Copper Hair Quotes

No,” he muttered, running a hand through his copper hair. “No. No. There are dozens.” “Kell?” she asked, moving to touch his arm. He shook her off. “Dozens of ships, Lila! And you had to climb aboard his.” “I’m sorry,” she shot back, bristling, “I was under the impression that I was free to do as I pleased.” “To be fair,” added Alucard, “I think she was planning to steal it and slit my throat.” “Then why didn’t you?” snarled Kell, spinning on her. “You’re always so eager to slash and stab, why couldn’t you have stabbed him?

And I realize in that moment maybe I am heartless after all, because the beautiful girl with the copper hair grinning back at me right now is the one who stole it.

Her salary as King’s Champion was considerable, and Celaena spent every last copper of it. Shoes, hats, tunics, dresses, jewelry, weapons, baubles for her hair, and books. Books and books and books. So many books that Philippa had to bring up another bookcase for her room.

Her hair was copper-red, like the grass of the shore on which the spring floods leave their rust; but her eyes were dark, like the pools among the marshes, drawing the beholder down into their depths, and their surface was still as bog-water.

A lion is a mammal like us; an octopus is put together completely differently, with three hearts, a brain that wraps around its throat, and a covering of slime instead of hair. Even their blood is a different color from ours; it’s blue, because copper, not iron, carries its oxygen.

Kell tipped his head so that his copper hair tumbled out of his eyes, revealing not only the crisp blue of the left one but the solid black of the right. A black that ran edge to edge, filling white and iris both. There was nothing human about that eye. It was pure magic. The mark of the blood magician.

Her own hair was a glory of copper fire that morning, shining like a whisky still, long and loose in gentle flames down her back.

Redhead All over the house Strands of copper hair Like filaments from a cobweb Collect. If you and I Were ever to part— For months, perhaps years, I’d be combing out, Brushing or picking up Strands of significance, Traces of you In my life

The hair of his face, on the contrary, carroty and flaming, resembled a growth of copper wire clipped short to the line of the lip; while, no matter how close he shaved, fiery metallic gleams passed, when he moved his head, over the surface of his cheeks.

She was one of those golden mulatas that French-speaking Caribbeans call chabines, that my boys call chicas de oro; she had snarled, apocalyptic hair, copper eyes, and was one whiteskinned relative away from jaba.

Vida Winter's appearance was not calculated for concealment. She was an ancient queen, sorceress or goddess. Her stiff figure rose regally out of a profusion of fat purple and red cushions. Draped around her shoulders, the folds of the turquoise-and-green cloth that had cloaked her body did not soften the rigidity of her frame. Her bright copper hair had been arranged into an elaborate confection of twists, curls and coils. Her face, as intricately lined as a map, was powdered white and finished with bold scarlet lipstick. In her lap, her hands were a cluster of rubies, emeralds and white, bony knuckles; only her nails, unvarnished, cut short and square like my own, struck an incongruous tone.

For the record, I tried to stop this," I said grimly. Then I turned my attention back to Ian. The afternoon sun gave his copper-hued hair golden highlights and he made sure that the hard lines of his chest and abdomen were on full display as his pace kept his shirt billowing behind him. Grudgingly, I had to admit that several heads turned, and more than a few cars slowed down as female drivers gave him a second, third and fourth look. Ian responded by flashing them a dazzling smile, making him appear almost angelic to anyone who didn't know that he was a conscienceless slut.

Then I smiled at her, right before I grbbed a handful of copper hair and yanked her out of the chair. Screw being a better person.

His copper hair curled at the edges, and his smile could light a thousand cities.

She looked like a painted icon of a Saint, her hair a burnished copper halo. •chapter 20, page 320

When the Devil was a woman, When Lilith wound Her ebony hair in heavy braids, And framed Her pale features all 'round With Botticelli's tangled thoughts, When she, smiling softly, Ringed all her slim fingers In golden bands with brilliant stones, When she leafed through Villiers And loved Huysmans, When she fathomed Maeterlinck's silence And bathed her Soul In Gabriel d'Annunzio's colors, She even laughed And as she laughed, The little princess of serpents sprang Out of her mouth. Then the most beautiful of she-devils Sought after the serpent, She seized the Queen of Serpents With her ringed finger, So that she wound and hissed Hissed, hissed And spit venom. In a heavy copper vase; Damp earth, Black damp earth She scattered upon it. Lightly her great hands caressed This heavy copper vase All around, Her pale lips lightly sang Her ancient curse. Like a children's rhyme her curses chimed, Soft and languid Languid as the kisses, That the damp earth drank From her mouth, But life arose in the vase, And tempted by her languid kisses, And tempted by those sweet tones, From the black earth slowly there crept, Orchids - When the most beloved Adorns her pale features before the mirror All 'round with Botticelli's adders, There creep sideways from the copper vase, Orchids- Devil's blossoms which the ancient earth, Wed by Lilith's curse To serpent's venom, has borne to the light Orchids- The Devil's blossoms- "The Diary Of An Orange Tree

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.

This week in live current events: your eyes. All power can be dangerous: Direct or alternating, you, socket to me. Plugged in and the grid is humming, this electricity, molecule-deep desire: particular friction, a charge strong enough to stop a heart or start it again; volt, re-volt-- I shudder, I stutter, I start to life. I've got my ion you, copper-top, so watch how you conduct yourself. Here's today's newsflash: a battery of rolling blackouts in California, sudden, like lightning kisses: sudden, whitehot darkness and you're here, fumbling for that small switch with an urgent surge strong enough to kill lesser machines. Static makes hair raise, makes things cling, makes things rise like a gathering storm charging outside our darkened house and here I am: tempest, pouring out mouthfulls of tsunami on the ground, I've got that rain-soaked kite, that drenched key. You know what it's for, circuit-breaker, you know how to kiss until it's hertz.

Men came in and dragged us apart. It took us five minutes to bring Nora to. She sat up holding her cheek and looked around the room until she saw Morelli, nippers on one wrist, standing between two detectives. Morelli's face was a mess: the coppers had worked him over a little just for the fun of it. Nora glared at me. "You damned fool," she said, "you didn't have to knock me cold. I knew you'd take him, but I wanted to see it." One of the coppers laughed. "Jesus," he said admiringly, "there's a woman with hair on her chest.

If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn red or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Sander suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant. She is always carrying bags of clothes, bouquets of roses, take-out Chinese containers, or bagels. Museum tags fill her pockets and purses, along with perfume samples and invitations to art gallery openings. When she is walking to work, to ward off bums or psychos, her face resembles the Statue of Liberty, but at home in her candlelit, dove-colored apartment, the stony look fades away and she smiles like the sterling roses she has brought for herself to make up for the fact that she is single and her feet are sore.

You listen to me, and listen good!" she shouted, shocking me. "I am not evil because I have a thousand years of demon smut on my soul!" she exclaimed, the tips of her hair trembling and her face flushed. "Every time you disturb reality, nature has to balance it out. The black on your soul isn't evil, it's a promise to make up for what you have done. It's a mark, not a death sentence. And you can get rid of it given time." "Ceri, I'm sorry," I fumbled, but she wasn't listening. "You're an ignorant, foolish, stupid witch," she berated, and I cringed, my grip tightening on the copper spell pot and feeling the anger from her like a whip. "Are you saying because I carry the stink of demon magic, that I'm a bad person?" "No..." I wedged in. "That God will show no pity?" she said, green eyes flashing. "That because I made one mistake in fear that led to a thousand more that I will burn in hell?" "No. Ceri -" I took a step forward. "My soul is black," she said, her fear showing in her suddenly pale cheeks. "I'll never be rid of it all before I die, but it won't be because I'm a bad person but because I was a frightened one.

Pleasure eased the edges of Tiern-Cope's face, and with his mouth curved in a smile he resembled his brother more than ever. But the eyes gave him away. They were cold, a lifeless, icy blue. He grasped the woman's hips, and this woman who had Olivia's copper hair and even her features, cried out in a low, guttural moan of pleasure incapable of containment. "I am coming," he said. He opened his eyes again, looking at her, and she wanted to weep from the heartbreak. His hips came up, and he gasped and said, "My heart. My love. I'm coming." She slid away, down and away, and into the safety of Sebastian's embrace. His arms enfolded her, warm and tight. Hurry, she thought.

It was hard not to watch Arthie Casimir. The way she worked and schemed, at times as still as stone, other times as restless as a bee. For the most part, Arthie obscured her femininity. She was, after all, a girl in a man’s world, but it snuck through every once in a while. When she turned a certain way. When she lit up at Jin’s words or countered Matteo’s provocations or slid a glance at Laith. When the waves of her hair caught the light, illuminating the copper of her skin and making her gaze come alive with mischief.

