Cut Them Off Silently Quotes

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain.

The Western States nervous under the beginning change. Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company--that's the bank when it has land --wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours it would be good--not mine, but ours. If our tractor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good. Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But the tractor does two things--it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this. One man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlarge of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here "I lost my land" is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate--"We lost our land." The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first "we" there grows a still more dangerous thing: "I have a little food" plus "I have none." If from this problem the sum is "We have a little food," the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side- meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It's wool. It was my mother's blanket--take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning--from "I" to "we." If you who own the things people must have could understand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could separate causes from results, if you could know Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into "I," and cuts you off forever from the "we." The Western States are nervous under the begining change. Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action. A half-million people moving over the country; a million more restive, ready to move; ten million more feeling the first nervousness. And tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land.

What did that word mean to me? Earth? I thought of the great bustling cities where I would wander and lose myself, and I thought of them as I had thought of the ocean on the second or third night, when I had wanted to throw myself upon the dark waves. I shall immerse myself among men. I shall be silent and attentive, an appreciative companion. There will be many acquaintances, friends, women—and perhaps even a wife. For a while, I shall have to make a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand and perform the thousands of little gestures which constitute life on Earth, and then those gestures will become reflexes again. I shall find new interests and occupations; and I shall not give myself completely to them, as I shall never again give myself completely to anything or anybody. Perhaps at night I shall stare up at the dark nebula that cuts off the light of the twin suns, and remember everything, even what I am thinking now. With a condescending, slightly rueful smile I shall remember my follies and my hopes.

There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful.

This afternoon, being on Fair Haven Hill, I heard the sound of a saw, and soon after from the Cliff saw two men sawing down a noble pine beneath, about forty rods off. I resolved to watch it till it fell, the last of a dozen or more which were left when the forest was cut and for fifteen years have waved in solitary majesty over the sprout-land. I saw them like beavers or insects gnawing at the trunk of this noble tree, the diminutive manikins with their cross-cut saw which could scarcely span it. It towered up a hundred feet as I afterward found by measurement, one of the tallest probably in the township and straight as an arrow, but slanting a little toward the hillside, its top seen against the frozen river and the hills of Conantum. I watch closely to see when it begins to move. Now the sawers stop, and with an axe open it a little on the side toward which it leans, that it may break the faster. And now their saw goes again. Now surely it is going; it is inclined one quarter of the quadrant, and, breathless, I expect its crashing fall. But no, I was mistaken; it has not moved an inch; it stands at the same angle as at first. It is fifteen minutes yet to its fall. Still its branches wave in the wind, as it were destined to stand for a century, and the wind soughs through its needles as of yore; it is still a forest tree, the most majestic tree that waves over Musketaquid. The silvery sheen of the sunlight is reflected from its needles; it still affords an inaccessible crotch for the squirrel’s nest; not a lichen has forsaken its mast-like stem, its raking mast,—the hill is the hulk. Now, now’s the moment! The manikins at its base are fleeing from their crime. They have dropped the guilty saw and axe. How slowly and majestic it starts! as it were only swayed by a summer breeze, and would return without a sigh to its location in the air. And now it fans the hillside with its fall, and it lies down to its bed in the valley, from which it is never to rise, as softly as a feather, folding its green mantle about it like a warrior, as if, tired of standing, it embraced the earth with silent joy, returning its elements to the dust again. But hark! there you only saw, but did not hear. There now comes up a deafening crash to these rocks , advertising you that even trees do not die without a groan. It rushes to embrace the earth, and mingle its elements with the dust. And now all is still once more and forever, both to eye and ear. I went down and measured it. It was about four feet in diameter where it was sawed, about one hundred feet long. Before I had reached it the axemen had already divested it of its branches. Its gracefully spreading top was a perfect wreck on the hillside as if it had been made of glass, and the tender cones of one year’s growth upon its summit appealed in vain and too late to the mercy of the chopper. Already he has measured it with his axe, and marked off the mill-logs it will make. And the space it occupied in upper air is vacant for the next two centuries. It is lumber. He has laid waste the air. When the fish hawk in the spring revisits the banks of the Musketaquid, he will circle in vain to find his accustomed perch, and the hen-hawk will mourn for the pines lofty enough to protect her brood. A plant which it has taken two centuries to perfect, rising by slow stages into the heavens, has this afternoon ceased to exist. Its sapling top had expanded to this January thaw as the forerunner of summers to come. Why does not the village bell sound a knell? I hear no knell tolled. I see no procession of mourners in the streets, or the woodland aisles. The squirrel has leaped to another tree; the hawk has circled further off, and has now settled upon a new eyrie, but the woodman is preparing [to] lay his axe at the root of that also.

WHEN IT’S ALL OVER, there’s one final talk I want to make—to the press. When they gather in front of me, it’s hard to forget that nearly all of them had considered me a hoax. They start to shoot questions at me, but I cut them off: “Hold it! Hold it!” I say. “You’ve all had a chance to say what you thought before the fight. Now it’s my turn. You all said Sonny Liston would kill me. You said he was better than Jack Johnson or Jack Dempsey, even Joe Louis, and you ranked them the best heavyweights of all time. You kept writing how Liston whipped Floyd Patterson twice, and when I told you I would get Liston in eight, you wouldn’t believe it. Now I want all of you to tell the whole world while all the cameras are on us, tell the world that I’m The Greatest.” There’s a silence. “Who’s The Greatest?” I ask them. Nobody answers. They look down at their pads and microphones. “Who’s The Greatest?” I say again. They look up with solemn faces, but the room is still silent. “For the LAST TIME!” I shout. “All the eyes of the world on us. You just a bunch of hypocrites. I told you I was gonna get Liston and I got him. All the gamblers had me booked eight-to-one underdog. I proved all of you wrong. I shook up the world! Tell me who’s The Greatest! WHO IS THE GREATEST?” They hesitate for a minute, and finally in a dull tone they all answer, “You are.” •

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.

Then it was horn time. Time for the big solo. Sonny lifted the trumpet - One! Two! - He got it into sight - Three! We all stopped dead. I mean we stopped. That wasn't Sonny's horn. This one was dented-in and beat-up and the tip-end was nicked. It didn't shine, not a bit. Lux leaned over-you could have fit a coffee cup into his mouth. "Jesus God," he said. "Am I seeing right?" I looked close and said: "Man, I hope not." But why kid? We'd seen that trumpet a million times. It was Spoof's. Rose-Ann was trembling. Just like me, she remembered how we'd buried the horn with Spoof. And she remembered how quiet it had been in Sonny's room last night... I started to think real hophead thoughts, like - where did Sonny get hold of a shovel that late? and how could he expect a horn to play that's been under the ground for two years? and - That blast got into our ears like long knives. Spoof's own trademark! Sonny looked caught, like he didn't know what to do at first, like he was hypnotized, scared, almighty scared. But as the sound came out, rolling out, sharp and clean and clear - new-trumpet sound - his expression changed. His eyes changed: they danced a little and opened wide. Then he closed them, and blew that horn. Lord God of the Fishes, how he blew it! How he loved it and caressed it and pushed it up, higher and higher and higher. High C? Bottom of the barrel. He took off, and he walked all over the rules and stamped them flat. The melody got lost, first off. Everything got lost, then, while that horn flew. It wasn't only jazz; it was the heart of jazz, and the insides, pulled out with the roots and held up for everybody to see; it was blues that told the story of all the lonely cats and all the ugly whores who ever lived, blues that spoke up for the loser lamping sunshine out of iron-gray bars and every hop head hooked and gone, for the bindlestiffs and the city slicers, for the country boys in Georgia shacks and the High Yellow hipsters in Chicago slums and the bootblacks on the corners and the fruits in New Orleans, a blues that spoke for all the lonely, sad and anxious downers who could never speak themselves... And then, when it had said all this, it stopped and there was a quiet so quiet that Sonny could have shouted: 'It's okay, Spoof. It's all right now. You get it said, all of it - I'll help you. God, Spoof, you showed me how, you planned it - I'll do my best!' And he laid back his head and fastened the horn and pulled in air and blew some more. Not sad, now, not blues - but not anything else you could call by a name. Except... jazz. It was Jazz. Hate blew out of that horn, then. Hate and fury and mad and fight, like screams and snarls, like little razors shooting at you, millions of them, cutting, cutting deep... And Sonny only stopping to wipe his lip and whisper in the silent room full of people: 'You're saying it, Spoof! You are!' God Almighty Himself must have heard that trumpet, then; slapping and hitting and hurting with notes that don't exist and never existed. Man! Life took a real beating! Life got groined and sliced and belly-punched and the horn, it didn't stop until everything had all spilled out, every bit of the hate and mad that's built up in a man's heart. ("Black Country")

