Fern Leaves Quotes

I'm sure the red fern has grown and has completely covered the two little mounds. I know it is still there, hiding its secret beneath those long, red leaves, but it wouldn't be hidden from me for part of my life is buried there, too. Yes, I know it is still there, for in my heart I believe the legend of the sacred red fern.

I found her lying on her stomach, her hind legs stretched out straight, and her front feet folded back under her chest. She had laid her head on his grave. I saw the trail where she had dragged herself through the leaves. The way she lay there, I thought she was alive. I called her name. She made no movement. With the last ounce of strength in her body, she had dragged herself to the grave of Old Dan.

The house was burning, the yellow-red sky was like the sunset...Nothing would be left, the golden ferns and the silver ferns, the orchids, the ginger lilies and the roses...When they had finished, there would be nothing left but blackened walls and the mounting stone. That was always left. That could not be stolen or burned.

A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you can see. Roots to leaves, yes-those you can, in part, see. But it is more-it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one.

Consider a single piece glowing in your family’s stove. See it, children? That chunk of coal was once a green plant, a fern or reed that lived one million years ago, or maybe two million, or maybe one hundred million. Can you imagine one hundred million years? Every summer for the whole life of that plant, its leaves caught what light they could and transformed the sun’s energy into itself. Into bark, twigs, stems. Because plants eat light, in much the way we eat food. But then the plant died and fell, probably into water, and decayed into peat, and the peat was folded inside the earth for years upon years—eons in which something like a month or a decade or even your whole life was just a puff of air, a snap of two fingers. And eventually the peat dried and became like stone, and someone dug it up, and the coal man brought it to your house, and maybe you yourself carried it to the stove, and now that sunlight—sunlight one hundred million years old—is heating your home tonight . . .

Beauty was all around them. Unsuspected tintings glimmered in the dark demesnes of the woods and glowed in their alluring by-ways. The spring sunshine sifted through the young green leaves. Gay trills of song were everywhere. There were little hollows where you felt as if you were bathing in a pool of liquid gold. At every turn some fresh spring scent struck their faces: Spice ferns...fir balsam...the wholesome odour of newly ploughed fields. There was a lane curtained with wild-cherry blossoms; a grassy old field full of tiny spruce trees just starting in life and looking like elvish things that had sat down among the grasses; brooks not yet "too broad for leaping"; starflowers under the firs; sheets of curly young ferns; and a birch tree whence someone had torn away the white-skin wrapper in several places, exposing the tints of the bark below-tints ranging from purest creamy white, through exquisite golden tones, growing deeper and deeper until the inmost layer revealed the deepest, richest brown as if to tell tha all birches, so maiden-like and cool exteriorly, had yet warm-hued feelings; "the primeval fire of earth at their hearts.

I know it is still there, hiding its secret beneath those long, red leaves, but it wouldn't be hidden from me for part of my life is buried there, too.

I know it is still there, hiding its secret beneath those long, red leaves, but it woukdn't be hidden from me for part of my life is buried there, too".

Spring had come once more to Green Gables-the beautiful, capricious Canadian spring, lingering along through April and may in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red-budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's place, the mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil.

She sat very still, listening to a stream gurgling, the breeze soughing through upper branches, the melodious kloo-klack of ravens, the nyeep-nyeep of nuthatches - all sounds chokingly beautiful. She felt she could hear the cool clean breath of growing things - fern fronds, maple leaves, white trillium petals, tree trunks, each in its rightful place.

I couldn’t describe the smells of West Virginia, even if I tried. It has something to do with the leaves composting in the woods, the cold trickle of little creeks and waterfalls, the ferns greening up everything. But somewhere deep below, I can smell the rock and the coal this state is built on.

On the first day of November last year, sacred to many religious calendars but especially the Celtic, I went for a walk among bare oaks and birch. Nothing much was going on. Scarlet sumac had passed and the bees were dead. The pond had slicked overnight into that shiny and deceptive glaze of delusion, first ice. It made me remember sakes and conjure a vision of myself skimming backward on one foot, the other extended; the arms become wings. Minnesota girls know that this is not a difficult maneuver if one's limber and practices even a little after school before the boys claim the rink for hockey. I think I can still do it - one thinks many foolish things when November's bright sun skips over the entrancing first freeze. A flock of sparrows reels through the air looking more like a flying net than seventy conscious birds, a black veil thrown on the wind. When one sparrow dodges, the whole net swerves, dips: one mind. Am I part of anything like that? Maybe not. The last few years of my life have been characterized by stripping away, one by one, loves and communities that sustain the soul. A young colleague, new to my English department, recently asked me who I hang around with at school. "Nobody," I had to say, feeling briefly ashamed. This solitude is one of the surprises of middle age, especially if one's youth has been rich in love and friendship and children. If you do your job right, children leave home; few communities can stand an individual's most pitiful, amateur truth telling. So the soul must stand in her own meager feathers and learn to fly - or simply take hopeful jumps into the wind. In the Christian calendar, November 1 is the Feast of All Saints, a day honoring not only those who are known and recognized as enlightened souls, but more especially the unknowns, saints who walk beside us unrecognized down the millennia. In Buddhism, we honor the bodhisattvas - saints - who refuse enlightenment and return willingly to the wheel of karma to help other beings. Similarly, in Judaism, anonymous holy men pray the world from its well-merited destruction. We never know who is walking beside us, who is our spiritual teacher. That one - who annoys you so - pretends for a day that he's the one, your personal Obi Wan Kenobi. The first of November is a splendid, subversive holiday. Imagine a hectic procession of revelers - the half-mad bag lady; a mumbling, scarred janitor whose ravaged face made the children turn away; the austere, unsmiling mother superior who seemed with great focus and clarity to do harm; a haunted music teacher, survivor of Auschwitz. I bring them before my mind's eye, these old firends of my soul, awakening to dance their day. Crazy saints; but who knows what was home in the heart? This is the feast of those who tried to take the path, so clumsily that no one knew or notice, the feast, indeed, of most of us. It's an ugly woods, I was saying to myself, padding along a trail where other walkers had broken ground before me. And then I found an extraordinary bouquet. Someone had bound an offering of dry seed pods, yew, lyme grass, red berries, and brown fern and laid it on the path: "nothing special," as Buddhists say, meaning "everything." Gathered to formality, each dry stalk proclaimed a slant, an attitude, infinite shades of neutral. All contemplative acts, silences, poems, honor the world this way. Brought together by the eye of love, a milkweed pod, a twig, allow us to see how things have been all along. A feast of being.

I have never been back to the Ozarks. All I have left are my dreams and memories, but if God is willing, some day I’d like to go back—back to those beautiful hills. I’d like to walk again on trails I walked in my boyhood days. Once again I’d like to face a mountain breeze and smell the wonderful scent of the redbuds, and papaws, and the dogwoods. With my hands I’d like to caress the cool white bark of a sycamore. I’d like to take a walk far back in the flinty hills and search for a souvenir, an old double-bitted ax stuck deep in the side of a white oak tree. I know the handle has long since rotted away with time. Perhaps the rusty frame of a coal-oil lantern still hangs there on the blade. I’d like to see the old home place, the barn and the rail fences. I’d like to pause under the beautiful red oaks where my sisters and I played in our childhood. I’d like to walk up the hillside to the graves of my dogs. I’m sure the red fern has grown and has completely covered the two little mounds. I know it is still there, hiding its secret beneath those long, red leaves, but it wouldn’t be hidden from me for part of my life is buried there, too. Yes, I know it is still there, for in my heart I believe the legend of the sacred red fern.

Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf their modest epitaph in the coal.

When You Return Fallen leaves will climb back into trees. Shards of the shattered vase will rise and reassemble on the table. Plastic raincoats will refold into their flat envelopes. The egg, bald yolk and its transparent halo, slide back in the thin, calcium shell. Curses will pour back into mouths, letters un-write themselves, words siphoned up into the pen. My gray hair will darken and become the feathers of a black swan. Bullets will snap back into their chambers, the powder tamped tight in brass casings. Borders will disappear from maps. Rust revert to oxygen and time. The fire return to the log, the log to the tree, the white root curled up in the un-split seed. Birdsong will fly into the lark’s lungs, answers become questions again. When you return, sweaters will unravel and wool grow on the sheep. Rock will go home to mountain, gold to vein. Wine crushed into the grape, oil pressed into the olive. Silk reeled in to the spider’s belly. Night moths tucked close into cocoons, ink drained from the indigo tattoo. Diamonds will be returned to coal, coal to rotting ferns, rain to clouds, light to stars sucked back and back into one timeless point, the way it was before the world was born, that fresh, that whole, nothing broken, nothing torn apart.

