Distant Sister Quotes

He began it,” Cecily said, jerking her chin at Will, though she knew it was pointless. Jem, Will’s parabatai, treated her with the distant sweet kindness reserved for the little sisters of one’s friends, but he would always side with Will. Kindly, but firmly, he put Will above everything else in the world. Well, nearly everything.

Her eyes were distant, and she seemed to be listening to that voice that first told her the story, a mother, sister, or aunt. Then her voice, like her singing, cut through the crickets and crackling fire.

The world is a wide place where we stumble like children learning to walk. The world is a bright mosaic where we learn like children to see, where our little blurry eyes strive greedily to take in as much light and love and colour and detail as they can. The world is a coaxing whisper when the wind lips the trees, when the sea licks the shore, when animals burrow into earth and people look up at the sympathetic stars. The world is an admonishing roar when gales chase rainclouds over the plains and whip up ocean waves, when people crowd into cities or intrude into dazzling jungles. What right have we to carry our desperate mouths up mountains or into deserts? Do we want to taste rock and sand or do we expect to make impossible poems from space and silence? The vastness at least reminds us how tiny we are, and how much we don't yet understand. We are mere babes in the universe, all brothers and sisters in the nursery together. We had better learn to play nicely before we're allowed out..... And we want to go out, don't we? ..... Into the distant humming welcoming darkness.

They were young; time hadn't yet rubbed at them, polishing their differences and sharpening their opinions...

Good morning,” he drawled. She straightened her shoulders with the silent reminder that she had to be as distant as he was. “My lord.” He gave her an indulgent smirk. “As much as I like to be referred to as your lord, I think we’ve gone far beyond those empty platitudes. You have called me Ethan several times.” He hesitated and tapped his chin. “Actually you moaned it once. I prefer you call me that while we are alone together.

The White Goddess All saints revile her, and all sober men Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean - In scorn of which we sailed to find her In distant regions likeliest to hold her Whom we desired above all things to know, Sister of the mirage and echo. It was a virtue not to stay, To go our headstrong and heroic way Seeking her out at the volcano's head, Among pack ice, or where the track had faded Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers: Whose broad high brow was white as any leper's, Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips, With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips. The sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate with green the Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But we are gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of her nakedly worn magnificence We forget cruelty and past betrayal, Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

My son used to believe that he could look at a plane in flight and make it explode in midair by simply thinking it. He believed, at thirteen, that the border between himself and the world was thin and porous enough to allow him to affect the course of events. An aircraft in flight was a provocation too strong to ignore. He’d watch a plane gaining altitude after taking off from Sky Harbor and he’d sense an element of catastrophe tacit in the very fact of a flying object filled with people. He was sensitive to the most incidental stimulus and he thought he could feel the object itself yearning to burst. All he had to do was wish the fiery image into his mind and the plane would ignite and shatter. His sister used to tell him, Go ahead, blow it up, let me see you take that plane out of the sky with all two hundred people aboard, and it scared him to hear someone talk this way and it scared her too because she wasn’t completely convinced he could not do it. It’s the special skill of an adolescent to imagine the end of the world as an adjunct to his own discontent. But Jeff got older and lost interest and conviction. He lost the paradoxical gift for being separate and alone and yet intimately connected, mind-wired to distant things.

Abra DeMadrigal didn't look young enough to be my sister anymore. Her sorrow weighed her down and aged her. She was still beautiful, but she looked very far away. No wonder our people had raven eyes, so distant, so sad. No matter how wise she was, my mother looked like a woman who hadn't truely believed how much evil there was in our world. Not until this moment.

A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Mark the mastodon. The dinosaur, who left dry tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages. But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow. I will give you no hiding place down here. You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness, Have lain too long Face down in ignorance. Your mouths spelling words Armed for slaughter. The rock cries out today, you may stand on me, But do not hide your face. Across the wall of the world, A river sings a beautiful song, Come rest here by my side. Each of you a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege. Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. Yet, today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more. Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I And the tree and stone were one. Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow And when you yet knew you still knew nothing. The river sings and sings on. There is a true yearning to respond to The singing river and the wise rock. So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew, The African and Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek, The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The privileged, the homeless, the teacher. They hear. They all hear The speaking of the tree. Today, the first and last of every tree Speaks to humankind. Come to me, here beside the river. Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river. Each of you, descendant of some passed on Traveller, has been paid for. You, who gave me my first name, You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, Then forced on bloody feet, Left me to the employment of other seekers-- Desperate for gain, starving for gold. You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot... You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare Praying for a dream. Here, root yourselves beside me. I am the tree planted by the river, Which will not be moved. I, the rock, I the river, I the tree I am yours--your passages have been paid. Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, Need not be lived again. Lift up your eyes upon The day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream. Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands. Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts. Each new hour holds new chances For new beginnings. Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness. The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out upon me, The rock, the river, the tree, your country. No less to Midas than the mendicant. No less to you now than the mastodon then. Here on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, Into your brother's face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope Good morning.

There is some strange sense in which distance and closeness are sisters, the two sides of the one experience. Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging. Yet they are always in a dynamic interflow with each other. When we fix or locate them definitively, we injure our growth. It is an interesting imaginative exercise to interchange them: to consider what is near as distant and to consider the distant as intimate.

He'd seen this babe before--her many counterparts, that is. He knew her kin, distant and near. All her mamas, sisters, aunts, cousins and what have you. And he knew the name was Lowdown with a capital L. He wasn't at all surprised to find her in a setup like this. Not after encountering her as a warden's sister-in-law, the assistant treasurer of a country bank, and a supervisor of paroles. This babe got around. She was the original square-plug-in-a-round-hole kid. But she never changed any. She had that good old Lowdown blood in her, and the right guy could bring it out.

Here's the thing about New York, the thing I love most: there is no such substance as silence. If you ever stop talking, and he stops talking, the city takes over for you. A siren forms a distant parabola of sound. A door slams. The old couple in 4A argues over who will answer the telephone. The young lovers in 2C reach an animalistic climax. A million other lives play out on your doorstep, and not one of them gives a damn about your little problems. Life goes on and on and on.

Our civilisation is still in a middle stage, scarcely beast, in that it is no longer wholly guided by instinct; scarcely human, in that it is not yet wholly guided by reason. On the tiger no responsibility rests. We see him aligned by nature with the forces of life - he is born into their keeping and without thought he is protected. We see man far removed from the lairs of the jungles, his innate instincts dulled by too near an approach to free-will, his free-will not sufficiently developed to replace his instincts and afford him perfect guidance... In this intermediate stage he wavers - neither drawn in harmony with nature by his instincts nor yet wisely putting himself into harmony by his own free-will... We have the consolation of knowing that evolution is ever in action, that the ideal is a light that cannot fail. He will not forever balance thus between good and evil. When this jangle of free-will and instinct shall have been adjusted, when perfect understanding has given the former the power to replace the latter entirely, man will no longer vary. The needle of understanding will yet point steadfast and unwavering to the distant pole of truth.

Often we imagine that we will work hard until we arrive at some distant goal, and then we will be happy. This is a delusion. Happiness is the result of a life lived with purpose. Happiness is not an objective. It is the movement of life itself, a process, and an activity. It arises from curiosity and discovery. Seek pleasure and you will quickly discover the shortest path to suffering. Other people, friends, brothers, sisters, neighbors, spouses, even your mother and I are not responsible for your happiness. Your life is your responsibility, and you always have the choice to do your best. Doing your best will bring happiness. Do not be overconcerned with avoiding pain or seeking pleasure. If you are concentrating on the results of your actions, you are not dedicated to your task.

In Dedication. All saints revile her, and all sober men Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean - In scorn of which I sailed to find her In distant regions likeliest to hold her Whom I desired above all things to know, Sister of the mirage and echo. It was a virtue not to stay, To go my headstrong and heroic way Seeking her out at the volcano's head, Among pack ice, or where the track had faded Beyond the cavern of the seven sleepers: Whose broad high brow was white as any leper's, Whose eyes were blue, with rowan-berry lips, With hair curled honey-coloured to white hips. Green sap of Spring in the young wood a-stir Will celebrate the Mountain Mother, And every song-bird shout awhile for her; But I am gifted, even in November Rawest of seasons, with so huge a sense Of her nakedly worn magnificence I forget cruelty and past betrayal, Careless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

It was as if I had stepped through a mirror and was living a day in the life I might have had, if I’d stayed on the mountain. My life had diverged from my sister’s, and it felt as though there was no common ground between us. The hours passed; it was late afternoon; and still she felt distant from me, still she refused to meet my gaze.

And in their distant cave and where the threads of life are woven, measured, and always cut short the three sisters of fate always busy at their terrible task smile sardonically' - Odyssey

You can not fight "RACISM" when the "MIND" is weak. You can't fight "INJUSTICE" or "CORRUPTION" when you're not a true follower of your soul. You can't fight "OPPRESSION" when you "THINK" and "ACT" like the oppressor. You can't become a "CHANGE" when you keep on accepting the same old results.You can't become a valuable source in society when you devalued your brothers and sisters from distant lands. It is impossible to change America when you see foul practices at institutions and don't speak up because it is not affecting you. What affect others should affect you mentally and physically, be part of the "HUMAN RACE." Be your brother's/sister's keeper no matter what religion or race he or she is. Be the change that you want to see in America.

Eyes belonging to some creature beyond man - a distant, callous calculation fueled by monstrous, inhuman pride. A pride that goes beyond him and stretches back to man's first feeble steps into black space. It is the pride of a dozen generations of fathers and grandfathers and sisters and brothers, all distilled now into a single brilliant, perfect vessel that bears no failure, abides no flaws.

I think if you wanted a peaceful marriage and orderly household, you should have proposed to any one of the well-bred simpletons who've been dangled in front of you for years. Ivo's right: Pandora is a different kind of girl. Strange and marvelous. I wouldn't dare predict-" She broke off as she saw him staring at Pandora's distant form. "Lunkhead, you're not even listening. You've already decided to marry her, and damn the consequences." "It wasn't even a decision," Gabriel said, baffled and surly. "I can't think of one good reason to justify why I want her so bloody badly." Phoebe smiled, gazing toward the water. "Have I ever told you what Henry said when he proposed, even knowing how little time we would have together? 'Marriage is far too important a matter to be decided with reason.' He was right, of course." Gabriel took up a handful of warm, dry sand and let it sift through his fingers. "The Ravenels will sooner weather a scandal than force her to marry. And as you probably overheard, she objects not only to me, but the institution of marriage itself." "How could anyone resist you?" Phoebe asked, half-mocking, half-sincere. He gave her a dark glance. "Apparently she has no problem. The title, the fortune, the estate, the social position... to her, they're all detractions. Somehow I have to convince her to marry me despite those things." With raw honesty, he added, "And I'm damned if I even know who I am outside of them." "Oh, my dear..." Phoebe said tenderly. "You're the brother who taught Raphael to sail a skiff, and showed Justin how to tie his shoes. You're the man who carried Henry down to the trout stream, when he wanted to go fishing one last time." She swallowed audibly, and sighed. Digging her heels into the sand, she pushed them forward, creating a pair of trenches. "Shall I tell you what your problem is?" "Is that a question?" "Your problem," his sister continued, "is that you're too good at maintaining that façade of godlike perfection. You've always hated for anyone to see that you're a mere mortal. But you won't win this girl that way." She began to dust the sand from her hands. "Show her a few of your redeeming vices. She'll like you all the better for it.