The wind rose, whipping at Gregori's solid form, lashing his body,ripping at the waves of black hair so that it streamed around his face. His expression was impassive, the pale silver eyes cold and merciless, unblinking and fixed on his prey. The attack came from sky and ground simultaneously; slivers of sharpened wood shot through the air on the wild winds,aimed directly at Gregori. The wolves leapt for him,eyes glowing hotly in the night. The army of the dead moved relentlessly forward, pressing toward Gregori's lone figure. His hands moved, a complicated pattern drected at the approaching army;then he was whirling, a flowing wind of motion beautiful to the eye,so fast that he blurred. Yelps and howls accompanied bodies flying through the air. Wolves landed to lie motionless at his feet. His expression never changed. There was no hint of anger or emotion,no sign of fear,no break in concentration. He simply acted as the need arose. The skeletons were mowed down by a wall of flame, an orange-red conflagration that rose in the night sky and danced furiously for a brief moment. The army withered into ashes, leaving only a pile of blackened dust that spewed across the street in the ferocious onslaught of the wind. Savannah felt Gregori wince, the pain that sliced though him just before he shut out all sensation.She whirled to face him and saw a sharpened stake portruding from his right shoulder. Even as she saw it, Gregori jerked it free.Blood gushed,spraying the area around him.Just as quickly it stopped,as if cut off midstream. The winds rose to a thunderous pitch, a whirling gale of debris above their heads like the funnel cloud of a tornado. The black cloud spun faster and paster,threatening to suck everything and everyone up into its center where the malevolent red eye stared at them with hatred. The tourists screamed in fear,and even the guide grabbed for a lamppost to hang on grimly.Gregori stood alone,the winds assaulting him,tearing at him, reaching for him.As the whirling column threatened him from above, sounding like the roar of a freight train, he merely clapped his hands, then waved to send a backdraft slamming into the dark entity.The vampire screamed his rage. The thick black cloud sucked in on itself with an audible soumd, hovering in the air, waiting, watching, silent. Evil.No one moved.No one dared to breathe. Suddenly the churning black entity gathered itself and streamed across the night sky,racing away from the hunter over the French Quarter and toward the swamp.Gregori launched himself into the air,shape-shifting as he did so,ducking the bolts of white-hot energy and slashing stakes flying in the turbulant air.

From east to west, in fact, her gaze swept slowly, without encountering a single obstacle, along a perfect curve. Beneath her, the blue-and-white terraces of the Arab town overlapped one another, splattered with the dark-red spots of the peppers drying in the sun. Not a soul could be seen, but from the inner courts, together with the aroma of roasting coffee, there rose laughing voices or incomprehensible stamping of feet. Father off, the palm grove, divided into uneven squares by clay walls, rustled its upper foliage in a wind that could not be felt up on the terace. Still farther off and all the way to the horizon extended the ocher-and-gray realm of stones, in which no life was visible. At some distance from the oasis, however, near the wadi that bordered the palm grove on the west could be seen broad black tents. All around them a flock of motionless dromedaries, tiny at the distance, formed against the gray ground the black signs of a strange handwriting, the meaning of which had to be deciphered. Above the desert, the silence was as vast as the space. Janine, leaning her whole body against the parapet, was speechless, unable to tear herself away from the void opening before her. Beside her, Marcel was getting restless. He was cold; he wanted to go back down. What was there to see here, after all? But she could not take her gaze from the horizon. Over yonder, still farther south, at that point where sky and earth met in a pure line - over yonder it suddenly seemed there was awaiting her something of which, though it had always been lacking, she had never been aware until now. In the advancing afternoon the light relaxed and softened; it was passing from the crystalline to the liquid. Simultaneously, in the heart of a woman brought there by pure chance a knot tightened by the years, habit, and boredom was slowly loosening. She was looking at the nomads' encampment. She had not even seen the men living in it' nothing was stirring among the black tents, and yet she could think only of them whose existence she had barely known until this day. Homeless, cut off from the world, they were a handful wandering over the vast territory she could see, which however was but a paltry part of an even greater expanse whose dizzying course stopped only thousands of miles farther south, where the first river finally waters the forest. Since the beginning of time, on the dry earth of this limitless land scraped to bone, a few men had been ceaselessly trudging, possessing nothing but serving no one, poverty-stricken but free lords of a strange kingdom. Janine did not know why this thought filled her with such a sweet, vast melancholy that it closed her eyes. She knew that this kingdom had been eternally promised her and yet that it would never be hers, never again, except in this fleeting moment perhaps when she opened her eyes again on the suddenly motionless sky and on its waves of steady light, while the voices rising from the Arab town suddenly fell silent. It seemed to her that the world's course had just stopped and that, from that moment on, no one would ever age any more or die. Everywhere, henceforth, life was suspended - except in her heart, where, at the same moment, someone was weeping with affliction and wonder.

Stop staring at Kevin so much. You're making me fear for your life over here." "What do you mean?" "Andrew is scary territorial of him. He punched me the first time I said I'd like to get Kevin too wasted to be straight." Nicky pointed at his face, presumably where Andrew had decked him. "So yeah, I'm going to crush on safer targets until Andrew gets bored of him. That means you, since Matt's taken and I don't hate myself enough to try Seth. Congrats." "Can you take the creepy down a level?" Aaron asked. "What?" Nikcy asked. "He said he doesn't swing, so obviously he needs a push." "I don't need a push," Neil said. "I'm fine on my own." "Seriously, how are you not bored of your hand by now?" "I'm done with this conversation," Neil said. "This and every future variation of it. [...]" The stadium door slammed open as Andrew showed up at last. He swept them with a wide-eyed look as if surprised to see them all there. "Kevin wants to know what's taking you so long. Did you get lost?" "Nicky's scheming to rape Neil," Aaron said. "There are a couple flaws in his plan he needs to work out first, but he'll get there sooner or later." [...] "Wow, Nicky," Andrew said. "You start early." "Can you really blame me?" Nicky glanced back at Neil as he said it. He only took his eyes off Andrew for a second, but that was long enough for Andrew to lunge at him. Andrew caught Nicky's jersey in one hand and threw him hard up against the wall. [...] "Hey, Nicky," Andrew said in stage-whisper German. "Don't touch him, you understand?" "You know I'd never hurt him. If he says yes-" "I said no." "Jesus, you're greedy," Nicky said. "You already have Kevin. Why does it-" He went silent, but it took Neil a moment to realize why. Andrew had a short knife pressed to Nicky's Jersey. [...] Neil was no stranger to violence. He'd heard every threat in the book, but never from a man who smiled as bright as Andrew did. Apathy, anger, madness, boredom: these motivators Neil knew and understood. But Andrew was grinning like he didn't have a knife point where it'd sleep perfectly between Nicky's ribs, and it wasn't because he was joking. Neil knew Andrew meant it. If Nicky so much as breathed wrong right now, Andrew would cut his lungs to ribbons, any and all consequences be damned. Neil wondered if Andrew's medicine would let him grieve, or if he'd laugh at Nicky's funeral too. Then he wondered if a sober Andrew would act any different. Was this Andrew psychosis or his medicine? Was he flying too high to understand what he was doing, or did his medicine only add a smile to Andrew's ingrained violence? [...] Andrew let go of Nicky and spun away. [...] Aaron squized Nicky's shoulder on his way out. Nicky looked shaken as he stared after the twins, but when he realized Neil was watching him he rallied with a smile Neil didn't believe at all. "On second thought, you're not my type after all,” Nicky said [...]. "Don't let him get away with things like that." Nicky considered him for a moment, his smile fading into something small and tired. "Oh, Neil. You're going to make this so hard on yourself. Look, [...] Andrew is a little crazy. Your lines are not his lines, so you can get all huff and puff when he tramps across yours but you'll never make him understand what he did wrong. Moreover, you'll never make him care. So just stay out of his way." "He's like this because you let him get away with it," Neil said. [...] "That was my fault. [...] I said something I shouldn't have, and got what I deserved.

Keefe mumbled “ow” several times before shouting, “YOU THINK YOU CAN HOLD M—” A loud RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP cut him off, and he shouted a bunch of words that would earn him a month of detention before a CRUNCH! left him silent. “Are you okay?” Sophie called. “I’ve been better,” Keefe groaned. “Guess I forgot to brace for the fall.” “He also forgot his pants,” the blue-cloaked figure noted. A wave of snickers followed, and Sophie realized the whole school was hiding in the mist, watching them dangle like sides of beef at the butcher shop. Keefe’s boot dangled with them, along with a shredded pair of black pants. “Oy, his boxers are covered in little banshees!” a kid shouted. “Bet he peed himself too,” another said.