His warm fingers slid along my cheek, then wrapped into my hair. He leaned down to rest his forehead against mine and closed his eyes. “The ribbon. I lied.” “What? We aren't engaged?” I asked, smiling shakily, curling my fingers into his shirt. “I have to show up to family dinners as your weird second cousin?” He opened his eyes and looked into mine. “It doesn't mean family. Not like that. Not to me.” And his emotional connection opened cleanly, without the muddle he usually hid his true feelings within. And it was love, clear and without artifice, shining there. I stared at him, breath caught in my chest. “You—” His emotions were wrapping around me, free and clear and relieved. Like honey and copper—sweet, tangy, and charged—gentle, consuming, warm, passionate, and resolute. “No tricks. No games. No expectations. No lies—not to you, not ever again.” Stunned, I watched him pull away. He looked at peace for the first time in weeks. Months. Then he looked down at our connection threads and I wondered what on earth he’d see. He looked up, and a smile, brilliant and all-consuming split his face. He backed up slowly. “Interesting. See you soon, darling.” He winked, turned, and flipped over the edge of the seal and through the vortex.

Tal trailed his fingertips over Athlen’s cheek. Athlen didn’t flinch away this time. Instead he nuzzled into the touch, eyes remaining closed, but the wrinkles of pain around his eyes eased. Tal leaned in and kissed Athlen’s jaw, then the corner of his slight smile, then he pressed his open mouth to Athlen’s parted lips. Athlen sighed into it, melting into the kiss, mouth open and pliant, head tipped back as Tal cradled it, his fingers running through the thigh copper hair. Tal pressed a little harder, a little more urgent, a fierce want brewing in his veins.

What Jessica said—hair much shorter, wearing a darker mouth of different outline, harder lipstick, her typewriter banking in a phalanx of letters between them—was: "We're going to be married. We're trying very hard to have a baby." All at once there is nothing but his asshole between Gravity and Roger. "I don't care. Have his baby. I'll love you both—just come with me Jess, please... I need you...." She flips a red lever on her intercom. Far away a buzzer goes off. "Security." Her voice is perfectly hard, the word still clap-echoing in the air as in through the screen door of the Quonset office wth a smell of tide flats come the coppers, looking grim. Security. Her magic word, her spell against demons.

Touching the copper of the ankh reminded me of another necklace, a necklace long since lost under the dust of time. That necklace had been simpler: only a string of beads etched with tiny ankhs. But my husband had brought it to me the morning of our wedding, sneaking up to our house just after dawn in a gesture uncharacteristically bold for him. I had chastised him for the indiscretion. "What are you doing? You're going to see me this afternoon... and then every day after that!" "I had to give you these before the wedding." He held up the string of beads. "They were my mother's. I want you to have them, to wear them today.” He leaned forward, placing the beads around my neck. As his fingers brushed my skin, I felt something warm and tingly run through my body. At the tender age of fifteen, I hadn't exactly understood such sensations, though I was eager to explore them. My wiser self today recognized them as the early stirrings of lust, and . . . well, there had been something else there too. Something else that I still didn't quite comprehend. An electric connection, a feeling that we were bound into something bigger than ourselves. That our being together was inevitable. "There," he'd said, once the beads were secure and my hair brushed back into place. "Perfect.” He said nothing else after that. He didn't need to. His eyes told me all I needed to know, and I shivered. Until Kyriakos, no man had ever given me a second glance. I was Marthanes' too-tall daughter after all, the one with the sharp tongue who didn't think before speaking. (Shape-shifting would eventually take care of one of those problems but not the other.) But Kyriakos had always listened to me and watched me like I was someone more, someone tempting and desirable, like the beautiful priestesses of Aphrodite who still carried on their rituals away from the Christian priests. I wanted him to touch me then, not realizing just how much until I caught his hand suddenly and unexpectedly. Taking it, I placed it around my waist and pulled him to me. His eyes widened in surprise, but he didn't pull back. We were almost the same height, making it easy for his mouth to seek mine out in a crushing kiss. I leaned against the warm stone wall behind me so that I was pressed between it and him. I could feel every part of his body against mine, but we still weren't close enough. Not nearly enough. Our kissing grew more ardent, as though our lips alone might close whatever aching distance lay between us. I moved his hand again, this time to push up my skirt along the side of one leg. His hand stroked the smooth flesh there and, without further urging, slid over to my inner thigh. I arched my lower body toward his, nearly writhing against him now, needing him to touch me everywhere. "Letha? Where are you at?” My sister's voice carried over the wind; she wasn't nearby but was close enough to be here soon. Kyriakos and I broke apart, both gasping, pulses racing. He was looking at me like he'd never seen me before. Heat burned in his gaze. "Have you ever been with anyone before?" he asked wonderingly. I shook my head. "How did you ... I never imagined you doing that...” "I learn fast.” He grinned and pressed my hand to his lips. "Tonight," he breathed. "Tonight we ...” "Tonight," I agreed. He backed away then, eyes still smoldering. "I love you. You are my life.” "I love you too." I smiled and watched him go.

She was met with startled copper-brown eyes and black hair that hung past his ears and lips that every girl in the country had admired a thousand times.

[…] her head, covered by the dark bristle of her returning hair, looked like a dough ball rolled in iron filings.

Katrina stepped out from behind Horst and tossed back her auburn hair like a spray of molten copper.

I want to walk to a café after class and see you sitting there with your copper-tinted hair and dark blue eyes buried in a book...I wonder who's sitting in our usual places there now.

I left Kiki in the yard, and fetched my pick and brushes. She lifted her leg and I dislodged the stone then pulled the shedding blade through her copper hair. After a while, I removed my cloak. When I finished, clumps of horse hair clung to my sweaty clothes. You’re beautiful and I need a bath, I said to her. Pasture or stall? Stall. Nap time. And what about your snooze before I groomed you? Pre nap.

The third house had a man living alone. He told her three times over supper that his wife had died and how lonely it was for him, and tried twice to touch her hair. His lower lip trembled when he talked. Gerta offered to sweep the porch, left a copper on the step to pay for her supper, and slipped away. I may have spent the last seven months under a spell, she thought grimly, but I’m not a total fool.  

Mira Levenson. Aged twelve. Looks, long dark shiny hair, dark brown eyes (almost black), brown skin. Beautiful. Favorite colour, copper orange, I think. Personality, clever, bright, serious, shy, funny without realizing it, holds back her thoughts, mystery girl, arty. What I've noticed: she's stronger than she thinks she is; she doesn't speak much ay school. What I know: she's got a loud laugh (when she lets it out). Her best friend is Millie Lockhart. She doesn't need Millie as much as she thinks she does. Her grandmother is dying and she loves her. She started talking in Pat Print's class. I know she doesn't know how much I think of her, how much I miss her if she's not around. What I think she thinks about me is that I'm a bit of a joker, but I'm deadly serious. Deer...apple...green...sea... See you on Friday! Love Jidé

Bronze and copper to course through your veins Hair of coal, black as raven Liquid fossils flowing longer than the Nile Rubbies and sapphires inside your chambers And diamonds for pupils in almond set eyes Because I love you

The surprise lay in the third niche of the high altar, on the side where the Gospels were kept. The stone shattered at the first blow of the pickax, and a stream of living hair the intense color of copper spilled out of the crypt.

turquoise-and-green cloth that cloaked her body did not soften the rigidity of her frame. Her bright copper hair had been arranged into an elaborate confection of twists, curls and coils. Her face, as intricately lined as a map, was powdered white and finished with bold scarlet lipstick. In her lap, her hands were a cluster of rubies, emeralds and white, bony knuckles; only her nails, unvarnished, cut short and square like my own, struck an incongruous note.

Which was why he reflexively turned when a flash of iridescence caught his eye. His first thought was: Morpho rhetenor Helena. The extraordinary tropical butterfly with wings of shifting colors: blues, lavenders, greens. It proved to be a woman’s skirt. The color was blue, but by the light of the legion of overhead candles, he saw purples and even greens shivering in its weave. A bracelet of pale stones winked around one wrist, a circlet banded her dark head. The chandelier struck little beams from that, too. She’s altogether too shiny for a woman, he decided, and began to turn away. Which was when she tipped her face up into the light. Everything stopped. The beat of his heart, the pump of his lungs, the march of time. Seconds later, thankfully, it all resumed. Much more violently than previously. And then absurd notions roman-candled in his mind. His palms ached to cradle her face—it was a kitten’s face, broad and fair at the brow, stubborn at the chin. She had kitten’s eyes, too: large and a bit tilted and surely they weren’t actually the azure of calm southern seas? Surely he, Miles Redmond, hadn’t entertained such a florid thought? Her eyebrows were wicked: fine, slanted, very dark. Her hair was probably brown, but it was as though he’d never learned the word “brown.” Burnished. Silk. Copper. Azure. Delicate. Angel. Hallelujah. Suddenly these were the only words he knew.

As I was a stranger in Olondria, I knew nothing of the splendour of its coasts, nor of Bain, the Harbour City, whose lights and colours spill into the ocean like a cataract of roses. I did not know the vastness of the spice markets of Bain, where the merchants are delirious with scents, I had never seen the morning mists adrift above the surface of the green Illoun, of which the poets sing; I had never seen a woman with gems in her hair, nor observed the copper glinting of the domes, nor stood upon the melancholy beaches of the south while the wind brought in the sadness from the sea. Deep within the Fayaleith, the Country of the Wines, the clarity of light can stop the heart: it is the light the local people call 'the breath of angels'...