The Chorus Line: The Birth of Telemachus, An Idyll Nine months he sailed the wine-red seas of his mother's blood Out of the cave of dreaded Night, of sleep, Of troubling dreams he sailed In his frail dark boat, the boat of himself, Through the dangerous ocean of his vast mother he sailed From the distant cave where the threads of men's lives are spun, Then measured, and then cut short By the Three Fatal Sisters, intent on their gruesome handcrafts, And the lives of women also are twisted into the strand. And we, the twelve who were later to die by his hand At his father's relentless command, Sailed as well, in the dark frail boats of ourselves Through the turbulent seas of our swollen and sore-footed mothers Who were not royal queens, but a motley and piebald collection, Bought, traded, captured, kidnapped from serfs and strangers. After the nine-month voyage we came to shore, Beached at the same time as he was, struck by the hostile air, Infants when he was an infant, wailing just as he wailed, Helpless as he was helpless, but ten times more helpless as well, For his birth was longed-for and feasted, as our births were not. His mother presented a princeling. Our various mothers Spawned merely, lambed, farrowed, littered, Foaled, whelped and kittened, brooded, hatched out their clutch. We were animal young, to be disposed of at will, Sold, drowned in the well, traded, used, discarded when bloomless. He was fathered; we simply appeared, Like the crocus, the rose, the sparrows endangered in mud. Our lives were twisted in his life; we also were children When he was a child, We were his pets and his toythings, mock sisters, his tiny companions. We grew as he grew, laughed also, ran as he ran, Though sandier, hungrier, sun-speckled, most days meatless. He saw us as rightfully his, for whatever purpose He chose, to tend him and feed him, to wash him, amuse him, Rock him to sleep in the dangerous boats of ourselves. We did not know as we played with him there in the sand On the beach of our rocky goat-island, close by the harbour, That he was foredoomed to swell to our cold-eyed teenaged killer. If we had known that, would we have drowned him back then? Young children are ruthless and selfish: everyone wants to live. Twelve against one, he wouldn't have stood a chance. Would we? In only a minute, when nobody else was looking? Pushed his still-innocent child's head under the water With our own still-innocent childish nursemaid hands, And blamed it on waves. Would we have had it in us? Ask the Three Sisters, spinning their blood-red mazes, Tangling the lives of men and women together. Only they know how events might then have had altered. Only they know our hearts. From us you will get no answer.

Was I the only one? Did the planet on which I was wandering have a thousand sister planets scattered across the starry sky and, at night, while I was waiting to fall asleep, and my gaze sometimes lit on some distant globe, was the same scene taking place there?

His mother is dead. She was a suicide. Her marriage was terrifying to her. In the center of it she found herself completely alone. During the last year she sent long telegrams to her sister, sometimes quoting poetry, Swinburne, Blake. One day she burned her diaries, a spring day, and walked into the Connecticut River to drown, just like Virginia Woolf or Madame Magritte. She was buried in Boston, her home. I could see the ceremony. Dean is six years old and his sister three. They stand stunned and obedient as the great, glistening coffin is lowered into the ground. Within lies the drowned woman who had given them life and who now gives an example of melancholy and commitment which will stay with them forever. Clods of earth thunder onto the hollow lid and, half-orphan, bearer of his mother’s death which is not yet even real, he begins his life. Much of it you know, at any rate college, the wanderings. Now, at twenty-four, he has come to the time of choice. I know quite well how all that is. And then, I read his letters. His father writes to him in the most beautiful, educated hand, the born hand of a copyist. Admonitions to confront life, to think a little more seriously about this or that. I could have laughed. Words that meant nothing to him. He has already set out on a dazzling voyage which is more like an illness, becoming ever more distant, more legendary. His life will be filled with those daring impulses which cause him to disappear and next be heard of in Dublin, in Veracruz… I am not telling the truth about Dean, I am inventing him. I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you must always remember that.

The Queen of Faedom lifted an elegant hand, gesturing to the warrior. “Prince Rowan—” Prince. She swallowed the urge to turn to him. “—is from my sister Mora’s bloodline. He is my nephew of sorts, and a member of my household. An extremely distant relation of yours; there is some ancient ancestry linking you.

Wherever there is distance, there is longing. Yet there is some strange wisdom in the fact of distance. It is interesting to remember that the light that sustains life here on earth comes from elsewhere. Light is the mother of life. Yet the sun and the moon are not on the earth; they bless us with light across the vast distances. We are protected and blessed in our distance. Were we nearer to the sun, the earth would be consumed in its fire; it is the distance that makes the fire kind. Nothing in creation is ever totally at home in itself. No thing is ultimately at one with itself. Everything that is alive holds distance within itself. This is especially true of the human self. It is the deepest intimacy which is nevertheless infused with infinite distance. There is some strange sense in which distance and closeness are sisters, the two sides of the one experience. Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging. Yet they are always in a dynamic interflow with each other. When we fix or locate them definitively, we injure our growth. It is an interesting imaginative exercise to interchange them: to consider what is near as distant and to consider the distant as intimate.

In 1969 my parents, my sister, my brother Jin-ming, and I were expelled from Chengdu one after another, and sent to distant parts of the Sichuan wilderness. We were among millions of urban dwellers to be exiled to the countryside. In this way, young people would not be roaming the cities with nothing to do, creating trouble out of sheer boredom, and adults like my parents would have a 'future." They were part of the old administration which had been replaced by Mao's Revolutionary Committees, and packing them off to the sticks to do hard labor was a convenient solution. According to Mao's rhetoric, we were sent to the countryside 'to be reformed." Mao advocated 'thought reform through labor' for everyone, but never explained the relationship between the two. Of course, no one asked for clarification. Merely to contemplate such a question was tantamount to treason. In reality, everyone in China knew that hard labor, particularly in the countryside, was always punishment. It was noticeable that none of Mao's henchmen, the members of the newly established Revolutionary Committees, army officers and very few of their children had to do it. The first of us to be expelled was my father. Just after New Year 1969 he was sent to Miyi County in the region of Xichang, on the eastern edge of the Himalayas, an area so remote that it is China's satellite launch base today. It lies about 300 miles from Chengdu, four days' journey by truck, as there was no railway. In ancient times, the area was used for dumping exiles, because its mountains and waters were said to be permeated with a mysterious 'evil air." In today's terms, the 'evil air' was subtropical diseases.

Hold on tight, because we are about to take off. “NOW” MEANS NOTHING What is happening “now” in a distant place? Imagine, for example, that your sister has gone to Proxima b, the recently discovered planet that orbits a star at approximately four light-years’ distance from us. What is your sister doing now on Proxima b? The only correct answer is that the question makes no sense. It is like asking “What is here, in Beijing?” when we are in Venice.

This twinned twinkle was delightful but not completely satisfying; or rather it only sharpened my appetite for other tidbits of light and shade, and I walked on in a state of raw awareness that seemed to transform the whole of my being into one big eyeball rolling in the world's socket. Through peacocked lashes I saw the dazzling diamond reflection of the low sun on the round back of a parked automobile. To all kinds of things a vivid pictorial sense had been restored by the sponge of the thaw. Water in overlapping festoons flowed down one sloping street and turned gracefully into another. With ever so slight a note of meretricious appeal, narrow passages between buildings revealed treasures of brick and purple. I remarked for the first time the humble fluting - last echoes of grooves on the shafts of columns - ornamenting a garbage can, and I also saw the rippling upon its lid - circles diverging from a fantastically ancient center. Erect, dark-headed shapes of dead snow (left by the blades of a bulldozer last Friday) were lined up like rudimentary penguins along the curbs, above the brilliant vibration of live gutters. I walked up, and I walked down, and I walked straight into a delicately dying sky, and finally the sequence of observed and observant things brought me, at my usual eating time, to a street so distant from my usual eating place that I decided to try a restaurant which stood on the fringe of the town. Night had fallen without sound or ceremony when I came out again. ("The Vane Sisters")

Only the working class is capable of maintaining morale in the modern world with its distorted social relations. With firm and measured step it advances steadily towards its aim. It draws the working women to its ranks. The proletarian woman bravely starts out on the thorny path of labour. Her legs sag; her body is torn. There are dangerous precipices along the way, and cruel beasts of prey are close at hand. But only by taking this path is the woman able to achieve that distant but alluring aim – her true liberation in a new world of labour. During this difficult march to the bright future the proletarian woman, until recently a humiliated, downtrodden slave with no rights, learns to discard the slave mentality that has clung to her, step by step she transforms herself into an independent worker, an independent personality, free in love. It is she, fighting in the ranks of the proletariat, who wins for women the right to work; it is she, the “younger sister”, who prepares the ground for the “free” and “equal” woman of the future.

When I was 15 years old, I came in contact with my first ashram, my first spiritual commune, in the form of Ljusbacken ("The Hill of Light") in Delsbo in beautiful Halsingland in the north of Sweden. Ljusbacken consisted of an international gathering of yogis, meditators, therapists, healers and seekers of truth. It was on Ljusbacken that I for the first time came in contact with my path in life: meditation. It was also on Ljusbacken that I meet people for the first time in my 15 year old life, where I on a deep wordless level felt that I meet people, who were on the same path as me. It was the first time that I meet people, who could put words on and confirm my own inner thirst after something that I could only occasionally sense vaguely, like some sort of inner guiding presence, or like a beacon in the distant far out on the open and misty ocean. For the first time in my life, I meet brothers, sisters and friends on the inner path. It was also on Ljusbacken that I meet the mystery called love for the first time in my 15 year old life. With my 15 year old eyes, I watched with wide eyed fascination and fear filled excitement the incomprehensible mystery, which is called woman. My own thirst after truth, together with my inner guiding light, resulted in an early spiritual awakening when I was 15 years old. It led me back to the inner path, which I have already followed for many lives. It led me back to a life lived with vision, with dedication and meaning, and not only a life governed by the endless desires of the ego, a mere vegetating without substance between life and death. It led me to explore the inner journey again, to discover the inner being, the meditative quality within, and to come in intimate contact with the endless and boundless ocean of consciousness, like the drop surrenders to the sea. At the source, the drop and ocean are one.

But I did remember lying down on the beaskin rug once it was done. How I felt Elain's slim body settle next to mine and curl into my side, careful not to touch the bandaged wound in my shoulder. I had not realised how cold I was until her warmth seeped into me. A moment later, another warm body nestled on my left. Nesta's scent drifted over me, fire and steel and unbending will. Distantly, I heard Rhys usher everyone out- to join him in checking on Azriel, now under Thesan's care. I didn't know how long my sisters and I lay there together, just like we had once shared that carved bed in that dilapidated cottage. Then- back then, we had kicked and twisted and fought for any bit of space, any breathing room. But that morning, as the son rose over the world, we held tight. And did not let go.

Even if these two didn't share the same short dark hair, the same violet eyes, and the same flawless olive skin, I'd know they were related because of their most dominant feature-their habit of staring. "I'm Chloe. This is my friend Emma, who apparently just head-butted your boyfriend Galen. We were in the middle of apologizing." I pinch the bridge of my nose and count to ten-Mississippi, but fifty-Mississippi seems more appropriate. Fifty allows more time to fantasize about ripping one of Chloe's new waves out. "Emma, what's wrong? Your nose isn't bleeding, is it?" She chirps, enjoying herself. Tingles gather at my chin as Galen lifts it with the crook of his finger. "Is your nose bleeding? Let me see," he says. He tilts my head side to side, leans closer to get a good look. And I meet my threshold for embarrassment. Tripping is bad enough. Tripping into someone is much worse. But if that someone has a body that could make sculpted statues jealous-and thinks you've broken your nose on one of his pecs-well, that's when tripping runs a distant second to humane euthanasia. He is clearly surprised when I swat his hand and step away. His girlfriend/relative seems taken aback that I mimic his stance-crossed arms and deep frown. I doubt she has ever met her threshold for embarrassment. "I said I was fine. No blood, no foul." "This is my sister Rayna," he says, as if the conversation steered naturally in that direction. She smiles at me as if forced at knifepoint, the kind of smile that comes purely from manners, like the smile you give your grandmother when she gives you the rotten-cabbage-colored sweater she's been knitting. I think of that sweater now as I return her smile.