The trivialization of life is perhaps the strongest anti-mystical force among us. Some people are literally obsessed by the compulsion to trivialize everything . . . For mystical consciousness, it is essential that everything internal become external and be made visible. A dream wants to be told, the "inner light" wants to shine, the vision has to be shared . . . It is so easy to douse the inner light of a human being. And we busily assist in doing just that as we learn to make the world's efficiency our own. We cut ourselves off from our own experiences by looking upon them as irrelevant and not worth talking about or, what is no less cynical, not communicable at all. We are losing dreams, those of the night and those of the day, and increasingly we lose the visions of our life.

My, my,” Chloe murmured, studying the chocolate she held. “I do believe this one’s gone off. It stinks like a cesspit.” Her eyes lifted. “Oh, wait. It’s only the guttersnipe.” “Or perhaps it’s your perfume,” I said cordially. “You always smell like a whore.” “It’s French,” retorted Runny-Nose, before Chloe could speak. “Then she smells like a French whore.” “Aren’t you the eloquent young miss.” Chloe’s gaze cut to Sophia, standing close behind me. “Slumming, little sister? I can’t confess I’m surprised.” “I’m merely here for the show,” Sophia said breezily. “Something tells me it’s going to be good.” I took the brooch from my pocket and let it slide down my index finger, giving it a playful twirl. “A fine try. But, alas, no winner’s prize for you, Chloe. I’m sure you’ve been waiting here for Westcliffe to raise the alarm about her missing ring, ready with some well-rehearsed story about how you saw me sneaking into her office and sneaking out again, and oh, look isn’t that Eleanore’s brooch there on the floor? But I’ve news for you, dearie. You’re sloppy. You’re stupid. And the next time you go into my room and steal from me, I’ll make certain you regret it for the rest of your days.” “How dare you threaten me, you little tart!” “I’m not threatening. You have no idea how easy it would be to, say, pour glue on your hair while you sleep. Cut up all your pretty dresses into ribbons.” Chloe dropped her half-eaten chocolate back into its box, turning to her toadies. “You heard her! You all head her! When Westcliffe finds out about this-“ “I didn’t hear a thing,” piped up Sophia. “In fact, I do believe that Eleanore and I aren’t even here right now. We’re both off in my room, diligently studying.” She sauntered to my side, smiling. “And I’ll swear to that, sister. Without hesitation. I have no misgivings about calling you all liars right to Westcliffe’s face.” “What fun,” I said softly, into the hush. “Shall we give it a go? What d’you say, girls? Up for a bit of blood sport?” Chloe pushed to her feet, kicking the chocolates out of her way. All the toadies cringed. “You,” she sneered, her gaze scouring me. “You with your ridiculous clothing and that preposterous bracelet, acting as if you actually belong here! Really, Eleanore, I wonder that you’ve learned nothing of real use yet. Allow me to explain matters to you. You may have duped Sophia into vouching for you, but your word means nothing. You’re no one. No matter what you do here or who you may somehow manage to impress, you’ll always be no one. How perfectly sad that you’re allowed to pretend otherwise.” “I’m the one he wants,” I said evenly. “No one’s pretending that.” I didn’t have to say who. She stared at me, silent, her color high. I saw with interest that real tears began to well in her eyes. “That’s right.” I gave the barest smile. “Me, not you. Think about that tomorrow, when I’m with him on the yacht. Think about how he watches me. How he listens to me. Another stunt like this”-I held up the circlet-“and you’ll be shocked at what I’m able to convince him about you.” “As if you could,” she scoffed, but there was apprehension behind those tears. “Try me.” I brought my foot down on one of the chocolates, grinding it into a deep, greasy smear along the rug. “Cheerio,” I said to them all, and turned around and left.

There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquillity of the evening or at the feast at midnight when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remort, reproachful.

Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself. “I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one you walked in with untenable. Perhaps–I’m just suggesting an offhand possibility–you could change to thinking of me as The Sagacious Old Mentor, a kind of Machiavellian Nestor, say, and yourself as The Ingenuous But Promising Young Protégé, a young Alexander, who someday will put all these teachings into practice and far outshine the master. Do you get the idea? Or–this is repugnant, but it could be used as a last resort–The Silently Indignant Young Man, who tolerates the ravings of a Senile Crank but who will leave this house unsullied by them. I call this repugnant because if you ever used it you’d cut yourself off from much that you haven’t learned yet. “It’s extremely important that you learn to assume these masks wholeheartedly. Don’t think there’s anything behind them: ego means I, and I means ego, and the ego by definition is a mask. Where there’s no ego–this is you on the bench–there’s no I. If you sometimes have the feeling that your mask is insincere–impossible word!–it’s only because one of your masks is incompatible with another. You mustn’t put on two at a time. There’s a source of conflict, and conflict between masks, like absence of masks, is a source of immobility. The more sharply you can dramatize your situation, and define your own role and everybody else’s role, the safer you’ll be. It doesn’t matter in Mythotherapy for paralytics whether your role is major or minor, as long as it’s clearly conceived, but in the nature of things it’ll normally be major. Now say something.

Miserable beings, who, during their ragged infancy, ran barefoot in the mud of the crossings; shivering in winter near the quays, or seeking to warm themselves from the kitchens of M. Véfour, where you happen to be dining; scratching out, here and there, a crust of bread from the heaps of filth, and wiping it before eating; scraping in the gutter all day, with a rusty nail, in the hopes of finding a farthing; having no other amusement than the gratuitous sight of the king’s fête, and the executions — that other gratuitous sight: poor devils! whom hunger forces to theft, and theft to all the rest; children disinherited by their step-mother, the world; who are adopted by the house of correction, in their twelfth year, by the galleys at eighteen, and by the guillotine at forty! Unfortunate beings, whom, by means of a school and a workshop, you might have rendered good, moral, useful; and with whom you now know not what to do; flinging them away like a useless burthen, sometimes into the red antheaps of Toulon, sometimes into the silent cemetery of Clamart; cutting off life after taking away liberty.

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamored of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those who minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black, fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of the birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleeper, and yet must needs call forth Sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin, dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colors of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colors, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.

That’s the Thornton place up there atop yon hill,” the farmer said, pointing. Lucinda gazed in mounting anger at the large, but unimpressive cottage that was barely visible through the thick trees, then she turned the full force of her authority on the hapless farmer. “You’re mistaken, my good man,” she said stoutly. “No gentleman of consequence or sense would live in such a godforsaken place as this. Kindly turn this decrepit vehicle around and return us to the village whence we came so that we can ask directions again. There was obviously a misunderstanding.” At that, both the horse and the farmer swung their heads around and looked at her with identical expressions of weary resentment. The horse remained silent, but the farmer had heard Lucinda’s irate complaints for the last twelve miles, and he was heartily sick of them. “See here, my lady,” he began, but Lucinda cut him off. “Do not address me as ‘my lady.’ ‘Miss Throckmorton-Jones’ will do very well.” “Aye. Well, whoever ye be, this is as far as I’m takin’ ye, and that thar is the Thornton cottage.” “You can’t mean to abandon us here!” she said as the tired old man exhibited a surge of renewed energy-obviously brought on by the prospect of ridding himself of his unwanted guests-and leapt off the wagon, whereupon he began to drag their trunks and bandboxes off the wagon and onto the side of the narrow ledge that passed for a road.

He stared down at her for a moment, wanting to heal every cut on her soft skin. But he couldn’t, not yet. He needed to get her, and her car, far from this place so neither he nor Kate would be implicated in any way with the gruesome murder site. It also meant he would have to drive. In all his years, he had never driven an automobile. The closest he had come was watching various assistants through the years as they chauffeured him. He wasn’t sure he could even remember how to start the car, but right now he had no choice. Grudgingly, he got into the driver’s seat, and finding the lever underneath, he pushed it back so he sat comfortably behind the wheel. After trying three different keys, he found one that slipped into the ignition. From what he had seen over the past hundred years, driving was not a complex operation, and he was an immortal with reflexes far more keen than a human man. How difficult could it be? He turned the key and nearly jerked the wheel off the steering column when the car surprised him by lurching forward. The car went silent. The engine wasn’t running. What was he doing wrong? He stared at the gearshift, wondering if he should move it. His frustration reared up, but his agitation would not make the car drive itself. He had to keep a cool head. Not knowing what else to try, he pushed one of the pedals at his feet to the floor and turned the key again. This time the car didn’t move, and it roared to life. Grasping the gearshift, he jammed it into the first position and glanced over at Kate. Why couldn’t she have owned a car with an automatic transmission? Shaking his head, he put some pressure on the gas pedal and slowly released the clutch. Thankfully the car rolled a few feet, but without warning it jumped forward. He pressed the clutch back to the floor before the engine lost power again. Calisto slammed his hand against the wheel, muttering under his breath in Spanish. At this rate it would take him all night to drive her home. The faded yellow convertible pitched forward again, threatening to stall as he continued out of the parking lot, thankful it was late. The streets were fairly empty. At least he wouldn’t get into an accident with another car. Her car staggered ahead, lurching each time he tried to release the clutch, bouncing and jostling them both until Kate finally stirred and woke up. § “Are we out of gas or something?” Calisto watched her with a tight smile. “Not exactly.” Kate winced in pain when she laughed. “You can’t drive a stickshift, can you?” “Does it show?” Calisto pulled over, finally allowing the engine to stall. She nodded her head slowly to avoid more pain. “Just a little. What happened?” “You don’t remember?” “I remember being mugged. And I remember seeing you, but everything after that is blank.” She watched his eyes as Calisto reached over to brush her hair back from her face, and his touch sent shivers through her body. This wasn’t how she had hoped she would run into him, but she learned a long time ago fate didn’t always work out the way you expected.

