped the pebbled shore. The clouds on the horizon were beginning to brighten, the black fading to dark hues of blue. A couple months ago she’d mentioned that she’d never watched a sunrise. He seemed intent on being there for all her firsts. The first time she rented a house. The first time she opened her own bank account. The first time she swam in the ocean. She embraced her freedom, and Beau was there, supporting her however he could.

She drifted down the walk carelessly for a moment, stunned by the night. The moon had come out, and though not dramatically full or a perfect crescent, its three quarters were bright enough to turn the fog and dew and all that had the power to shimmer a bright silver, and everything else- the metal of the streetlamps, the gates, the cracks in the cobbles- a velvety black. After a moment Wendy recovered from the strange beauty and remembered why she was there. She padded into the street before she could rethink anything and pulled up her hood. "Why didn't I do this earlier?" she marveled. Sneaking out when she wasn't supposed to was its own kind of adventure, its own kind of magic. London was beautiful. It felt like she had the whole city to herself except for a stray cat or two. Despite never venturing beyond the neighborhood much by herself, she had plenty of time with maps, studying them for someday adventures. And as all roads lead to Rome, so too do all the major thoroughfares wind up at the Thames. Names like Vauxhall and Victoria (and Horseferry) sprang from her brain as clearly as if there had been signs in the sky pointing the way. Besides Lost Boys and pirates, Wendy had occasionally terrified her brothers with stories about Springheel Jack and the half-animal orphan children with catlike eyes who roamed the streets at night. As the minutes wore on she felt her initial bravery dissipate and terror slowly creep down her neck- along with the fog, which was also somehow finding its way under her coat, chilling her to her core. "If I'm not careful I'm liable to catch a terrible head cold! Perhaps that's really why people don't adventure out in London at night," she told herself sternly, chasing away thoughts of crazed, dagger-wielding murderers with a vision of ugly red runny noses and cod-liver oil. But was it safer to walk down the middle of the street, far from shadowed corners where villains might lurk? Being exposed out in the open meant she would be more easily seen by police or other do-gooders who would try to escort her home. "My mother is sick and requires this one particular tonic that can only be obtained from the chemist across town," she practiced. "A nasty decoction of elderberries and slippery elm, but it does such wonders for your throat. No one else has it. And do you know how hard it is to call for a cab this time of night? In this part of town? That's the crime, really." In less time than she imagined it would take, Wendy arrived at a promenade that overlooked the mighty Thames. She had never seen it from that particular angle before or at that time of night. On either bank, windows of all the more important buildings glowed with candles or gas lamps or even electric lights behind their icy panes, little tiny yellow auras that lifted her heart. "I do wish I had done this before," she breathed. Maybe if she had, then things wouldn't have come to this...

In the white bowl, the paper caught fire, burning like a desperate flower, blooming and dying at the same time. Its scents came on tendrils of smoke, wrapping themselves around me. We missed you. I inhaled, and Victoria's kitchen disappeared around me. It was early morning in the cabin, winter; I could smell the woodstove working to keep the frost at bay. My father had fed the sourdough starter, and the tang of it played off the warm scent of coffee grounds. I could smell my own warmth in the air, rising from the blankets I'd tossed aside. I remembered that morning. It was the first time I ever saw the machine. I must have been three, maybe four years old. I'd woken up and seen my father, standing in the middle of the room, a box in his hands, bright and shiny and magical. I remembered racing across the floor, my bare feet tingling from the chill. What is it, Papa? It's wonderful. I want to know. And he'd put the shiny box aside and lifted me up high and said, You are the most wonderful thing in the world, little lark. The last of the paper crumbled to ash. I stood there, trying to remember what had happened next- but I couldn't. Did my father show me the machine, or did we go outside and chop wood? You'd think I'd remember, but I didn't. What I remembered was how it felt to be held in his arms. To be loved that way, before everything else happened. And in that moment, I felt whole. "Oh," I heard Victoria say, and when I turned to her, her eyes were filled with tears.