[Funeral sermon, 02/08/1880] How is it with this young man here? Well, I wish it were otherwise; I wish he had lived a very good Saint, which, however, he did not do. We have not come here to indulge in any kind of false sentimentality. He was a drunkard; that is a truth and many of you know it. . . . His father lived up to the Gospel, and died strong in the faith; and his mother has been a very good woman, so far as I know; I have never known anything against her. This boy has caused her a great deal of trouble; and I have been sorry for him. Well, should we tell things? Yes, always; that day is not far distant when the coverings will be taken from the face of all people, and we shall all stand naked, as it were, before God--both you and I and this young man. Well this boy,--I call him a boy, he is a young man, and is a nephew of mine by marriage; and I would not want to say anything about him on that account, neither would I falsify the young man on that account; but let us tell things and understand them as they are. . . . I would say, I do not utter these things to cause any unpleasant feeling in the bosom of the family; they cannot help it. If I could have helped it, I would; if the mother could have helped it, she would; if the sister could have helped it, she would; if the friends could have helped it, they would. . . . We are now talking not to the dead, but to the living. I would say, Let us avoid these evils, they lead down to death; let us seek to live our religion, to obey the laws of God and keep his commandments. And in regard to the future, we leave that in the hands of the Almighty who doeth all things well; and we will do all we can to promote the comfort of the living and the dead.

He leaned in. This was it. His first kiss. His first k - "BOY!" yelled a distant voice. "WHERE ARE YOU, BOY!" Grace drew back abruptly. "Your granny is calling you." "She can wait," he said. "IT'S TIME FOR YOUR MEDICINE!" Gran called out. Gracie jumped to her feet. "You should go in." "BOY!" She hastily brushed off her trousers. "Besides, I just remembered some chores your sister wanted me to get done. Some very important chores. Full of ... tasks." "Tasks?" Edward said, doubtful. "Yes, tasks. Lots of them." "Gracie," he started as she backed away from him. "Wait." "GET IN HERE, BOY!" He watched helplessly as Gracie set off toward the keep, almost at a run. "BOY!" At the moment we should confess that Edward briefly considered murdering his dear sweet grandmother. And he might have gotten away with it too, on account of the rest of the world thinking the old lady was already dead.

Perhaps the most arresting of quantum improbabilities is the idea, arising from Wolfgang Pauli’s Exclusion Principle of 1925, that the subatomic particles in certain pairs, even when separated by the most considerable distances, can each instantly “know” what the other is doing. Particles have a quality known as spin and, according to quantum theory, the moment you determine the spin of one particle, its sister particle, no matter how distant away, will immediately begin spinning in the opposite direction and at the same rate. It is as if, in the words of the science writer Lawrence Joseph, you had two identical pool balls, one in Ohio and the other in Fiji, and the instant you sent one spinning the other would immediately spin in a contrary direction at precisely the same speed. Remarkably, the phenomenon was proved in 1997 when physicists at the University of Geneva sent photons seven miles in opposite directions and demonstrated that interfering with one provoked an instantaneous response in the other.

Perhaps the most arresting of quantum improbabilities is the idea, arising from Wolfgang Pauli’s Exclusion Principle of 1925, that certain pairs of subatomic particles, even when separated by the most considerable distances, can each instantly “know” what the other is doing. Particles have a quality known as spin and, according to quantum theory, the moment you determine the spin of one particle, its sister particle, no matter how distant away, will immediately begin spinning in the opposite direction and at the same rate. It is as if, in the words of the science writer Lawrence Joseph, you had two identical pool balls, one in Ohio and the other in Fiji, and that the instant you sent one spinning the other would immediately spin in a contrary direction at precisely the same speed. Remarkably, the phenomenon was proved in 1997 when physicists at the University of Geneva sent photons seven miles in opposite directions and demonstrated that interfering with one provoked an instantaneous response in the other. Things

I always think about how life would have been if Eo never died. The children I would have had. What I would have named them.” I smile distantly. “I would have grown old. Watched Eo grow old. And I would have loved her more with each new scar, with each new year even as she learned to despise our small life. I would have said farewell to my mother, maybe my brother, sister. And if I was lucky, one day when Eo’s hair turned gray, before it began to fall out and she began to cough, I would hear the shift of rocks over my head on the drill and that would be it. She would have sent me to the incinerators and sprinkled my ashes, then our children would have done the same. And the clans would say we were happy and good and raised bloodydamn fine children. And when those children died, our memory would fade, and when their children died, it would be swept away like the dust we become, down and away to the long tunnels. It would have been a small life,” I say with a shrug, “but I would have liked it. And every day I ask myself if I was given the chance to go back, to be blind, to have all that back, would I?

.. I am free to walk on the moors - but when I go out there alone - everything reminds me of the times when others were with me and the the moors seem a wilderness, featureless, solitary, saddening. My sister Emily had a particular love for them, and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a young bilberry leaf not a fluttering lark or linnet but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne's delight, and when I look around, she is in the blue tints, the pale mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hillcountry silence their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind: once I loved it, now I dare not read it, and am driven often to wish I could taste one draught of oblivion and forget much that, whilde mind remains, I never shall forget. Many people seem to recall their departed relatives with a sort of melancholy complacency - but I think these have not watched them through lingering sickness nor witnessed their last moments - it is these reminiscences that stand by your bedside at night, and rise at your pillow in the morning. (Charlotte's letter to Williams, in which she express how much she misses her sisters)

Nobody ever talked about what a struggle this all was. I could see why women used to die in childbirth. They didn't catch some kind of microbe, or even hemorrhage. They just gave up. They knew that if they didn't die, they'd be going through it again the next year, and the next. I couldn't understand how a woman might just stop trying, like a tired swimmer, let her head go under, the water fill her lungs. I slowly massaged Yvonne's neck, her shoulders, I wouldn't let her go under. She sucked ice through threadbare white terry. If my mother were here, she'd have made Melinda meek cough up the drugs, sure enough. "Mamacita, ay," Yvonne wailed. I didn't know why she would call her mother. She hated her mother. She hadn't seen her in six years, since the day she locked Yvonne and her brother and sisters in their apartment in Burbank to go out and party, and never came back. Yvonne said she let her boyfriends run a train on her when she was eleven. I didn't even know what that meant. Gang bang, she said. And still she called out, Mama. It wasn't just Yvonne. All down the ward, they called for their mothers. ... I held onto Yvonne's hands, and I imagined my mother, seventeen years ago, giving birth to me. Did she call for her mother?...I thought of her mother, the one picture I had, the little I knew. Karin Thorvald, who may or may not have been a distant relation of King Olaf of Norway, classical actress and drunk, who could recite Shakespeare by heart while feeding the chickens and who drowned in the cow pond when my mother was thirteen. I couldn't imagine her calling out for anyone. But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood, women who let their boyfriends run a train on them. Bingers and purgers, women smiling into mirrors, women in girdles, women in barstools. Not those women with their complaints and their magazines, controlling women, women who asked, what's in it for me? Not the women who watched TV while they made dinner, women who dyed their hair blond behind closed doors trying to look twenty-three. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition, get used to it. They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for is when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us. Yvonne was sitting up, holding her breath, eyes bulging out. It was the thing she should not do. "Breathe," I said in her ear. "Please, Yvonne, try." She tried to breathe, a couple of shallow inhalations, but it hurt too much. She flopped back on the narrow bed, too tired to go on. All she could do was grip my hand and cry. And I thought of the way the baby was linked to her, as she was linked to her mother, and her mother, all the way back, insider and inside, knit into a chain of disaster that brought her to this bed, this day. And not only her. I wondered what my own inheritance was going to be. "I wish I was dead," Yvonne said into the pillowcase with the flowers I'd brought from home. The baby came four hours later. A girl, born 5:32 PM.

Many kinds of animal behavior can be explained by genetic similarity theory. Animals have a preference for close kin, and study after study has shown that they have a remarkable ability to tell kin from strangers. Frogs lay eggs in bunches, but they can be separated and left to hatch individually. When tadpoles are then put into a tank, brothers and sisters somehow recognize each other and cluster together rather than mix with tadpoles from different mothers. Female Belding’s ground squirrels may mate with more than one male before they give birth, so a litter can be a mix of full siblings and half siblings. Like tadpoles, they can tell each other apart. Full siblings cooperate more with each other than with half-siblings, fight less, and are less likely to run each other out of the territory when they grow up. Even bees know who their relatives are. In one experiment, bees were bred for 14 different degrees of relatedness—sisters, cousins, second cousins, etc.—to bees in a particular hive. When the bees were then released near the hive, guard bees had to decide which ones to let in. They distinguished between degrees of kinship with almost perfect accuracy, letting in the closest relatives and chasing away more distant kin. The correlation between relatedness and likelihood of being admitted was a remarkable 0.93. Ants are famous for cooperation and willingness to sacrifice for the colony. This is due to a quirk in ant reproduction that means worker ants are 70 percent genetically identical to each other. But even among ants, there can be greater or less genetic diversity, and the most closely related groups of ants appear to cooperate best. Linepithema humile is a tiny ant that originated in Argentina but migrated to the United States. Many ants died during the trip, and the species lost much of its genetic diversity. This made the northern branch of Linepithema humile more cooperative than the one left in Argentina, where different colonies quarrel and compete with each other. This new level of cooperation has helped the invaders link nests into supercolonies and overwhelm local species of ants. American entomologists want to protect American ants by introducing genetic diversity so as to make the newcomers more quarrelsome. Even plants cooperate with close kin and compete with strangers. Normally, when two plants are put in the same pot, they grow bigger root systems, trying to crowd each other out and get the most nutrients. A wild flower called the Sea Rocket, which grows on beaches, does not do that if the two plants come from the same “mother” plant. They recognize each others’ root secretions and avoid wasteful competition.