When warm weather came, Baby Suggs, holy, followed by every black man, woman, and child who could make it through, took her great heart to the Clearing--a wide-open place cut deep in the woods nobody knew for what at the end of the path known only to deer and whoever cleared the land in the first place. In the heat of every Saturday afternoon, she sat in the clearing while the people waited among the trees. After situating herself on a huge flat-sided rock, Baby Suggs bowed her head and prayed silently. The company watched her from the trees. They knew she was ready when she put her stick down. Then she shouted, "Let the children come!" and they ran from the trees toward her. "Let your mothers hear you laugh,"she told them, and the woods rang. The adults looked on and could not help smiling. Then "Let the grown men come," she shouted. They stepped out one by one from among the ringing trees. "Let your wives and your children see you dance," she told them, and groundlife shuddered under their feet. Finally she called the women to her. “Cry,” she told them. “For the living and the dead. Just cry.” And without covering their eyes the women let loose. It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart…“Here,” she said, “in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it… No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them! Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ‘cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it - you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed…What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give leavins instead. No they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it." "This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved. Feet that need to rest and to dance; backs that need support; shoulders that need arms, strong arms I’m telling you. And oh my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it, and hold it up. And all your inside parts that they’d just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver - love it, love it, and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet…More than your life-holding womb and your live-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize."" -Baby Suggs

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.

The crowd as silent,holding their breaths.Hot wind rustled in the trees as the ax gleamed in the sun.Luce could feel that the end was coming,but why? Why had her soul dragged her here? What insight abouther past,or the curse, could she possibly gain from having her head cut off? Then Daniel dropped the ax to the ground. "What are you doing?" Luce asked. Daniel didn't answer.He rolled back his shoulders, turned his face toward the sky, and flung out her arms. Zotz stepped forward to interfere,but when he touched Daniel's shoulder,he screamed and recoiled as if he'd been burned. And then- Daniel's white wings unfurled from his shoulders.As they extended fully from his sides,huge and shockingly bright against the parched brown landscape, they sent twenty Mayans hurtling backward. Shouts rang out around the cenote: "What is he?" "The boy is winged!" "He is a god! Sent to us by Chaat!" Luce thrashed against the ropes binding her wrists and her ankles.She needed to run to Daniel.She tried to move toward him,until- Until she couldn't move anymore. Daniel's wings were so bright they were almost unbearable. Only, now it wasn't just Daniel's wings that were glowing. It was...all of him. His entire body shone.As if he'd swallowed the sun. Music filled the air.No,not music, but a single harmonious chord.Deafening and unending,glorious and frightening. Luce had heard it before...somewhere. In the cemetery at Sword&Cross, the last night she'd been there,the night Daniel had fought Cam,and Luce hadn't been allowed to watch.The night Miss Sophia had dragged her away and Penn had died and nothing had ever been the same.It had begun with that very same chord,and it was coming out of Daniel.He was lit up so brightly,his body actually hummed. She swayed where she stood,unable to take her eyes away.An intense wave of heat stroked her skin. Behind Luce,someone cried out.The cry was followed by another,and then another,and then a whole chorus of voices crying out. Something was burning.It was acrid and choking and turned her stomach instantly. Then,in the corner of her vision,there was an explosion of flame, right where Zotz had been standing a moment before. The boom knocked her backward,and she turned away from the burning brightness of Daniel,coughing on the black ash and bitter smoke. Hanhau was gone,the ground where she'd stood scorched black.The gap-toothed man was hiding his face,trying hard not to look at Daniel's radiance.But it was irresistible.Luce watched as the man peeked between his fingers and burst into a pillar of flame. All around the cenote,the Mayans stared at Daniel.And one by one,his brilliance set them ablaze.Soon a bright ring of fire lit up the jungle,lit up everyone but Luce. "Ix Cuat!" Daniel reached for her. His glow made Luce scream out in pain,but even as she felt as if she were on the verge of asphyxiation, the words tumbled from her mouth. "You're glorious." "Don't look at me," he pleaded. "When a mortal sees an angel's true essence, then-you can see what happened to the others.I can't let you leave me again so soon.Always so soon-" "I'm still here," Luce insisted. "You're still-" He was crying. "Can you see me? The true me?" "I can see you." And for just a fraction of a second,she could.Her vision cleared.His glow was still radiant but not so blinding.She could see his soul. It was white-hot and immaculate,and it looked-there was no other way to say it-like Daniel. And it felt like coming home.A rush of unparalleled joy spread through Luce.Somewhere in the back of her mind,a bell of recognition chimed. She'd seen him like this before. Hadn't she? As her mind strained to draw upon the past she couldn't quite touch,the light of him began to overwhelm her. "No!" she cried,feeling the fire sear her heart and her body shake free of something.

We had something real,” Nobley said, starting to sound a little desperate. “You must have felt it, seeping through the costumes and pretenses.” The brunette nodded. “Seeping through the pretenses? Listen to him, he’s still acting.” Martin turned to the brunette in search of an ally. “Do I detect any jealousy there, my flagpole-like friend?” Nobley said. “Still upset that you weren’t cast as a gentleman? You do make a very good gardener.” Martin took a swing. Nobley ducked and rammed into his body, pushing them both to the ground. The brunette squealed and bounced on the balls of her feet. “Stop it!” Jane pulled at Nobley, then slipped. He put out an arm and caught her midfall across her middle. “Here, let me…” Nobley tried to give her a hand up and push Martin away at the same time. “Get off me,” Martin said. “I’ll help her.” He kicked Nobley in the rear, followed by some swatting of hands. Jane planted her feet, grabbed Nobley’s arm, and pulled him off. Martin was still swiping at Nobley from the ground. Nobley’s cap fell off, then his trench coat twisted up around Martin, who batted at it crazily. “Cut it out!” Jane said, pushing Nobley back and putting herself between them. She felt more like a teacher stopping a schoolboy scuffle than an ingénue with two brawling beaus. “M-m-martin’s gay!” Nobley said. “I am not! You’re thinking of Edgar.” “Who the hell is Edgar?” “You know, that other gardener who always smells of fish.” “Oh, right.” Jane raised her hands in exasperation. “Would you two…” A stuffed-up voice over the PA announced preboarding for Jane’s flight. The brunette made an audible moan of disappointment. Martin struggled to his feet with a hand up from Nobley, and they both stood before Jane, silent, pathetic as wet dogs who want to be let back in the house. She felt very sure of herself just then, tall and sleek and confident. “Well, they’re playing my song, boys,” she said melodically.

1595, Richard Field, fellow-alumnus of the King Edward grammar school in Stratford-upon-Avon, printed The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes, compared together by that grave learned philosopher and historiographer, Plutarke of Chaeronea: translated out of Greeke into French by James Amiot, abbot of Bellozane, Bishop of Auxerre, one of the Kings privie counsell, and great Amner of France, and out of French into English, by Thomas North. This was the book that got Shakespeare thinking seriously about politics: monarchy versus republicanism versus empire; the choices we make and their tragic consequences; the conflict between public duty and private desire. He absorbed classical thought, but was not enslaved to it. Shakespeare was a thinker who always made it new, adapted his source materials, and put his own spin on them. In the case of Plutarch, he feminized the very masculine Roman world. Brutus and Caesar are seen through the prism of their wives, Portia and Calpurnia; Coriolanus through his mother, Volumnia; Mark Antony through his lover, Cleopatra. Roman women were traditionally silent, confined to the domestic sphere. Cleopatra is the very antithesis of such a woman, while Volumnia is given the full force of that supreme Ciceronian skill, a persuasive rhetorical voice.40 Timon of Athens is alone and unhappy precisely because his obsession with money has cut him off from the love of, and for, women (the only females in Timon’s strange play are two prostitutes). Paradoxically, the very masculinity of Plutarch’s version of ancient history stimulated Shakespeare into demonstrating that women are more than the equal of men. Where most thinkers among his contemporaries took the traditional view of female inferiority, he again and again wrote comedies in which the girls are smarter than the boys—Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing, Rosalind in As You Like It, Portia in The Merchant of Venice—and tragedies in which women exercise forceful authority for good or ill (Tamora, Cleopatra, Volumnia, and Cymbeline’s Queen in his imagined antiquity, but also Queen Margaret in his rendition of the Wars of the Roses).41