The man exhaled and wondered. He thought about the squid, and he thought about summers divested of chill and abundant with the strange precocity of wild laughter, of warm days spent tracking footfalls in warm sands, of that electric mane of hair, as black as starlight, wheeling and blowing into her eyes and his mouth as the air accelerated over the water. He thought about the dresses, as candid and diaphanous as photographs captured of butterflies in flight, packed up, boxed in, sent away. He thought about domestic sounds smote to dark corners in dim rooms as vast and terrestrial as forsaken landscape, sounds that should not ever be pursued and evicted from this hillside house, sounds that had as much utility and purpose as the wood fashioned to stabilise the house, sounds who proved the most generous tenants he could have ever invited to share the burdensome wealth of his privacy, sounds who left like friends do when they mean not to return, without word or signal or symbol, but with the cruelty of caprice and the loveless whispers of memories receding to a breakwater of ruin. He thought about how sad he had become, and how ugly, and how fast. He thought about all the mornings covertly spoiled by a ramshackle attack of tears, he thought about the immeasurable distance from his house on its hill to the first forge of shoreline by the bay, he thought about the dialogue of terns and the sordid mystery of snow, but he fell asleep thinking about summers ended and the squid, at rest in a shoebox in the bathroom.

Fifty miles out of Prague, the halved carcass of a freshly killed hog hangs, still steaming in the cold, from what looks like a child’s swing set. It’s a wet, drizzling morning and your feet are sopping and you’ve been warming yourself against the chill by huddling around the small fire over which a pot of pig parts boils. The butcher’s family and friends are drinking slivovitz and beer, and though noon is still a few hours off, you’ve had quite a few of both. Someone calls you inside to the tiled workspace, where the butcher has mixed the pig’s blood with cooked onions and spices and crumbs of country bread, and he’s ready to fill the casings. Usually, they slip the casing over a metal tube, turn on the grinding machine, cram in the forcemeat or filling, and the sausages fill like magic. This guy does it differently. He chops everything by hand. A wet mesa of black filling covers his cutting board, barely retaining its shape—yet he grabs the casing in one hand, puts two fingers in one open end, makes the “V” sign, stretching it disturbingly, and reaches with the other—then buries both his hands in the mix. A whirlwind of movement as he squeezes with his right hand, using his palm like a funnel, somehow squirting the bloody, barely containable stuff straight into the opening. He does this again and again with breathtaking speed, mowing his way across the wooden table, like a thresher cutting a row through a cornfield, a long, plump, rapidly growing, glistening, fully filled length of sausage engorging to his left as he moves. It’s a dark, purplish color through the translucent membrane. An assistant pinches off links, pins them with broken bits of wooden skewer. In moments, they are done.