Ballad" Oh dream, why do you do me this way? Again, with the digging, again with the digging up. Once more with the shovels. Once more, the shovels full of dirt. The vault lid. The prying. The damp boards. Mother beside me. Like she’s an old hat at this. Like all she’s got left is curiosity. Like curiosity didn’t kill the red cat. Such a sweet, gentle cat it was. Here we go again, dream. Mother, wearing her take-out-the-garbage coat. I haven’t seen that coat in years. The coat she wore to pick me up from school early. She appeared at the back of the classroom, early. Go with your mother, teacher said. Diane, you are excused. I was a little girl. Already a famous actress. I looked at the other kids. I acted lucky. Though everyone knows what an early pick-up means. An early pick-up, dream. What’s wrong, I asked my mother. It is early spring. Bright sunlight. The usual birds. Air, teetering between bearable and unbearable. Cold, but not cold enough to shiver. Still, dream, I shiver. You know, my mother said. Her long garbage coat flying. There was a wind, that day. A wind like a scurrying grandmother, dusting. Look inside yourself, my mother said. You know why I have come for you. And still I acted lucky. Lucky to be out. Lucky to be out in the cold world with my mother. I’m innocent, I wanted to say. A little white girl, trying out her innocence. A white lamb, born into a cold field. Frozen almost solid. Brought into the house. Warmed all night with hair dryers. Death? I said. Smiling. Lucky. We’re barely to the parking lot. Barely to the car ride home. But the classroom already feels like the distant past. Long ago, my classmates pitying me. Arriving at this car full of uncles. Were they wearing suits? Death such a formal occasion. My sister, angry-crying next to me. Me, encountering a fragment of evil in myself. Evilly wanting my mother to say it. What? I asked, smiling. My lamb on full display at the fair. He’s dead! my sister said. Hit me in the gut with her flute. Her flute case. Her rental flute. He’s dead! Our father. Our father, who we were not supposed to know had been dying. He’s dead! The flute gleaming in its red case. Here, my mother said at home. She’d poured us each a small glass of Pepsi We normally couldn’t afford Pepsi. Lucky, I acted. He’s no longer suffering, my mother said. Here, she said. Drink this. The little bubbles flew. They bit my tongue. My evil persisted. What is death? I asked. And now, dream, once more you bring me my answer. Dig, my mother says. Pry, she says. I don’t want to see, dream. The lid so damp it crumbles under my hands. The casket just a drawerful of bones. A drawerful. Just bones and teeth. That one tooth he had. Crooked like mine.

As she listened, or seemed to listen, the whole place around her became alive with the strange creatures of her little sister’s dream. The long grass rustled at her feet as the White Rabbit hurried by—the frightened Mouse splashed his way through the neighbouring pool—she could hear the rattle of the teacups as the March Hare and his friends shared their never-ending meal, and the shrill voice of the Queen ordering off her unfortunate guests to execution—once more the pig-baby was sneezing on the Duchess’s knee, while plates and dishes crashed around it—once more the shriek of the Gryphon, the squeaking of the Lizard’s slate-pencil, and the choking of the suppressed guinea-pigs, filled the air, mixed up with the distant sobs of the miserable Mock Turtle. So she sat on, with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality—the grass would be only rustling in the wind, and the pool rippling to the waving of the reeds—the rattling teacups would change to tinkling sheep-bells, and the Queen’s shrill cries to the voice of the shepherd boy—and the sneeze of the baby, the shriek of the Gryphon, and all the other queer noises, would change (she knew) to the confused clamour of the busy farm-yard—while the lowing of the cattle in the distance would take the place of the Mock Turtle’s heavy sobs.

I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. … My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds... I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought. I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!” I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!” It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream. … It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air. We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come. Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us. It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.

I was turned High Fae when an enemy shoved me into it. It’s raw power, but also … sentient.” “Like that mask you put on earlier.” Azriel folded his wings tightly, clearly wary of discussing such a powerful instrument with a potential enemy. But Nesta asked, “You detected a sentience in the Mask?” Bryce nodded. “It didn’t, like, talk to me or anything. I could just … sense it.” “What did it feel like?” Nesta asked quietly. “Like death,” Bryce breathed. “Like death incarnate.” Nesta’s eyes grew distant, grave. “That’s what the Mask can do. Give its wearer power over Death itself.” Bryce’s blood chilled. “And this is a … normal type of weapon here?” “No,” Azriel said from ahead, shoulders tense. “It is not.” Nesta explained, “The Mask is one of three objects of catastrophic power, Made by the Cauldron itself. The Dread Trove, we call it.” “And the Mask is … yours?” “I was also Made by the Cauldron,” Nesta said, “which allows me to wield it.” She spoke with no pride or boasting. Merely cold resignation and responsibility. “Made,” Bryce mused. “You said that my tattoo was Made.” “It is a mystery to us,” Nesta said. “You’d need to have had the ink Made by the Cauldron, in this world, for it to be so.” The Horn had come from here. Had been brought by Theia and Pelias into Midgard. Perhaps it, too, had been forged by the Cauldron. Bryce tucked away the knowledge, the questions it raised. “We don’t have anything like the Cauldron on Midgard. Solas is our sun god, Cthona his mate and the earth goddess. Luna is his sister, the moon; Ogenas, Cthona’s jealous sister in the seas. And Urd guides all—she’s the weaver of fate, of destiny.” Bryce added after a moment, “I think she’s the reason I’m here.” “Urd,” Nesta murmured. “The Fae say the Cauldron holds our fates. Maybe it became this Urd.

Our story begins on a sweltering August night, in a sterile white room where a single fateful decision is made amid the mindless ravages of grief. But our story does not end there. It has not ended yet. Would I change the course of our lives if I could? Would I have spent my years plucking out tunes on a showboat, or turning the soil as a farmer’s wife, or waiting for a riverman to come home from work and settle in beside me at a cozy little fire? Would I trade the son I bore for a different son, for more children, for a daughter to comfort me in my old age? Would I give up the husbands I loved and buried, the music, the symphonies, the lights of Hollywood, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren who live far distant but have my eyes? I ponder this as I sit on the wooden bench, Judy’s hand in mine, the two of us quietly sharing yet another Sisters’ Day. Here in the gardens at Magnolia Manor, we’re able to have Sisters’ Day anytime we like. It is as easy as leaving my room, and walking to the next hall, and telling the attendant, “I believe I’ll take my dear friend Judy out for a little stroll. Oh yes, of course, I’ll be certain she’s delivered safely back to the Memory Care Unit. You know I always do.” Sometimes, my sister and I laugh over our clever ruse. “We’re really sisters, not friends,” I remind her. “But don’t tell them. It’s our secret.” “I won’t tell.” She smiles in her sweet way. “But sisters are friends as well. Sisters are special friends.” We recall our many Sisters’ Day adventures from years past, and she begs me to share what I remember of Queenie and Briny and our life on the river. I tell her of days and seasons with Camellia, and Lark, and Fern, and Gabion, and Silas, and Old Zede. I speak of quiet backwaters and rushing currents, the midsummer ballet of dragonflies and winter ice floes that allowed men to walk over water. Together, we travel the living river. We turn our faces to the sunlight and fly time and time again home to Kingdom Arcadia. Other days, my sister knows me not at all other than as a neighbor here in this old manor house. But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse. “Aren’t they so very sweet?

Tell me you didn’t,” she groaned, knowing it would not be the truth. “Please tell me you didn’t take advantage of these poor people.” “I didn’t,” he chirped. “Liar.” With an irritated sigh he tried to convince her. “Amora, you’re not seeing things from an immortal perspective. The people who built this temple…” “Temple?” she cried, cutting him off. “You forced these people to build you a temple? Why? Because all of a sudden you’re God now?” Perturbed by her interruption, he raised a warning finger. “No, no, Amora, not God. But from their viewpoint I may seem a bit…..god-like.” She rolled her eyes in an exaggerated manner. “If you would let me finish,” he went on, “these particular individuals had no part in the construction of that monument; it was their ancestors who erected it. And I must say, they did a fine job. My likeness has weathered the centuries quite well.” “You’re despicable.” He frowned at the insult. “Nobody was forced to build us a temple, Amora. They chose to do so.” “You were that impressive to them, huh?” “Apparently.” His eyes twinkled at the memory. He took a few steps toward the distant city, pulling Eena along. “Come on, let’s go have some fun.” “No way.” She planted her feet, refusing. Surprisingly it put a stop to him. “And why not?” “Because your sudden appearance will upset them! No doubt you’ll want to show off with some shockingly grand entrance. I’m not going to take part in a game of deceit.” “I’m not deceiving anyone,” Edgar disputed. “I can’t help it if they happen to think I’m perfectly magnificent.” His pompous view of himself earned a nasty look as well as a lecture. “I can’t believe you’re okay with selling people lies that affect the way they live and think! You’re not even close to being a god, Edgar, and yet you allow them to accept you as some sort of deity because of your unusual abilities. For centuries now you’ve abandoned this world and a population who probably looked to you and your lousy sisters for help. It’s all a big, disgusting sham!” Edgar pouted like a child. “Fine—spoil all my fun. We’ll go do something else. Something that doesn’t include your poor, fragile, stupid mortals.” “They’re not stupid.” “They think I’m a god,” he snapped. That was a pretty good argument.

In the light of the evidence it is hard to believe that most crusaders were motivated by crude materialism. Given their knowledge and expectations and the economic climate in which they lived, the disposal of assets to invest in the fairly remote possibility of settlement in the East would have been a stupid gamble. It makes much more sense to suppose, in so far as one can generalize about them, that they were moved by an idealism which must have inspired not only them but their families. Parents, brothers and sisters, wives and children had to face a long absence and must have worried about them: in 1098 Countess Ida of Boulogne made an endowment to the abbey of St Bertin 'for the safety of her sons, Godfrey and Baldwin, who have gone to Jerusalem'.83 And they and more distant relatives — cousins, uncles and nephews - were prepared to endow them out of the patrimonial lands. I have already stressed that no one can treat the phenomenal growth of monasticism in this period without taking into account not only those who entered the communities to be professed, but also the lay men and women who were prepared to endow new religious houses with lands and rents. The same is true of the crusading movement. Behind many crusaders stood a large body of men and women who were prepared to sacrifice interest to help them go. It is hard to avoid concluding that they were fired by the opportunity presented to a relative not only of making a penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem but also of fighting in a holy cause. For almost a century great lords, castellans and knights had been subjected to abuse by the Church. Wilting under the torrent of invective and responding to the attempts of churchmen to reform their way of life in terms they could understand, they had become perceptibly more pious. Now they were presented by a pope who knew them intimately with the chance of performing a meritorious act which exactly fitted their upbringing and devotional needs and they seized it eagerly. But they responded, of course, in their own way. They were not theologians and were bound to react in ways consonant with their own ideas of right and wrong, ideas that did not always respond to those of senior churchmen. The emphasis that Urban had put on charity - love of Christian brothers under the heel of Islam, love of Christ whose land was subject to the Muslim yoke - could not but arouse in their minds analogies with their own kin and their own lords' patrimonies, and remind them of their obligations to avenge injuries to their relatives and lords. And that put the crusade on the level of a vendetta. Their leaders, writing to Urban in September 1098, informed him that 'The Turks, who inflicted much dishonour on Our Lord Jesus Christ, have been taken and killed and we Jerusalemites have avenged the injury to the supreme God Jesus Christ.

What do you suppose has happened to Captain Phelan?" Beatrix's older sister Amelia asked, after he had gone missing for three days. "From what I remember of the man, he was a social fellow who would have adored being the center of so much attention." "He's gaining even more attention by his absence," Cam pointed out. "He doesn't want attention," Beatrix couldn't resist saying. "He's run to ground." Cam lifted a dark brow, looking amused. "Like a fox?" he asked. "Yes. Foxes are wily. Even when they seem to head directly away from their goal, they always turn and make it good at the last." Beatrix hesitated, her gaze distant as she stared through the nearby window, at the forest shadowed by a harsh and backward spring... too much easterly wind, too much rain. "Captain Phelan wants to come home. But he'll stay aground until the hounds stop drawing from him." She was quiet and contemplative after that, while Cam and Amelia continued to talk. It was only her imagination... but she had the curious feeling that Christopher Phelan was somewhere close by.

