Flat Nose Quotes

She was a very pretty woman. She had dark red hair and her eyes -- her eyes are just like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the glass. Bright green -- exactly the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just like Harry's did. Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection. "Mum?" he whispered. "Dad?" They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees -- Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life. The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside of him, half joy, half terrible sadness.

Hadrian shook his head and sighed. “Why do you have to make everything so difficult? They’re probably not bad people—just poor. You know, taking what they need to buy a loaf of bread to feed their family. Can you begrudge them that? Winter is coming and times are hard.” He nodded his head in the direction of the thieves. “Right?” “I ain’t got no family,” flat-nose replied. “I spend most of my coin on drink.” “You’re not helping,” Hadrian said.

The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw, And could sculpt like men, then the horses would draw their gods Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.

Where have you been?" she cried. "Damn you, where have you been?" She took a few steps toward Schmendrick, but she was looking beyond him, at the unicorn. When she tried to get by, the magician stood in her way. "You don't talk like that," he told her, still uncertain that Molly had recognized the unicorn. "Don't you know how to behave, woman? You don't curtsy, either." But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down. "I am here now," she said at last. Molly laughed with her lips flat. "And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?" With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. "I wish you had never come. Why did you come now?" The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose. The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world." "She would be." Molly sniffed. "It would be the last unicorn in the world to come to Molly Grue." She reached up then to lay her hand on the unicorn's cheek; but both of them flinched a little, and the touch came to rest on on the swift, shivering place under the jaw. Molly said, "It's all right. I forgive you.

In her way, she was a hard one. Faith in any sort of natural justice was nothing but a night light; she knew of that. Whatever she did, she would end the same way with everyone does: flat on her back with a tube in her nose, wondering, "Is this all?

Invisible She scanned through the magazine for girls who looked like her with deeper hues, flat nose, and thick hair. The day she turned fifteen she scrubbed herself with bleach while screaming for God, whispering over and over again "the darker the skin, the deeper the struggle" releasing a sigh that made her soul shake.

I think I fell in love with you,” Rhys murmured, stroking a finger down my arm, “the moment I realized you were cleaving those bones to make a trap for the Middengard Wyrm. Or maybe the moment you flipped me off for mocking you. It reminded me so much of Cassian. For the first time in decades, I wanted to laugh.” “You fell in love with me,” I said flatly, “because I reminded you of your friend?” He flicked my nose. “I fell in love with you, smartass, because you were one of us—because you weren’t afraid of me, and you decided to end your spectacular victory by throwing that piece of bone at Amarantha like a javelin. I felt Cassian’s spirit beside me in that moment, and could have sworn I heard him say, ‘If you don’t marry her, you stupid prick, I will.’ ” I huffed a laugh, sliding my paint-covered hand over his tattooed chest. Paint—right. We were both covered in it. So was the bed.

Newsflash she already has body image issues.  It's an intrinsic part of being a woman. Every woman in the world has some part of herself that she absolutely hates.  Her hands are too small, her feet are too big, her hair is too straight, too curly, her ears stick out, her bums too flat, her nose is too big and, you know, nothing you can say will change how we feel.  What men don't understand is, the right clothes, the right shoes, the right makeup it just... It, it hides the flaws we think we have.  They make us look beautiful to ourselves.  That's what makes us look beautiful to others. Used to be all she needed to feel beautiful was a pink tutu and a plastic tiara. And we spend our whole lives trying to feel that way again.

Thank you for the shoes, Thomas.” I looked at the stack of boxes, teetering precariously close to the edge of the settee now. He caught my stare and nudged them back to safety. “All of them. It was very sweet. And highly unnecessary.” “Your happiness is always necessary to me.” He tilted my chin up and kissed the tip of my nose. “We’ll find new ways of navigating the world together, Wadsworth. If you can no longer wear heels, we’ll design flats you adore. If you ever find those no longer work, I’ll have a wheeled chair made and bejeweled to your liking. Anything at all in the universe you need, we will make it so. And if you’d prefer to do it on your own, I will always step aside. I also promise to keep my opinion mostly to myself.” “Mostly?” He considered that. “Unless it’s vastly inappropriate. Then I’ll share it with gusto.