How are you giving it magic?” he said, through his teeth. “I already found the path!” I said. “I’m just staying on it. Can’t you—feel it?” I asked abruptly, and held my hand cupping the flower out towards him; he frowned and put his hands around it, and then he said, “Vadiya rusha ilikad tuhi,” and a second illusion laid itself over mine, two roses in the same space—his, predictably, had three rings of perfect petals, and a delicate fragrance. “Try and match it,” he said absently, his fingers moving slightly, and by lurching steps we brought our illusions closer together until it was nearly impossible to tell them one from another, and then he said, “Ah,” suddenly, just as I began to glimpse his spell: almost exactly like that strange clockwork on the middle of his table, all shining moving parts. On an impulse I tried to align our workings: I envisioned his like the water-wheel of a mill, and mine the rushing stream driving it around. “What are you—” he began, and then abruptly we had only a single rose, and it began to grow. And not only the rose: vines were climbing up the bookshelves in every direction, twining themselves around ancient tomes and reaching out the window; the tall slender columns that made the arch of the doorway were lost among rising birches, spreading out long finger-branches; moss and violets were springing up across the floor, delicate ferns unfurling. Flowers were blooming everywhere: flowers I had never seen, strange blooms dangling and others with sharp points, brilliantly colored, and the room was thick with their fragrance, with the smell of crushed leaves and pungent herbs. I looked around myself alight with wonder, my magic still flowing easily. “Is this what you meant?” I asked him: it really wasn’t any more difficult than making the single flower had been. But he was staring at the riot of flowers all around us, as astonished as I was. He looked at me, baffled and for the first time uncertain, as though he had stumbled into something, unprepared. His long narrow hands were cradled around mine, both of us holding the rose together. Magic was singing in me, through me; I felt the murmur of his power singing back that same song. I was abruptly too hot, and strangely conscious of myself. I pulled my hands free.

I was conscious of that moment of stepping into the woods and leaving everything else behind. That one instant when all the sounds of people, of traffic, of doors opening and closing, were suddenly gone, swallowed up by trees and ferns. It was like a curtain falling on a stage, and I waited for that moment every time. My heart opened just a little bit wider.

Nobody goes anywhere though we are always leaving and returning. It's a ceremony. Sunrise occurs everywhere, in lizard time, human time, or a fern uncurling time.

The fine rain, falling unseen in darkness, pattered on the leaves overhead, on his arms and neck and head protected by their thick silk-fine hair, on the earth and ferns and undergrowth nearby, on all the leaves of the forest, near and far. Selver sat as quiet as the gray owl on a branch above him, unsleeping, his eyes wide open in the rainy dark.

The redwoods, once seen, leave a mark or create a vision that stays with you always. No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable. From them comes silence and awe. It's not only their unbelievable stature, nor the color which seems to shift and vary under your eyes, no, they are not like any trees we know, they are ambassadors from another time. They have the mystery of ferns that disappeared a million years ago into the coal of the carboniferous era. They carry their own light and shade. The vainest, most slap-happy and irreverent of men, in the presence of redwoods, goes under a spell of wonder and respect. Respect--that's the word. One feels the need to bow to unquestioned sovereigns. I have known these great ones since my earliest childhood, have lived among them, camped and slept against their warm monster bodies, and no amount of association has bred contempt in me.

This was a beautiful, old wood, all massive oak and ash trees finding footing among great slabs of cracked stone. Ferns sprang from rocks and verdant moss grew up the sides of the tree trunks. The air itself was scented with green and growing and water. The light was golden through the leaves. Everything was alive, alive.

broad-faced she-cat stood among the ferns, her tortoiseshell-and-white fur patched and scarred from long-past battles. Her amber eyes gleamed like tiny gold moons; they seemed much brighter than the rest of the she-cat, and Tigerclaw was uncomfortably aware that he could see the leaves and ground on the other side of her.

Approximately 15 to 20 percent of the population has a nervous system wired to be more sensitive. These people are more attuned to the subtleties of their environment and process that information much more deeply compared to others without this trait. While being more observant might be a survival advantage, it can also be overwhelming. Someone who is constantly aware of the subtleties of the environment and of the people around them can quickly experience sensory overload. My clients who consider themselves to be HSPs [highly sensitive persons] often report experiencing a certain type of disorganized attachment because the world itself is too much. Due to their increased sensitivity, even normal everyday events can feel too intense, too chaotic or too stimulating, leaving little respite to feel settled, safe and secure. In relationships, HSPs are often unclear as to whether what they are feeling has its origin in themselves or if their partner's feelings are creating that 'one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake' experience in their nervous system. They want to be close to people, but being close can be a sensory assault that is confusing or that dysregulates them for days.

Because the minister's wife refused to leave the minister, and because my mother required a worshipful companion, she was forced to break up with Fern and secure herself a new mate. As luck would have it, Dr. Finch had recently begun seeing a suicidal eighteen-year-old African-American girl who had taken a leave of absence from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her name was Dorothy.

I divined and chose a distant place to dwell T'ien-t'ai; what more is there to say? Monkeys cry where valley mists are cold, My grass gate blends with the color of the crags, I pick leaves to thatch a hut among the pines, Scoop out a pond and lead a runnel from the spring. By now I am used to doing without the world, Picking ferns, I pass the years that are left. The trail to Cold Mountain is faint the banks of Cold Stream are a jungle birds constantly chatter away I hear no sound of people gusts of wind lash my face flurries of snow bury my body day after day, no sun year after year no spring.

Our garden was large and beautiful as that garden in the Bible - the tree of life grew there. But it had gone wild. The paths were overgrown and a smell of dead flowers mixed with the fresh living smell. Underneath the tree ferns, tall as forest tree ferns, the light was green. Orchids flourished out of reach or for some reason not to be touched. One was snaky looking, another like an octopus with long thing brown tentacles bare of leaves hanging from a twisted root. Twice a year the octopus orchid flowered - then not an inch of tentacle showed. It was a bell-shaped mass of white, mauve, deep purples, wonderful to see. The sent was very sweet and strong. I never went near it.

gnarled podium of roots, the largest of them looking twenty or thirty feet thick. The trunk was comprised of dozens of intertwined boles, rising into huge branches with fern-like leaves. The tree seemed to glow with its own light, a surrounding aura.

Never since the broadsword became the national weapon had there been more dexterity shown in its management than by the hands of Sergeant Troy, and never had he been in such splendid temper for the performance as now in the evening sunshine among the ferns with Bathsheba. It may safely be asserted with respect to the closeness of his cuts, that had it been possible for the edge of the sword to leave in the air a permanent substance wherever it flew past, the space left untouched would have been almost a mould of Bathsheba's figure.

It [the charcuterie] was almost on the corner of the Rue Pirouette and was a joy to behold. It was bright and inviting, with touches of brilliant colour standing out amidst white marble. The signboard, on which the name QUENU-GRADELLE glittered in fat gilt letter encircled by leaves and branches painted on a soft-hued background, was protected by a sheet of glass. On the two side panels of the shop front, similarly painted and under glass, were chubby little Cupids playing in the midst of boars' heads, pork chops, and strings of sausages; and these still lifes, adorned with scrolls and rosettes, had been designed in so pretty and tender a style that the raw meat lying there assumed the reddish tint of raspberry jam. Within this delightful frame, the window display was arranged. It was set out on a bed of fine shavings of blue paper; a few cleverly positioned fern leaves transformed some of the plates into bouquets of flowers fringed with foliage. There were vast quantities of rich, succulent things, things that melted in the mouth. Down below, quite close to the window, jars of rillettes were interspersed with pots of mustard. Above these were some boned hams, nicely rounded, golden with breadcrumbs, and adorned at the knuckles with green rosettes. Then came the larger dishes--stuffed Strasbourg tongues, with their red, varnished look, the colour of blood next to the pallor of the sausages and pigs' trotters; strings of black pudding coiled like harmless snakes; andouilles piled up in twos and bursting with health; saucissons in little silver copes that made them look like choristers; pies, hot from the oven, with little banner-like tickets stuck in them; big hams, and great cuts of veal and pork, whose jelly was as limpid as crystallized sugar. Towards the back were large tureens in which the meats and minces lay asleep in lakes of solidified fat. Strewn between the various plates and sishes, on the bed of blue shavings, were bottles of relish, sauce, and preserved truffles, pots of foie gras, and tins of sardines and tuna fish. A box of creamy cheeses and one full of snails stuffed with butter and parsley had been dropped in each corner. Finally, at the very top of the display, falling from a bar with sharp prongs, strings of sausages and saveloys hung down symmetrically like the cords and tassels of some opulent tapestry, while behind, threads of caul were stretched out like white lacework. There, on the highest tier of this temple of gluttony, amid the caul and between two bunches of purple gladioli, the alter display was crowned by a small, square fish tank with a little ornamental rockery, in which two goldfish swam in endless circles.

Martin knew it was autumn again, for Dog ran into the house bringing wind and frost and a smell of apples turned to cider under trees. In dark clock-springs of hair, Dog fetched goldenrod, dust of farewell-summer, acorn-husk, hair of squirrel, feather of departed robin, sawdust from fresh-cut cordwood, and leaves like charcoals shaken from a blaze of maple trees. Dog jumped. Showers of brittle fern, blackberry vine, marsh-grass sprang over the bed where Martin shouted. No doubt, no doubt of it at all, this incredible beast was October!

At every step the prospect ahead grew more enchanting with added detail of crenellated crags and lichen-patterned stone. Now a mountain laurel glossy above the dogwood's dusty silver leaves, now a dark slit between two rocks where maidenhair fern trembled like green lace.

beautiful, of course; I couldn’t deny that. Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves. It was too green—an alien planet.

People slice up tree trunks, nail the pieces together into boxy shapes, and then go inside to sleep. Trees use the wood in their trunks for a different purpose—namely, they use it to fight with other plants. From dandelions to daffodils, from ferns to figs, from potatoes to pine trees—every plant growing on land is striving toward two prizes: light, which comes from above, and water, which comes from below. Any contest between two plants can be decided in one move, when the winner simultaneously reaches higher and digs deeper than the loser. Consider the tremendous advantage that wood confers to one of the contestants during such a battle: armed with a stiff-yet-flexible, strong-yet-light prop that separates—and connects—leaves and roots, trees have dominated the tournament for more than four hundred million years.