It had been often commented upon that Vibe offspring tended to be crazy as bedbugs. ‘Fax’s brother Cragmont had run away with a trapeze girl, then brought her back to New York to get married, the wedding being actually performed on trapezes, groom and best man, dressed in tails and silk opera hats held on with elastic, swinging upside down by their knees in perfect synchrony across the perilous Æther to meet the bride and her father, a carnival “jointee” or concessionaire, in matched excursion from their own side of the ring, bridesmaids observed at every hand up twirling by their chins in billows of spangling, forty feet above the faces of the guests, feathers dyed a deep acid green sweeping and stirring the cigar smoke rising from the crowd. Cragmont Vibe was but thirteen that circus summer he became a husband and began what would become, even for the day, an enormous family. The third brother, Fleetwood, best man at this ceremony, had also got out of the house early, fast-talking his way onto an expedition heading for Africa. He kept as clear of political games as of any real scientific inquiry, preferring to take the title of “Explorer” literally, and do nothing but explore. It did not hurt Fleetwood’s chances that a hefty Vibe trust fund was there to pick up the bills for bespoke pith helmets and meat lozenges and so forth. Kit met him one spring weekend out at the Vibe manor on Long Island. “Say, but you’ve never seen our cottage,” ‘Fax said one day after classes. “What are you doing this weekend? Unless there’s another factory girl or pizza princess or something in the works.” “Do I use that tone of voice about the Seven Sisters material you specialize in?” “I’ve nothing against the newer races,” ‘Fax protested. “But you might like to meet Cousin Dittany anyway.” “The one at Smith.” “Mount Holyoke, actually.” “Can’t wait.” They arrived under a dourly overcast sky. Even in cheerier illumination, the Vibe mansion would have registered as a place best kept clear of—four stories tall, square, unadorned, dark stone facing looking much older than the known date of construction. Despite its aspect of abandonment, an uneasy tenancy was still pursued within, perhaps by some collateral branch of Vibes . . . it was unclear. There was the matter of the second floor. Only the servants were allowed there. It “belonged,” in some way nobody was eager to specify, to previous occupants. “Someone’s living there?” “Someone’s there.” . . . from time to time, a door swinging shut on a glimpse of back stairway, a muffled footfall . . . an ambiguous movement across a distant doorframe . . . a threat of somehow being obliged to perform a daily search through the forbidden level, just at dusk, so detailed that contact with the unseen occupants, in some form, at some unannounced moment, would be inevitable . . . all dustless and tidy, shadows in permanent possession, window-drapes and upholstery in deep hues of green, claret, and indigo, servants who did not speak, who would or could not meet one’s gaze . . . and in the next room, the next instant, waiting . . . “Real nice of you to have me here, folks,” chirped Kit at breakfast. “Fellow sleeps like a top. Well, except . . .” Pause in the orderly gobbling and scarfing. Interest from all around the table. “I mean, who came in the room in the middle of the night like that?” “You’re sure,” said Scarsdale, “it wasn’t just the wind, or the place settling.” “They were walking around, like they were looking for something.” Glances were exchanged, failed to be exchanged, were sent out but not returned. “Kit, you haven’t seen the stables yet,” Cousin Dittany offered at last. “Wouldn’t you like to go riding?

I know that you regret Theo’s death,” Devon said quietly. “I know that you married him with the best of intentions, and you’ve tried to mourn him sincerely. But Kathleen, love…You’re no more his widow than you ever were his wife.” The words were like a slap in the face. Shocked and offended, she scrambled from the bed and snatched up her shawl. “I should never have confided in you,” she exclaimed. “I’m only pointing out that--at least in private--you’re not bound by the same obligations as a true widow.” “I am a true widow!” Devon looked sardonic. “You barely knew Theo.” “I loved him,” she insisted. “Oh? What did you love most about him?” Angrily Kathleen parted her lips to reply…but not a single word emerged. She pressed the flat of her hand to her stomach as a sickening realization occurred to her. Now that her guilt over Theo’s death had been at least partially assuaged, she couldn’t identify any particular feeling for him except the distant pity she would have had for a complete stranger who had met such a fate. Despite that, she had taken her place as Theo’s widow, living in his house, befriending his sisters, enjoying all the benefits of being Lady Trenear. Theo had known that she was a sham. He had known that she didn’t love him, even when she herself hadn’t known it. That was why his last words had been an accusation. Furious and ashamed, Kathleen turned and went to the door. She flung it open without pausing to consider the need for discretion, and ran across the threshold. The breath was nearly knocked from her as she collided with a sturdy form. “What the--” she heard West say, while he reached out to steady her. “What is it? Can I help?” “Yes,” she snapped, “you can throw your brother back into that river.” She strode away before he could respond.

Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares, and the slavery of Home, man feels once more happy. The blood flows with the fast circulation of childhood. Excitement lends unwonted vigour to the muscle, and the sudden sense of freedom adds a cubit to the mental stature. Afresh dawns the morn of life. Again the bright world is beautiful to the eye, and the glorious face of nature gladdens the soul. A journey, in fact, appeals to Imagination, to Memory, to Hope-the sister graces of our mortal being.

The Sisters of Mercy,” I said quietly.

As we are ready to give ear and credit to those we love, he believed all she said. From this time he became distant and reserved towards me, shunning my presence as much as possible; whereas, before, he was open and communicative to me as to his sister… What I had dreaded, I now perceived had come to pass. This was the loss of his favor and good opinion; to preserve which I had studied to gain his confidence by a ready compliance with his wishes.

The Weaving We stand here, surrounded by the sacred mountains, at the sipapu, where our world began. We come from the four corners of this earth, walking in love, bringing our knowledge of many cultures, many languages. Seeking understanding, growth and change, for ourselves, our nations, our world. This is our intention! Here at this time we create a new world, we weave a new reality! We pray for assistance and request witness, from the sacred energies of our world! AIR - Winds of the 4 directions, winds that move the stars WATER - Rain, rivers, springs FIRE - Our sun, lightning that dances on the sky EARTH - Our mother, her sand, her cliffs, her mountains OUR BROTHERS - The four legs, the winged ones, water children and those that creep and crawl OUR SISTERS - The standing people, from mighty tree to smallest flower OUR OWN HUMAN RACE - From our ancestors who first walked this land, to our children's children, seven generations distant, most of all we call upon OUR SELVES, here and now, to witness and strive. We are here to create a weaving of a new reality.

ENLARGING OUR HORIZONS Most of us as Christians tend to think of the sovereignty of God only in terms of its immediate effect upon us, or our families or friends. We're not too interested in the sovereignty of God over the nations and over history unless we are consciously and personally affected by that history. We are only vaguely interested in the political turmoil and wars of distant nations unless, for example, a missionary friend of ours can't get an entrance visa to his country of ministry. But we must remember that God promised to Abraham and to his seed that all nations will be blessed through Christ (Genesis 12:3, 22:18; Galatians 3:8). Someday that promise will be fulfilled for, as recorded in Revelation 7:9, John saw "a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb." God has a plan to redeem people from all nations and to bless all nations through Christ. However, as we look around the world today what do we see? We see over one-half of the world's population living in countries whose governments are hostile to the gospel, where missionaries are not allowed, and where national Christians are severely hindered from proclaiming Christ. How do we trust God for the fulfillment of His promises when the current events and conditions of the day seem so directly contrary to their fulfillment? We can take a lesson from the example of Daniel. Daniel understood from the Scriptures in the prophecy of Jeremiah that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years, and realizing that seventy years was almost complete, Daniel set himself to pray (see Daniel 9). He recognized that his people were in exile because of their sins and he recognized that a sovereign God, and only a sovereign God, could restore them from their exile. He trusted in the sovereignty and faithfulness of God, therefore he prayed. We might say he pleaded God's promise to Jeremiah. Neither God's sovereignty nor His promise to restore the exiles caused Daniel to lapse into a fatalistic, do-nothing attitude. Daniel realized that God's sovereignty and God's promise were intended to stimulate him to pray. Because God is sovereign, He is able to answer. Because He is faithful to His promises, He will answer. Daniel prayed and God answered. As we saw in chapter four, God moved the heart of the Persian king to permit and even encourage all the exiles who wanted to, to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. As we look at the condition of the world today, so utterly hostile to the gospel, we must also look at the sovereignty of God and at His promises. He has promised to redeem people from every nation, and He has commanded us to make disciples of all nations, We must, then, trust God by praying. Some will go to Those nations as God opens doors, but all of us must pray. We must learn to trust God, not only in the adverse circumstances of our individual lives, but also in the adverse circumstances of the Church as a whole. We must learn to trust God for the spread of the gospel, even in those areas where it is severely restricted. God is sovereign over the nations. He is sovereign over the officials of our own government in all their actions as they affect us, directly or indirectly. He is sovereign over the officials of government in lands where our brothers and sisters in Christ suffer for their faith in Him. And He is sovereign over the nations where every attempt is made to stamp out true Christianity. In all of these areas, we can and must trust God.

ENLARGING OUR HORIZONS Most of us as Christians tend to think of the sovereignty of God only in terms of its immediate effect upon us, or our families or friends. We're not too interested in the sovereignty of God over the nations and over history unless we are consciously and personally affected by that history. We are only vaguely interested in the political turmoil and wars of distant nations unless, for example, a missionary friend of ours can't get an entrance visa to his country of ministry. But we must remember that God promised to Abraham and to his seed that all nations will be blessed through Christ (Genesis 12:3, 22:18; Galatians 3:8). Someday that promise will be fulfilled for, as recorded in Revelation 7:9, John saw "a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb." God has a plan to redeem people from all nations and to bless all nations through Christ. However, as we look around the world today what do we see? We see over one-half of the world's population living in countries whose governments are hostile to the gospel, where missionaries are not allowed, and where national Christians are severely hindered from proclaiming Christ. How do we trust God for the fulfillment of His promises when the current events and conditions of the day seem so directly contrary to their fulfillment? We can take a lesson from the example of Daniel. Daniel understood from the Scriptures in the prophecy of Jeremiah that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years, and realizing that seventy years was almost complete, Daniel set himself to pray (see Daniel 9). He recognized that his people were in exile because of their sins and he recognized that a sovereign God, and only a sovereign God, could restore them from their exile. He trusted in the sovereignty and faithfulness of God, therefore he prayed. We might say he pleaded God's promise to Jeremiah. Neither God's sovereignty nor His promise to restore the exiles caused Daniel to lapse into a fatalistic, do-nothing attitude. Daniel realized that God's sovereignty and God's promise were intended to stimulate him to pray. Because God is sovereign, He is able to answer. Because He is faithful to His promises, He will answer. Daniel prayed and God answered. As we saw in chapter four, God moved the heart of the Persian king to permit and even encourage all the exiles who wanted to, to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple. As we look at the condition of the world today, so utterly hostile to the gospel, we must also look at the sovereignty of God and at His promises. He has promised to redeem people from every nation, and He has commanded us to make disciples of all nations, We must, then, trust God by praying. Some will go to Those nations as God opens doors, but all of us must pray. We must learn to trust God, not only in the adverse circumstances of our individual lives, but also in the adverse circumstances of the Church as a whole. We must learn to trust God for the spread of the gospel, even in those areas where it is severely restricted. God is sovereign over the nations. He is sovereign over the officials of our own government in all their actions as they affect us, directly or indirectly. He is sovereign over the officials of government in lands where our brothers and sisters in Christ suffer for their faith in Him. And He is sovereign over the nations where every attempt is made to stamp out true Christianity. In all of these areas, we can and must trust God.