A sloping, earthy passage inside the barrel travels upwards a little way until a cosy, round, low-ceilinged room is revealed, reminiscent of a badger’s set. The room is decorated in the cheerful, bee-like colours of yellow and black, emphasised by the use of highly polished, honey-coloured wood for the tables and the round doors that lead to the boys’ and girls’ dormitories (furnished with comfortable wooden bedsteads, all covered in patchwork quilts). A colourful profusion of plants and flowers seem to relish the atmosphere of the Hufflepuff common room: various cacti stand on wooden circular shelves (curved to fit the walls), many of them waving and dancing at passers-by, while copper-bottomed plant holders dangling amid the ceiling cause tendrils of ferns and ivies to brush your hair as you pass under them. A portrait over the wooden mantelpiece (carved all over with decorative dancing badgers) shows Helga Hufflepuff, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School, toasting her students with a tiny, two-handled golden cup.

He intends to publish his memoirs about his years as Chief Resident in Japan, but somehow life always conspires to rob him of the time. Jacob turns fifty. He is elected on to the council of Middelburg. Jacob turns sixty, and his memoirs are still unwritten. His copper hair loses is burnish, his face sags and his hairline retreats until it resembles an elderly samurai’s shaven pate. A rising artist who paints his portrait wonders at his air of melancholic distance, but exorcises the ghost of absence from the finished painting.

To Pandora's surprise, the duchess was waiting for them in the hall. She glowed like a flame in the cool white surroundings, with her gold-freckled complexion and a wealth of rose-copper hair that had been pinned up in a braided mass. Her voluptuous but tidy form was covered in a blue muslin dress, with a ribbon belt tied neatly at her trim waist. Everything about her was warm and approachable and soft. The duke went to his wife, his hand coming to rest at the small of her back. He seemed to luxuriate in her presence like a great cat.

You will leave your home: nothing will hold you. You will wear dresses of gold; skins of silver, copper and bronze. The sky above you will shift in meaning each time you think you understand. You will spend a lifetime chipping away layers of flesh. The shadow of your scales will always remain. You will be marked by sulphur and salt. You will bathe endlessly in clear streams and fail to rid yourself of that scent. Your feet will never be your own. Stone will be your path. Storms will follow in your wake, destroying all those who take you in. You will desert your children kill your lovers and devour their flesh. You will love no one but the wind and ache of your bones. Neither will love you in return. With age, your hair will grow matted and dull, your skin will gape and hang in long folds, your eyes will cease to shine. But nothing will be enough. The sea will never take you back.

He wanted to wrap his arms around her and kiss away her uncertainty. But if he did that she would bolt. So he brushed stray hairs that had fallen out of her ponytail off her face instead. Ignored how soft the strands felt against his fingers. Pretended his pulse wasn't stampeding like a herd of bison on the plain.

McGrath smoothed his hair with the flat of his hand. He was silently gazing along the copper colored pathway as though it led to a mystical place where men found answers just lying, uncovered on the warm, soft earth. A place where men knew everything and the blackness of infinity was just a ghost story told to scare children.

The Tender Place Your temples , where the hair crowded in , Were the tender place. Once to check I dropped a file across the electrodes of a twelve-volt battery -- it exploded Like a grenade. Somebody wired you up. Somebody pushed the lever. They crashed The thunderbolt into your skull. In their bleached coats, with blenched faces, They hovered again To see how you were, in your straps. Whether your teeth were still whole . The hand on the calibrated lever Again feeling nothing Except feeling nothing pushed to feel Some squirm of sensation . Terror Was the cloud of you Waiting for these lightnings. I saw An oak limb sheared at a bang. You your Daddy's leg . How many seizures Did you suffer this god to grab you By the roots of the hair? The reports Escaped back into clouds. What went up Vaporized? Where lightning rods wept copper And the nerve· threw off its skin Like a burning child Scampering out of the bomb-flash. They dropped you A rigid bent bit of wire Across the Boston City grid. The lights In the Senate House dipped As your voice dived inwards Right through the bolt-hole basement. Came up, years later, Over-exposed, like an X-ray -- Brain-map still dark-patched With the scorched-earth scars Of your retreat . And your words , Faces reversed from the light , Holding in their entrails.

Baldwin Montclair, as he was known in the financial markets, strode down the hall of the ground floor. His copper-colored hair gleamed in the electric light, and his muscles twitched with the quick reflexes of a born athlete. Trained to wield a sword from childhood, he had been imposing before becoming a vampire, and after his rebirth few dared to cross him.

And when spring comes to the City people notice one another in the road; notice the strangers with whom they share aisles and tables and the space where intimate garments are laundered. going in and out, in and out the same door, they handle the handle; on trolleys and park benches they settle thighs on a seat in which hundreds have done it too. Copper coins dropped in the palm have been swallowed by children and tested by gypsies, but it’s still money and people smile at that. It’s the time of year when the City urges contradiction most, encouraging you to buy street food when you have no appetite at all; giving you a taste for a single room occupied by you alone as well as a craving to share it with someone you passed in the street. Really there is no contradiction—rather it’s a condition; the range of what an artful City can do. What can beat bricks warming up to the sun? The return of awnings. The removal of blankets from horses’ backs. Tar softens under the heel and the darkness under bridges changes from gloom to cooling shade. After a light rain, when the leaves have come, tree limbs are like wet fingers playing in woolly green hair. Motor cars become black jet boxes gliding behind hoodlights weakened by mist. On sidewalks turned to satin figures move shoulder first, the crowns of their heads angled shields against the light buckshot that the raindrops are. The faces of children glimpsed at windows appear to be crying, but it is the glass pane dripping that makes it seem so.

When you are better rested, I’ll expect you to help with the chores.” Her head whipped around so quickly that hair like copper silk lashed his arm. “What makes you think I will be here long enough for that?” “I am paying you the compliment of assuming you are intelligent.” Before she could conceal her wary surprise, he added, “Or if not, that you have at least enough common sense to realize that you would not get very far.” Ominously, he added, “If I have to go after you again, I will put aside any concern I have about why you are concealing your identity and take you straight to the authorities. Is that clear?” She paled slightly, making him twinge with guilt, but he ignored that. The threat was as much for her own good as for his peace of mind. When she murmured under her breath, he bent closer. “What was that?” Their eyes were level. Hers blazed. “I said,” she repeated, enunciating very clearly, “You’ll have to catch me first.

If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model and the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister, then New York is their cousin. Her hair is dyed autumn or aubergine or Egyptian henna, depending on her mood. Her skin is pale as frost and she wears beautiful Jil Sander suits and Prada pumps on which she walks faster than a speeding taxi (when it is caught in rush hour, that is). Her lips are some unlikely shade of copper or violet, courtesy of her local MAC drag queen makeup consultant.

The first person whom she introduced him to, at that island of fauteuils and androids, now getting up from around a low table with a copper ashbowl for hub, was the promised belle-sœur, a short plumpish lady in governess gray, very oval-faced, with bobbed auburn hair, a sallowish complexion, smoke-blue unsmiling eyes, and a fleshy little excrescence, resembling a ripe maize kernel, at the side of one nostril, added to its hypercritical curve by an afterthought of nature as not seldom happens when a Russian’s face is mass-produced.

Laughter greeted Clint’s ears at the open doorway—rich, soft laughter, like the creamy center of a melted caramel. The kind of laughter that made you want to wrap yourself up in it and stay a while. Clint stopped in the doorway, spellbound. The boys sat on different sides of an antique four-poster bed, sunk knee-deep in patchwork quilts, sheets and what he would swear was an old fashioned feather-tick mattress. But it was the vision between the little boys that held Clint’s attention. Emma Lewis had the same rich, dark, burnt-copper hair as her sons, and the burns-if-she’s-out-in-the-sun-longer-than-one-hour skin of most redheads. Beneath the wrinkled T-shirt and jeans she’d fallen asleep in, he could tell she was neither too thin nor too heavy, just the luscious type of figure Clint decided long ago he liked on women. She also possessed that wonderful laughter that had stirred more than his heart to life. But when she raised the deepest cornflower-blue eyes to him, Clint nearly moaned. If he let himself, he could get lost in that open, clear gaze forever. “Can I help you?” The remnants of sleep in her voice brought on visions of hearing her voice after a night of endless passion.

I've come for Emma," Lachlain bellowed, standing in the shadow of Emma's home, Val Hall, which looked to be the face of hell. Though the fog was cloying, lightning fired all around, sometimes corralled by the many copper rods planted all along the roof and the grounds, sometimes by the scorched oaks crowding the yard. Annika stepped out onto the porch, looking otherworldly in her rage, her eyes glittering green, then silver, and back. Wraiths flew about her hair, cackling. At that moment, he couldn't decide whether this bayou shrine to insanity or Helvita was worse. Nïx waved happily from a window.

Bill Muller was a tall grey-haired man with an apparently high level of vitality despite incessant cigarette smoking. Holding everyone's attention by his forceful personality, he described his invention as a way to make a heavy wheel carry strong magnets past electricity-inducing copper coils without needing to fight the electrical drag force which usually opposes rotation and limits how efficient a generator can be. His wheel didn't have any "stuck" position; it moved freely. "We have a magnetically balanced flywheel." In his basement workshop, Bill showed us the beginnings of a permanent-magnet generator.