Spring, in Brittany, is milder than spring in Paris, and bursts into flower three weeks earlier. The five birds that herald its appearance—the swallow, the oriole, the cuckoo, the quail, and the nightingale—arrive with the breezes that refuge in the bays of the Armorican peninsula.[28] The earth is covered over with daisies, pansies, jonquils, daffodils, hyacinths, buttercups, and anemones, like the wastelands around San Giovanni of Laterano and the Holy Cross of Jerusalem in Rome. The clearings are feathered with tall and elegant ferns; the fields of gorse and broom blaze with flowers that one may take at first glance for golden butterflies. The hedges, along which strawberries, raspberries, and violets grow, are adorned with hawthorn, honeysuckle, and brambles whose brown, curving shoots burst forth with magnificent fruits and leaves. All the world teems with bees and birds; hives and nests interrupt the child’s every footstep. In certain sheltered spots, the myrtle and the rose-bay flourish in the open air, as in Greece; figs ripen, as in Provence; and every apple tree, bursting with carmine flowers, looks like the big bouquet of a village bride.

What was dark will always be dark, I know that. Death is still death. Hatred will never be far, in this life. But also, there is light. It is everywhere. It floods this world--the world brims with it. Once, I sat by the Coe and watched a shaft of light come down through the trees, through leaves, and wondered if there was a greater beauty, or a simpler one. There are many great beauties. but all of them--from the snow, to his fern-red hair, to my mare's eye reflecting the sky as she smelt the air of Rannoch Moor--have light in them, and are worth it. They are worth the darker parts.

Work brought my family to Tennessee. I was just a kid. We lived in a green house off Old McClure Road. A big mimosa tree in the yard. Fern-like leaves and summer blooms. It reminded me of Florida. The mimosa was an invasive species there. State wanted them cut down. But we left ours alone. A tree growing where it should not be. Like my family. We were invasive too.

Work brought my family to Tennessee. I was just a kid. We lived in a green house off Old McClure Road. A big mimosa tree in the yard. Fern-like leaves and summer blooms. It reminded me of Florida. The mimosa was an invasive species there. State wanted them cut down. But we left ours alone. A tree growing where it should not be. Like my family. We were invasive too.

Where are your monuments, your battles, martyrs? Where is your tribal memory? Sirs, in that gray vault. The sea. The sea has locked them up. The sea is History. First, there was the heaving oil, heavy as chaos; then, likea light at the end of a tunnel, the lantern of a caravel, and that was Genesis. Then there were the packed cries, the shit, the moaning: Exodus. Bone soldered by coral to bone, mosaics mantled by the benediction of the shark's shadow, that was the Ark of the Covenant. Then came from the plucked wires of sunlight on the sea floor the plangent harp of the Babylonian bondage, as the white cowries clustered like manacles on the drowned women, and those were the ivory bracelets of the Song of Solomon, but the ocean kept turning blank pages looking for History. Then came the men with eyes heavy as anchors who sank without tombs, brigands who barbecued cattle, leaving their charred ribs like palm leaves on the shore, then the foaming, rabid maw of the tidal wave swallowing Port Royal, and that was Jonah, but where is your Renaissance? Sir, it is locked in them sea sands out there past the reef's moiling shelf, where the men-o'-war floated down; strop on these goggles, I'll guide you there myself. It's all subtle and submarine, through colonnades of coral, past the gothic windows of sea fans to where the crusty grouper, onyx-eyed, blinks, weighted by its jewels, like a bald queen; and these groined caves with barnacles pitted like stone are our cathedrals, and the furnace before the hurricanes: Gomorrah. Bones ground by windmills into marl and cornmeal, and that was Lamentations - that was just Lamentations, it was not History; then came, like scum on the river's drying lip, the brown reeds of villages mantling and congealing into towns, and at evening, the midges' choirs, and above them, the spires lancing the side of God as His son set, and that was the New Testament. Then came the white sisters clapping to the waves' progress, and that was Emancipation - jubilation, O jubilation - vanishing swiftly as the sea's lace dries in the sun, but that was not History, that was only faith, and then each rock broke into its own nation; then came the synod of flies, then came the secretarial heron, then came the bullfrog bellowing for a vote, fireflies with bright ideas and bats like jetting ambassadors and the mantis, like khaki police, and the furred caterpillars of judges examining each case closely, and then in the dark ears of ferns and in the salt chuckle of rocks with their sea pools, there was the sound like a rumour without any echo of History, really beginning.

A tree is alive, and thus it is always more than you see. Roots to leaves, yes—those you can, in part, see. But it is more—it is the lichens and moss and ferns that grow on its bark, the life too small to see that lives among its roots, a community we know of, but do not think on. It is every fly and bee and beetle that uses it for shelter or food, every bird that nests in its branches. Every one an individual, and yet every one part of the tree, and the tree part of every one.

O Thebes! garland yourself in all the green there is — ivy green, olive green, fennel green, growing green, yearning green, wet sap green, new grape green, green of youth and green of branches, green of mint and green of marsh grass, green of tea leaves, oak and pine, green of washed needles and early rain, green of weeds and green of oceans, green of bottles, ferns and apples, green of dawn-soaked dew and slender green of roots, green fresh out of pools, green slipped under fools, green of the green fuse, green of the honeyed muse, green of the rough caress of ritual, green undaunted by reason or delirium, green of jealous joy, green of the secret holy violence of the thyrsos, green of the sacred iridescence of the dancе — and let all the land of Thebes dance! with Dionysos leading, to the mountains! to the mountains! where the mob of women waits! They’ve forsaken their shuttles, they’ve left their looms, they’ve dropped their aprons and taken up their stations on Dionysos’ mountain!

If you’re going to give me the third degree,” she tells him, “let’s get it over with. Best to withhold food or water; water is probably best. I’ll get thirsty before I get hungry.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “Do you really think I’m like that? Why would you think that?” “I was taken by force, and you’re keeping me here against my will,” she says, leaning across the table toward him. She considers spitting in his face, but decides to save that gesture as punctuation for a more appropriate moment. “Imprisonment is still imprisonment, no matter how many layers of cotton you wrap it in.” That makes him lean farther away, and she knows she’s pushed a button. She remembers seeing those pictures of him back when he was all over the news, wrapped in cotton and kept in a bombproof cell. “I really don’t get you,” he says, a bit of anger in his voice this time. “We saved your life. You could at least be a little grateful.” “You have robbed me, and everyone here, of their purpose. That’s not salvation, that’s damnation.” “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Now it’s her turn to get angry. “Yes, you’re sorry I feel that way, everyone’s sorry I feel that way. Are you going to keep this up until I don’t feel that way anymore?” He stands up suddenly, pushing his chair back, and paces, fern leaves brushing his clothes. She knows she’s gotten to him. He seems like he’s about to storm out, but instead takes a deep breath and turns back to her. “I know what you’re going through,” he says. “I was brainwashed by my family to actually want to be unwound—and not just by my family, but by my friends, my church, everyone I looked up to. The only voice who spoke sense was my brother Marcus, but I was too blind to hear him until the day I got kidnapped.” “You mean see,” she says, putting a nice speed bump in his way. “Huh?” “Too blind to see him, too deaf to hear him. Get your senses straight. Or maybe you can’t, because you’re senseless.” He smiles. “You’re good.” “And anyway, I don’t need to hear your life story. I already know it. You got caught in a freeway pileup, and the Akron AWOL used you as a human shield—very noble. Then he turned you, like cheese gone bad.” “He didn’t turn me. It was getting away from my tithing, and seeing unwinding for what it is. That’s what turned me.” “Because being a murderer is better than being a tithe, isn’t that right, clapper?” He sits back down again, calmer, and it frustrates her that he is becoming immune to her snipes. “When you live a life without questions, you’re unprepared for the questions when they come,” he says. “You get angry and you totally lack the skills to deal with the anger. So yes, I became a clapper, but only because I was too innocent to know how guilty I was becoming.” ... “You think I’m like you, but I’m not,” Miracolina says. “I’m not part of a religious order that tithes. My parents did it in spite of our beliefs, not because of ii.” “But you were still raised to believe it was your purpose, weren’t you?” “My purpose was to save my brother’s life by being a marrow donor, so my purpose was served before I was six months old.” “And doesn’t that make you angry that the only reason you’re here was to help someone else?” “Not at all,” she says a little too quickly. She purses her lips and leans back in her chair, squirming a bit. The chair feels a little too hard beneath her. “All right, so maybe I do feel angry once in a while, but I understand why they did it. If I were them, I would have done the same thing.” “Agreed,” he says. “But once your purpose was served, shouldn’t your life be your own?” “Miracles are the property of God,” she answers. “No,” he says, “miracles are gifts from God. To calthem his property insults the spirit in which they are given.” She opens her mouth to reply but finds she has no response, because he’s right. Damn him for being right—nothing about him should be right! “We’ll talk again when you’re over yourself,” he says.

them flouncing into the pool, drinking, tossing up their heads, drinking again, the water dribbling from their lips in silver threads. There was another flounce, and they came out of the pond, and turned back again towards the farm. She looked further around. Day was just dawning, and beside its cool air and colours her heated actions and resolves of the night stood out in lurid contrast. She perceived that in her lap, and clinging to her hair, were red and yellow leaves which had come down from the tree and settled silently upon her during her partial sleep. Bathsheba shook her dress to get rid of them, when multitudes of the same family lying round about her rose and fluttered away in the breeze thus created, "like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing." There was an opening towards the east, and the glow from the as yet unrisen sun attracted her eyes thither. From her feet, and between the beautiful yellowing ferns with their feathery arms, the ground sloped downwards to a hollow, in which was a species of swamp, dotted with fungi. A morning mist hung over it now—a fulsome yet magnificent silvery veil, full of light from the sun, yet semi-opaque—the hedge behind it being in some measure hidden by its hazy luminousness. Up the sides of this depression grew sheaves of the common rush, and here and there a peculiar species of flag, the blades of which glistened in the emerging sun, like scythes. But the general aspect of the swamp was malignant. From its moist and poisonous coat seemed to be exhaled the essences of evil things in the earth, and in the waters under the earth. The fungi grew in all manner of positions from rotting leaves and tree stumps, some exhibiting to her listless gaze their clammy tops, others their oozing gills. Some were marked with great splotches, red as arterial blood, others were saffron yellow, and others tall and attenuated, with stems like macaroni. Some were leathery and of richest browns. The hollow seemed a nursery of pestilences small and great, in the immediate neighbourhood of comfort and health, and Bathsheba arose with a tremor at the thought of having passed the night on the brink of so dismal a place.