Everything and Nothing* There was no one inside him; behind his face (which even in the bad paintings of the time resembles no other) and his words (which were multitudinous, and of a fantastical and agitated turn) there was no more than a slight chill, a dream someone had failed to dream. At first he thought that everyone was like him, but the surprise and bewilderment of an acquaintance to whom he began to describe that hollowness showed him his error, and also let him know, forever after, that an individual ought not to differ from its species. He thought at one point that books might hold some remedy for his condition, and so he learned the "little Latin and less Greek" that a contemporary would later mention. Then he reflected that what he was looking for might be found in the performance of an elemental ritual of humanity, and so he allowed himself to be initiated by Anne Hathaway one long evening in June. At twenty-something he went off to London. Instinctively, he had already trained himself to the habit of feigning that he was somebody, so that his "nobodiness" might not be discovered. In London he found the calling he had been predestined to; he became an actor, that person who stands upon a stage and plays at being another person, for an audience of people who play at taking him for that person. The work of a thespian held out a remarkable happiness to him—the first, perhaps, he had ever known; but when the last line was delivered and the last dead man applauded off the stage, the hated taste of unreality would assail him. He would cease being Ferrex or Tamerlane and return to being nobody. Haunted, hounded, he began imagining other heroes, other tragic fables. Thus while his body, in whorehouses and taverns around London, lived its life as body, the soul that lived inside it would be Cassar, who ignores the admonition of the sibyl, and Juliet, who hates the lark, and Macbeth, who speaks on the moor with the witches who are also the Fates, the Three Weird Sisters. No one was as many men as that man—that man whose repertoire, like that of the Egyptian Proteus, was all the appearances of being. From time to time he would leave a confession in one corner or another of the work, certain that it would not be deciphered; Richard says that inside himself, he plays the part of many, and Iago says, with curious words, I am not what I am. The fundamental identity of living, dreaming, and performing inspired him to famous passages. For twenty years he inhabited that guided and directed hallucination, but one morning he was overwhelmed with the surfeit and horror of being so many kings that die by the sword and so many unrequited lovers who come together, separate, and melodiously expire. That very day, he decided to sell his theater. Within a week he had returned to his birthplace, where he recovered the trees and the river of his childhood and did not associate them with those others, fabled with mythological allusion and Latin words, that his muse had celebrated. He had to be somebody; he became a retired businessman who'd made a fortune and had an interest in loans, lawsuits, and petty usury. It was in that role that he dictated the arid last will and testament that we know today, from which he deliberately banished every trace of sentiment or literature. Friends from London would visit his re-treat, and he would once again play the role of poet for them. History adds that before or after he died, he discovered himself standing before God, and said to Him: I , who have been so many men in vain, wish to be one, to be myself. God's voice answered him out of a whirlwind: I, too, am not I; I dreamed the world as you, Shakespeare, dreamed your own work, and among the forms of my dream are you, who like me, are many, yet no one.

Sleepless City (Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne)" Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one. No one sleeps. Lunar creatures sniff and circle the dwellings. Live iguanas will come to bite the men who don’t dream, and the brokenhearted fugitive will meet on street corners an incredible crocodile resting beneath the tender protest of the stars. Out in the world, no one sleeps. No one, no one. No one sleeps. There is a corpse in the farthest graveyard complaining for three years because of an arid landscape in his knee; and a boy who was buried this morning cried so much they had to call the dogs to quiet him. Life is no dream. Watch out! Watch out! Watch out! We fall down stairs and eat the humid earth, or we climb to the snow’s edge with the choir of dead dahlias. But there is no oblivion, no dream: raw flesh. Kisses tie mouths in a tangle of new veins and those in pain will bear it with no respite and those who are frightened by death will carry it on their shoulders. One day horses will live in the taverns and furious ants will attack the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cattle. Another day we’ll witness the resurrection of dead butterflies, and still walking in a landscape of gray sponges and silent ships, we’ll see our ring shine and rose spill from our tongues. Watch out! Watch out! Watch out! Those still marked by claws and cloudburst, that boy who cries because he doesn’t know bridges exist, or that corpse that has nothing more than its head and one shoe— they all must be led to the wall where iguanas and serpents wait, where the bear’s teeth wait, where the mummified hand of a child waits and the camel’s fur bristles with a violent blue chill. Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one. No one sleeps. But if someone closes his eyes, whip him, my children, whip him! Let there be a panorama of open eyes and bitter inflamed wounds. Out in the world, no one sleeps. No one. No one. I’ve said it before. No one sleeps. But at night, if someone has too much moss on his temples, open the trap doors so he can see in moonlight the fake goblets, the venom, and the skull of the theaters.