After twenty minutes of hard swimming, his muscles were burning. He hoisted himself out of the water, breathing heavily, and went to fetch a towel from a stack on a table. As he dried himself vigorously, he caught a glimpse of someone standing by the other end of the swimming bath. He went very still at the sight of rose-copper hair... pink cheeks and round blue eyes... and lavish curves contained in a fashionable striped wool dress. Every filament of his nervous system sparked with an infusion of joy. "Evie?" he asked huskily, afraid he was imagining her. She glanced at the water, remarking innocently, "You were swimming so hard, I thought there might be a sh-shark." It took all Sebastian's concentration to reply casually, "You know better than that, pet." He wrapped the towel around his waist and tucked in the overlapping edge to fasten it. "I am the shark." He went to his wife in no apparent hurry, but as he drew closer his stride quickened, and he snatched her up with an ardor that nearly lifted her feet from the floor. She gasped and clutched his shoulders, and lifted her smiling mouth to his. Glorying in the taste and feel of her, Sebastian kissed her thoroughly, eventually finishing with a soft, provocative bite at her lower lip.

1495: Salamanca The First Word from America Elio Antonio de Nebrija, language scholar, publishes here his “Spanish-Latin Vocabulary.” The dictionary includes the first Americanism of the Castilian language: Canoa: Boat made from a single timber. The new word comes from the Antilles. These boats without sails, made of the trunk of a ceiba tree, welcomed Christopher Columbus. Out from the islands, paddling canoes, came the men with long black hair and bodies tattooed with vermilion symbols. They approached the caravels, offered fresh water, and exchanged gold for the kind of little tin bells that sell for a copper in Castile. (52

Now, beauty is not a size or a shape, an outfit or a color. Real beauty is something that shines. The rest is only glamour. This girl was both dark and luminous, like a copper beech in the sun. Luminous was her brown skin, and her eyes were every shade of leaf, from guinea gold to forest-floor black. She was wearing a yellow dress. Her hair was a crown of autumn fire. And yes, she was very beautiful. But her beauty was none of these things. And although by the time she had left, Tom could barely remember her clothes, or the shape of her face, or the color of her eyes, or the exact shade of her skin, he knew he would always remember that shine.

Sebastian nodded his way. “This is Hadrian … er, Hadrian…” He snapped his fingers and looked for help. “Blackwater.” He extended his hand and shook with each. “And where do you hail from, Hadrian?” Eugene asked. “Nowhere really.” “A man with no home?” Samuel’s voice was nasal and a bit suspicious. Hadrian imagined him the type of man to count money handed him by a priest. “What do you mean?” Eugene asked. “He came off the boat from Calis. We talked about it just last night.” “Don’t be a fool, Eugene,” Sebastian said. “Do you think Calians have sandy hair and blue eyes? Calians are swarthy brutes and clever beyond measure. Never trust one, any of you.” “What were you doing in Calis, then?” Eugene’s tone was inquisitorial and spiteful, as if Hadrian had been the one to declare him foolish. “Working.” “Making his fortune, I suspect,” Sebastian said, motioning toward Hadrian. “The man wears a heavy purse. You should be half as successful, Eugene.” “All Calian copper dins, I’ll wager.” Eugene sustained his bitter tone. “If not, he’d have a fine wool robe like us.” “He wears a fine steel sword, two of them in fact. So you might consider your words more carefully,” Sebastian said. “Three,” Samuel added. “He keeps another in his cabin. A big one.” “There you have it, Eugene. The man spends all his coin on steel, but by all means go right on insulting him. I’m certain Samuel and I can manage just fine without you.

And barbarians were inventors not only of philosophy, but almost of every art. The Egyptians were the first to introduce astrology among men. Similarly also the Chaldeans. The Egyptians first showed how to burn lamps, and divided the year into twelve months, prohibited intercourse with women in the temples, and enacted that no one should enter the temples from a woman without bathing. Again, they were the inventors of geometry. There are some who say that the Carians invented prognostication by the stars. The Phrygians were the first who attended to the flight of birds. And the Tuscans, neighbours of Italy, were adepts at the art of the Haruspex. The Isaurians and the Arabians invented augury, as the Telmesians divination by dreams. The Etruscans invented the trumpet, and the Phrygians the flute. For Olympus and Marsyas were Phrygians. And Cadmus, the inventor of letters among the Greeks, as Euphorus says, was a Phoenician; whence also Herodotus writes that they were called Phoenician letters. And they say that the Phoenicians and the Syrians first invented letters; and that Apis, an aboriginal inhabitant of Egypt, invented the healing art before Io came into Egypt. But afterwards they say that Asclepius improved the art. Atlas the Libyan was the first who built a ship and navigated the sea. Kelmis and Damnaneus, Idaean Dactyli, first discovered iron in Cyprus. Another Idaean discovered the tempering of brass; according to Hesiod, a Scythian. The Thracians first invented what is called a scimitar (arph), -- it is a curved sword, -- and were the first to use shields on horseback. Similarly also the Illyrians invented the shield (pelth). Besides, they say that the Tuscans invented the art of moulding clay; and that Itanus (he was a Samnite) first fashioned the oblong shield (qureos). Cadmus the Phoenician invented stonecutting, and discovered the gold mines on the Pangaean mountain. Further, another nation, the Cappadocians, first invented the instrument called the nabla, and the Assyrians in the same way the dichord. The Carthaginians were the first that constructed a triterme; and it was built by Bosporus, an aboriginal. Medea, the daughter of Æetas, a Colchian, first invented the dyeing of hair. Besides, the Noropes (they are a Paeonian race, and are now called the Norici) worked copper, and were the first that purified iron. Amycus the king of the Bebryci was the first inventor of boxing-gloves. In music, Olympus the Mysian practised the Lydian harmony; and the people called Troglodytes invented the sambuca, a musical instrument. It is said that the crooked pipe was invented by Satyrus the Phrygian; likewise also diatonic harmony by Hyagnis, a Phrygian too; and notes by Olympus, a Phrygian; as also the Phrygian harmony, and the half-Phrygian and the half-Lydian, by Marsyas, who belonged to the same region as those mentioned above. And the Doric was invented by Thamyris the Thracian. We have heard that the Persians were the first who fashioned the chariot, and bed, and footstool; and the Sidonians the first to construct a trireme. The Sicilians, close to Italy, were the first inventors of the phorminx, which is not much inferior to the lyre. And they invented castanets. In the time of Semiramis queen of the Assyrians, they relate that linen garments were invented. And Hellanicus says that Atossa queen of the Persians was the first who composed a letter. These things are reported by Seame of Mitylene, Theophrastus of Ephesus, Cydippus of Mantinea also Antiphanes, Aristodemus, and Aristotle and besides these, Philostephanus, and also Strato the Peripatetic, in his books Concerning Inventions. I have added a few details from them, in order to confirm the inventive and practically useful genius of the barbarians, by whom the Greeks profited in their studies. And if any one objects to the barbarous language, Anacharsis says, "All the Greeks speak Scythian to me." [...]

They [mountains] are portions of the heart of the earth that have escaped from the dungeon down below, and rushed up and out. For the heart of the earth is a great wallowing mass, not of blood, as in the hearts of men and animals, but of glowing hot melted metals and stones. And as our hearts keep us alive, so that great lump of heat keeps the earth alive: it is a huge power of buried sunlight—that is what it is. Now think: out of that caldron, where all the bubbles would be as big as the Alps if it could get room for its boiling, certain bubbles have bubbled out and escaped—up and away, and there they stand in the cool, cold sky—mountains. Think of the change, and you will no more wonder that there should be something awful about the very look of a mountain: from the darkness—for where the light has nothing to shine upon, it is much the same as darkness—from the heat, from the endless tumult of boiling unrest—up, with a sudden heavenward shoot, into the wind, and the cold, and the starshine, and a cloak of snow that lies like ermine above the blue-green mail of the glaciers; and the great sun, their grandfather, up there in the sky; and their little old cold aunt, the moon, that comes wandering about the house at night; and everlasting stillness, except for the wind that turns the rocks and caverns into a roaring organ for the young archangels that are studying how to let out the pent-up praises of their hearts, and the molten music of the streams, rushing ever from the bosoms of the glaciers fresh-born. Think too of the change in their own substance—no longer molten and soft, heaving and glowing, but hard and shining and cold. Think of the creatures scampering over and burrowing in it, and the birds building their nests upon it, and the trees growing out of its sides, like hair to clothe it, and the lovely grass in the valleys, and the gracious flowers even at the very edge of its armour of ice, like the rich embroidery of the garment below, and the rivers galloping down the valleys in a tumult of white and green! And along with all these, think of the terrible precipices down which the traveller may fall and be lost, and the frightful gulfs of blue air cracked in the glaciers, and the dark profound lakes, covered like little arctic oceans with floating lumps of ice. All this outside the mountain! But the inside, who shall tell what lies there? Caverns of awfullest solitude, their walls miles thick, sparkling with ores of gold or silver, copper or iron, tin or mercury, studded perhaps with precious stones—perhaps a brook, with eyeless fish in it, running, running ceaseless, cold and babbling, through banks crusted with carbuncles and golden topazes, or over a gravel of which some of the stones are rubies and emeralds, perhaps diamonds and sapphires—who can tell?—and whoever can't tell is free to think—all waiting to flash, waiting for millions of ages—ever since the earth flew off from the sun, a great blot of fire, and began to cool. Then there are caverns full of water, numbing cold, fiercely hot—hotter than any boiling water. From some of these the water cannot get out, and from others it runs in channels as the blood in the body: little veins bring it down from the ice above into the great caverns of the mountain's heart, whence the arteries let it out again, gushing in pipes and clefts and ducts of all shapes and kinds, through and through its bulk, until it springs newborn to the light, and rushes down the mountain side in torrents, and down the valleys in rivers—down, down, rejoicing, to the mighty lungs of the world, that is the sea, where it is tossed in storms and cyclones, heaved up in billows, twisted in waterspouts, dashed to mist upon rocks, beaten by millions of tails, and breathed by millions of gills, whence at last, melted into vapour by the sun, it is lifted up pure into the air, and borne by the servant winds back to the mountain tops and the snow, the solid ice, and the molten stream.