There are few of us who have not sometimes wakened before dawn, either after one of those dreamless nights that make us almost enamoured of death, or one of those nights of horror and misshapen joy, when through the chambers of the brain sweep phantoms more terrible than reality itself, and instinct with that vivid life that lurks in all grotesques, and that lends to Gothic art its enduring vitality, this art being, one might fancy, especially the art of those whose minds have been troubled with the malady of reverie. Gradually white fingers creep through the curtains, and they appear to tremble. In black fantastic shapes, dumb shadows crawl into the corners of the room, and crouch there. Outside, there is the stirring of birds among the leaves, or the sound of men going forth to their work, or the sigh and sob of the wind coming down from the hills, and wandering round the silent house, as though it feared to wake the sleepers, and yet must needs call forth sleep from her purple cave. Veil after veil of thin dusky gauze is lifted, and by degrees the forms and colours of things are restored to them, and we watch the dawn remaking the world in its antique pattern. The wan mirrors get back their mimic life. The flameless tapers stand where we had left them, and beside them lies the half-cut book that we had been studying, or the wired flower that we had worn at the ball, or the letter that we had been afraid to read, or that we had read too often. Nothing seems to us changed. Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off, and there steals over us a terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been refashioned anew in the darkness for our pleasure, a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness, and the memories of pleasure their pain.

He was reading a little shiny book with covers mottled like a plover’s egg. Now and again, as they hung about in that horrid calm, he turned a page. And James felt that each page was turned with a peculiar gesture aimed at him: now assertively, now commandingly; now with the intention of making people pity him; and all the time, as his father read and turned one after another of those little pages, James kept dreading the moment when he would look up and speak sharply to him about something or other. Why were they lagging about here? he would demand, or something quite unreasonable like that. And if he does, James thought, then I shall take a knife and strike him to the heart. He had always kept this old symbol of taking a knife and striking his father to the heart. Only now, as he grew older, and sat staring at his father in an impotent rage, it was not him, that old man reading, whom he wanted to kill, but it was the thing that descended on him—without his knowing it perhaps: that fierce sudden black-winged harpy, with its talons and its beak all cold and hard, that struck and struck at you (he could feel the beak on his bare legs, where it had struck when he was a child) and then made off, and there he was again, an old man, very sad, reading his book. That he would kill, that he would strike to the heart. Whatever he did—(and he might do anything, he felt, looking at the Lighthouse and the distant shore) whether he was in a business, in a bank, a barrister, a man at the head of some enterprise, that he would fight, that he would track down and stamp out—tyranny, despotism, he called it—making people do what they did not want to do, cutting off their right to speak. How could any of them say, But I won’t, when he said, Come to the Lighthouse. Do this. Fetch me that. The black wings spread, and the hard beak tore. And then next moment, there he sat reading his book; and he might look up—one never knew—quite reasonably. He might talk to the Macalisters. He might be pressing a sovereign into some frozen old woman’s hand in the street, James thought; he might be shouting out at some fisherman’s sports; he might be waving his arms in the air with excitement. Or he might sit at the head of the table dead silent from one end of dinner to the other.

The man who had him pinned kicked him over again and pointed down at the tire. "Stay down, you little bastard, or we'll rape your mum and skin her alive." Chris clamped his hands over Michael's ears. When Dean edged the truck forwards, Tommy's eyes jumped from his face. "Mum! Mummy! Help me, Mummy! Mum!" The engine bellowed, Tommy cried, Marie screamed, Frank roared, and Chris' pulse thumped in his ears. Locked in a maniacal fit, Dean cackled at the sky, his pointy nose and gaunt face making him look like a satanic Mr. Punch. He edged forward again. As Michael fought against Chris' restraint, he eased off a little. Should he just let him go? Were the images in his mind worse than those outside? When the truck moved forward again, the thick treads of the huge tires biting into the back of Tommy's head, he squeezed tightly once more. No mind could create anything worse than that. Chris looked away too.  Tommy's scream was so shrill Chris thought all of the glass in the cul-de-sac would crack, and he fought harder against his thrashing son to keep him restrained. When he felt like he couldn't fight the boy's will any more, he let go.  Instead of looking outside, Michael fell to the floor in a ball, scuttled beneath some blankets, and covered his ears. From beneath the sheets, Chris heard his small voice singing, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." Nudging his boy, Chris waited for him to resurface and put a finger to his lips again. They couldn't afford for the looters to hear them no matter how much it took his son away from their dark reality. The sound of a beeping horn was accompanied by Dean howling and laughing, the vehicle's engine releasing a war cry under the weight of his heavy foot. The cacophony of chaos outside got louder. Frank wailed, Marie let out louder screams, the engine roared, the horn beeped, Dean laughed, and Tommy shrieked. Looking outside again, Chris kept his eyes away from Tommy. Instead, he watched George. If there was anyone who would save them, it was him.  Crunch! Crash!  The truck dropped by six inches. Tommy stopped screaming.  When Dean cut the engine, silence settled over the cul-de-sac, spreading outwards like the thick pool of blood from Tommy's crushed head. Marie's face was locked in a silent scream. Frank slumped further and shook with inaudible sobs. The men, even the weasel with the tennis racket, stood frozen. None of them looked at the dead boy.  Turning away from the murder, Chris looked down to find Michael staring back at him. What could he say to him? Tommy was his best friend. Then, starting low like a distant air-raid siren, Marie began to wail.  After rapidly increasing in volume, it turned into a sustained and brutal cry as if she was being torn in two. Chilled

I stopped struggling, going limp in his arms. He reached around us and shoved the door closed, spinning around and facing us toward the kitchen. “I was trying to make you breakfast.” It took a moment for his words and their meaning to sink in. I stared dumbfounded across the room and past the island. There was smoke billowing up from the stove and the window above the sink was wide open. Bowls and spoons littered the island and there was a carton of eggs sitting out. He was trying to cook. He was really bad at it. I started to laugh. The kind of laugh that shook my shoulders and bubbled up hysterically. My heart rate was still out of control, and I took in a few breaths between laughs to try and calm it down. He said something, but I couldn’t hear him because the fire alarm was still going off. I had no doubt half the neighborhood was now awake from the sound. He didn’t bother to put me down, instead hauling me along with him, where he finally set me down, dragged a chair over near the alarm, and climbed up to remove the battery. The noise cut off and the kitchen fell silent. “Well, shit,” he said, staring at the battery in his hand. A giggle escaped me. “Does this always happen when you cook?” He shrugged. “The only time I ever cook is when it’s my turn at the station.” His forehead creased and a thoughtful look came over his face. “The guys are never around when it’s my night to cook. Now I know why.” He snagged a towel off the counter and began waving away the rest of the lingering smoke. I clicked on the vent fan above the stove. There was a pan with half a melted spatula, something that may or may not have once been eggs, and a muffin tin with half-burned, half-raw muffins (how was that even possible?). “Well, this looks…” My words faltered, trying to come up with something positive to say. “Completely inedible?” he finished. I grinned. “You did all this for me?” “I figured after a week of hospital food, you might like something good. Apparently you aren’t going to find that here.” I had the urge to hug him. I kept my feet planted where they were. “Thank you. No one’s ever ruined a pan for me before.” He grinned. “I have cereal. Even I can’t mess that up.” I watched as he pulled down a bowl and poured me some, adding milk. He looked so cute when he handed me the bowl that I lifted the spoon and took a bite. “Best cereal I ever had.” “Damn straight.” I carried it over to the counter and sat down. “After we eat, would you mind taking me to my car? I hope it’s still drivable.” “What about the keys?” “I have a security deposit box at the bank. I keep my spare there in case I ever need them.” “Pretty smart.” “I have a few good ideas now and then.” “Contrary to the way it looks, I do too.” “Thank you for trying to make me breakfast. And for the cereal.” He walked over to the stove and picked up the ruined pan. “You died with honor,” he said, giving it a mock salute. And then he threw the entire thing into the trashcan. I laughed. “You could have washed it, you know.” He made a face. “No. Then I might be tempted to use it again.

The bouncer swallowed hard. “So, you have two choices, you could go get Mister Steiner and tell him that there is someone waiting for him. That is a bad plan, you would be interrupting his night and I doubt he would enjoy that. Or, the second choice is you accept my hundred dollars and you open the fucking door. Because if my date and I have to wait out in this shitty line for another second, I’m going to cut your fucking balls off, have them bronzed, and give them to Karl as a gift.” I stepped back from the bouncer, the hundred note still in my hand. He took the note, opened the door and wished us a good evening. “Right choice,” I told him and stepped inside the building.