If a season like the Great Rebellion ever came to him again, he feared, it could never be in that same personal, random array of picaresque acts he was to recall and celebrate in later years at best furious and nostalgic; but rather with a logic that chilled the comfortable perversity of the heart, that substituted capability for character, deliberate scheme for political epiphany (so incomparably African); and for Sarah, the sjambok, the dances of death between Warmbad and Keetmanshoop, the taut haunches of his Firelily, the black corpse impaled on a thorn tree in a river swollen with sudden rain, for these the dearest canvases in his soul's gallery, it was to substitute the bleak, abstracted and for him rather meaningless hanging on which he now turned his back, but which was to backdrop his retreat until he reached the Other Wall, the engineering design for a world he knew with numb leeriness nothing could now keep from becoming reality, a world whose full despair he, at the vantage of eighteen years later, couldn't even find adequate parables for, but a design whose first fumbling sketches he thought must have been done the year after Jacob Marengo died, on that terrible coast, where the beach between Luderitzbucht and the cemetery was actually littered each morning with a score of identical female corpses, an agglomeration no more substantial-looking than seaweed against the unhealthy yellow sand; where the soul's passage was more a mass migration across that choppy fetch of Atlantic the wind never left alone, from an island of low cloud, like an anchored prison ship, to simple integration with the unimaginable mass of their continent; where the single line of track still edged toward a Keetmanshoop that could in no conceivable iconology be any part of the Kingdom of Death; where, finally, humanity was reduced, out of a necessity which in his loonier moments he could almost believe was only Deutsch-Sudwestafrika's (actually he knew better), out of a confrontation the young of one's contemporaries, God help them, had yet to make, humanity was reduced to a nervous, disquieted, forever inadequate but indissoluble Popular Front against deceptively unpolitical and apparently minor enemies, enemies that would be with him to the grave: a sun with no shape, a beach alien as the moon's antarctic, restless concubines in barbed wire, salt mists, alkaline earth, the Benguela Current that would never cease bringing sand to raise the harbor floor, the inertia of rock, the frailty of flesh, the structural unreliability of thorns; the unheard whimper of a dying woman; the frightening but necessary cry of the strand wolf in the fog.

Besides the fact that you’re a scoundrel at the gaming tables,” she responded tartly, “I’m beginning to suspect that you’re a womanizing rake.” Christopher grinned leisurely as his perusal swept her. “I’ve been a long time at sea. However, I doubt that in your case my reaction would vary had I just left the London Court.” Erienne’s eyes flared with poorly suppressed ire. The insufferable egotist! Did he dare think he could find a willing wench at the back door of the mayor’s cottage? “I’m sure that Claudia Talbot would welcome your company, sir. Why don’t you ride on over to see her? I hear his lordship traveled off to London this morning.” He laughed softly at her sneering tones. “I’d rather be courting you.” “Why?” she scoffed. “Because you want to thwart my father?” His smiling eyes captured hers and held them prisoner until she felt a warmth suffuse her cheeks. He answered with slow deliberation. “Because you are the prettiest maid I’ve ever seen, and I’d like to get to know you better. And of course, we should delve into this matter of your accidents more thoroughly, too.” Twin spots of color grew in her cheeks, but the deepening dusk did much to hide her blush. Lifting her nose primly in the air, Erienne turned aside, tossing him a cool glance askance. “How many women have you told that to, Mr. Seton?” A crooked smile accompanied his reply. “Several, I suppose, but I’ve never lied. Each had their place in time, and to this date, you are the best I’ve seen.” He reached out and taking a handful of the cracklings, he chewed the crisp morsels as he awaited her reaction. A flush of anger spread to the delicate tips of her ears, and icy fire smoldered in the deep blue-violet pools. “You conceited, unmitigated boor!” Her voice was as cold and as flat as the Russian steppes. “Do you think to add me to your long string of conquests?” Her chilled contempt met him face to face until he rose and towered above her. His eyes grew distant, and he reached out a finger to flip a curl that had strayed from beneath the kerchief. “Conquest?” His voice was soft and deeply resonant. “You mistake me, Erienne. In the rush of a moment’s lust, there are purchased favors, and these are for the greater part forgotten. The times that are cherished and remembered are not taken, are not given, but shared, and are thus treasured as a most blissful event.” He lifted his coat on his fingertips and slung it over his shoulder. “I do not ask that you yield to me, nor do I desire to conquer you. All I plead is that you grant me moments now and then that I might present my case, to the end that we could share a tender moment at some distant time.” -Erienne & Christopher