In the deep woods of the far North, under feathery leaves of fern, was a great fairyland of merry elves, sometimes called forest brownies. These elves lived joyfully. They had everything at hand and did not need to worry much about living. Berries and nuts grew plentiful in the forest. Rivers and springs provided the elves with crystal water. Flowers prepared them drink from their flavorful juices, which the munchkins loved greatly. At midnight the elves climbed into flower cups and drank drops of their sweet water with much delight. Every elf would tell a wonderful fairy tale to the flower to thank it for the treat. Despite this abundance, the pixies did not sit back and do nothing. They tinkered with their tasks all day long. They cleaned their houses. They swung on tree branches and swam in forested streams. Together with the early birds, they welcomed the sunrise, listened to the thunder growling, the whispering of leaves and blades of grass, and the conversations of the animals. The birds told them about warm countries, sunbeams whispered of distant seas, and the moon spoke of treasures hidden deeply in the earth. In winter, the elves lived in abandoned nests and hollows. Every sunny day they came out of their burrows and made the forest ring with their happy shouts, throwing tiny snowballs in all directions and building snowmen as small as the pinky finger of a little girl. The munchkins thought they were giants five times as large as them. With the first breath of spring, the elves left their winter residences and moved to the cups of the snowdrop flowers. Looking around, they watched the snow as it turned black and melted. They kept an eye on the blossoming of hazel trees while the leaves were still sleeping in their warm buds. They observed squirrels moving their last winter supplies from storage back to their homes. Gnomes welcomed the birds coming back to their old nests, where the elves lived during winters. Little by little, the forest once more grew green. One moonlight night, elves were sitting at an old willow tree and listening to mermaids singing about their underwater kingdom. “Brothers! Where is Murzilka? He has not been around for a long time!” said one of the elves, Father Beardie, who had a long white beard. He was older than others and well respected in his striped stocking cap. “I’m here,” a snotty voice arose, and Murzilka himself, nicknamed Feather Head, jumped from the top of the tree. All the brothers loved Murzilka, but thought he was lazy, as he actually was. Also, he loved to dress in a tailcoat, tall black hat, boots with narrow toes, a cane and a single eyeglass, being very proud of that look. “Do you know where I’m coming from? The very Arctic Ocean!” roared he. Usually, his words were hard to believe. That time, though, his announcement sounded so marvelous that all elves around him were agape with wonder. “You were there, really? Were you? How did you get there?” asked the sprites. “As easy as ABC! I came by the fox one day and caught her packing her things to visit her cousin, a silver fox who lives by the Arctic Ocean. “Take me with you,” I said to the fox. “Oh, no, you’ll freeze there! You know, it’s cold there!” she said. “Come on.” I said. “What are you talking about? What cold? Summer is here.” “Here we have summer, but there they have winter,” she answered. “No,” I thought. “She must be lying because she does not want to give me a ride.” Without telling her a word, I jumped upon her back and hid in her bushy fur, so even Father Frost could not find me. Like it or not, she had to take me with her. We ran for a long time. Another forest followed our woods, and then a boundless plain opened, a swamp covered with lichen and moss. Despite the intense heat, it had not entirely thawed. “This is tundra,” said my fellow traveler. “Tundra? What is tundra?” asked I. “Tundra is a huge, forever frozen wetland covering the entire coast of the Arctic Ocean.

There is a deep stillness in the Fakahatchee, but there is not a moment of physical peace. Something is always brushing against you or lapping at you or snagging at you or tangling in your legs, and the sun is always pummeling your skin, and the wetness in the air makes your hair coil like a phone cord. You never smell plain air in a swamp - you smell the tang of mud and the sourness of rotting leaves and the cool musk of new leaves and the perfumes of a million different flowers floating by, each distinct but transparent, like soap bubbles. The biggest number in the universe would not be big enough to count the things your eyes see. Every inch of land holds up a thatch of tall grass or a bush or a tree, and every bush or tree is girdled with another plant’s roots, and every root is topped with a flower or a fern or a swollen bulb, and every one of those flowers and ferns is the pivot around which a world of bees and gnats and spiders and dragonflies revolve. The sounds you hear are twigs cracking underfoot and branches whistling past you and leaves murmuring and leaves slopping over the trunks of old dead trees and every imaginable and unimaginable insect noise and every kind of bird peep and screech and tootle, and then all those unclaimed sounds of something moving in a hurry, something low to the ground and heavy, maybe the size of a horse in the shape of a lizard, or maybe the size, shape and essential character of a snake. In the swamp you feel as if someone had plugged all of your senses into a light socket. A swamp is logy and slow-moving about at the same time highly overstimulating. Even in the dim, sultry places deep within it, it is easy to stay awake.

Incrimination and heady elation, cutting capers in the misty vapours, havoc and ravage hurrah for the savage life precarious, life so various, life nefarious and temerarious, pulling faces, fierce grimaces, leaving traces in rocky places, pieces and faeces all over the fleece is that a yow's shoulder they've left there to moulder stuck up on a boulder? Much to learn, Rowf, in the fern, of great concern, for this is the point of no return. Those who kill sheep should mind where they sleep, when there's nothing to hear the shot-gun is near, the curse of the farmer is likely to harm yer, a scent in the morning is sent for a warning, at a cloud on the sun a wise dog will run, it's the sharp and alert who avoid being hurt and a dog that's gone feral is living in peril. Those with blood on their paws and wool in their jaws should heed these old saws.

A dead world is never really dead. Even when the stars vanish in a great exodus, leaving an inky night that swallows the sky. Even when the sound of silence is a terrible thing to listen to in a city that once groaned with noise. But it’s not quite silence, is it? There are the birds that soar over bare roof rafters, egrets and jackdaws and scruffy brown scraps that go by a multitude of names calling joyfully to each other. There are the nocturnal animals who claw and scrape over cobblestones, lifting their gazes to the two pale moons impressed against a violet sky. There are the trees that stretch upwards, overgrown and languorous, from leaf-strewn courtyards, extending gracefully through balconies and walkways. And below them, the ferns that unfurl in dark, damp corners that might still bear cracked tiles in parched colours, or spongey wooden skates engraved with toothy chisel marks. Life, persistent and predictably stubborn, goes on. Close your eyes and the stars might not sing in this hushed city of dust and dreams, but there’s still singing nonetheless. Even if there’s just one voice left.

Pack what you need for the divination,” he said. Relieved that he believed me capable, I walked to his desk. A detailed map of Hereswith was spread over the wood, river rocks pinning down the four corners. It was a map I had memorized with its crooked, winding streets. Above the desk, shelves lined the walls, burdened with leather-bound spell books, stacks of paper, jars brimming with crushed flowers and salt crystals and swan quills, ornate ink pots, cast-iron spoons with jewels embedded in the handles, silver bowls nestled into each other, a potted fern whose wilting leaves dangled like unrequited love. I gathered what I needed: a bowl that shone like a full moon, pink salt, dried gardenias, a spoon with an emerald chip, a pitcher full of water, a swan quill, a silver inkwell that was crafted as an octopus, its tentacles holding a vial of walnut ink. I charmed them all beneath my breath with a shrinking cantrip—a spell my mother had taught me—until the objects could sit cradled in my palm, and I slipped them into my pocket, where the remedies waited. The objects clinked like musical notes when they met, weightless as air.

Here are some of the remedios, and what they were used for by the old curanderas. For calentura (fever), for de sauco (elderberry) flowers were placed in a jar of water, and soaked for twenty-four hours, then strained through a cloth, and the water given to the sick one. This was used either fresh or dry. Polvos de coyote is like a small tomato bush. In the spring it has a white flower, later a small green berry, which looks like a tiny tomato, about the size of a small marble. In the fall this berry dries up into a pod, and inside this is a grey powder. This powder was blown into the ears to cure sordera (deafness). The reason for its name, polvo de coyote, is that it grows on the mesa, where the coyotes roam. Yerba de la golondrina (swallow's herb) was used as an inguente (salve). This yerba was picked green and hung up to dry. When dry, it was ground into a powder and mixed with sheep tallow for a salve. It was used for wounds, cuts, and sores. Yerba de la golondrina, or swallow's herb, grows close to the ground and has small round leaves, and looks like a small fern. The reason for the name is that the swallows eat the leaves of this yerba. Yerba de la golondrina grows only in the southern part of the state.