APRIL 15 BREAK AND DIVIDE EVERY DEMONIC CONFEDERACY I WILL NOT be silent when those who hate me have lifted up their heads and taken crafty counsel against My people. They have consulted together against My children and put a confederacy in place to cut you off so that you will be remembered no more. I will deal with them as I dealt with the enemies of the Israelites, and they will become refuse on the earth. They will be like the whirling dust and the chaff that blows before the wind. I will cause them to confounded and dismayed forever, and I will put them to shame that they may perish. For My name alone is the Lord, and I am the Most High over all the earth. PSALM 83 Prayer Declaration Father, I break and divide every demonic confederacy against my life in the name of Jesus, and I loose confusion into every demonic confederacy directed against my life, family, and church. Persecute them with Your tempest, and make them afraid of Your terrible storm. Let them be confounded and troubled forever. Let them be confused and attack each other until they perish.

The lunch menu consisted of a seafood appetizer, creamy chicken in a pastry shell, and a green salad--none of which was really kids’ food. Patrick and Caroline toyed silently with their seafood and managed a few obligatory bites. I noticed Diana’s eyes twinkling with amusement as she watched them. I had to admit “Patrick and Caroline aren’t especially fond of shellfish.” When the chicken was served, Caroline didn’t know how to serve herself and cast an imploring look at me that said, “Oh, help! What do I do, Mom?” Before I could react, Diana, so attuned to children, jumped up and came over to serve Caroline and cut up her chicken. I was speechless at her rapid, sympathetic response. Caroline thanked her, then gazed at her in adoration for the rest of the meal. She was in heaven! Dessert was tricky and delicious--ice cream in a slippery chocolate shell. This time two people served all of us, so my children would not have to struggle for themselves. During lunch, Diana made a point of asking Patrick and Caroline about their travels, their schools, and their hobbies. Patrick’s responses were very polite, but tended to be rather subdued and brief. I wanted him to sound a bit more animated. I resisted the urge to give him a sharp kick under the table. Caroline was more talkative. Diana seemed to enjoy my lively, spunky daughter. My children behaved themselves beautifully amidst the unaccustomed formality and luxury. My years of daily training paid off. They answered questions politely, sat up straight in their chairs, and even chewed with their mouths closed. I thought of my mother-in-law’s claim, “You can take those children anywhere.” Their lunch with the Princess of Wales certainly proved her point. I was very proud of them.

There is about our house a need. The running, pulsating restlessness of the four boys as they struggle to learn and grow; the world embraces them….All this wonder needs a counterpart. We need some starched crisp frocks to go with all our torn-kneed blue jeans and helmets. We need some soft blond hair to off-set those crew cuts. We need a doll house to stand firm against our forts and rackets and thousand baseball cards. We need a cut-out star to play alone while the others battle to see who’s ‘family champ.’ We even need someone…who could sing the descant to “Alouette,” while outside they scramble to catch the elusive ball aimed ever roofward, but usually thudding against the screens. We need a legitimate Christmas angel—one who doesn’t have cuffs beneath the dress. We need someone who’s afraid of frogs. We need someone to cry when I get mad—not argue. We need a little one who can kiss without leaving egg or jam or gum. We need a girl. We had one once—she’d fight and cry and play and make her way just like the rest. But there was about her a certain softness. She was patient—her hugs were just a little less wiggly. Like them, she’d climb in to sleep with me, but somehow she’d fit. She didn’t boot and flip and wake me up with pug nose and mischievous eyes a challenging quarter-inch from my sleeping face. No—she’d stand beside our bed till I felt her there. Silently and comfortable, she’d put those precious, fragrant locks against my chest and fall asleep. Her peace made me feel strong, and so very important. “My Daddy” had a caress, a certain ownership which touched a slightly different spot than the “Hi Dad” I love so much. But she is still with us. We need her and yet we have her. We can’t touch her, and yet we can feel her. We hope she’ll stay in our house for a long, long time. Love Pop

You must think me the veriest ninny,” she said, “not knowing how to dance.” “I think you’re very brave, actually, for admitting it.” His free hand found hers and slowly lifted it into the air. “Most women of my acquaintance would have feigned an injury or disinterest.” She looked up into his eyes even though she knew it would leave her breathless. “I haven’t the acting skills to feign disinterest,” she admitted. The hand at the small of her back tightened. “Listen to the music,” he instructed, his voice oddly hoarse. “Do you feel it rising and falling?” She shook her head. “Listen harder,” he whispered, his lips drawing closer to her ear. “One, two, three; one, two, three.” Sophie closed her eyes and somehow filtered out the endless chatter of the guests below them until all she heard was the soft swell of the music. Her breathing slowed, and she found herself swaying in time with the orchestra, her head rocking back and forth with Benedict’s softly uttered numerical instructions. “One, two, three; one two three.” “I feel it,” she whispered. He smiled. She wasn’t sure how she knew that; her eyes were still closed. But she felt the smile, heard it in the tenor of his breath. “Good,” he said. “Now watch my feet and allow me to lead you.” Sophie opened her eyes and looked down. “One, two, three; one, two, three.” Hesitantly, she stepped along with him— right onto his foot. “Oh! I’m sorry!” she blurted out. “My sisters have done far worse,” he assured her. “Don’t give up.” She tried again, and suddenly her feet knew what to do. “Oh!” she breathed in surprise. “This is wonderful!” “Look up,” he ordered gently. “But I’ll stumble.” “You won’t,” he promised. “I won’t let you. Look into my eyes.” Sophie did as he asked, and the moment her eyes touched his, something inside her seemed to lock into place, and she could not look away. He twirled her in circles and spirals around the terrace, slowly at first, then picking up speed, until she was breathless and giddy. And all the while, her eyes remained locked on his. “What do you feel?” he asked. “Everything!” she said, laughing. “What do you hear?” “The music.” Her eyes widened with excitement. “I hear the music as I’ve never heard it before.” His hands tightened, and the space between them diminished by several inches. “What do you see?” he asked. Sophie stumbled, but she never took her eyes off his. “My soul,” she whispered. “I see my very soul.” He stopped dancing. “What did you say?” he whispered. She held silent. The moment seemed too charged, too meaningful, and she was afraid she’d spoil it. No, that wasn’t true. She was afraid she’d make it even better, and that would make it hurt all the more when she returned to reality at midnight. How on earth was she going to go back to polishing Araminta’s shoes after this? “I know what you said,” Benedict said hoarsely. “I heard you, and—” “Don’t say anything,” Sophie cut in. She didn’t want him to tell her that he felt the same way, didn’t want to hear anything that would leave her pining for this man forever. But it was probably already too late for that. He stared at her for an agonizingly long moment, then murmured, “I won’t speak. I won’t say a word.” And then, before she even had a second to breathe, his lips were on hers, exquisitely gentle and achingly tender. -Sophie & Benedict

She found Emery and Mg. Aviosky talking to two disgruntled police officers. Or rather, Mg. Aviosky stood by silently while Emery yelled at them. “Then take me!” Emery shouted, a vein on the side of his forehead looking especially rigid. The skin around his eyes was flushed, and he waved his hands in the air like cleavers. “Don’t you understand? She might be in there! They all might be in there. We have to go!” “Sir,” said the taller officer, “as I’ve already explained, we can only—” “Emery!” Ceony shouted as she pushed past the last of the crowd. Emery whirled around at his name. “It’s okay, we got out before—” The rest of her words were cut off when Emery threw his arms around her and embraced her, sending her top hat—and her stomach—tumbling to the ground.

The two wars that I have participated in were not horribly fascinating like the devil-protected, fiery gates at all. Rather, war is unspeakably disgusting. War is seeing poorly trained American boys committing atrocities—savagely cutting the ears off of injured enemy soldiers. It is stopping them and then wondering about being shot in the back. War is a young husband with his privates blown away and begging you for a grenade and you are tempted to give him one. War is the elderly, half-crazed peasant suffering from “interrogation wounds” lying in the mud beside his dead wife who had been sexually assaulted because he would not tell secrets that he probably did not possess. War is to see an American Marine cut in two by machine gun bullets; seeing him writhing in the dirt, trying to pull his own intestines out of the black, gritty sand and shove them back into the cavity that was his abdomen while pleading with his eyes for you to come out in front of the lines and help him; war is seeing that tortured silent plea just after seeing two of his buddies try, but be killed immediately by sinister, hissing sniper fire from nowhere. War is a young man, your own brother (say), with half his face shot away, while he is choking and drowning in his own vomit as it pulsates out of his throat. This is war. To veil it with the word, “hell,” is a manipulative lie, like calling it “heaven.” Face it; be able to discuss it for what it is—horrible death over and over—so that we are truly motivated to stop it.