Hey,” he said, his hand gently rubbing my back. I heard the diesel rattle of vehicles driving away from the scene. “Hey,” I replied, sitting up and looking at my watch. It was 5:00 A.M. “Are you okay?” “Yep,” he said. “We finally got it out.” Marlboro Man’s clothes were black. Heavy soot covered his drawn, exhausted face. “Can I go home now?” I said. I was only halfway kidding. And actually, I wasn’t kidding at all. “Sorry about that,” Marlboro Man said, still rubbing my back. “That was crazy.” He gave a half-chuckle and kissed my forehead. I didn’t know what to say. Driving back to his house, the pickup was quiet. My mind began to race, which is never good at five in the morning. And then, inexplicably, just as we reached the road to his house, I lost it. “So, why did you even take me there, anyway?” I said. “I mean, if I’m just going to ride in someone’s pickup, why even bring me along? It’s not like I was any help to anyone…” Marlboro Man glanced over at me. His eyes were tired. “So…did you want to operate one of the sprayers?” he asked, an unfamiliar edge to his voice. “No, I just…I mean…” I searched for the words. “I mean, that was just ridiculous! That was dangerous!” “Well, prairie fires are dangerous,” Marlboro Man answered. “But that’s life. Stuff like this happens.” I was cranky. The nap had done little to calm me down. “What happens? You just drive right into fires and throw caution to the wind? I mean, people could die out there. I could have died. You could have died! I mean, do you realize how crazy that was?” Marlboro Man looked straight ahead, rubbing his left eye and blinking. He looked exhausted. He looked spent. We arrived in his driveway just in time to see the eastern sun peeking over the horse barn. Marlboro Man stopped his pickup, put it into park, and said, still looking straight ahead, “I took you with me…because I thought you’d like to see a fire.” He turned off the pickup and opened his door. “And because I didn’t want to leave you here by yourself.” I didn’t say anything. We both exited the pickup, and Marlboro Man began walking toward his house. And then, still walking, he said it--words that chilled me to the bone. “I’ll see you later.” He didn’t even turn around. I stood there, not knowing what to say, though deep down I knew I wouldn’t have to. I knew that just as he’d always done anytime I’d ever been rendered speechless in his presence, he’d speak up, turn around, come to my rescue, hold me in his arms…and infuse love into my soul, as only he could do. He always swooped in to save me, and this time would be no different. But he didn’t turn around. He didn’t speak up. He simply walked toward the house, toward the door on his back porch--the same porch door where, hours earlier, he and I had stood in a complete fit of romance and lust, where the heat between us was but a foreshadowing of the fire waiting for us in that distant prairie.