The hill between the manor and forest displayed layers of Lady Croft's prized gardens. Paved pathways wove through a formal Italian garden, rose garden, water garden, lily pond, and a tulip garden built around Roman ruins. Maggie stood beside a statue of the goddess Hemera and a row of yew bushes that had been neatly pruned into a wall to form the perimeter of the Croft family maze. Walter sat nearby on a picnic blanket as she scanned the hillside above the maze to see if she could find Libby's copper-streaked hair among the immaculate gardens and all the people dressed in their finest for this entree into Ladenbrooke's gardens. The Croft family opened the front gate to the public once each summer. Hundreds of people from around the Cotswolds came to peruse Lady Croft's magnificent displays- the golden heather, purple dahlias, peach lilies floating on the pond.

Taunja Bennett kissed her mother good-bye and said she was off to meet a boyfriend. She disappeared from sight in the direction of a bus stop, her Walkman plugged into her ears. Lately the twenty-three-year-old high school dropout had been listening over and over to “Back to Life” by Soul II Soul. She carried a small black purse. Taunja was mildly retarded from oxygen deprivation at birth. She’d been a difficult child. In a cooking class at Cleveland High School, she assaulted a classmate in a quarrel over a piece of cake. Addicted to alcohol and drugs, she was committed to a state hospital for six months. At twenty-one, she frequented northeast Portland bars like the Woodshed, the Copper Penny and Thatcher’s. She hustled drinks, shot pool and got into trouble with men. She was petite and pretty—five-five, with glistening dark brown hair, liquid brown eyes, a trim figure,

She found another intriguing object, and she held it up to inspect it. A button. Her brow creased as she stared at the front of the button, which was engraved with a pattern of a windmill. The back of it contained a tiny lock of black hair behind a thin plate of glass, held in place with a copper rim. Swift blanched and reached for it, but Daisy snatched it back, her fingers closing around the button. Daisy's pulse began to race. "I've seen this before," she said. "It was a part of a set. My mother had a waistcoat made for Father with five buttons. One was engraved with a windmill, another with a tree, another with a bridge... she took a lock of hair from each of her children and put it inside a button. I remember the way she took a little snip from my hair at the back where it wouldn't show." Still not looking at her, Swift reached for the discarded contents of his pocket and methodically replaced them. As the silence drew out, Daisy waited in vain for an explanation. Finally she reached out and took hold of his sleeve. His arm stilled, and he stared at her fingers on his coat fabric. "How did you get it?" she whispered. Swift waited so long that she thought he might answer. Finally he spoke with a quiet surliness that wrenched her heart. "Your father wore the waistcoat to the company offices. It was much admired. But later that day he was in a temper and in the process of throwing an ink bottle he spilled some on himself. The waistcoat was ruined. Rather than face your mother with the news he gave the garment to me, buttons and all, and told me to dispose of it." "But you kept one button." Her lungs expanded until her chest felt tight on the inside and her heartbeat was frantic. "The windmill. Which was mine. Have you... have you carried a lock of my hair all these years?

Now into the small ceramic pan I grate the block of couverture. Almost at once the scent rises, the dark and loamy scent of bitter chocolate from the block. At this concentration it is slow to melt; the chocolate is very low in fat, and I will have to add butter and cream to the mixture to bring it to truffle consistency. But now it smells of history; of the mountains and forests of South America' of felled wood and spilled sap and campfire smoke. It smells of incense and patchouli; of the black gold of the Maya and the red gold of the Aztec; of stone and dust and of a young girl with flowers in her hair and a cup of pulque in her hand. It is intoxicating; as it melts, the chocolate becomes glossy; steam rises from the copper pan, and the scent grows richer, blossoming into cinnamon and allspice and nutmeg; dark undertones of anise and espresso; brighter notes of vanilla and ginger. Now it is almost melted through. A gentle vapor rises from the pan. Now we have the true Theobroma, the elixir of the gods in volatile form, and in the steam I can almost see- A young girl dancing with the moon. A rabbit follows at her heels. Behind her stands a woman with her head in shadow, so that for a moment she seems to look three ways- But now the steam is getting too thick. The chocolate must be no warmer than forty-six degrees. Too hot, and the chocolate will scorch and streak. Too cool, and it will bloom white and dull. I know by the scent and the level of steam that we are close to the danger point. Take the copper off the heat and stand the ceramic in cold water until the temperature has dropped. Cooling, it acquires a floral scent; of violet and lavender papier poudré. It smells of my grandmother, if I'd had one, and of wedding dresses kept carefully boxed in the attic, and of bouquets under glass.

She sent Amelie to inform Maydrop that she donned an evening dress made of a heavy, supple olive green silk that gleamed under candlelight. It fell from the bodice, but rather than belling out, the silk was cut on the bias and hugged every curve of her body. The bodice was gathered under her breasts and trimmed with dark copper lace that glimmered with shiny black beads. and widened into short sleeves. Her hair was pulled straight back from her forehead without even a wisp floating at her ears, and she waved away the ruby necklace Amelie offered. She wanted no distraction from her face. She did, however, slide a sparkling ruby onto her right hand, a present she had given to herself when Ryburn Weavers made its first thousand guineas in profit. How better to remember that milestone than to wear a sizable percentage it on one's finger? Finally, Amelie drew out a small brush and skillfully applied a few strategic dabs of face paint. The last thing Theo wanted was to try to look conventionally feminine, but she'd discovered that a thin line of kohl made her eyes look deep and mysterious.

The man in front of me was different. His frame was that of a Caucasian Nordic, topping mine by nearly thirty centimeters, but the face was at odds. It began African, broad and deep ebony, but the color ended like a mask under the eyes, and the lower half was divided along the line of the nose, pale copper on the left, corpse white on the right. The nose was both fleshy and aquiline and mediated well between the top and bottom halves of the face, but the mouth was a mismatch of left and right sides that left the lips peculiarly twisted. Long straight black hair was combed manelike back from the forehead, shot through on one side with pure white. The hands, immobile on the metal table, were equipped with claws similar to the ones I’d seen on the giant Freak Fighter in Licktown, but the fingers were long and sensitive. He had breasts, impossibly full on a torso so overmuscled. The eyes, set in jet skin, were a startling pale green. Kadmin had freed himself from conventional perceptions of the physical. In an earlier age, he would have been a shaman; here, the centuries of technology had made him more. An electronic demon, a malignant spirit that dwelled in altered carbon and emerged only to possess flesh and wreak havoc.

But what he liked above all was to cycle in the dusk along a certain path skirting meadows. There, he would sit on a fence looking at the wispy salmon-pink clouds turning to a dull copper in the pale evening sky and think about things. What things? That cockney girl with her soft hair still in plaits whom he once followed across the common, and accosted and kissed, and never saw again? The form of a particular cloud? Some misty sunset beyond a Black Russian fir-wood (o, how much I would give for such a memory coming to him!)? The inner meaning of grass-blade and star? The unknown language of silence? The terrific weight of a dew-drop? The heartbreaking beauty of a pebble among millions and millions of pebbles, all making sense, but what sense? The old, old question of Who are you? To one’s own self grown strangely evasive in the gloaming, and to God’s world around to which one has never been really introduced. Or perhaps, we shall be nearer the truth in supposing that while Sebastian sat on that fence, his mind was a turmoil of words and fancies, incomplete fancies and insufficient words, but already he knew that this and only this was the reality of his life, and that his destiny lay beyond that ghostly battlefield which he would cross in due time.