Bluefur headed along the fern tunnel. Why wasn’t Goosefeather helping more? Why did ThunderClan seem to have the laziest, dumbest medicine cat? As she reached the end of the tunnel, she stopped. The medicine clearing was cool and green and empty. “Goosefeather!” Bluefur guessed he was sleeping in his den. Two eyes peered from the crack in the rock. Bluefur tensed. They were round and wild, and for a moment she thought a fox had got in. “Goosefeather?” she ventured shakily. The medicine cat padded out, his pelt ruffled. His eyes were still wild, but less startling in the daylight. “What is it?” “Featherwhisker sent me for herbs for my belly. I shared a bad mouse with Sweetpaw and Rosepaw last night.” “You as well?” He rolled his eyes. Bluefur nodded. “Evil omens everywhere.” Bluefur wondered if she’d heard the medicine cat correctly. He was muttering as he turned back into his den and still muttering as he came out and shoved a pawful of shredded leaves in front of her. “It was just a bad mouse,” she meowed, wondering why he was so upset. He leaned toward her, his breath stinky in her face. “Just a bad mouse?” he echoed. “Another warning, that’s what it was! I should have seen it coming. I should have noticed.” “How?” Bluefur backed away. “It didn’t taste bad.” She realized that his pelt wasn’t ruffled from sleep, but simply ungroomed. It clung to his frame as though the season were leaf-bare and he hadn’t eaten properly for a moon. She took another pace back. “It was just a bad mouse,” she repeated. He turned a disbelieving look on her. “How can you—you of all cats—ignore the signs?” he spat. “Me?” What did he mean? “You have a prophecy hanging over your head like a hawk. You’re fire, and only water can destroy you! You can’t ignore the signs.” “B-but…I’m just a warrior.” Was she supposed to have the insight of a medicine cat? That wasn’t fair. He should be giving her answers, not taunting her with the promise of a destiny she didn’t understand. She had wondered when Goosefeather would again speak to her about the prophecy, but now he was making even less sense than before. “Just a warrior?” His whiskers trembled. “Too many omens. Three cats poisoned, two only whiskers from StarClan, Leopardfoot nearly dead, her three kits hanging on to life like rabbits in a fox den.” He stared through her, seeming to forget she was there. “Why such a difficult birth for the Clan leader’s mate? The kits may not make it through another night. The tom is too weak to mew, let alone feed. I should help them, and yet how can I when the signs are clear?” What in the name of StarClan was he talking about? Forgetting the herbs, Bluefur backed out of the den. Only whiskers from StarClan.

Planted rows went turning past like giant spokes one by one as they ranged the roads. The skies were interrupted by dark gray storm clouds with a flow like molten stone, swept and liquid, and light that found its way through them was lost in the dark fields but gathered shining along the pale road, so that sometimes all you could see was the road, and the horizon it ran to. Sometimes she was overwhelmed by the green life passing in such high turbulence, too much to see, all clamoring to have its way. Leaves sawtooth, spade-shaped, long and thin, blunt-fingered, downy and veined, oiled and dusty with the day—flowers in bells and clusters, purple and white or yellow as butter, star-shaped ferns in the wet and dark places, millions of green veilings before the bridal secrets in the moss and under the deadfalls, went on by the wheels creaking and struck by rocks in the ruts, sparks visible only in what shadow it might pass over, a busy development of small trailside shapes tumbling in what had to be deliberately arranged precision, herbs the wildcrafters knew the names and market prices of and which the silent women up in the foothills, counterparts whom they most often never got even to meet, knew the magic uses for. They lived for different futures, but they were each other’s unrecognized halves, and what fascination between them did come to pass was lit up, beyond question, with grace.

It was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy Glen; the trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the industrious earth beneath was as a weaver’s loom, with a gorgeous carpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and woof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their laden branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the message-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the lacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving the unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!—pause!—one word!—whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all these ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!—stay thy hand!—but one single word with thee! Nay—the shuttle flies—the figures float from forth the loom; the fresher-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god, he weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal voice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened; and only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak through it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken words that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words are plainly heard without the walls, bursting from the opened casements. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be heedful; for so, in all this din of the great world’s loom, thy subtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.

Enormous hydrangeas with vibrant pink sponge-like blooms, rhododendrons and impatiens, tall spears of flowering oyster plants jostled together with Jurassic-looking philodendron leaves and tree ferns, a mixed bag all tied by a wild creeper with bell-shaped blue flowers. The damp smell of the garden reminded Jess of places she'd visited in Cornwall, like St. Just in Roseland, where fertile ground spoke of layers of different generations, civilizations past. At last, beyond the tangled greenery, Jess glimpsed the jutting white chimneys of a large roof. She realized she was holding her breath. She turned a final corner, just like Daniel Miller had done on his way to meet Nora, and there it was. Grand and magnificent, yet even from a distance she could see that the house was in a state of disrepair. It was perched upon a stone plinth that rose about a meter off the ground. A clinging ficus with tiny leaves had grown to cover most of the stones and moss stained the rest, so that the house appeared to sit upon an ocean of greenery. Jess was reminded of the houses in fairy tales, hidden and then forgotten, ignored by the human world only to be reclaimed by nature. Protruding from one corner of the plinth was a lion's head, its mouth open to reveal a void from which a stream of spring water must once have flowed. On the ground beneath sat a stone bowl, half-filled with stale rainwater. As Jess watched, a blue-breasted fairy wren flew down to perch upon the edge of the bowl; after observing Jess for a moment, the little bird made a graceful dive across the surface of the water, skimming himself clean before disappearing once more into the folds of the garden.

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?

He'd found a sweet-water stream that I drank from, and for dinner we found winkles that we ate baked on stones. We watched the sun set like a peach on the sea, making plans on how we might live till a ship called by. Next we made a better camp beside a river and had ourselves a pretty bathing pool all bordered with ferns; lovely it was, with marvelous red parrots chasing through the trees. Our home was a hut made of branches thatched with flat leaves, a right cozy place to sleep in. We had fat birds that Jack snared for our dinner, and made fire using a shard of looking glass I found in my pocket. We had lost the compass in the water, but didn't lament it. I roasted fish and winkles in the embers. For entertainment we even had Jack's penny whistle. It was a paradise, it was." "You loved him," her mistress said softly, as her pencil resumed its hissing across the paper. Peg fought a choking feeling in her chest. Aye, she had loved him- a damned sight more than this woman could ever know. "He loved me like his own breath," she said, in a voice that was dangerously plaintive. "He said he thanked God for the day he met me." Peg's eyes brimmed full; she was as weak as water. The rest of her tale stuck in her throat like a fishbone. Mrs. Croxon murmured that Peg might be released from her pose. Peg stared into space, again seeing Jack's face, so fierce and true. He had looked down so gently on her pitiful self; on her bruises and her bony body dressed in salt-hard rags. His blue eyes had met hers like a beacon shining on her naked soul. "I see past your always acting the tough girl," he insisted with boyish stubbornness. "I'll be taking care of you now. So that's settled." And she'd thought to herself, so this is it, girl. All them love stories, all them ballads that you always thought were a load of old tripe- love has found you out, and here you are. Mrs. Croxon returned with a glass of water, and Peg drank greedily. She forced herself to continue with self-mocking gusto. "When we lay down together in our grass house we whispered vows to stay true for ever and a day. We took pleasure from each other's bodies, and I can tell you, mistress, he were no green youth, but all grown man. So we were man and wife before God- and that's the truth." She faced out Mrs. Croxon with a bold stare. "You probably think such as me don't love so strong and tender, but I loved Jack Pierce like we was both put on earth just to find each other. And that night I made a wish," Peg said, raising herself as if from a trance, "a foolish wish it were- that me and Jack might never be rescued. That the rotten world would just leave us be.