Sophie?” He knocked, though not that hard, then decided she wasn’t going hear anything less than a regiment of charging dragoons over Kit’s racket. He pushed the door open to find half of Sophie’s candles lit and the lady pacing the room with Kit in her arms. “He won’t settle,” she said. “He isn’t wet; he isn’t hungry; he isn’t in want of cuddling. I think he’s sickening for something.” Sophie looked to be sickening. Her complexion was pale even by candlelight, her green eyes were underscored by shadows, and her voice held a brittle, anxious quality. “Babies can be colicky.” Vim laid the back of his hand on the child’s forehead. This resulted in a sudden cessation of Kit’s bellowing. “Ah, we have his attention. What ails you, young sir? You’ve woken the watch and disturbed my lady’s sleep.” “Keep talking,” Sophie said softly. “This is the first time he’s quieted in more than an hour.” Vim’s gaze went to the clock on her mantel. It was a quarter past midnight, meaning Sophie had gotten very little rest. “Give him to me, Sophie. Get off your feet, and I’ll have a talk with My Lord Baby.” She looked reluctant but passed the baby over. When the infant started whimpering, Vim began a circuit of the room. “None of your whining, Kit. Father Christmas will hear of it, and you’ll have a bad reputation from your very first Christmas. Do you know Miss Sophie made Christmas bread today? That’s why the house bore such lovely scents—despite your various efforts to put a different fragrance in the air.” He went on like that, speaking softly, rubbing the child’s back and hoping the slight warmth he’d detected was just a matter of the child’s determined upset, not inchoate sickness. Sophie would fret herself into an early grave if the boy stopped thriving. “Listen,” Vim said, speaking very quietly against the baby’s ear. “You are worrying your mama Sophie. You’re too young to start that nonsense, not even old enough to join the navy. Go to sleep, my man. Sooner rather than later.” The child did not go to sleep. He whimpered and whined, and by two in the morning, his nose was running most unattractively. Sophie would not go to sleep either, and Vim would not leave her alone with the baby. “This is my fault,” Sophie said, her gaze following Vim as he made yet another circuit with the child. “I was the one who had to go to the mews, and I should never have taken Kit with me.” “Nonsense. He loved the outing, and you needed the fresh air.” The baby wasn’t even slurping on his fist, which alarmed Vim more than a possible low fever. And that nose… Vim surreptitiously used a hankie to tend to it, but Sophie got to her feet and came toward them. “He’s ill,” she said, frowning at the child. “He misses his mother and I took him out in the middle of a blizzard and now he’s ill.” Vim put his free arm around her, hating the misery in her tone. “He has a runny nose, Sophie. Nobody died of a runny nose.” Her expression went from wan to stricken. “He could die?” She scooted away from Vim. “This is what people mean when they say somebody took a chill, isn’t it? It starts with congestion, then a fever, then he becomes weak and delirious…” “He’s not weak or delirious, Sophie. Calm down.

But the restlessness Quentin had been conscious of last night had shifted abruptly into a deep, cold sense of foreboding this morning when Diana had opened her eyes so suddenly to make an eerily familiar statement. "It's coming." And it had required all his willpower to allow her to leave his sight. To walk away from him, back up the well-lit paths to her cottage in order to change. Because that was exactly what Missy had said to him twenty-five years before. The last time he had seen her alive.

To judge by the many crossings-out and the scribbles that adorned the discarded sheets, several of which had been screwed into balls by a frustrated hand and flung against the opposite wall, the muse this chill March morning was proving recalcitrant.

turned around, wrapping my arms around myself, chilled from the early morning breeze that blew through the open window. Hayden lay sprawled out on his stomach with one leg hanging off the bed. He had had another nightmare last night, one that shook him so deep he woke up thinking he was back in the desert during the war. I carefully crawled over him, pulling the sheet up to his waist. In his sleep, he reached out for me, wrapping his arm around my side. I wiggled close to him, tracing his tattoos with my finger until I drifted back to sleep.   * * *   “Riss,” Hayden said an hour later. “We need to workout.” I pretended to be asleep. I was comfortable and didn’t want to get up, let alone get up and do physical work. Not yet at least. “Riss,” he repeated. The closet door closed. “Get up. We have the new A1s with us today.” Begrudgingly, I opened my eyes. Hayden stood by the bed wearing black athletic shorts and a white t-shirt with the sleeves cut off. He had an iPod in his hand. “I’m up,” I grumbled and went to the closet, yanking a tank top off

Reveille echoed in the first light of dawn. Susannah opened one eye to see Jesse blowing on a bugle formed with his two fists. She pulled the covers over her head and rolled into a ball. “None of that, slugabed.” He lifted the quilts from her legs. Air chilled by yesterday’s storm hit her feet and she squeaked. He yanked the covers off. “Atten’hut!” She glared at him. “What rank did you attain?” “Oh, I’ve held a number of ranks. Busted out of a few too. This morning I’m your sergeant. Fall in!” He saluted her, then pulled her into his arms. “Soldiers aren’t this beautiful to roust. Men look their worst in the morning, a night’s growth of beard scabbing their faces, hair sticking up like rabid porcupines.” Susannah snuggled into the curve of his arm. “That so?” “Whereas women look all soft and lazy in the morning. Especially lazy.” He set her upright. “Private Mason, you have stable duty this morning.” Susannah groaned. “I liked you better when your orders were for bed rest.” “Maybe later.” He patted her backside. “Now I’ll show you why our door opens inward.