What in the sodding Dark happened back there on Aarden? What did you find?" He stared at her hand for a long moment. His cheek muscle bunched rhythmically, a tell she had learned meant he was struggling over some internal debate. Sigel's Wives burned down from above; Sherp went on snoring away, and Scow appeared to be giving chase again. Mung, Voth and Rantham hadn't moved from where they lay in some time, either, and Biiko was at his post. This was about as alone as they could ever hope to be. She reached up with her other hand, feather-soft, touched his cheek, his chin. It was rough with stubble, the same fiery copper-and-chestnut as his hair. His jaw stopped twitching and he closed his eyes, but did not resist as she gently turned his head to face her. She could hear the subtle trembling in his breathing and leaned closer, licked her cracked lips. "Triistan, please...tell me what terrible secret you are guarding..." she whispered, barely a breath really, but his eyes snapped open as if she'd struck him. He looked so sad. "I'm sorry," he mumbled. Then he was standing, gently disengaging himself from her, and moving towards Biiko where he stood his watch on the other side of the launch. He paused a moment at the mainmast and she thought he might come back, but he only turned his head, speaking over his shoulder without looking at her. His voice was heavy with sorrow. "Please don't take my journal again." Without bothering to wait for a response, he slipped around the mainmast and left her by herself. Dreysha sat there brooding for a long time. She was angry with him for rejecting her, and with herself for mishandling both him and his Dark-damned journal. Most of all, though, she was angry with herself for what she had felt when he'd looked at her. After awhile Scow snorted himself awake. He groaned and stretched, then grumbled a greeting at her, getting barely a grunt in reply for his trouble. The Mattock stood and stretched some more, his massive frame providing some welcome shade, and she sensed him watching her, could imagine him glancing across the deck at Triistan. He knew his men almost as well as his ship, which is why he stood there silently for awhile. Thunder rumbled again, great boulders of sound rolling across the sea, and this time there could be no doubt it was closer. She rose and leaned over the rail. The southern horizon was lost in a dark shadow beneath towering columns of bruised, sullen clouds. She could smell the rain, though the air was as still as death. Beside her, Scow hawked and spat over the side. "Storm's comin' ". "Aye," she answered softly. "Been coming for some time now." - from the upcoming "RUINE" series.

A long time ago, I collected the flower petals stained with my first blood; I thought there was something significant about that, there was importance in all the little moments of experience, because when you live forever, the first times matter. The first time you bleed, first time you cry — I don’t remember that — first time you see your wings, because new things defile you, purity chips away. your purity. nestled flowers in your belly, waiting to be picked. do you want innocence back? small and young smiles that make your eyes squint and cheeks flare the feeling of your face dripping down onto the grass, the painted walls you tore down, the roads you chipped away, they’ll eat away at you, the lingering feelings of a warm hand on your waist, the taps of your feet as you dance, the beats of your timbrel.’ ‘and now you are like Gods, sparkling brilliant with jewelry that worships you, and you’re splitting in order to create.’ ‘The tosses of your wet hair, the rushes of chariots speeding past, the holy, holy, holy lord god of hosts, the sweetness of a strawberry, knocks against the window by your head, the little tunes of your pipes, the cuts sliced into your fingers by uptight cacti fruits, the brisk scent of a sea crashing into the rocks, the sweat of wrestling, onions, cumin, parsley in a metal jug, mud clinging to your skin, a friendly mouth on your cheeks and forehead, chimes, chirps of chatter in the bazaar, amen, amen, amen, the plump fish rushing to take the bread you toss, scraping of a carpenter, the hiss of chalk, the wisps of clouds cradling you as you nap, the splashes of water in a hot pool, the picnic in a meadow, the pounding of feet that are chasing you, the velvet of petals rustling you awake, a giant water lily beneath you, the innocent kiss, the sprawl of the universe reflected in your eyes for the first time, the bloody wings that shred out of your back, the apples in orchards, a basket of stained flowers, excited chants of a colosseum audience, the heat of spinning and bouncing to drums and claps, the love braided into your hair, the trickles of a piano, smell of myrrh, the scratches of a spoon in a cup, the coarseness of a carpet, the stringed instruments and trumpets, the serene smile of not knowing, the sleeping angel, the delight of a creator, the amusement of gossip and rumors, the rumbling laughter between shy singing, the tangling of legs, squash, celery, carrot, and chayote, the swirled face paint, the warmth of honey in your tea, the timid face in the mirror, mahogany beams, the embrace of a bed of flowers, the taste of a grape as its fed to you, the lip smacks of an angel as you feed him a raspberry, the first dizziness of alcohol, the cool water and scent of natron and the scratch of the rock you beat your dirty clothes against, the strain of your arms, the columns of an entrance, the high ceilings of a dark cathedral, the boiling surface of bubbling stew, the burn of stained-glass, the little joyous jump you do seeing bread rise, the silky taste of olive oil, the lap of an angel humming as he embroiders a little fox into his tunic, the softness of browned feathers lulling you to sleep, the weight of a dozen blankets and pillows on your small bed, the proud smile on the other side of a window in a newly-finished building, the myrtle trees only you two know about, the palm of god as he fashions you from threads of copper, his praises, his love, his kiss to your hair, your father.

Toward an Organic Philosophy SPRING, COAST RANGE The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless, The circle of white ash widens around it. I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller. Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw; The moon has come before them, the light Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees. It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish, Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons; The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall. There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now. There were sheep here after the farm, and fire Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch, The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat And plate the surface like scales. Twenty years ago the spreading gully Toppled the big oak over onto the house. Now there is nothing left but the foundations Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge, Six lonely, ominous fenceposts; The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge Over the deep waterless creek bed; The hills are covered with wild oats Dry and white by midsummer. I walk in the random survivals of the orchard. In a patch of moonlight a mole Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein; Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean; Leo crouches under the zenith. There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees. The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible. As the wind dies down their fragrance Clusters around them like thick smoke. All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight They are silent and immaculate. SPRING, SIERRA NEVADA Once more golden Scorpio glows over the col Above Deadman Canyon, orderly and brilliant, Like an inspiration in the brain of Archimedes. I have seen its light over the warm sea, Over the coconut beaches, phosphorescent and pulsing; And the living light in the water Shivering away from the swimming hand, Creeping against the lips, filling the floating hair. Here where the glaciers have been and the snow stays late, The stone is clean as light, the light steady as stone. The relationship of stone, ice and stars is systematic and enduring: Novelty emerges after centuries, a rock spalls from the cliffs, The glacier contracts and turns grayer, The stream cuts new sinuosities in the meadow, The sun moves through space and the earth with it, The stars change places. The snow has lasted longer this year, Than anyone can remember. The lowest meadow is a lake, The next two are snowfields, the pass is covered with snow, Only the steepest rocks are bare. Between the pass And the last meadow the snowfield gapes for a hundred feet, In a narrow blue chasm through which a waterfall drops, Spangled with sunset at the top, black and muscular Where it disappears again in the snow. The world is filled with hidden running water That pounds in the ears like ether; The granite needles rise from the snow, pale as steel; Above the copper mine the cliff is blood red, The white snow breaks at the edge of it; The sky comes close to my eyes like the blue eyes Of someone kissed in sleep. I descend to camp, To the young, sticky, wrinkled aspen leaves, To the first violets and wild cyclamen, And cook supper in the blue twilight. All night deer pass over the snow on sharp hooves, In the darkness their cold muzzles find the new grass At the edge of the snow.

A small figure in crimson stood before the bench, sleeves rolled to the elbow, muttering. Dumai cleared her throat. “Master Kiprun?” The alchemist whipped around. He wore round amber panes over his eyes, clipped to his nose, huge and misty with steam. “I did ask for duck feathers,” he said, in a tone of sincere annoyance. Dumai could only blink. His cheeks were flushed, threads of hair were stuck to his forehead, and he brandished a grey feather. “You brought me goose feathers. Goose,” he barked, making her jump. “You do know the difference between a duck and a goose, don’t you? One quacks and the other honks, not to mention the neck. The neck alone—” “Master Kiprun,” Kanifa interjected, “this is Noziken pa Dumai, Crown Princess of Seiiki.” The alchemist sleeved the fog from his eyeglasses. “Ah. Yes.” He interlocked his fingers. Each bore a ring of a different metal: gold, iron, copper. “Princess Dumai. I am Master Kiprun, who shines—well, flickers really—for the Munificent Empress. And you?” he said to Kanifa. “Who are you, the Prince of Seiiki?” “No.” Kanifa cleared his throat. “I’m just a guard, a friend to Princess Dumai. Not a noble.” “Is it not noble to be a guard?” Master Kiprun wafted a brown hand, webbed with scars from burns, like his arms. “No matter. I never understand these things. Yes, your message caught my interest, Princess Dumai of the Faraway Isle. You don’t look much like a princess,” he said, cocking his head. “Aren’t you suppose to wear a crown, or something?” Dumai reunited with her tongue. “Well,” she said, indicating her headpiece, “this is—” “Madam, that is a fish.” After a moment, Dumai decided not to kick against the current. “It is a fish,” she agreed, taking a step toward him. “My fish and I flew here to seek your help, Master Kiprun.” “Yes, I did fear as much. Last time, it was a king who disturbed my work. He found me in the mountains, just to annoy me.” The alchemist snorted. “Once, it was the poor who sought my services, asking me to turn grass to gold. They were, at least, polite, if wildly optimistic. Now I am summoned hither and thither, disturbed by everyone from Golümtan to Ginura.