He loves you,’ I said, and smoothed the tumbled hair off her flushed face. ‘He won’t stop.’ I got up, brushing yellow leaves from my skirt. ‘We’ll have a bit of time, then, but none to waste. Jamie can send word downriver, to keep an eye out for Roger. Speaking of Roger …’ I hesitated, picking a bit of dried fern from my sleeve. ‘I don’t suppose he knows about this, does he?’ Brianna took a deep breath, and her fist closed tight on the leaf in her hand, crushing it. ‘Well, see, there’s a problem about that,’ she said. She looked up at me, and suddenly she was my little girl again. ‘It isn’t Roger’s.’ ‘What?’ I said stupidly. ‘It. Isn’t. Roger’s. Baby,’ she said, between clenched teeth. I sank down beside her once more. Her worry over Roger suddenly took on new dimensions. ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Here, or there?’ Even as I spoke, I was calculating – it had to be someone here, in the past. If it had been a man in her own time, she’d be farther along than two months. Not only in the past, then, but here, in the Colonies. I wasn’t planning to have sex, she’d said. No, of course not. She hadn’t told Roger, for fear he would follow her – he was her anchor, her key to the future. But in that case – ‘Here,’ she said, confirming my calculations. She dug in the pocket of her skirt, and came out with something. She reached toward me, and I held out my hand automatically. ‘Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.’ The worn gold wedding band sparked in the sun, and my hand closed reflexively over it. It was warm from being carried next to her skin, but I felt a deep coldness seep into my fingers. ‘Bonnet?’ I said. ‘Stephen Bonnet?’ Her throat moved convulsively, and she swallowed, head jerking in a brief nod. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you – I couldn’t; not after Ian told me about what happened on the river. At first I didn’t know what Da would do; I was afraid he’d blame me. And then when I knew him a little better – I knew he’d try to find Bonnet – that’s what Daddy would have done. I couldn’t let him do that. You met that man, you know what he’s like.’ She was sitting in the sun, but a shudder passed over her, and she rubbed her arms as though she was cold. ‘I do,’ I said. My lips were stiff. Her words were ringing in my ears. I wasn’t planning to have sex. I couldn’t tell … I was afraid he’d blame me. ‘What did he do to you?’ I asked, and was surprised that my voice sounded calm. ‘Did he hurt you, baby?’ She grimaced, and pulled her knees up to her chest, hugging them against herself. ‘Don’t call me that, okay? Not right now.’ I reached to touch her, but she huddled closer into herself, and I dropped my hand. ‘Do you want to tell me?’ I didn’t want to know; I wanted to pretend it hadn’t happened, too. She looked up at me, lips tightened to a straight white line. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t want to. But I think I’d better.’ She had stepped aboard the Gloriana in broad daylight, cautious, but feeling safe by reason of the number of people around; loaders, seamen, merchants, servants – the docks bustled with life. She had told a seaman on the deck what she wanted; he had vanished into the recesses of the ship, and a moment later, Stephen Bonnet had appeared. He had on the same clothes as the night before; in the daylight, she could see that they were of fine quality, but stained and badly crumpled. Greasy candle wax had dripped on the silk cuff of his coat, and his jabot had crumbs in it. Bonnet himself showed fewer marks of wear than did his clothes; he was fresh-shaven, and his green eyes were pale and alert. They passed over her quickly, lighting with interest. ‘I did think ye comely last night by candlelight,’ he said, taking her hand and raising it to his lips. ‘But a-many seem so when the drink is flowin’. It’s a good deal more rare to find a woman fairer in the sun than she is by the moon.

I glanced up at the trees too. Dead. Every one of them gray and white, needles rusted, leaves shriveled at the tips of branches. All the life sucked out of them. Not just the trees. All the plants, ferns, grasses and brush were shriveled, brown, barren. As if a month of winter had set down right here in my driveway and gone on a killing spree. ... "Love what you've done with the landscape," Cody said. "You could open your own business, you know." ... "The hell you talking about, Miller?" I asked Cody. "Yard care. You're poison and weed whacker all in one. You can call it Death to All Shrubbery.

Gollum!’ he called softly. ‘Third time pays for all. I want some herbs.’ Gollum’s head peeped out of the fern, but his looks were neither helpful nor friendly. ‘A few bay-leaves, some thyme and sage, will do – before the water boils,’ said Sam.

This was true mountain country, now, and true wilderness. Valley meadows, leafy trees halfway up the slopes, then evergreens gradually taking over at the higher altitudes... their road wound its way up and down through tree-tunnels that only intermittently allowed them to see the sky. It would have been a lovely journey under other circumstances. The weather remained fair, and remarkably pleasant, even if the night was going to be cold. She had only read about the wilderness, never experienced it for herself, and she found herself liking it a lot. Or- parts of it, anyway. The way it was never entirely silent, but simply 'quiet'- birdsong and insect noises, the rustle of leaves, the distant sound of water. She had never before realized how noisy people were. And the forest was so beautiful. She wasn't at all used to deep forest; it was like being inside a living cathedral, with beams of light penetrating the tree-canopy and illuminating unexpected treasures, a moss-covered rock, a small cluster of flowers, a spray of ferns. These woods were 'old', too, the trees had trunks so big it would take three people to put their arms around them, and there was a scent to the place that somehow conveyed that centuries of leaves had fallen here and become earth.

Matrimony and the toothache may be survived, but of all the evils femininity is heir to, defend me from a shopping excursion.

And people protested. They protested the bans and they protested and they protested the Cad and they mobbed anyone with tattoos of leaves or ferns or cephalopods. No one realized that the infection was cryptic, then dormant, then heritable from either parent. And so it spread, named and considered an epidemic at first- a flash in the pan, like Ebola or Zika or Covid, that would eventually burn-out – and near the end more or less endemic.

I spend most of my Mondays with blood. I am a hematologist by training. I study blood and treat blood diseases, including cancers and precancers of white blood cells. On Monday, I arrive much earlier than my patients, when the morning light is still aslant across the black slate of the lab benches. I close the shutters and peer through the microscope at blood smears. A droplet of blood has been spread across a glass slide, to make a film of single cells, each stained with special dyes. The slides are like previews of books, or movie trailers. The cells will begin to reveal the stories of the patients even before I see them in person. I sit by the microscope in the darkened room, a notepad by my side, and whisper to myself as I go through the slides. It’s an old habit; a passerby might well consider me unhinged. Each time I examine a slide, I mumble out the method that my hematology professor in medical school, a tall man with a perpetually leaking pen in his pocket, taught me: “Divide the main cellular components of blood. Red cell. White cell. Platelet. Examine each cell type separately. Write what you observe about each type. Move methodically. Number, color, morphology, shape, size.” It is, by far, the favorite time of my day at work. Number, color, morphology, shape, size. I move methodically. I love looking at cells, in the way that a gardener loves looking at plants—not just the whole but also the parts within the parts: the leaves, the fronds, the precise smell of loam around a fern, the way the woodpecker has bored into the high branches of a tree. Blood speaks to me—but only if I pay attention.

I’ve witnessed many couples who have measured their sense of personal and relationship security based on the fact of having shared finances, being legally married, running a business together, co-owning a home or how many carats the engagement ring has. These more structural demonstrations of security can be signs of genuine commitment and they undoubtedly make it more difficult for someone to just pick up and leave one day, but they do not ensure the high-quality attunement, presence and responsiveness that foster secure attachment at the interpersonal level. Here are some signs that might indicate that you are relying more on the structure of your relationship for your attachment and security than the emotional experience of your relationship:

Dina raised her arms, palms facing upward, the teacup held high. The forest grew dark around them. Like any sliver of moonlight was vanishing, leaving them in absolute black. Only it wasn't for long, as a pool of silvery substance--- not liquid but not air either--- began to swarm around her, like it was raining moonlight. She turned her face to the sky and was bathed in a milky glow. Sometimes she forgot how much joy raw magic brought her. The rivers of moonlight twisted in rivulets across her body, until they all collected into the teacup in a shimmering liquid. For a moment, the air around them was scented like fresh coffee and spices. Dina met Scott's eyes, testing him. He couldn't speak, but he wasn't running away. With an ecstatic smile, Dina flicked the teacup, flinging moonlight outward, splashing it against the trunks of trees, coating ferns and shrubs near the path like silver luminescent paint. As it landed, it began to fade, until--- within seconds--- full night had returned. Dina set the teacup down on the front step of the cottage.

In the top left you have simmered Nagaoka bamboo shoots and wakame seaweed from Izumo, served in a Karatsu-ware bowl. Next to that, on the long Oribe dish, is grilled masu salmon seasoned with pepper tree leaves. The square Kutani bowl is dashi-simmered egg scrambled with green peas. The next row down is a series of five small Imari plates. Starting on the left: white miso clam gratin; salad of finely chopped cockles and Kujo green onion; tilefish sashimi with a ponzu, miso, and pepper-tree-leaf dressing; slow-cooked Tamba chicken in a salt koji marinade. At the end, on the right, is pickled sweetfish sushi, served whole. The round dish at the bottom is a selection of wild vegetables: butterbur buds, devil's-walking-stick, ostrich fern, momiji-gasa, bracken shoots, and smilax. Normally those would be served as tempura, but I've gone for something a little different and deep-fried them Western-style instead. Sprinkle them with matcha salt if you like, or they go very nicely with this green peppercorn-infused Worcestershire sauce." Nagare produced a bottle of white wine. "Now, will something like this do?" "Hang on a moment," said Kana, reaching for her digital camera again. "My friend in Tamba makes this," continued Nagare. "Hundred percent Chardonnay grapes, fermented in small French casks, apparently. Has an elegant flavor--- perfect for spring, I'd say.

I watched water dripping off the ferns and the needles of the Western Red Cedar next door. I watched it running in runnels down the bark of the Cherry tree, and I looked at the small droplets of misty water that were accumulating on the broad leaves of the Bigleaf Maple.I touched one of the accumulated droplets, and instantly it was gone.

The Resource List Oak Wood 104, Oak Wood Planks 12, Oak Wood Slabs 58, Birch Wood Planks 28, Birch Wood Stairs 36, Birch Wood Slabs 60, Cobblestone Wall 44, Gravel, Glass 16, Ladders 18, Fence 26, Torch 10, Redstone Torch 4, Redstone Lamp 4, Painting, Crafting Table, Furnace, Trapdoors, Chests, Wooden Door, Flower Pots 3, Jungle Leaves, Jungle Sapling 4, Fern 2, Flowers

Step 16: Furnishing This is how I chose to furnish the back side of the room. We’ve got a bed with a rose flower pot beside it and we’ve got a glowstone block with jungle leaves on top. There’s also a crafting table and a furnace with trapdoors on the sides and fern flower pots on top.