He raises his head to look at me. Eyes belonging to some creature beyond man—a distant, callous calculation fueled by monstrous, inhuman pride. A pride that goes beyond him and stretches back to man’s first feeble steps into black space. It is the pride of a dozen generations of fathers and grandfathers and sisters and brothers, all distilled now into a single brilliant, perfect vessel that bears no failure, abides no flaws.

Stepping through the mirror was like no physical experience he'd ever had. It was like swimming if the water was made of treacle and also of outer space, sweet and airless and tugging and infinite, and dark in a way that wasn't a binary to light but rather a different state entirely, complete unto itself. The body of the darkness was sound, which was sensation: countless wings brushing against one another, countless blades of golden grass moving in an endless wind, every distant highway ever heard.

As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters. But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough. The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women.

Edda and Briar, two cousins that were as close as sisters, had been trained since infancy to blend into any sliver of darkness and listen—and they were nowhere to be seen in this hall. Just as Manon had ordered. “They’ll have a report for you tonight,” Asterin said. Distant cousins to Manon, the Shadows bore the same moon-white hair. Or

Max and the Good Soul grew close to each other, the way the sky and the earth draw close together at some distant point -- they merge in the eye that looks toward them on the horizon, yet for them there is neither union nor separation.

No Shows I woke up this morning but there were some no shows. My wife, Darcy, died of pancreatic cancer at 31; one day she came from a routine checkup and the next month she was gone. My oldest daughter, Jenna, was 9 at the time, and 9 years later she OD’d on something; I asked the coroner not to tell me ‘what’ but ‘why’? My youngest daughter, Sylvia, hasn’t talk to me since, so I guess that counts as a no show. My parents are long gone, my brothers and sisters, dispersed over the world, rarely email. My cousins, uncles, aunts, are all distant or deceased. So when I woke up this morning, I counted the no shows like sheep and fell back into a welcome sleep where everyone still showed up.

Mr. Grattingly, while we might tarry in the conservatory in plain sight of the open door, the location you’ve chosen—ooph!” “The location I’ve chosen is perfect,” Grattingly said as he mashed his body against Louisa’s. He’d shoved her back against a tree, off the path, into the shadows. “Mr. Grattingly! How dare—” Wet lips landed on Louisa’s jaw, and the scent of wine-soured breath filled her head. “Of course, I dare. You all but begged me to drag you in here. With your tits nigh falling from your bodice, how do you expect a man to act?” He thrust his hand into the neckline of Louisa’s gown and closed his fingers around her breast. Louisa was too stunned for a moment to think, then something more powerful than fear came roaring forward. “You slimy, presuming, stinking, drunken, witless varlet!” She shoved against him hard, but he wasn’t budging, and those thick, wet lips were puckering up abominably. Louisa heard her brother Devlin’s voice in her head, instructing her to use her knee, when Grattingly abruptly shifted off her and landed on his bottom in the dirt. “Excuse me.” Sir Joseph stood not two feet away, casually unbuttoning his evening coat. His expression was as composed as his tone of voice, though even when he dropped his coat around Louisa’s shoulders, he kept his gaze on Grattingly. “I do hope I’m not interrupting.” “You’re not.” Louisa clutched his jacket to her shoulders, finding as much comfort in its cedary scent as she did in the body heat it carried. “Mr. Grattingly was just leaving.” “Who the hell are you,” Grattingly spat as he scrambled to his feet, “to come around and disturb a lady at her pleasures?” Somewhere down the path, a door swung closed. Louisa registered the sound distantly, the way she’d notice when rain had started outside though she was in the middle of a good book. Though this was not a good book. Instinctively Louisa knew she was, without warning or volition, in the middle of something not good at all. “I was not at my pleasures, you oaf.” She’d meant to fire the words off with a load of scathing indignation, but to Louisa’s horror, her voice shook. Her knees were turning unreliable on her, as well, so she sank onto the hard bench. “What’s going on here?” Lionel Honiton stood on the path, three or four other people gathered behind him. “Nothing,” Sir Joseph said. “The lady has developed a megrim and will be departing shortly.” “A megrim!” Grattingly was on his feet, though to Louisa it seemed as if he weaved a bit. “That bitch was about to get something a hell of a lot more—” Sir Joseph, like every other guest, was wearing evening gloves. They should not have made such a loud, distinct sound when thwacked across Grattingly’s jowls. Lionel stepped forth. “Let’s not be hasty. Grattingly, apologize. We can all see you’re a trifle foxed. Nobody takes offense at what’s said when a man’s in his cups, right?” “I’m not drunk, you ass. You—” “That’s not an apology.” Sir Joseph pulled on his gloves. “My seconds will be calling on yours. If some one of the assembled multitude would stop gawping long enough to fetch the lady’s sisters to her, I would appreciate it.” He said nothing more, just treated each member of the small crowd to a gimlet stare, until Lionel ushered them away. Nobody had a word for Grattingly, who stomped off in dirty breeches, muttering Louisa knew not what. Sir

In truth I do not want to part ways with you, Maggie Windham, and I’d ask you for a fair hearing.” She turned her head to meet his gaze, though her bearing had become positively imperial with a simple lift of her chin. “I’m listening.” “I have an heir, but he’s a distant cousin who wants nothing to do with titles, votes, or the obligation my sisters represent. He’s a Town man, handy with the ladies, and not given to agricultural matters in the least.” “Is this Archer?” In for a penny, in for a pound. “Yes. I’d like you to meet him.” She shook her head, but he forged on rather than let her start on her protestations. “One reluctant heir is not adequate to secure the succession. I am attracted to you, and I think the attraction is mutual. I am asking you to marry me, Maggie Windham.

A familiar oak tree. A pine needle carpeted forest. She searches for secret messages from her dead father. The big house fills the background. Wind carries a sound of distant crying, and a plaintive voice sounding like her sister.

Sitting closest to the captain was a man who was clearly Alpha Dog of the group. He was about thirty-five and wore what looked like a very expensive suit, and Matthews had inclined his head toward the man in a way that went beyond deferential and nearly approached reverence. The man looked up at me as I entered, scanned me as if he was memorizing a row of numbers, and then turned impatiently back to Matthews. Sitting next to this charming individual was a woman so startlingly beautiful that for a half moment I forgot I was walking, and I paused in midstep, my right foot dangling in the air, as I gaped at her like a twelve-year-old boy. I simply stared, and I could not have said why. The woman’s hair was the color of old gold, and her features were pleasant and regular, true enough. And her eyes were a startling violet, a color so unlikely and yet so compelling that I felt an urgent need to move near and study her eyes at close range. But there was something beyond the mere arrangement of her features, something unseen and only felt, that made her seem far more attractive than she actually was—a Bright Passenger? Whatever it was, it grabbed my attention and held me helpless. The woman watched me goggle at her with distant amusement, raising an eyebrow and giving me a small smile that said, Of course, but so what? And then she turned back to face the captain, leaving me free to finish my interrupted step and stumble toward the table once more. In a morning of surprises, my reaction to mere Female Pulchritude was a rather large one. I could not remember ever behaving in such an absurdly human way: Dexter does not Drool, not at mere womanly beauty. My tastes are somewhat more refined, generally involving a carefully chosen playmate and a roll of duct tape. But something about this woman had absolutely frozen me, and I could not stop myself from continuing to stare as I lurched into a chair next to my sister. Debs greeted me with a sharp elbow to the ribs and a whisper: “You’re drooling,” she hissed. I wasn’t, of course, but I straightened myself anyway and summoned the shards of my shattered dignity, looking around me with an attempt at regaining my usual composure. There was one last person at the table whom I had not registered yet. He had put a vacant seat between himself and the Irresistible Siren, and he leaned away from her as if afraid he might catch something from her, his head propped up on one elbow, which was planted casually on the table. He wore aviator sunglasses, which did not disguise the fact that he was a ruggedly handsome man of about forty-five, with a perfectly trimmed mustache and a spectacular haircut. It wasn’t possible to be sure with the sunglasses clamped to his face, but it certainly seemed like he hadn’t even glanced at me as I’d come clown-footing into the room and into my chair. Somehow I managed to conceal my crushing disappointment at his negligence, and I turned my steely gaze to the head of the table, where Captain Matthews was once again clearing his throat.

Why do I love Italy? Do not a hundred answers present themselves to you on the instant? I love Italy because my mother is an Italian; because the blood that flows in my veins is Italian; because the soil in which are buried the dead whom my mother mourns and whom my father venerates is Italian; because the town in which I was born, the language that I speak, the books that educate me, because my brother, my sister, my comrades, the great people among whom I live, and the beautiful nature which surrounds me, and all that I see, that I love, that I study, that I admire, is Italian. Oh, you cannot feel that affection to the full! You will feel it when you become a man; when, returning from a long journey, after a prolonged absence, you step up in the morning to the bulwarks of the vessel and see on the distant horizon the lofty blue mountains of your country; you will feel it then in the impetuous flood of tenderness which will fill your eyes with tears and will wrest a cry from your heart. You will feel it in some great and distant city, in that impulse of the soul which will draw you from the strange throng towards a working man from whom you have heard in passing a word.

My sisters seemed so different from the way I remembered them. Sali, the one closest in age, mother of two children. Her tone of voice had changed; she spoke German or Yiddish with an English accent. The brothers-in-law, all so different from people that I used to know: Betty's husband Nat - distant; Sali's husband Willie - friendly and enthusiastic; Gertie's Jacques - a real character, a devout Communist, who told me that I didn't understand what I saw when I criticized the Soviet system. My cousins, close in age to me: Jack Stadler, one year older than myself, had just got engaged the week when I arrived and Albert, a few years younger - none of them could talk to the newly arrived uncle and aunt, since they spoke only English.

This is the road of the long slow decline. You know it well. You who have watched helpless as son, daughter, sister, brother, husband, wife, friend stood uncertain at its crossroads before taking that single decisive step. Maybe you took that step yourself. Either way, you know that there is no getting off of this road until the traveler has reached its inevitable end. The road twists and winds and goes on into an unseen, distant horizon. Sometimes there are breakdowns. Sometimes there is hope. Sometimes the ones we love crash and die. There may be rest stops along the way on this road, side trips into what looks like happiness or sanity. But these are only mirages that shimmer and dissolve when we reach out to grab them. They are not real life or real rest stops. In the end, the traveler must figure out why he got on the road in the first place before making that final choice to get off.

Comfort for Comfort For this reason Jesus had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every way so he could be their merciful and faithful high priest in service to God. Then Jesus could die in their place to take away their sins. And now he can help those who are tempted, because he himself suffered and was tempted. HEBREWS 2:17–18 NCV God chose to come to earth in human form to be made like us. To understand what it’s like to be human. To be able to fully take our place and remove our sins. Because He was fully human while being fully God, He can help. He can comfort. The Bible says that He “comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (2 Corinthians 1:4 NIV). It’s so encouraging that Jesus was just like us! Our God is not one who wants to remain as a distant high king, out of touch with the commoners. He wants a very personal relationship with each one of us. He lowered Himself to our level so that we could have personal and continual access to Him. His glory knows no bounds, yet He desires to be our Friend. Take great comfort in that. And then when people around you are troubled, you can step in. You can wrap your arms around someone else who needs a friend because of what Jesus has done for you. Dear Jesus, thank You for the great gift of Your friendship. Allow me the opportunity to be a friend and comfort to those around me in need. Amen.