Would you say that that man is at leisure who arranges with finical care his Corinthian bronzes, that the mania of a few makes costly, and spends the greater part of each day upon rusty bits of copper? Who sits in a public wrestling-place (for, to our shame I we labour with vices that are not even Roman) watching the wrangling of lads? Who sorts out the herds of his pack-mules into pairs of the same age and colour? Who feeds all the newest athletes? Tell me, would you say that those men are at leisure who pass many hours at the barber’s while they are being stripped of whatever grew out the night before? while a solemn debate is held over each separate hair? while either disarranged locks are restored to their place or thinning ones drawn from this side and that toward the forehead? How angry they get if the barber has been a bit too careless, just as if he were shearing a real man! How they flare up if any of their mane is lopped off, if any of it lies out of order, if it does not all fall into its proper ringlets! Who of these would not rather have the state disordered than his hair? Who is not more concerned to have his head trim rather than safe? Who would not rather be well barbered than upright? Would you say that these are at leisure who are occupied with the comb and the mirror? And what of those who are engaged in composing, hearing, and learning songs, while they twist the voice, whose best and simplest movement Nature designed to be straightforward, into the meanderings of some indolent tune, who are always snapping their fingers as they beat time to some song they have in their head, who are overheard humming a tune when they have been summoned to serious, often even melancholy, matters? These have not leisure, but idle occupation. And their banquets, Heaven knows! I cannot reckon among their unoccupied hours, since I see how anxiously they set out their silver plate, how diligently they tie up the tunics of their pretty slave-boys, how breathlessly they watch to see in what style the wild boar issues from the hands of the cook, with what speed at a given signal smooth-faced boys hurry to perform their duties, with what skill the birds are carved into portions all according to rule, how carefully unhappy little lads wipe up the spittle of drunkards. By such means they seek the reputation for elegance and good taste, and to such an extent do their evils follow them into all the privacies of life that they can neither eat nor drink without ostentation. And

From the data presented in the preceding chapters and in this comparison of the primitive and modernized dietaries it is obvious that there is great need that the grains eaten shall contain all the minerals and vitamins which Nature has provided that they carry. Important data might be presented to illustrate this phase in a practical way. In Fig. 95 will be seen three rats all of which received the same diet, except for the type of bread. The first rat (at the left) received whole-wheat products freshly ground, the center one received a white flour product and the third (at the right) a bran and middlings product. The amounts of each ash, of calcium as the oxide, and of phosphorus as the pentoxide; and the amounts of iron and copper present in the diet of each group are shown by the height of the columns beneath the rats. Clinically it will be seen that there is a marked difference in the physical development Qf these rats. Several rats of the same age were in each cage. The feeding was started after weaning at about twenty-three days of age. The rat at the left was on the entire grain product. It was fully developed. The rats in this cage reproduced normally at three months of age. The rats in this first cage had very mild dispositions and could be picked up by the ear or tail without danger of their biting. The rats represented by the one in the center cage using white flour were markedly undersized. Their hair came out in large patches and they had very ugly dispositions, so ugly that they threatened to spring through the cage wall at us when we came to look at them. These rats had tooth decay and they were not able to reproduce. The rats in the next cage (illustrated by the rat to the right) which were on the bran and middlings mixture did not show tooth decay, but were considerably undersized, and they lacked energy. The flour and middlings for the rats in cages two and three were purchased from the miller and hence were not freshly ground. The wheat given to the first group was obtained whole and ground while fresh in a hand mill. It is of interest that notwithstanding the great increase in ash, calcium, phosphorus, iron and copper present in the foods of the last group, the rats did not mature normally, as did those in the first group. This may have been

I can’t hear you, people! Make some noise if you want a good show. How about death? Do you wanna see lots and lots of death tonight?” I took in the applause, the hollering, the hammering feet, basking in it. Then my arm shot up, pointing one finger to the ceiling. The guard-tower window exploded. A man plummeted from the tower, slamming on the concrete floor behind me with a splat like someone stomping on a tomato. He’d been torn open from throat to groin, his chest a ragged ruin of splintered, wrenched-back ribs and mangled organs. His dead eyes were still open, jaw wrenched wide in terror. Then came the rain. The second sniper, one piece at a time. Hands. Feet. Arms, wrenched off at the elbows. His severed head bounced like a basketball as it hit the concrete, rolling across the floor and coming to a stop next to Warden Lancaster’s Italian leather shoe. A horrified silence fell across the room. The guards looked at one another, uncertain, hands on their guns but not sure if they should draw. Lancaster stared down at the severed head, frozen like a deer in the headlights. “Well,” I said, “you’re about to get everything you asked for. What do you think, Warden? Is this good and messy enough for you? Wouldn’t want you to think I ‘pussied out’ again.” His gaze snapped toward me. He took a halting step back, away from the carnage. “How? How did you—” A third body dove from the shattered window. Not in a guard’s uniform, but a billowing white leather coat. She landed as graceful as a raptor, absorbing the impact with one knee and the outstretched fingers of a single hand, and slowly rose to her full willowy height. Her eyes blazed like molten copper, as radiant as her twist of scarlet hair. “If anyone in this room believes themselves to be a righteous soul,” Caitlin said, “I suggest you kneel down and pray. If nobody answers…then you belong to me.

He looks up and up and up to get to her face. His mama's a tall lady, and he's only seven. He's overwhelmed by red. Red heels, red nails, red lips, red hair, red eyes. So help him, the boy has always thought his mama's copper-colored eyes damn near shined red. He looks into those eyes and knows she's come home funny.

He wasn’t as tall as Tanner, and he wasn’t as broad; he had the catlike grace of a young Leontine, and his hair was a burnished copper, something that reddened in caught light. But his eyes were the blue she remembered, cold blue, and if he had new scars—and he did—they hadn’t changed his face enough to remove it from her memory.

A long, black cloak with embroidered golden edges fell from his broad shoulders, and she could see the large, firm muscles rippling under the thick layer of dark damask fabric. The glistening strands of his sleek ebony hair fell across his forehead in flawless disarray, accentuating the amazing bone structure of his harmoniously proportional face. The copper-colored rings around his charcoal irises shone brighter than ever. His gaze was positively hypnotic. Everything about him radiated ethereal sophistication and supernatural dominance. Just as the rumors had said, this man was no human emperor. He was an omnipotent, divine creature that breathed complete perfection.

Maester,” said Lady Melisandre, her deep voice flavored with the music of the Jade Sea. “You ought take more care.” As ever, she wore red head to heel, a long loose gown of flowing silk as bright as fire, with dagged sleeves and deep slashes in the bodice that showed glimpses of a darker bloodred fabric beneath. Around her throat was a red gold choker tighter than any maester’s chain, ornamented with a single great ruby. Her hair was not the orange or strawberry color of common red-haired men, but a deep burnished copper that shone in the light of the torches. Even her eyes were red … but her skin was smooth and white, unblemished, pale as cream. Slender she was, graceful, taller than most knights, with full breasts and narrow waist and a heart-shaped face. Men’s eyes that once found her did not quickly look away, not even a maester’s eyes. Many called her beautiful. She was not beautiful. She was red, and terrible, and red. “I … thank you, my lady.” “A man your age must look to where he steps,” Melisandre said courteously. “The night is dark and full of terrors.

Cardan has stopped beside a boy with long copper hair and a pair of small moth wings- a boy who isn't bowing. The boy laughs and Cardan lunges. Between one eyeblink and the next, the prince's balled fist strikes the boy hard across the jaw, sending him sprawling. As the boy falls, Cardan grabs one of his wings. It tears like paper. The boy's scream is thin and reedy. He curls up into himself on the ground, agony plain on his face. I wonder if faerie wings grow back; I know that butterflies that lose a wing never fly again.

a clutch of syllables tied with a blue string- red clover, lavender, damiana, juniper berries, and deer's tongue. A black candle. A copper ring of hair. Ink. Let it warp.

The message left Kiel at a speed of 300,000 kilometres per second. The sequence of words keyed into Erwin Suess’s laptop at the Geomar Centre entered the net in digital form. Converted by laser diodes into optical pulses, the information raced along with a wavelength of 1.5 thousandths of a millimetre, shooting down a transparent fibreoptic cable with millions of phone conversations and packets of data. The fibres bundled the stream of light until it was no thicker than two hairs, while total internal reflection stopped it escaping. Whizzing towards the coast, the waves surged along the overland cable, speeding through amplifiers every fifty kilometres until the fibres vanished into the sea, protected by copper casing and thick rubber tubing, and strengthened by powerful wires. The underwater cable was as thick as a muscular forearm. It stretched out across the shelf, buried in the seabed to protect it from anchors and fishing-boats. TAT 14, as it was officially known, was a transatlantic cable linking Europe to the States. Its capacity was higher than that of almost any other cable in the world. There were dozens of such cables in the North Atlantic alone. Hundreds of thousands of kilometres of optical fibre extended across the planet, making up the backbone of the information age. Three-quarters of their capacity was devoted to the World Wide Web. Project Oxygen linked 175 countries in a kind of global super Internet. Another system bundled eight optical fibres to give a transmission capacity of 3.2 terabits per second, the equivalent of 48 million simultaneous phone conversations. The delicate glass fibres on the ocean bed had long since supplanted satellite technology.