So you’ve run off from him, have you?” Beatrix asked, smoothing the wiry ruff on his head. “Naughty boy. I suppose you’ve had a fine old time chasing rabbits and squirrels. And there’s a damaging rumor about a missing chicken. You had better stay out of poultry yards, or it won’t go well for you in Stony Cross. Shall I take you home, boy? He’s probably looking for you. He--” She stopped at the sound of something…someone…moving through the thicket. Albert turned his head and let out a happy bark, bounding toward the approaching figure. Beatrix was slow to lift her head. She struggled to moderate her breathing, and tried to calm the frantic stutters of her heart. She was aware of the dog bounding joyfully back to her, tongue dangling. He glanced back at his master as if to convey Look what I found! Letting out a slow breath, Beatrix looked up at the man who had stopped approximately three yards away. Christopher. It seemed the entire world stopped. Beatrix tried to compare the man standing before her with the cavalier rake he had once been. But it seemed impossible that he could be the same person. No longer a god descending from Olympus…now a warrior hardened by bitter experience. His complexion was a deep mixture of gold and copper, as if he had been slowly steeped in sun. The dark wheaten locks of his hair had been cut in efficiently short layers. His face was impassive, but something volatile was contained in the stillness. How bleak he looked. How alone. She wanted to run to him. She wanted to touch him. The effort of standing motionless caused her muscles to tremble in protest. She heard herself speak in a voice that wasn’t quite steady. “Welcome home, Captain Phelan.” He was silent, staring at her without apparent recognition. Dear Lord, those eyes…frost and fire, his gaze burning through her awareness. “I’m Beatrix Hathaway,” she managed to say. “My family--” “I remember you.” The rough velvet of his voice was a pleasure-stroke against her ears. Fascinated, bewildered, Beatrix stared at his guarded face. To Christopher Phelan, she was a stranger. But the memories of his letters were between them, even if he wasn’t aware of it. Her hand moved gently over Albert’s rough fur. “You were absent in London,” she said. “There was a great deal of hullabaloo on your behalf.” “I wasn’t ready for it.” So much was expressed in that spare handful of words. Of course he wasn’t ready. The contrast would be too jarring, the blood-soaked brutality of war followed by a fanfare of parades and trumpets and flower petals. “I can’t imagine any sane man would be,” she said. “It’s quite an uproar. Your picture is in all the shop windows. And they’re naming things after you.” “Things,” he repeated cautiously. “There’s a Phelan hat.” His brows lowered. “No there isn’t.” “Oh, yes there is. Rounded at the top. Narrow-brimmed. Sold in shades of gray or black. They have one featured at the milliner’s in Stony Cross.” Scowling, Christopher muttered something beneath his breath.

If Sophie’s too young,” he said, “then you can be my girl, Elise. You’re a looker.” “None of us are going to be your girl,” she shot back. He advanced closer. “Your uncle told us he’s throwing you all out of here soon. But if you’re my girl, I’ll make sure you stay.” Elise was surprised Uncle Hermann hadn’t forced them out yet. She’d known it was only a matter of time before he did. Since Reinhold had brought her the news of Uncle’s plans, she’d been asking around the neighborhood for a new place to live. But whenever she found an available space, no one wanted so many young dependents, especially when over half weren’t wage earners. Friedric drew close enough that she caught the smell of beer on his breath. “You know you want me.” He leaned in and attempted to kiss her. She dodged him and at the same time thrust out the knife. When the sharp tip pricked him in the chest, he froze. “Don’t try to touch me or my sisters again.” She attempted to keep her hand from trembling. “If you so much as breathe on us, I won’t hesitate to cut you up.” He was silent for a moment as though trying to grasp the meaning of her words in his beer-fogged brain. Finally he stepped out of her reach and said, “You’ll regret turning me down, princess,” and his voice rumbled low with menace. “Never.” “You just wait and see. I’ll make sure that next time you’re not here when I want one of your sisters.” Elise fought back panic and forced herself to remain calm. She drew in a steadying breath. “Okay, Friedric. You’re right. You’re my best option. I’ll consider being your girl so long as you promise to get Uncle to let me and my sisters stay.” Her words must have taken Friedric by surprise because he was speechless for a minute before giving a triumphant laugh. “You have a deal. You’ll have to get rid of the two snot-nosed babies. But I won’t have any trouble convincing your uncle to let you and your sisters stay.” He fumbled for her again. She stopped him with her knife. “You said you’d be my girl,” he whined, backing away again. “Only after I have proof that Uncle won’t throw us out. If you touch me before that, I’ll hack off your fingers.” He grumbled under his breath before finally muttering, “Fine.

Don’t come out from under unless you hear my voice. Understand?” Karen’s eyes were full of tears but she nodded and slid beneath the Gremlin. I’d purchased it from some guy who’d been using it as a dune buggy, so the tires were oversized. She’d never have made it under the car if they hadn’t been. I ran in the opposite direction, waving my arms to catch the attention of the alien piloting the saucer. It worked all too well. I ran faster than I’d ever run. Bodies were scattered throughout the park, some of them with arms and legs cut off by the beam. I turned back to check on the saucer’s location, because the machines were deadly silent. When I did I tripped over something and went sprawling. Scrambling to my feet, I saw that it was a young girl, perhaps eleven or twelve. Long brown hair, and a pretty face. She’d been cut in half by the beam. Her legs and hips, and the singed waist of her pretty Easter dress, lay about five yards behind her upper torso. I was about to run when big, beautiful but terrified eyes suddenly opened and shocked me. She looked up at me. “Help me,” she begged softly. Fear of remaining with her to die was overwhelming, but I discovered my humanity was stronger. I took her hand in mine and squeezed it. Somehow I managed a smile, watching in apprehension as the saucer circled for another pass. “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” I lied. “My name’s Tom, and I’m right here. I won’t leave you.” I felt a slight pressure against my grip. “Ginny,” she whispered. Then her grip loosened, and her eyes closed forever. The saucer was too close. I’d never escape it. I resigned myself to dying, proud that at least when I’d been tested, I’d chosen compassion over fear. As it swooped toward me, my last thoughts were of Karen. I took a deep breath and stood; I wanted to meet death with eyes wide open, in one last act of human defiance. — (Saturday's Children)

They turn on short-range telemetry kits, and we approach through the clear-cut. The black soil is deformed into thigh-high welts from earth-moving equipment. Pings from the radio collars tell them that the male is south of the female, who is farther up the wood line. Because the male wolf and the yearlings will often sit the pups while the female goes off to hunt or rest elsewhere, the biologists must choose which wolf’s signal to focus upon. This morning, they can’t decide which wolf might be with the pups. Chris whispers a game plan to Ryan. “I’m going to walk up on the male,” Chris says. “You walk farther up and get a bead on the female. Wait a few minutes before you go in - give me some time to find him first because the wind will wash your scent south right back on top of him, okay? If the pups aren’t with him, I’ll just keep moving north toward her and find you.” Ryan nods his agreement, and Chris slips into the woods. The density of the vegetation encloses around him within a few feet from the tree line. Chris, having spent twenty-five years using telemetry to track wolves, can interpret the pings like most people read road signs. His body melts behind thick vines, woody growth, and an abundance of wax myrtle bushes that crowd the understory. Ryan and I walk north along the clear-cut. He listens for the female, holding his telemetry antennae high. He waves the unit this way and that, searching the radio wave for the best strength. It begins raining. He paces up and down a fifty-foot stretch of the tree line. Where the female wolf’s signal is the strongest, he scratches a large X in the dark muck with his boot heel. We wait in the light drizzle. Minutes tick by. Finally, Ryan motions for me to follow him into the woods. We creep deliberately, slowly, and I plant each step where he does. After about ten yards, he drops onto his hands and knees and crawls beneath a cluster of thorny devil’s walking sticks. I trail him as if playing a silent game of follow the leader. We pause here and there to let the wolf confuse our sounds with a foraging squirrel. He uses vine clippers to snip through several large branches obscuring our way. Soon, Ryan pulls the cable from his antennae and shows me that he can hear her with just the receiver box. We are close. I try not to breathe. She is within thirty feet. Then the pinging in his headphones tells him she is running. We don’t hear or even see her flush. It is like tracking a ghost.

It was as if, in the midst of a film concerning an avalanche, a tornado, a hurricane, a volcanic eruption, something had, first, gone wrong with the sound apparatus, thus muffling and finally cutting off all noise, all of the blasts and repercussions and thunders, and then, second, ripped the film from the projector and inserted in its place a beautiful tropical slide which did not move or tremor. The world ground to a standstill. The silence was so immense and unbelievable that you felt your ears had been stuffed or you had lost your hearing altogether. The children put their hands to their ears. They stood apart. The door slid back and the smell of the silent, waiting world came in to them. The sun came out.