Behind those homes was Mass General, where my father and I had gone together so many times. A phone call had woken us in the early hours one morning, and we had driven down to Boston just as the first light was intruding with harsh orange streaks in the sky. She looked the same as the night before, lying in the bed with her eyes closed, only all the machines were shut off, making the room in which we had spent so many quiet hours all the more silent. Her skin felt chilled when I touched it, as if she had just returned from a brisk walk in winter. I looked up now at the windows of the hospital, but my father turned toward Chitra.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed—it could have been hours—when something roused her. With a start she opened her eyes. It took her a moment to realize Connell was sitting next to her and that he’d tucked her into the crook of his arm with her head against his chest. The steady thud of his heartbeat echoed against her ear. His face was haggard with weariness, a testimony to the sleeplessness and danger he’d endured all night. She had no doubt it was well into the morning and that the threat of wolves was over for at least the time being; otherwise he wouldn’t have allowed himself the luxury of breaking his vigilance. Her parched tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and her body ached with feverish chills. She was sick. The peril of their predicament returned with a fresh wave of fear. One glance across the shack to the door, to the dead wolf, to the blood now crusted brown, and the terror of the night crashed back through her. How could they survive another day? Or another night?

Day by day as autumn tanned the valley around us, now with bright frost weather, now with rain carrying the first chill of winter, my father stayed in the dusk of his grief. That sandbagged mood, I understand now, can only have been a kind of battle fatigue-the senses blasted around in him by that morning of death and the thousands of inflicting minutes it was followed by.

From the shameful part, I meditated on receiving and getting connected with the true self’s assurance and understanding. I was able to direct my true self to ask this trait if it needed anything else and how it wanted to release the degradation it held in. It wanted the disgraceful memories erased, as well as removing the chill and sickness in its gut when they flashed instinctively and uncontrollably in its mind. It sought to have all the unmanageable sexual images of its imagination controlled and reprogrammed with normal thoughts. It wanted to feel like it was not a consenting party to the abnormal sexual perversions that were forced upon a young child. The shameful part within me wanted reassurance that the creature I thought I had become was the result of a young mind being molded from wickedness thrust upon it during peak developmental years. It wanted to stop having to always look over its shoulder thinking it had done something wrong. It wanted to wake up in the morning at peace, not immediately expecting the worst. The shame within wanted to stop feeling like bad things were going to happen in life because it was not a good person. It wanted to feel it deserved to be happy and worthy of receiving the good things of this life. After relinquishing all the burdens of the shameful part and communicating what it wanted from the true self, I continued meditating on the connection of the true self’s understanding and the shameful part’s acceptance of that understanding. I visualized unburdening the shame like the outer tarnished skin being removed from a banana, envisioning the negative self-perceptions of myself peeling away and exposing the true clean, white, sweet goodness within. CHAPTER