You can't tell me you haven't been lifting,” Bailey said. “I can tell. You may have a naturally good physique, but you're shredded. You've got serious size and you're hardened down.” This coming from a kid who'd never lifted a weight in his life, Ambrose thought, shaking his head and pushing another tray of cupcakes into the oven. Yeah, cupcakes. “So what's the point? I mean, you've got this amazing body–big, strong. You just going to keep it to yourself? You gotta share it with the world, man.” “If I didn't know better, I would think you were hitting on me,” Ambrose said. “Do you stand naked in front of the mirror and flex every night? I mean, really, at least go into the adult film industry. At least it won't go completely to waste.” “There you go again . . . talking about things you know nothing about,” Ambrose said. “Fern reads romance novels and you are suddenly Hugh Hefner. I don't think either of you has room to lecture me about anything.” “Fern's been lecturing?” Bailey sounded surprised and not at all offended that Ambrose had basically told him he didn't know jack crap because he was in a wheelchair. “Fern's been leaving inspirational quotes,” Ambrose said. “Ahhh. That sounds more like Fern. Like what? Just Believe? Dream big? Marry me?

Planted rows went turning past like giant spokes one by one as they ranged the roads. The skies were interrupted by dark gray storm clouds with a flow like molten stone, swept and liquid, and light that found its way through them was lost in the dark fields but gathered shining along the pale road, so that sometimes all you could see was the road, and the horizon it ran to. Sometimes she was overwhelmed by the green life passing in such high turbulence, too much to see, all clamoring to have its way. Leaves sawtooth, spade-shaped, long and thin, blunt-fingered, downy and veined, oiled and dusty with the day—flowers in bells and clusters, purple and white or yellow as butter, star-shaped ferns in the wet and dark places, millions of green veilings before the bridal secrets in the moss and under the deadfalls, went on by the wheels creaking and struck by rocks in the ruts, sparks visible only in what shadow it might pass over, a busy development of small trailside shapes tumbling in what had to be deliberately arranged precision, herbs the wildcrafters knew the names and market prices of and which the silent women up in the foothills, counterparts whom they most often never got even to meet, knew the magic uses for. They lived for different futures, but they were each other’s unrecognized halves, and what fascination between them did come to pass was lit up, beyond question, with grace. Merle

the fern sitting unaffected by the heat in a planter outside the door. Its leaves are lush and green as if they’re giving summer the middle finger with their refusal to succumb to the heat. I smile at the plant, somewhat proud of it. Then I frown with the realization that I’m envious of the resilience of a plant.

Finn wanted to collect the plants he knew he could sell, and he was teaching Maia. He climbed to the top of the leaf canopy and came back with clusters of yellow fruits which could be boiled up to treat skin diseases. He found a tree whose leaves were made into an infusion to help people with kidney complaints and brought back a silvery fern to rub on aching muscles. Most of these plants had Indian names, but as they sorted their specimens and put them to be dried and stored in labeled cotton bags, Maia learned quickly. “You’d be amazed how much money people give for these in the towns,” said Finn. But not everything he collected was for sale. He restocked his own medicine chest also. And every day he bullied Maia about taking her quinine pills. “Only idiots get malaria in the dry season,” he said.

retching and cracked ribs are a horrible combination. I was highly worried about even bringing her here in my wagon—it could’ve made things worse. But I had no choice. I couldn’t leave her out there at Rickter’s Bend. So, I drove as carefully as I could. And I prayed a lot,” Jack said. He pursed his lips. “Anyway, she seemed to just want to try to get settled down before trying to eat or drink much,” he said. Mrs. Stout

What are we doing here, what is our effect, what will be left behind as legacy, and so on. It all has to be thought about, of course. Step by step. This house is a good example.” He reached to his left and patted a patch of exposed wiring in the wall. “Maybe they paid off the owner or maybe he has no idea we are in it. Who knows? But now we are in it and all of the village sees we are in it, and so now they know that it belongs, in essence, to nobody, or to anybody the state on a whim decides to give it to. So what will happen when we leave, when the new school is up and running and we don’t visit here much any more—or at all? Maybe several families will move in, maybe it will become a community place. Maybe. My guess is it will be taken apart, brick by brick.” He took off his glasses and massaged them with the hem of his T-shirt. “Yes, first someone will take the wires, then the sheeting, then the tiles, but eventually every stone will be repurposed. This is my bet . . . I may be wrong, we will have to wait and see. I am not as ingenious as these people. No one is more ingenious than the poor, wherever you find them. When you are poor every stage has to be thought through. Wealth is the opposite. With wealth you get to be thoughtless.” “I don’t see anything ingenious about poverty like this. I don’t see anything ingenious about having ten children when you can’t afford one.” Fern put his glasses back on and smiled at me sadly. “Children can be a kind of wealth,” he said.

There is a wilderness in little girls. We could not contain it. It made magic of the rain and a temple of the forest. We raced down narrow trails, hair flying wind-wild behind us, and pretended that the slender spruce and hemlock were still the ancient woods that industry had chewed down to splinters. We made ourselves into warriors, into queens, into goddesses. Fern leaves and dandelions became poultices and potions, and we sang incantations to the trees. We gave ourselves new names: Artemis, Athena, Hecate. Conversations were in code, our letters filled with elaborate ciphers, and we taught ourselves the meanings of stones.

bothers me that someone used my knife. I’ve backtracked that evening and decided I either dropped it while I was walking, though the pockets on my cloak are deep, and it would have been hard for something to fall out. Or someone took it from the booth.” He vehemently shook his head. “I have a hard time believing that. The booth is warded against such things.” My head told me the same thing. “I know, but I’m trying to cover all angles. Do you know who cast the spell over it that night?” “Jocelyn did.” I dropped my shoulders, feeling defeated. “She does have powerful magic that would be hard to break.” He nodded. “Though, now that you mention it, I do recall Fern telling me that a spell can be undone if a person knows how and has an equal or greater power than the witch who cast it.” I tilted my head to the side, happy for the branch that he’d extended that still gave me hope. “True. It’s not easy, but it can be done. The question is, who would want to do it?” He looked at me matter-of-factly. “Whoever wanted to kill Merry, I’d expect.” I snorted softly. I’d meant that who would want to do it…so that they could harm Merry. But whatever. “Okay then. You were at the booth all night. Did anyone get close enough that they could undo the spell?” He held up a gnarled pointer finger. “I did leave the booth at one point to use the restroom. Oriana covered

Some factors that can contribute to a child adopting an anxious insecure attachment style are:23 Parents who are unable to consistently co-regulate with their child, which leaves the child dependent on others to regulate their emotions, again and again turning outward to make sense of their inner feelings and unable to emotionally regulate on their own. Over-involving the child in the parent’s state of mind, where the parent’s emotions or state of mind is more central to the parent-child interaction than the child’s. In this case, the child might be asked (whether explicitly or implicitly) to be responsible for meeting the parent’s needs, making the parent feel better or supplying the parent with meaning and purpose. This is often due to a parent’s own level of anxiety, stress or unresolved trauma, or their own anxious attachment history. When the state of mind of the parent is the centerpiece of interactions, the child is left to constantly monitor and be concerned about their parent’s state of well-being, which can encourage a role reversal in which the child is acting more like the parent in the relationship. As a child, being responsible for a parent’s well-being is a misplaced, confusing and overwhelming responsibility.

The child may be a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) or have a challenging health condition. While disorganized attachment is often associated with parental abuse and neglect, this isn’t always the case. Certain traits or experiences specific to the child can also prompt a disorganized experience. Approximately 15 to 20 percent of the population has a nervous system wired to be more sensitive. These people are more attuned to the subtleties of their environment and process that information much more deeply compared to others without this trait.28 While being more observant might be a survival advantage, it can also be overwhelming. Someone who is constantly aware of the subtleties of the environment and of the people around them can quickly experience sensory overload. My clients who consider themselves to be HSPs often report experiencing a certain type of disorganized attachment because the world itself is too much. Due to their increased sensitivity, even normal everyday events can feel too intense, too chaotic or too stimulating, leaving little respite to feel settled, safe and secure. In relationships, HSPs are often unclear as to whether what they are feeling has its origin in themselves or if their partner’s feelings are creating that “one foot on the gas, one foot on the brake” experience in their nervous system. They want to be close to people, but being close can be a sensory assault that is confusing or that dysregulates them for days.

Culturally, in the West, we tend to see romantic and parental relationships as superior in influence to others, and studies have shown that adult attachments are mostly directed towards a romantic/sexual partner over adult friendships.31 But our relationships with siblings or close friends can function as some of the most important attachment bonds that we have. For many, a friend or sibling can serve as a primary attachment figure, and when there has been attachment wounding with partners or parents, it is these very connections that can provide the corrective attachment experiences and healing from the attachment disruptions we’ve had with others at the relational level. Friendships that function as a primary attachment can also leave a painful mark on one’s heart and a significant attachment disturbance when there is betrayal, dishonesty, ghosting or drama that ends in the loss of the friendship. Death or loss of a close friend can create massive shock waves in our attachment systems.

There are no medium-sized trees in the deep forest. There are only the towering ones, whose canopy spreads across the sky. Below, in the gloom, there's light for nothing but mosses and ferns. But when a giant falls, leaving little space... then there's a race - between the trees on either side, who want to spread out, and the seedlings below, who race to grow up.

It's lovely in the woods now. All the little wood things—the ferns and the satin leaves and the crackerberries—have gone to sleep, just as if somebody had tucked them away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think it was a little gray fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last moonlight night and did it.