I should be here with you,' Kieran stepped closer to Casteel. 'My duty is to defend your life with mine. That is what I'm bonded to do, the oath I took. How can I do that running away from the battle?' His voice lowered. 'Don't do this, Cas.' ... 'You took an oath to protect me, and you will,' Casteel said. 'You're not running away from the battle. You will be keeping safe what is most important to me, and that is Poppy.' I jolted. 'Wait. What?' 'You will leave with them. It will be hard,' he said, still holding Kieran's gaze. 'There will be no breaks, and you will need to listen to everything Kieran tells you, especially when it's night in the mountains, but-' 'I'm not leaving,' I cut him off. 'You can't be here,' Casteel replied. 'Not when they come. This is not up for discussion.' I shot to my feet. 'Let me make one thing clear. I don't know if you realise this or not, Casteel, but I'm not duty-bound to obey a single thing you say.' Casteel stiffened. 'And maybe you should actually look at me when you try to order me to do things,' I tacked on. He turned to me, his head cocked. 'I'm looking at you now.' 'But are you listening?' 'Oh, man,' Delano murmured under his breath as the rest of the room went dead silent. 'Someone is getting stabbed again.' Someone, I think it was Jasper, snorted. 'Oh, I'm listening,' Casteel replied. 'Maybe you should try that. Along with this thing called common sense.' 'Definitely getting stabbed,' Kieran confirmed.

Tamlin slumped against the edge of the table, gripping his injured hand at the wrist as he watched me sort through the supplies in the cabinets and drawers. When I'd gathered what I'd needed, I tried not to balk at the thought of touching him, but... I didn't let myself give in to my dread as I took his hand, the heat of his skin like an inferno against my cool fingers. I cleaned off his bloody, dirty hand, bracing for the first flash of those claws. But his claws remained retracted, and he kept silent as I bound and wrapped his hand- surprisingly enough, there were no more than a few vicious cuts, none of them requiring stitching. I secured the bandage in place and stepped away, bringing the bowl of bloody water to the deep sink in the back of the room. His eyes were a brand upon me as I finished cleaning, and the room became too small, too hot. He'd killed the Bogge and walked away relatively unscathed. If Tamlin was that powerful, then the High Lords of Prythian must be near-gods. Every mortal instinct in my body bleated in panic at the thought.

Jesus gestured to the two men, now laying on the ground awakening from their unconsciousness. “Get them some clothes and water.” Some of the disciples did so as Jesus sat down on a rock. He looked troubled. Simon asked him, “What is wrong, Rabbi?” Jesus stared out into the void. “The Gates of Hades have been opened. The Nephilim have returned.” A wave of understanding washed over Simon. Of course, he thought. My obsession with separation and uncleanness blinded me to the spiritual truth. Peter asked, “What does that mean, Rabbi?” Jesus remained silent and distant. Simon tried to help out by explaining it to Peter and the others who listened. “The healings, the exorcisms. They are not mere tricks of magic power intended to invoke awe, like a circus spectacle. The lepers, the blind and the lame—and sinners—are all those who are not allowed in the Temple because of their uncleanness. They are cut off from the privilege of Yahweh’s holy presence by Torah. By casting out the uncleanness, Jesus is purifying the land and the people of Israel. He is preparing us for our inheritance.

On his return, my husband was impressed that it was his duty to write and publish the present truth. He was greatly encouraged and blessed as he decided thus to do. But again he would be in doubt and perplexity as he was penniless. There were those who had means, but they chose to keep it. He at length gave up in discouragement, and decided to look for a field of grass to mow. As he left the house, a burden was rolled upon me, and I fainted. Prayer was offered for me, and I was blessed, and taken off in vision. I saw that the Lord had blessed and strengthened my husband to labor in the field one year before; that he had made a right {260} disposition of the means he there earned; and that he would have a hundred fold in this life, and, if faithful, a rich reward in the kingdom of God; but that the Lord would not now give him strength to labor in the field, for he had another work for him; that if he ventured into the field he would be cut down by sickness; but that he must write, write, write, and walk out by faith. He immediately commenced to write, and when he came to some difficult passage we would call upon the Lord to give us the true meaning of his word.  “My husband then began, to publish a small sheet at Middletown, eight miles from Rocky Hill, and often walked this distance and back again, although he was then lame. When he brought the first number from the printing-office, we all bowed around it, asking the Lord, with humble hearts and many tears, to let his blessing rest upon the feeble efforts of his servant. He then directed the paper to all he thought would read it, and carried it to the post office in a carpet-bag. Every number was taken from Middletown to Rocky Hill, and always before preparing them for the post office, they were spread before the Lord, and earnest prayers mingled with tears, were offered to God that his blessing would attend the silent messengers. Very soon letters came bringing means to publish the paper, and the good news of many souls embracing the truth. 

I think of Baghdad years ago, when I met Professor Al-Rawi for the first time to discuss The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, his favorite book by his favorite American. He awarded me the task of reading it in the off-term, when the other students of English relaxed at home. Each day, I went to his office on the Karada campus and he explained to me things which I could not have possibly understood then. Truly, I did not comprehend a single thing at first. How Mark Twain wrote. How these Americans spoke, so ignorant and rough. Why Americans today thought of this story of terribly behaved children as high art. "Kateb, you must understand the context," Professor Al-Rawi said. "What the American reader knew then, what Americans today do not remember, and what you certainly cannot understand. These were not just boys making silly plans in caves. These were boys growing up just in time for their war. Sitting there, making plans to start this robber's gang, this was quite humorous to Americans reading the book in the nineteenth century." "But not Americans of today?" He lit a cigarette. "Humorous, yes. But for other reasons. You see, Americans today...forget. Ten years after these boys met to scheme in caves, their civil war fell upon them. These boys, these Missouri boys, they would have cut each other's throats in that war. And the sides they would pick? This was determined in their youth, you see." We were silent for a moment as I considered this. "Have you thought about Huck Finn cutting Tom Sawyer's throat?" he asked. "No." "You should, Kateb. You should think about that." Then he smiled, like he knew all along what would come for us.

Sunday dinner at the Marsdens’ is more than a meal--it’s an occasion. I’m dressed accordingly, wearing a pale green sundress with a sweater to ward off the chill of the air-conditioning. “Well, I blame my mama, God rest her soul,” Laura Grace says with a sigh. “She never taught me how to cook. You have no idea how lucky you are, Jemma--you and Nan both. Your mama’s a great cook, and she made sure to teach you. You girls’ husbands are surely going to thank her one day.” It’s impossible to miss the pointed look she gives Ryder. He ignores her and continues to attack his own roast. He’s rolled up the sleeves of his white button-down shirt, but his tie is neat and his khakis perfectly pressed. He cuts off a slice of rare meat and brings it to his mouth. Chewing slowly, he fixes his gaze on the wall directly above my mother’s head. It’s clear that he, too, would rather be anywhere else right now--anywhere but here, a helpless victim of our mothers’ machinations. Laura Grace glances from him to me and back to him again. “Next year, when the two of you are off at Oxford, you better promise to drive over together each week for Sunday dinner, you hear?” “Now, c’mon, Laura Grace,” Mr. Marsden chides. “You know Ryder hasn’t made his decision yet. You’ve got to give the boy some space to figure it out.” She waves one hand in dismissal. “I know. But a mama can hope, can’t she? I’m sorry, but I just can’t imagine the two of them going off in different directions.” “There’s only one choice for the both of them, as far as I’m concerned,” my mom says. “It’s about time the Rebels get their football program back on track, and Ryder’s just the boy to do it--with Jemma cheering him on.” I can’t help but cringe, staring down at my plate. I mean, is this really what my mom dreams about? Is this the best she can imagine for me? For a moment, everyone continues to eat silently. The tension in the air is so thick you could cut it with a knife, but I doubt Mama or Laura Grace even notice.

for some time. She’s long past her bearing years now. Nettle will be our only daughter.’ His face softened. ‘I’m sorry, Fitz. I’ve been told that nothing completes a man’s life in quite the way that children do. I know that you wanted—’ I interrupted. ‘I had the raising of Hap. I flatter myself that I did well enough for a man handed an eight-year-old orphan at short notice. He keeps in touch with me still, when his travels and minstrel duties allow it. And Nettle turned out well, and Molly has shared all her younger children with me. I watched Hearth and Just grow to manhood, and we watched them ride off together. Those were good years, Chade. There’s no good to be had from pining after lost chances. I have Molly. And truly, she’s enough for me. She’s my home.’ And there, I’d successfully cut him off before he could importune me to stay a while, or move back to Buckkeep Castle just for a season or a year or two. His litany was as familiar as Kettricken’s, but flavoured more with guilt than duty. He was an old man, and still had so much to teach me. I had always been his most promising student. Dutiful still had need of an accomplished assassin, and I was a unique weapon in that the young king could converse silently with me via the Skill. And there was the Skill itself. There were still so many mysteries to unravel. So much translating left to do, so many secrets and techniques to be mined from the trove of scrolls we had retrieved from Aslevjal. I knew all his arguments and persuasions. Over the years, I had heard them all. And resisted them all. Repeatedly. Yet