He pulled her upright and they stood facing each other, her hands in his. Again with the held breaths, the locked gazes. Twice in a row. It was almost too much! And Jane wanted to stay in that moment with him so much, her belly ached with the desire. “Your hands are cold,” he said, looking at her fingers. She waited. They had never practiced this part and the flimsy play gave no directions, such as, Kiss the girl, you fool. She leaned in a tiny bit. He warmed her hands. “So…” she said. “I suppose we know our scene, more or less,” he said. Was he going to kiss her? No, it seemed nobody ever kissed in Regency England. So what was happening? And what did it mean to fall in love in Austenland anyway? Jane stepped back, the weird anxiety of his nearness suddenly making her heart beat so hard it hurt. “We should probably return. Curtain, or bedsheet, I should say, is in two hours.” “Right. Of course,” he said, though he seemed a little sorry. The evening had pulled down over them, laying chill like morning dew on her arms, right through her clothes and into her bones. Though she was wearing her wool pelisse, she shivered as they walked back to the house. He gave her his jacket. “This theatrical hasn’t been as bad as you expected,” Jane said. “Not so bad. No worse than idle novel reading or croquet.” “You make any entertainment sound like taking cod liver oil.” “Maybe I am growing weary of this place.” He hesitated, as though he’d said too much, which made Jane wonder if the real mad had spoken. He cleared his throat. “Of the country, I mean. I will return to London soon for the season, and the renovations on my estate will be completed by summer. It will be good to be home, to feel something permanent. I tire of the guests who come and go in the country, their only goal to find some kind of amusement, their sentiments shallow. It wears on a person.” He met her eyes. “I may not return to Pembrook Park. Will you?” “No, I’m pretty sure I won’t.” Another ending. Jane’s chest tightened, and she surprised herself to identify the feeling as panic. It was already the night of the play. The ball was two days away. Her departure came in three. Not so soon! Clearly she was swimming much deeper in Austenland waters than she’d anticipated. And loving it. She was growing used to slippers and empire waists, she felt naked outside without a bonnet, during drawing room evenings her mouth felt natural exploring the kinds of words that Austen might’ve written. And when this man entered the room, she had more fun than she had in four years of college combined. It was all feeling…perfect.

By then dawn had broken across the sky in a spectacular bloody mess; yellow as scrambled egg and streaked the colour of blood. It cast a strange orange light along the damp Lambeth Road. Behind me I heard sparrows twittering on the vale. And finches played leapfrog along the wall. But in that peculiar dawn light, hidden beneath the fringe of the woodland, directly across the road from me in the morning shadows, stood two chilling figures. The Charweed sisters.

It was one of those mornings when you realize, with chilling clarity, that birding is a ridiculous activity.

Emily looked over at Courtney. He was still asleep. For a long time she had thought that if you loved anyone you had to tell him everything: go to him and confess as in the dream; there could be no secrets. But now in the dark of early morning with the copper bottle cold against her fee she felt that this desire to tell all was simply an evasion of responsibility, a weakness in wanting to push on to the person you love something that is your own responsibility to solve. It would be easier for her to tell Courtney all about Abe, to come to him as he sat at this desk in the chill little workroom and confess, to hand the responsibility for her ambivalence to him, to let him settle the problem of her puny conscience for her. But I know, she thought, lying there beside him on Madame Pedroti's lumpy bed, that if I love Courtney that is the last thing I must do. If I love Courtney he must never know.

A new instrument with an evil-sounding name is helping scientists see how stars are born. L.U.C.I.F.E.R., which stands for ‘Large Binocular Telescope Near-infrared Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research,’ is a chilled instrument attached to a telescope in Arizona. And yes, it’s named for the Devil, whose name itself means ‘morning star’ [and which] happens to be right next to the Vatican Observatory on Mt. Graham in Tucson.” ­—Rebecca Boyle, Popular Science magazine

It's happening, just from the warming of the sun, the road and green praire farmland and buffeting wind coming together. And soon it is nothing but beautiful warmth and wind and speed and sun down the empty road. The last chills of the morning are thawed by the warm air. Wind and more sun and more smooth road.

Please don’t force anyone to leave. Ha ha, BTW, who is Tesla for you? I don’t know you are talking about whom? I found all are antique over there. It’s OK, but if I come to know that you have purposely oust anyone, I swear I’ll kill you. Don’t need to be panic. You are impossible, have you seen yourself? You have changed. You are tweeting in morning? Are you OK? Whenever you will call me n future I’ll there with you, I said it. Then also? Chill & enjoy lock-down. You are lucky that you have get this time in this life.

It was more chilling still to see corpses littering the hallways surrounding the morgue. Vaughan reported, “In the morning the dead bodies are stacked about the morgue like cord wood.” As Cole recalled, “They were placed on the floor without any order or system, and we had to step amongst them to get into the room where an autopsy was going on.