Something snapped in my mind. The noise all around me receded in a wave until all I heard was a distant, throbbing pulse like a muffled heartbeat. A legionnaire gutted one of the pirates not three strides in front of me, and the man twisted in a horrid dance as his guts spilled. He dropped his weapons—a pair of short, curved swords—and one of them landed at my feet. I picked it up. Through the red mist that drifted down before my eyes, I no longer saw a ship, or pirates. I could see only soldiers. Legionnaires in their uniforms, hacking and slashing and killing. Where the young, arrogant Decurion stood, I saw only a nameless, faceless commander of Caesar’s legions. I saw only the man who’d murdered my sister. In that moment, Caius Varro was Rome. And I . . . I was Vengeance.

It’s not a very hopeful sign when your oncologist gives you a goodbye hug—but that only went through my mind later. It was a hug of genuine sweetness and affection: two people comforting each other, like sisters parting before one left on a long trip to a distant land.

Worse than that is the faint, uncanny off feeling when we’re actually together. Like she’s only halfway here. Like those metronomes have fallen into different rhythms, and even when we’re right next to each other, they never manage to match up. At first I’d chalked it up to stress about the new baby, but as time has worn on, my sister’s seemed more distant rather than closer. We’re fundamentally out of sync in a way I can’t seem to name,

If he considered the wind to be a price paid for freedom, then the sky was part of the prize. Evar sat beside his sister and watched the stars. The night sky rewarded attention. Like most things, it revealed new depths the longer it was studied. Parts of the sky that Evar had thought empty would slowly offer up fainter stars buried in the blackness. Here and there lengthier observation would pull faint veils of light from the depths, wisps of coloured mist that might in themselves be made of yet more stars, innumerable, hauntingly distant. Evar felt himself at once both infinitesimal and yet woven into the vastness promised by the sky. A peace so great and enfolding that even the distant hunting call of a cratalac couldn’t shake him from it.

—is from my sister Mora’s bloodline. He is my nephew of sorts, and a member of my household. An extremely distant relation of yours; there is some ancient ancestry linking you.

Prayer to the Pacific I traveled to the ocean distant from my southwest land of sandrock to the moving blue water Big as the myth of origin. Pale pale water in the yellow-white light of sun floating west to China where ocean herself was born. Clouds that blow across the sand are wet. Squat in the wet sand and speak to the Ocean: I return to you turquoise the red coral you sent us, sister spirit of Earth. Four round stones in my pocket I carry back the ocean to suck and to taste. Thirty thousand years ago Indians came riding across the ocean carried by giant sea turtles. Waves were high that day great sea turtles waded slowly out from the gray sundown sea. Grandfather Turtle rolled in the sand four times and disappeared swimming into the sun. And so from that time immemorial, as the old people say, rain clouds drift from the west gift from the ocean. Green leaves in the wind Wet earth on my feet swallowing raindrops clear from China.

Norcross was distant and scrupulous: she offered to read aloud from the extracts and letters she had copied so that Todd could check the proofs for the forthcoming volumes, but no eyes, she insists, will ever fall on the censored content. The following letter makes it plain that a huge batch of Dickinson’s letters—the originals—are to disappear: Concord [Massachusetts] Aug. 1, 1894 My dear Mrs. Todd, … I cannot send the letters, not because I fear they will be lost, but because my sister and I are not willing that any one even Vinnie should have the free reading of them; many of them have whole sentences which were intended for no eyes but ours, and on our own account as well as Emily’s no one else will ever read them. This we consider our right, and we must insist upon it.

Like a bird, like a squirrel, you longed for the woods. How you must have envied me! Ah my sister, you will leave for a distant place before the day ends, are you truly going alone? Ask me to come with you.

After accepting her anger, Jade could see her healing fantasy clearly for the first time. She had thought she could heal her family by being extremely loving. Here’s how she put it: “I tried to see everybody as good. I thought everyone loved one another. I was naive. I thought that if you were nice to people, at the end of the day things would get fixed. I thought that my parents would actually love me, and that my brother and sister might care about what I’m interested in. But now I’ve learned that I need to do what’s right for me and trust myself. I really do enjoy my own company. I don’t want to waste my time anymore. I hope I’ll find people I can trust. I’m not going to try to make it work with people who are distant or unsupportive. I’ll be cordial and polite, but I’m not moving in close just to be disappointed.

When I was 15 years old, I came in contact with my first ashram, my first spiritual commune, in the form of Ljusbacken ("The Hill of Light") in Delsbo in beautiful Halsingland in the north of Sweden. Ljusbacken consisted of an international gathering of yogis, meditators, therapists, healers and seekers of truth. It was on Ljusbacken that I for the first time came in contact with my path in life: meditation .It was also on Ljusbacken that I met people for the first time in my 15 year old life, where I on a deep wordless level felt that I met people, who were on the same path as me. It was the first time that I met people, who could put words on and confirm my own inner thirst after something that I could only occasionally sense vaguely, like some sort of inner guiding presence, or like a beacon in the distant far out on the open and misty ocean. For the first time in my life, I met brothers, sisters and friends on the inner path. It was also on Ljusbacken that I met the mystery called love for the first time in my 15 year old life. With my 15 year old eyes, I watched with wide eyed fascination and fear filled with excitement the incomprehensible mystery, which is called woman. My own thirst after truth, together with my inner guiding light, result

Just a little, a voice in his head urged him. He could show her just a little of passion, he reasoned; he could show her gently, skillfully, give her just a taste. Because lord knew what would become of her, and what sort of man would ultimately have the taking of her. He was certain he could give her pleasure, and she deserved that. He was distantly amused, even a little alarmed, at how reason and lust had conspired to make his desire to crawl beneath Susannah Makepeace's skirts seem noble.

Thalias had thought about this moment for a long time. She'd wondered what he would say, what she would say, and if it would open up new vistas for her life and her future. And now nothing. He was thoughtful. Just thoughtful. She closed her eyes, wishing she was anywhere else in the galaxy. She should never, never have started down this path in the first place. "I had an older sister," Thrawn said, his voice almost too soft for her to hear. "She was five when she disappeared. My parents would never tell me where she went." Thalias opened her eyes again. He was still sitting there in the gloom, still looking thoughtful. But now there was something new in his eyes. A distant, well-hidden, but lingering pain.

In Conversation With The Earth! Hello I am Earth , your home, Hello I am human from Climate summit at Rome, Pleasure meeting you today, Well I thought you met and saw me everyday, Nevermind, human mind is a curious creation, Look at the devastation and your numb sensation, Water levels rising, Frequent wildfires are least surprising, Landslides burying people alive, For the poor Earth is no longer a place to thrive, CO2 emissions creating a blanket of doom, The world looks like a planet draped in agony and gloom, Deforestation has left me naked, By your callousness I feel raped, you humans are so ungrateful and wicked, The rising heat will kill us both, I will manage drifting in the universe but imagine your plight in the cosmic broth? You are the cause of your own extinction, And you seek mercy from me for this inevitable destruction, I am part of the universe the universe is not a part of me, And if there is a cause, an effect too there shall be! But I am wondering why you are still procrastinating, You are more interested in Mars’s Terraforming, Instead of saving your present home, Where there is Italy, Germany, India, America, Russia, China, many others and Rome, You seem to ignore my pleadings and warning signs, And somehow your conscience resigns, Into a slumber of thoughtlessness, And you seem willing to endure this perpetual feeling of restlessness, But refrain from acting now, Sometimes you just need to start, without wasting too much time on thinking how, This maybe my last conversation with you , my dear human being, It is time you believed in what you are seeing, A ravaged soul of mine, I fret and fume, yet you convince yourself I am fine, Because you can still breathe in my air, But how long, because you are offering me a bargain that is unfair, Very soon you may need protected air zones to survive, And then only those with a penny in the pocket shall be alive, Where will your less fortunate brothers and sisters go? I think after the great fall, today humanity has fallen really too low, Not placing restraint on their acts so ignoble, Although you see my scars so fresh and palpable, Anyway, why shall you care as long as you can breathe, And not realise the irony, the day you feel choked I too shall no more be able to breathe! Mars is a distant dream, Pay heed now when I yell and scream, Mars is just a reflection in the mirror, But I am the mirror, you just need to be a heedful observer, And act now before it is too late, And stop wasting time in a bureaucratically complex debate, Maybe this will be the last summer for you and me too, But I am still believing and expecting the best from you! By: Javid Ahmad Tak

From the Introduction to Coldhearted River: A Canoe Odyssey Down the Cumberland: As I read about the Cumberland before the trip and began to scout it, its distinct personality began to emerge. It was colder, in a literal and figurative sense, than the Tennessee. Long stretches were empty, desolate, antisocial. It seemed haunted, distant, aloof, while the Tennessee was warm, embracing, pliant. The Tennessee was the friendly sister, close to my age, perhaps older, the Cumberland the younger one with a wild reputation. And like an outlaw, complex and difficult, it winded and twisted its way through Tennessee and Kentucky, still wild and ornery, roaring through high bluffs and narrow gorges, fogging up and flooding, resistant to human control. The Tennessee’s wildness was subdued, less confrontational, nine dams sedating, directing, and harnessing its power. While the Tennessee’s ghosts had whispered stories to me, the Cumberland’s, I suspected before the trip, would wail through the night, telling lies and creating mischief.

When I was 15 years old, I came in contact with my first ashram, my first spiritual commune, in the form of Ljusbacken ("The Hill of Light") in Delsbo in beautiful Halsingland in the north of Sweden. Ljusbacken consisted of an international gathering of yogis, meditators, therapists, healers and seekers of truth. It was on Ljusbacken that I for the first time came in contact with my path in life: meditation. It was also on Ljusbacken that I met people for the first time in my 15 year old life, where I on a deep wordless level felt that I met people, who were on the same path as me. It was the first time that I met people, who could put words on and confirm my own inner thirst after something that I could only occasionally sense vaguely, like some sort of inner guiding presence, or like a beacon in the distant far out on the open and misty ocean. For the first time in my life, I met brothers, sisters and friends on the inner path. It was also on Ljusbacken that I met the mystery called love for the first time in my 15 year old life. With my 15 year old eyes, I watched with wide eyed fascination and fear filled with excitement the incomprehensible mystery, which is called woman. My own thirst after truth, together with my inner guiding light, resulted in an early spiritual awakening when I was 15 years old. It led me back to the inner path, which I have already followed for many lives. It led me back to a life lived with vision, with dedication and meaning, and not only a life governed by the endless desires of the ego, a mere vegetating without substance between life and death. It led me to explore the inner journey again, to discover the inner being, the meditative quality within, and to come in intimate contact with the endless and boundless ocean of consciousness, like the drop surrenders to the sea. At the source, the drop and ocean are one. Devadas, a beautiful soul, whose meditation and way to God is laughter, house father at Ljusbacken, Giten's first ashram in beautiful Hälsingland in the north of Sweden when Giten was 15 years old. says: "Giten does a brilliant job. I am very happy with Giten's work and his satsangs. I must admit that only joy fills my heart when I read Giten's books and see his understanding and commitment. I suggest joining in to bless Giten's work.