Have you ever watched a baby learning to walk? He totters, arms stretched out to balance himself. He wobbles - and falls, perhaps bumps his nose. Then he puts the palms of his little hands flat on the floor, hikes his rear end up, looks around to see if anybody is watching him. If nobody is, usually he doesn't bother to cry, just precariously balances himself - and tries again. Well, the baby can teach us. What you've undertaken...isn't a state of perfection to be arrived at all of the sudden. It's a WALK, and a walk isn't static but ever-changing. We Friends say that all discouragement is from an evil source and can only end in more evil. Wallowing in self-condemnation or feeling sorry for yourself is worse than falling on your face in the first place. . . So thee is human.

I really hate Squires. (Syra) (She pulled another flat bolt out and loaded it, then shot it at Otto. Moving so fast he could hardly be seen, the Squire turned around and caught it without flinching. He held the bolt up to his nose and inhaled it lovingly.) Mmm. Rose. My favorite. (Otto) Perhaps we should leave you two alone. (Jess) Yeah, this does remind me a bit of the mating rites of the mean and the surly. (Allen)

He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

In this world one is seldom reduced to make a selection between two alternatives. There are as many varieties of conduct and opinion as there are turns of feature between an aquiline nose and a flat one.

That's the girl...that's the girl--" Annabeth punched him in the nose and knocked him flat. "And you," she told him, "lay off my friend.

My soul lightened as I realized I could help her. I rolled her body flat, like Grandpa taught me. I swept my finger inside her cold mouth to make sure her breathing passage was open, and I placed my mouth on hers, carefully pinching her nose, and breathed life into her lungs. Betsy stirred, sputtered a cough, and opened her eyes. “Now you kiss me?” she said, so weakly I could barely hear her.

He rolled his eyes and took my hand. His hand was hard and calloused, tough with muscle and old scars. The night settled around us like a blanket. I could hear the water lapping against the dock. We were totally alone. “You’re . . . ,” he began, and I waited, heart throbbing in my throat. “Such a pain,” he concluded. “What?” I asked, just as his head swooped in and his mouth touched mine. I tried to speak, but one of Fang’s hands held the back of my head, and he kept his lips pressed against me, kissing me softly but with a Fanglike determination. Oh, jeez, I thought distractedly. Jeez, this is Fang, and me, and . . . Fang tilted his head to kiss me more deeply, and I felt totally lightheaded. Then I remembered to breathe through my nose, and the fog cleared a tiny bit. Somehow we were pressed together, Fang’s arms around me now, sliding under my wings, his hands flat against my back. It was incredible. I loved it. I loved him. It was a total disaster. Gasping, I pulled back. “I, uh—,” I began oh so coherently, and then I jumped up, almost knocking him over, and raced down the dock. I took off, flying fast, like a rocket.

His intellect made increasing sense of this: there had been an ambush, he was underground, and since his body didn’t feel as if it had been transported for days, that meant— He opened his eyes and met the flat-nosed stare of Govart. ‘Hello, Princess.’ Panic

Paralytic It happens. Will it go on? ---- My mind a rock, No fingers to grip, no tongue, My god the iron lung That loves me, pumps My two Dust bags in and out, Will not Let me relapse While the day outside glides by like ticker tape. The night brings violets, Tapestries of eyes, Lights, The soft anonymous Talkers: 'You all right?' The starched, inaccessible breast. Dead egg, I lie Whole On a whole world I cannot touch, At the white, tight Drum of my sleeping couch Photographs visit me ---- My wife, dead and flat, in 1920 furs, Mouth full of pearls, Two girls As flat as she, who whisper 'We're your daughters.' The still waters Wrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears, A clear Cellophane I cannot crack. On my bare back I smile, a buddha, all Wants, desire Falling from me like rings Hugging their lights. The claw Of the magnolia, Drunk on its own scents, Asks nothing of life.

Mom?” he whispered. “Dad?” They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry’s knobbly knees—Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life. The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.

An intelligent man will use a book to settle an argument. Preferably a hardback with a thick spine, flat across the bridge of the nose.

Hope you’re not prone to nose bleeds. The course sits at the highest elevation in Texas. It’s flat as a pancake, but one day a guy in the group ahead of us had his superglued toupee ripped right off his head. Rumor was it rode the Rio Grande River all the way into Mexico,” Patrick said with a wink and a nod.

Her father sat her down and spoke to her with great seriousness. "You are not a witch, Katerina. There is magic in the world, and some of it is wholesome, and some of it is not, but it is a thing that is in the blood, and it is not in yours. "The foolish will always treat you badly, because they think you are not beautiful," he said, and she knew this was true. Plain Kate. She was a plain as a stick and thin as a stick and flat as a stick. Her nose was too long and her brows too strong. Her father kissed her twice, once above each brow. "We cannot help what fools think. But understand, it is your skill with a blade that draws this talk. If you want to give up your carving, you have my blessing." "I will never give it up," she answered.