I drew the things of nature, leaves and berries, shore grasses and nuts and long fronds of fern. I drew a curlew perched at the end of a pier, and a cormorant with wings outstretched to catch the breeze. Drawing is a way to make sense of the world in my heart and mind. I speak through my drawing and sometimes I discover my own feelings that were hidden from me.

Likewise, when she sometimes found arrows stuck in the roots of trees, she quietly unscrewed the shafts and used them to stake plants in the poison garden, where Herself grew hemlock, tall thimbleweed, white snakeroot, swamp milkweed, poison sumac, and bloodroot. Poison ivy with its white berries was ubiquitous on the island and didn't need any special place. This morning the island was alive with flowery and moldy fragrances, alive with the urgent trills and chirps of birdsong, while more quietly, down low, sounds of scurrying and munching. The island was bursting with spring things to count and measure and eat--- ramps and wild onion sprouts, three-leaved trillium and speckled trout lily, dandelions, horse tails, tender new nettles for tea, pokeweed shoots to boil, fiddlehead ferns to fry.

take our stuff to Jesus and leave it there. He’s the one who told us not to worry about tomorrow because today is bad enough,

When people describe this experience to me, they talk about how living in a new paradigm activates, stimulates and rouses new and old parts of themselves, leaving them feeling fortified and enlivened, finally in connection with their true or authentic self. I categorize this aspect of the transition from monogamy to nonmonogamy as being a more expansive awakening of the self aspect that can give people a new sense of clarity, meaning and purpose in their life.

Someone in the self-authoring stage can deconstruct mainstream monogamy and its limiting beliefs and intentionally sift through what works for them, leaving behind what doesn't. For instance, they might recognize how monogamy has traditionally aided patriarchal control of women, their bodies and their sexuality, and so instead create a partnership that is more egalitarian, where the domestic, financial and parenting responsibilities are more equally shared regardless of genitals and gender.

Fern, I’m glad I ran into you,” Carmel says, even though she was not running and nor had we made physical contact. She is wearing a bold yellow dress that suits neither her skin tone nor her personality. “I notice you haven’t put your name down for the staff bowling day.” She pauses expectantly, as if waiting for an answer, even though no matter how many times I replay her comment, I can’t find the question. Once, years ago, Rose told me that conversations were simply a series of questions. One person asked a question, the other person answered, and it went back and forth like this until the questions ran out. This explanation has assisted me through countless episodes of small talk. But lately, it feels like more and more people are opting for statement-to-statement types of conversation. Which generally leaves me at a loss. I am still searching for an appropriate response when Carmel continues.

On the other hand, not being able to immediately enter this phase (symbiosis) with a new partner can provoke feelings of resentment towards longer-standing partners or metamours because it feels like you are being thwarted from something pleasurable and enticing, leaving you constantly yearning for more of what you're not getting with a particular partner.

in the gloom, there’s light for nothing but mosses and ferns. But when a giant falls, leaving a little space . . . then there’s a race—between the trees on either side, who want to spread out, and the seedlings below, who race to grow up.

Can I fix the table with ferns and wild roses?” “I think that’s all nonsense,” sniffed Marilla. “In my opinion it’s the eatables that matter and not flummery decorations.” “Mrs. Barry had her table decorated,” said Anne, who was not entirely guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, “and the minister paid her an elegant compliment. He said it was a feast for the eye as well as the palate.” “Well, do as you like,” said Marilla, who was quite determined not to be surpassed by Mrs. Barry or anybody else. “Only mind you leave enough room for the dishes and the food.

dustpan that he emptied into a larger trash can. If I were him, picking up after people who carelessly dropped stuff on the ground, I’d be nothing but angry. They call it littering when you carelessly drop things. They call the careless folks who drop things by a cute name: litterbug. There’s nothing cute about dropping things carelessly. Dropping garbage and having puppies shouldn’t be called the same thing. “Litter.” I had a mind to write to Miss Webster about that. Puppies don’t deserve to be called a litter like they had been dropped carelessly like garbage. And people who litter shouldn’t be given a cute name for what they do. And at least the mother of a litter sticks around and nurses her pups no matter how sharp their teeth are. Merriam Webster was falling down on the job. How could she have gotten this wrong? Vonetta asked me again. Not because she was anxious to meet Cecile. Vonetta asked again so she could have her routine rehearsed in her head—her curtsy, smile, and greeting—leaving Fern and me to stand around like dumb dodos. She was practicing her role as the cute, bouncy pup in the litter and asked yet again, “Delphine, what do we call her?” A large white woman came and stood before us, clapping her hands like we were on display at the Bronx Zoo. “Oh, my. What adorable dolls you are. My, my.” She warbled like an opera singer. Her face was moon full and jelly soft, the cheeks and jaw framed by white whiskers. We said nothing. “And so well behaved.” Vonetta perked up to out-pretty and out-behave us. I did as Big Ma had told me in our many talks on how to act around white people. I said, “Thank you,” but I didn’t add the “ma’am,” for the whole “Thank you, ma’am.” I’d never heard anyone else say it in Brooklyn. Only in old movies on TV. And when we drove down to Alabama. People say “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am” in Alabama all the time. That old word was perfectly fine for Big Ma. It just wasn’t perfectly fine for me.

you right now.” “That won’t be necessary. I’m on your side. Look, I have to leave. As you all know, Lizzie does not like to be kept waiting. So, we’re good?” To everyone’s surprise, Harry spoke first. “We’re good. I think I speak for all of us.” The others nodded. The webcam came to life. “Good decision, guys. Gotta go; some high rollers just blew in. Have to get the red carpet ready to roll out. Time is money. See ya!

48. There is a fear for nearly everything. Sure, there is acrophobia (fear of high places), agoraphobia (fear of open spaces), claustrophobia (fear of closed spaces), as well as homophobia and xenophobia (both essentially meaning “being a bad person”, rather than some actual fear). However, did you know that George Washington suffered from taphephobia (fear of being buried alive)? Richard Nixon, on the other hand, had nosocomephobia (he was afraid of hospitals), while Napoleon Bonaparte suffered from ailurophobia (irrational fear of cats). Comedian Woody Allen might be the most peculiar of all – he suffers from panophobia, which is fear of virtually everything. Heights, bright colors, insects, elevators, closed spaces… you name it, mr. Allen is afraid of it – or at least was at one time. He is under psychoanalysis since 1970s. And since we're talking about psychoanalysis, none other than Sigmund Freud was supposedly afraid of ferns.

Tropical Air Plants (epiphytic plants) Air plants include orchids, bromeliads, and all staghorn ferns. They are not planted in soil, and they do not need to be watered. They derive nutrition from decomposing insects and leaves, and nitrogen from lightning strikes. There's not much to add to the story of plants that live off lightning and death. That is drama enough for ten stories.

The clouds hang heavy, like wet wool, and stars start to appear through the trees like large, shining stones at the bottom of a river. The temperature has fallen with the sun and Lauren hugs her padded arms to her padded body. ‘It’s already dark. Come on,’ he says. ‘I’ve got homework to do.’ The thought of school tomorrow sits in her stomach. They gather various belongings and treasures scattered around the camp – some plastic binoculars, a handmade catapult, a rusty teapot, a length of rope – and put them inside the hut. They argue about whether to take home the packet of bourbons that have been stolen from Billy’s larder, before deciding to leave it in the supply tin, half buried in the frozen ground. They walk back down the looping path, banked by snow-laden ferns, towards Clavanmore. She likes Billy walking beside her like this, in his Aberdeen beanie. He’s like a big brother, but with a better face and hair. Lauren rolls the silver ring between her index finger and thumb, in her pocket. Darkness seeps into the forest and the white snow fades to a dark grey, then darker still, until the world is black.

feel the snap of the black stone’s jaws at the empty air below my toes, and then I am out of the swallet and into the hollow, and warm air is rolling around me, and my bones grow again in the storm of light and ferns furl their green over and into me and moss thrives on my skin and leaves teem in my eyes, and Sean and I sit laughing, knowing for those few moments that to understand light you need first to have been buried in the deep-down dark.

And the thought of her garden---ballast and bread, those blooms and vines and spinney sprigs. Herbs that comforted, cured. Growing conditions had been ideal that summer. Resplendent. Delphinium spires soared their prettiest periwinkle blue; roses clambered over the arbor, luxuriant ivy slumped languidly like legions of lounging ladies. Myrtle gleamed so waxen Lavender almost saw a miniature of her face reflected back in its leaves. Ferns forested. Hollyhocks hollered their joy. Aromatic too, pears from her mother's tree. Even the moss spread ardent, brashly ambitious. The borage grew boisterous. And yarrow, always yarrow. And purple lavender, her namesake. Though some flower dictionaries ascribed a wary, ambiguous meaning to lavender, her mother long ago had asserted the contrary, that lavender equated calmness, serenity.

the artu trees came in places right down to the water’s edge; the breadfruit trees cast the shadow of their great scalloped leaves upon the water; glades, thick with fern, wildernesses of the mammee apple, and bushes of the scarlet “wild cocoa-nut” all slipped by, as the dinghy, hugging the shore, crept up the lagoon.

There, in that ancient house, rooted in that quiet park, where the ivy and moss have had time to mature, and the gnarled and warted elms, and the umbrageous oaks, stand deep in the fern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the terrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that Time, which was as much the property of every Dedlock – while he lasted – as the house and lands. Sir Leicester sits down in an easy chair, opposing his repose and that of Chesney Wold to the restless flights of ironmasters.