His lips touched hers, just a brush, once, twice, over the full softness of her lovely mouth, discovering what she knew of kissing. With devastating instinct, she echoed him, dragging her lips softly across his, with his, until the desire in him was coiled so tightly his limbs trembled from it. "Susannah." A ragged whisper. She sighed a warm breath out against his lips and brought her other hand up to hold his face; in her hands he could feel her tension and urgency. And he'd meant to linger over this kiss, to take it deeper with delicacy and finesse, and then to end it, but he found he could not. His desire was suddenly untenable; he was convinced only the taste of her could ease it. He touched an impatient tongue to her lips and coaxed them open. When she parted her mouth he sought her tongue, and discovered, with a low sound in the back of his throat, the hot, silken sweetness inside her mouth. Her tongue tentatively moved, tangled with his. Oh, God. "Like this?" she whispered. "God, yes," he breathed. She smiled against his mouth. "No smiling," he murmured. "Only kissing." Their mouths moved languidly over each other at first, nipping, delving deeply, retreating. And gradually it built to urgency. He rose up over her to take his kisses deeper still, to taste the contours of her mouth, teeth clashing against her teeth, and still it never seemed enough. The sensation was like soaring in place; Kit couldn't feel the ground beneath him, or the air above him; he was aware only of the sweetness of the woman joined with him, and distantly he marveled, he'd never felt quite so lost. He tucked his hip in firmly against hers, astounded at how painfully aroused he was. "Sweet," he murmured, moving his lips from hers to kiss, to nip beneath her chin, to draw his tongue down the cord of her throat. Her breathing was rushed, and with the rise and fall of her chest he could see the tight darkness of her nipples beneath the fine fabric of her dress. "Sweet," he sighed again, moving his mouth to breathe against her breast; he touched his tongue to her nipple through the fabric. She caught her breath at the sensation, arced up a little to meet him. And as she did, his fingers, five feathers, began to stroke the tender skin inside her thigh.

It is not easy to do this. Like Agnes's sisters, family members or close friends may be eager to help but are too timid; people may fear that they are intruding or that they will unsettle the dying by raising somber topics. The dying person generally needs to take the lead in discussing fears about death. If you are dying or panicky about death, and your friends and family remain distant or respond evasively, I would suggest you stay in the here-and-now (to be discussed more fully in Chapter Seven) and speak directly to the point-for example: "I notice you don't respond directly when I discuss my fears. It will help me if I can speak openly to close friends like you. Is it too much, too painful, for you?

As Maeve hurried from the study, she turned and took one last look at her father and Boudicca, whom she always thought of as her sister, an older sibling who remained distant and seldom displayed anything but animosity, but a sister nonetheless. Her father had kept the secret well, enduring the shame and hiding it from the world. It sickened her to discover after all these years that Boudicca was a man.

Blood is always a failure. Often the failure of the sister who holds the sword. Sometimes of those who send her into conflict. Or sometimes the failure lies years back, in the hands of someone who missed an opportunity for peace, who saw a chance to avert a distant violence and did not take it… or who failed to see that chance.

There’s plenty of work to do; do your job with decency and an open heart. Love your brothers and sisters in all actions, in all relationships. Speak the truth. Extend your innate empathy to distant tribes and strange animals. Arm yourself with friendship and love the Earth.

We are happier in nature. All of us. We take long walks through the woods, stopping to smell the scent of pine in the air, the distant snowcapped peak of Mount Washington or Three Sisters reminding us we are small and young.

Why could she not emulate his sisters: marry and concentrate on babies? He gloomily suspected that she had that plan lined up for him.

THE COMPANY INSPECTOR SAID, “You’ve been high-grading, Webb.” “Who don’t walk out of here with rocks in their dinner pail?” “Maybe over in Telluride, but not in this mine.” Webb looked at the “evidence” and said, “You know this was planted onto me. One of your finks over here. Maybe even you, Cap’n—” “Watch what you say.” “—no damned inspector yet ain’t taken a nugget when he thought he could.” Teeth bared, almost smiling. “Oh? seen a lot of that in your time?” “Everybody has. What’re we bullshittin’ about, here, really?” The first blow came out of the dark, filling Webb’s attention with light and pain. IT WAS TO BE a trail of pain, Deuce trying to draw it out, Sloat, closer to the realities of pain, trying to move it along. “Thought we ‘s just gonna shoot him simple and leave him where he fell.” “No, this one’s a special job, Sloat. Special handling. You might say we’re in the big time now.” “Looks like just some of the usual ten-day trash to me, Deuce.” “Well that’s where you’d be wrong. It turns out Brother Traverse here is a major figure in the world of criminal Anarchism.” “Of what’s that again?” “Apologies for my associate, the bigger words tend to throw him. You better get a handle on ‘Anarchism’ there, Sloat, because it’s the coming thing in our field. Piles of money to be made.” Webb just kept quiet. It didn’t look like these two were fixing to ask him any questions, because neither had spared him any pain that he could tell, pain and information usually being convertible, like gold and dollars, practically at a fixed rate. He didn’t know how long he’d hold out in any case if they really wanted to start in. But along with the pain, worse, he guessed, was how stupid he felt, what a hopeless damn fool, at just how deadly wrong he’d been about this kid. Before, Webb had only recognized it as politics, what Veikko called “procedure”—accepting that it might be necessary to lay down his life, that he was committed as if by signed contract to die for his brothers and sisters in the struggle. But now that the moment was upon him . . . Since teaming up, the partners had fallen into a division of labor, Sloat tending to bodies, Deuce specializing more in harming the spirit, and thrilled now that Webb was so demoralized that he couldn’t even look at them. Sloat had a railroad coupling pin he’d taken from the D.&R.G. once, figuring it would come in handy. It weighed a little over seven pounds, and Sloat at the moment was rolling it in a week-old copy of the Denver Post. “We done both your feet, how about let’s see your hands there, old-timer.” When he struck, he made a point of not looking his victim in the face but stayed professionally focused on what it was he was aiming to damage. Webb found himself crying out the names of his sons. From inside the pain, he was distantly surprised at a note of reproach in his voice, though not sure if it had been out loud or inside his thoughts. He watched the light over the ranges slowly draining away. After a while he couldn’t talk much. He was spitting blood. He wanted it over with. He sought Sloat’s eyes with his one undamaged one, looking for a deal. Sloat looked over at Deuce. “Where we headed for, li’l podner?” “Jeshimon.” With a malignant smile, meant to wither what spirit remained to Webb, for Jeshimon was a town whose main business was death, and the red adobe towers of Jeshimon were known and feared as the places you ended up on top of when nobody wanted you found. “You’re going over into Utah, Webb. We happen to run across some Mormon apostles in time, why you can even get baptized, get a bunch of them proxy wives what they call sealed on to you, so’s you’ll enjoy some respect among the Saints, how’s that, while you’re all waiting for that good bodily resurrection stuff.” Webb kept gazing at Sloat, blinking, waiting for some reaction, and when none came, he finally looked away.

I felt the weight of that responsibility even more now that I had seen firsthand what life here had been like. I took the donuts and juice to a little table we had set up in the Blue Room. I opened the box and set out some paper cups. Matthews was the first to arrive at the table. “Thank you, Carrie Jo.” “My pleasure. Have you heard anything from C. M. Lowell on those mantelpieces? I know it’s only been a few weeks, but TD is going to need to install them before they cut the molding for the rest of the room.” “Right. I’ll put a call in to them this morning. I’d forgotten about that. I’ve got some leads on paintings for the two main parlors. One is pretty incredible; I emailed you photos of both of them. Don’t forget, we’ve got boxes of paintings in the attic. And good news—we have air up there now, too. If you can’t find what you want, there is plenty of room in the budget, but many of the local families are willing to allow us to use their pieces. With all credits, of course.” I couldn’t figure Hollis Matthews out: one minute he was cold and distant, and the next he was kind and friendly. One thing I knew for sure—he was always a man with a plan. “Great. I’ll check out those pictures and let you know. I’ve got some plans ready for the ladies’ parlor, including a significant display of Augusta Evans books. I’ll have those to you by the end of next week.” With a nod of his salt-and-pepper head, he walked away, probably off to call about those mantelpieces. I invited the interns to have a donut and took a few minutes to get to know them. There were two Rachels, Rachel Kowalski and Rachel McGhee, and James Pittman. All of them were excellent archaeological students who had earned their spots on our team. I’d Skyped with them individually before I came to Mobile, but this was the first time we’d met in person. “Well, guys, are you ready for the grand tour? It’s the same one visitors will take once the museum is open.” We started in the ladies’ parlor, continued on to the men’s parlor and the Blue Room, and then went up the opposite side of the hall to the servants’ waiting area, the music room and the ballroom. There were of course a myriad of

Among the Pharisees and their flock, Christ was the first decent being — naive, but decent. He too couldn't stand a reality full of doom, gloom, and conflict, and so he willed himself and became a 'child' in order to show his brothers and sisters that heaven wasn't a distant, fictional place but a possibility here on earth. God could be found in everyone, and like a child, he was forgetting. And because this child was serious at play, he was punished and crucified for his rebelliousness. With the veil of ignorance lifted, the anti-Christ, or Buddha emerges from the abyss — the disillusioned individual who has uncovered morality and discovered the meaning of power. He then becomes the Superman or 'star-child', one who has experienced ‘death’ but has transcended ‘death’ and affirms life. He is pure but remembering.

One friend, whose father was an avid outdoorsman, has shared horror stories of being forced to ride for hours in the cap-enclosed bed of the family’s pickup truck en route to their distant cabin. While her parents traveled in relative comfort in the cab up front, she and her sister were tossed about in a dim, poorly ventilated compartment crammed with constantly shifting suitcases, tackle boxes, fishing poles, and even the family dog. In those days, this arrangement wasn’t illegal. And in the Midwest, where dads who hunt and fish abound, it was likely common.

Proud? I suppose. He’s very distant toward me. He doesn’t seem like he’s really here anymore. Not really. It’s like he’s somewhere else. Anything that happens, he just makes stories out of it. I’m less real to him than any of the characters in his plays. Mother says he’s changed in the last five years. But I don’t remember him any other way. Judith, she’s my twin sister, she once joked that if I died, he’d just write a play about it: Hamnet.

Win's sense of unease grew as evening settled over the house. She stayed in the parlor with her sisters and Miss Marks until Beatrix had tired of reading. The only relief from Win's growing tension was in watching the antics of Beatrix's ferret, Dodger, who seemed enamored of Miss Marks, despite-or perhaps because of-her obvious antipathy. He kept creeping up to the governess and trying to steal one of her knitting needles, while she watched him with narrowed eyes. "Don't even consider it," Miss Marks told the hopeful ferret with chilling calm. "Or I'll cut off your tail with a carving knife." Beatrix grinned. "I thought that only happened to blind mice, Miss Marks," "It works on any offending rodent," Miss Marks returned darkly. "Ferrets are not rodents, actually," Beatrix said. "They're classified as mustelidae. Weasels. So one might say the ferret is a distant cousin of the mouse." "It's not a family I'd care to become closely acquainted with," Poppy said. Dodger draped himself across the arm of the settee and pinned a love-struck gaze on Miss Marks, who ignored him.

Her façade could be deceiving, however. Dangerously so. People assumed from her silence that she was meek, and she’d often remind them, in startling ways, that she was not. For instance, there was the time my father refused to cut back on his salt, despite a doctor’s warnings that his blood pressure was up. My mother simply filled all the saltshakers in the house with powdered milk. And there was the day my sisters and I were bickering and clamoring for lunch, despite her pleas for quiet. My mother suddenly let out a savage scream and hurled an egg salad sandwich against the wall. She then walked out of the house, across the lawn, and disappeared. I’ll never forget the sight of that egg salad slowly dripping down the wall while my mother’s sundress dissolved in the distant trees.

Damian was like Pluto: too distant to see in detail, a speck of light on the outer reaches of our galaxy, always moving. A planet of extremes, its light as hard to penetrate as its darkness. Rock and ice — tough stuff Pluto's made of. It helped to think of Damian that way, a match for any city street. It helped me survive the winter without him.