Funny, he wasn't handsome, not in a Mr. Perfect kind of way, at least. The guy had a nose that had clearly been busted once or three times, and his hazel eyes were too shrewd and too exhausted to be classified as attractive. But he was like a cocked gun: He has a steely intelligence and a dangerous power about him that you respected. Because the combination was a flat-out killer, literally

Mrs. Turner was a milky sort of a woman that belonged to child-bed. Her shoulders rounded a little, and she must have been conscious of her pelvis because she kept it stuck out in front of her so she could always see it. Tea Cake made a lot of fun about Mrs. Turners shape behind her back. He claimed that she had been shaped up by a cow kicking her from behind. She was an ironing board with things throwed at it. Then that same cow took and stepped in her mouth when she was a baby and left it wide and flat with her chin and nose almost meeting.

I didn’t fuck Beau. I made slow, tantalizing love to him. Hey, first time for everything. We went slowly. My dick was rock hard. He used his hands to stroke his cock. My fingers were wrapped around his ankles so hard they might leave bruises. And yet we maintained eye contact. Even as the first threads of orgasm pulled at me. I watched his face. I memorized those dimples, the wide brown eyes, slightly flat nose, and his sharp jaw.

Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down—from high flat temples—in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.

Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The V motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down--from high flat temples--in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond Satan.

Well, I could befriend her,” Ten started, putting on an offended front as he pressed his hand to his chest. Noel threw back his head and laughed. “What?” Ten muttered, folding his arms over his chest and glaring. “I make a fucking awesome friend.” Noel’s chuckle settled before he seemed to realize Ten was serious. His smile dropped flat. Pointing at Ten’s nose, he growled. “Stay the fuck away from my sister.” Ten sent him a bland glance. “Why do you feel the need to say that to me in that exact tone every time you see me?

My only comfort," she said to Meg, with tears in her eyes, "is that Mother doesn't take tucks in my dresses whenever I'm naughty, as Maria Parks's mother does. My dear, it's really dreadful, for sometimes she is so bad her frock is up to her knees, and she can't come to school. When I think of this deggerredation, I feel that I can bear even my flat nose and purple gown with yellow sky-rockets on it.

Men imagine gods to be born, and to have clothes and voices and shapes like theirs....Yea, the gods of the Ethiopians are black and flat-nosed, and the gods of the Thracians are red-haired and blue-eyed.

I / I am a girl who feels too American for love...they say I'm a child of an AT&T café olé telephone-commercial future where your nose is not flat enough to offend/and not pointy enough to cut the glass ceiling.

daily visual reminder of the depths drink sunk him to, so Mrs. O. had gone around with her nose bent over flat against her left cheek—Bud O.’d tagged her with a left cross—until U.H.I.D. referred her to Al-Anon, which

What do you suppose it means?' he asked. ' "Do what you wish." That must mean I can do anything I feel like. Don't you think so? All at once Grograman's face looked alarmingly grave, and his eyes glowed. 'No,' he said in his deep rumbling voice. 'It means that you must do what you really and truly want. And nothing is more difficult.' ... 'It's your own deepest secret and you don't know it.' 'How can I find out?' 'By going the way of your wishes, fro one to another, from first to last. It will take you to what you really and truly want.' 'That doesn't sound so hard,' said Bastian. 'It is the most dangerous of all journeys.' 'Why? Bastian asked. 'I'm not afraid.' 'That isn't it,' Grograman rumbled. 'It requires the greatest honesty and vigilance, because there's no other journey on which it's so easy to lose yourself forever.' 'Do you mean because our wishes aren't always good?' Bastian asked. The lion lashed the sand he was lying on with his tail. His ears lay flat, he screwed up his nose, and his eyes flashed fire. Involuntarily Bastian ducked when Grograman's voice once again made the earth tremble: 'What do you know about wishes? How would you know what's good and what isn't?' In the days that followed Bastian thought a good deal about what the Many-Colored Death had said. There are some things, however, that we cannot fathom by thinking about them, but only by experience.

In her way, she was a hard one. Faith in any sort of natural justice was nothing but a night-light; she knew that. Whatever she did, she would end the same way everyone does: flat on her back with a tube in her nose, wondering “Is this all?