When she pulled it out, something tum- bled out along with it: a soft copper lock of her own hair. She went blank for a moment, thrown oddly off bal ance. The things lined up neatly on the floor in front of her were like words to a sentence in a language she had only begun learning, a sentence punctuated poignantly by a copper curl. They told a story Rebecca sensed she already half knew, she could feel it radiating, increasing in light, on the far reaches of her awareness.

Her hair was the color of an angry sunset, and it fell to her waist in ripples of copper and red. Her steps-deliberate, prideful, measured-took her eastward along Evans Avenue through clouds of dust raised by the summertime street repair. People stared at the small, wirestrung harp she carried tucked under her arm. She did not appear to notice.

Elle shifted the bags from her left arm to the right and tried—subsequently failing—to smother her smile when Darcy opened the door, this time wearing a camel-colored pencil skirt that hugged her hips, and a polka-dotted pussy-bow blouse in off-white that Darcy would probably dub something fancy like eggshell or mascarpone. On anyone else it would’ve been very blah, but the fall of Darcy’s copper hair over one shoulder and her curves made it less boring and more librarian chic. Never before had Elle met someone so pretty that it pissed her off.

I was hunting in the forest when I was visited by a fae. She told me I was to assist the copper-haired gold-giver in whatever way was needed. Then I found myself here. I assume you to be the copper-haired gold-giver?

This is a pleasant little room. The greenish-blue colour makes your lovely hair look like polished copper." "Save your cant for the deaf. How do you take your tea?

Sonnet for Ochún After my left arm I washed my right, neck, décolletage, and navel. I ate ground meat with large crystals of imported salt. The women and men who would stroke my hair if I asked, I thought of them fondly then sadly. At the flea market, what I touched with a fingernail was a copper lamp, a mundane painting of mountains, the cashier’s hum. I bought nothing I didn’t want. In the cul-de-sac, I found clouds on leashes, loose roosters. I thought thoughts ugly as clothespins. Reading a used book, I suspected I knew less about death than the last person who held it. I spat into a mirrored sink. I lost my slippers and face. To feel more like water, I drank it. Before bed, I walked my plank of uncertainties and plunged further into uncertainty. Am I capturing all of history in this gesture? I shouted into the future. In the wet air of the future, I could have but never appeared. No one was sorry but me.

And I realize in that moment maybe I am heartless after all, because the beautiful girl with the copper hair grinning back at me right now is the one who stole it

The burnished copper of his hair tumbled around his face like threads of fire, while the shadows softened the harder ridges of his jaw and nose.

His red hair looked like copper fire in the sunlight, freckles bold like dark constellations on his nose.

His age seemed nonspecific; she suspected he was still a young man, but he presented right away as an old soul wrapped in the cloak of youth. His skin was a burnished golden brown, his hair a sharp wave of red copper. He wore simple, unadorned black clothes – coat, jacket – and clutched in one hand both a tall black hat and a golden mace. He had bright, startlingly blue eyes, but there was something tragic about them, too, a heaviness there that made him hard to look at – and all the more so when he stared at her, his eyes widening a barely there micrometer as she moved into view. “Oh,” he said.

Ginger’s hair has grown some and she has washed out all the dye, so that now it’s a pretty copper color,

His fingers threaded into my deep copper hair and tilted my face up to meet his kiss. The second his lips touched mine, I threw caution to the wind.

I remember when I had gowns in every color and the dishes on the tables were white to match the Colier hair. I remember when the bell in the tower was copper, its chime light and clear. Things that were once feather-light now take several men to pick up. Parts that once carried the colors of age and history now glisten as if new. Even the roses in the atrium have been gold-touched, never again to sprout a new bud or fill the air with their perfume.

Sybil’s hair was a light auburn while Auri’s was an embarrassingly bright copper. People stopped her in the street and asked if they could touch it. Not creepy at all.

I saw how our Father sewed you from coppers, how He handled you when you were burning coals and when you were settings of gold. He embroidered a nose on you, a sweet mouth on you, then the outline for a pair of eyes before He placed suns there. He sculpted your face with wet clay; He opened you like a citrus and planted a garden of budding flowers inside. Then, He weaved your hair from the streaks of three stars and your wings out of four wandering crescent moons.” He breathed but was not finished: “And your hips — those came the tides of a sea, the same one whose pearls He took to carve your feet and hands. There was so much jade, so much marble; He fit it into the last places you were hollow. When He was done, I watched Him breathe life into you, then cradle you as if you were His first angel, before He settled you into fire and let you simmer.

His mother's flowers won all sorts of prizes for their beauty, but he thought Libby, with her brilliant copper-streaked hair and striking blue eyes, was more beautiful than anything found in a garden. She was an enchanting princess, reigning over a comely court. He'd known Libby was a princess since they were children. She'd captivated him long before he started school, and for years, he'd been trying to win her attention. Some people thought she was crazy, but she wasn't. She was ethereal. Magical. Like a fairy or butterfly. If only he could be like her. Happy and free. She seemed to understand what so many people did not. That happiness was not found in trying to pigeonhole one's self into another's ideal. Happiness was found in embracing all you were created to be. She twirled again in the twilight. Libby seemed to draw energy from the flowers.

Vanessa, you have the worst goddamn temper.” “I…” “And you’re the bossiest woman I’ve ever known. I want you to listen to me—I can’t change what I feel, what I’ve felt for years. I tried, because I never thought I’d have any kind of chance, I never imagined that we’d lose Matt. And even with you in my arms, finally, I’d give anything to have him back. But we can’t, Vanni. It’s going to be you and me now. That’s all it can be. Now stop all this fucking around—because I want you so bad, my head is pounding!” “I never knew how you felt.” “I know that, Vanni,” he said quietly. “You weren’t supposed to.” “I loved Matt, you know.” “I know. And he loved you.” He took a breath. “And I loved you both.” “But you were the guy who caught my eye the night we all met. You. Yet you never even talked to me. Maybe if you’d talked to me…” “He beat me to it. And once that happens…” “What did she do, Paul? The woman in Grants Pass? How’d she manage to get your attention?” “I told you. She was pretty. Seductive,” he said. “And I was lonely. I let it happen, Vanni, because there was no reason for me not to. You belonged to someone else. Not just anyone else, but Matt.” “And later? When I didn’t belong to anyone?” “I thought you still belonged to Matt, to a memory,” he said. “And I was pretty much out of my mind. It was stupid. I told you—I’m not good with women. I never have been, or you’d have belonged to me, not my best friend.” “I don’t have any regrets, you know. Matt was good for me, good to me. He made me happy, he gave me a beautiful son. I’ll never regret a day…” “Vanni,” he whispered, brushing that thick, copper hair away from her face. “Vanni, as much as I love you, as much as I wish I’d had the guts to pursue you before he got to you, in the end I wanted you happy. I wanted him happy. But now…” He gave her a kiss. “It is what it is. I want us to go forward. I want to take care of you and Mattie. And probably one more…” “You’re still not certain?” she asked him. He shook his head. “Vanni, be prepared—I don’t think I’m getting out of that one. If I’m responsible for a child, I’ll see it through.” “I know.” She sighed. “Could be a large family in the end.” “You’ll stand by me through that?” She shrugged. “You’d stand by little Matt, wouldn’t you? That’s how it is. We don’t leave babies out there alone, without parents who love them.” He smiled into her eyes. “You’re wonderful, you know. But very hard to shut up.

MICHAELA BOWDEN was a tall woman, thin, ramrod-straight, brown hair with copper highlights, attractive in a front-office way. She was talking to a small group of fawning locals, called a couple of them by name. Lucas picked out a half-dozen security people, four men, two women, within twenty feet of her. Every one of them eye-clicked Lucas, maybe smelling a guy with a gun, though he wasn’t wearing one. When they saw Clay pulling him along, they looked elsewhere.

He stopped speaking as Cassandra made her way down the stairs. Garbed in a Grecian gown of blue-green satin that matched her eyes perfectly, she looked like a goddess descending from Olympus to bestow a rare blessing. Her upswept auburn hair gleamed like burnished copper with silken tendrils framing the sculpted perfection of her face and brushing her smooth bared shoulders. The breath fled from his body. Surely he was unworthy of touching such a miraculous creature. “Rafe?” She frowned. He dragged his gaze from the curves of her breasts. “Yes?” Her frown deepened and she gave him a strange look. He realized she must have asked him a question. “I am sorry. What was that, Querida?” Vincent guffawed behind him, but fell silent as Lydia appeared in a matching gown of gold-spangled ivory. “God, Lydia…” He breathed. “You look quite smart as well, my lord,” she drawled sweetly. “Albeit a trifle overdressed for my taste.” The Lord of Cornwall eyed his wife. “I could say the same of you.” Rafe looked down at his feet and sighed. The sight of those two mooning over each other used to make his stomach roil. Now a twinge of envy gnawed at his heart. If only Cassandra would look at him with such adoration. If only they could share such suggestive, silly banter. “The