His nose was his most distinctive feature: curved like a scimitar at the top but bent flat at the tip, and with the bone of the bridge cut like a diamond--in short, a nose out of a folktale, the sort of sizable, convoluted, intricately turned nose that, for many centuries, confronted though they have been by every imaginable hardship, the Jews have never stopped making.

Bok knows everything about me, including my thing with auras. Truth is, though, he isn't much good as a bodyguard. Bok is a shade heavier than an eating disorder, has a cute button nose and long, silky, straight hair most girls would kill for. We've been friends since prep when he used to sit behind me in class and hit me with his ruler. I put up with it for weeks, and then one day when the teacher stepped out of the room I pushed him off his chair and watched as he fell flat on his skinny, pretty arse.

Sometimes I feel that what we do and what we say is just a repetition, that's it's all happened before,' I said. 'Déjà vu,' he said, his voice flat. 'No, not that, not identical - vaguely the same, like we're trapped in a pattern or an idea that we can't give up, that leads us by the nose...

Here’s how to get started: 1. Sit still and stay put . Sit in a chair with your feet flat on the ground, or sit cross-legged on a cushion. Sit up straight and rest your hands in your lap. It’s important not to fidget when you meditate—that’s the physical foundation of self-control. If you notice the instinct to scratch an itch, adjust your arms, or cross and uncross your legs, see if you can feel the urge but not follow it. This simple act of staying still is part of what makes meditation willpower training effective. You’re learning not to automatically follow every single impulse that your brain and body produce. 2. Turn your attention to the breath. Close your eyes or, if you are worried about falling asleep, focus your gaze at a single spot (like a blank wall, not the Home Shopping Network). Begin to notice your breathing. Silently say in your mind “inhale” as you breathe in and “exhale” as you breathe out. When you notice your mind wandering (and it will), just bring it back to the breath. This practice of coming back to the breath, again and again, kicks the prefrontal cortex into high gear and quiets the stress and craving centers of your brain . 3. Notice how it feels to breathe, and notice how the mind wanders. After a few minutes, drop the labels “inhale/exhale.” Try focusing on just the feeling of breathing. You might notice the sensations of the breath flowing in and out of your nose and mouth. You might sense the belly or chest expanding as you breathe in, and deflating as you breathe out. Your mind might wander a bit more without the labeling. Just as before, when you notice yourself thinking about something else, bring your attention back to the breath. If you need help refocusing, bring yourself back to the breath by saying “inhale” and “exhale” for a few rounds. This part of the practice trains self-awareness along with self-control. Start with five minutes a day. When this becomes a habit, try ten to fifteen minutes a day. If that starts to feel like a burden, bring it back down to five. A short practice that you do every day is better than a long practice you keep putting off to tomorrow. It may help you to pick a specific time that you will meditate every day, like right before your morning shower. If this is impossible, staying flexible will help you fit it in when you can.

She was a very pretty woman. She had dark red hair and her eyes- her eyes are just like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the glass. Bright green- exactly the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just as Harry's did. Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection. "Mom?" he whispered. "Dad?" They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees- Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life. The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.

We passed the Irish club, and the florist’s with its small stiff pink-and-white carnations in a bucket, and the drapers called ‘Elvina’s’, which displayed in its window Bear Brand stockings and knife-pleated skirts like cloth concertinas and pasty-shaped hats on false heads. We passed the confectioner’s – or failed to pass it; the window attracted Karina. She balled her hands into her pockets, and leant back, her feet apart; she looked rooted, immovable. The cakes were stacked on decks of sloping shelves, set out on pink doilies whitened by falls of icing sugar. There were vanilla slices, their airy tiers of pastry glued together with confectioners’ custard, fat and lolling like a yellow tongue. There were bubbling jam puffs and ballooning Eccles cakes, slashed to show their plump currant insides. There were jam tarts the size of traffic lights; there were whinberry pies oozing juice like black blood. ‘Look at them buns,’ Karina would say. ‘Look.’ I would turn sideways and see her intent face. Sometimes the tip of her tongue would appear, and slide slowly upwards towards her flat nose. There were sponge buns shaped like fat mushrooms, topped with pink icing and half a glace cherry. There were coconut pyramids, and low square house-shaped chocolate buns, finished with a big roll of chocolate-wrapped marzipan which was solid as the barrel of a cannon.

I didn’t know what he was yelling about, but he said he would handle it, and I was to have you report IMMEDIATELY. He also said I could smell when you were coming because you would be like a bourbon factory. He said you were a bull-necked, flat-nosed son of a bitch who would have no cap or raincoat because you didn’t have brains enough to wear them.

They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong. Compared, calendar page against calendar page, it looks to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose. However more abbreviated than it's cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old. February is pitiless, and it's boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed. Except to the extent that it "tints the buds and swells the leaves within" February is as useless as the extra r in its name. It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui holding both progress and contentment at bay. If February is the color of lard on rye, its aroma is that of wet wool trousers. As for sound, it is an abstract melody played on a squeaky violin, the petty whine of a shrew with cabin fever. O February, you may be little but you're small! Where you twice your tiresome length, few of us would survive to greet the merry month of May.

I’m returning your nose,” I said flatly. “I found it in my business.

This was turning into a B-rated Mexican soap opera, all pasión caliente and bad acting. I slammed the cupboard door into his face, a trick I’d learned from an old Tom and Jerry cartoon. However, unlike Tom the cat, Rex’s face wasn’t as flat as a pancake when I pulled the door away. But his nose was bleeding. I pointed at it. “Oops. You’ve got a little blood there.

When she (Miss Betsey - M. Zh.)reached the house she gave another proof of her identity. My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against the glass to that extent that my poor dear mother used to say it became perfectly flat and white in a moment. She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday." (Chapter I)

His eyes were a deep brown, almost pretty, but remote and flat. Dark hair was cut short, bristly. His nose was prominent and slightly crooked, like it had been broken. Maybe more than once.

You better shut your big blubber lips.” We would call each other “jungle bunnies” and “bush boogies.” We would talk about each other’s ugly, big lips and flat noses. We would call each other pickaninnies and nappy-haired so-and-so’s. “Act your age, not your color,” we would tell each other. “You gon thank me when I’m through with you, Ima beat you so bad, I’m gon beat the black offa you.” Black made any insult worse. When you called somebody a “bastard,” that was bad. But when you called somebody a “Black bastard,” now that was terrible. In fact, when i was growing up, being called “Black,” period, was grounds for fighting. “Who you callin’ Black?” we would say. We had never heard the words “Black is beautiful” and the idea had never occurred to most of us.

But about the gentleman thing.” She waved her glass. “I want to make it plain as the nose on your face. I can stand anything in the book but gentlemen. Because I've spent a lot of time, too much time with them, and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals. So they say to themselves one fine morning: 'What can I be that's no trouble at all and that doesn't amount to a damned thing, but yet will make everyone look up to me?' The answer's simple. Be a gentleman. Take life flat on your back, cry in private, and then in a well-modulated voice.

A villain. The enemy. Sandor watched Sophie tug on her eyelashes—her nervous habit, back in full force. “Nothing is going to happen,” he promised, tucking her blond hair behind her ear with a surprisingly gentle touch for a seven-foot-tall goblin warrior. It definitely helped having Sandor back at her side—especially after almost losing him during the battle on Mount Everest. And Sandor wasn’t the only goblin at Foxfire anymore. Each of the six wings in the main campus building had been assigned its own patrol, with two additional squadrons keeping watch over the sprawling grounds. The Council had also added security throughout the Lost Cities. They had to. The ogres were still threatening war. And in the three weeks since Sophie and her friends had returned from hiding with the Black Swan, the Neverseen had scorched the main gate of the Sanctuary and broken into the registry in Atlantis. Sophie could guess what the rebels had hoped to gain from the elves’ secret animal preserve—they obviously didn’t know that she’d convinced the Council to set the precious alicorns free. But the registry attack remained a mystery. The Councillors kept careful records on every elf ever born, and no one would tell her if any files had been altered or stolen. A bubble popped on Sophie’s head, and Sandor caught the box of Prattles that had been hovering inside. “If you’re going to eat these, I should check them first,” he told her. Sandor’s wide, flat nose scented no toxins in the nutty candy, but he insisted on examining the pin before handing them over. Every box of Prattles came with a special collectible inside, and in the past, the Black

Sir Falwick," said Geralt, not ceasing to smile. "If he draws his sword, I'll take it from him and beat the snotty-nosed little brat's arse with the flat of his blade. And then I'll batter the door down with him.

The small Japanese immortal sat cross-legged, his two swords resting flat on the ground before him. He folded his hands in his lap, closed his eyes and breathing through his nose, forcing the chill night air deep into his chest. He held it for a count of five, then shaped his lips into an O and blew it out again, puncturing a tiny hole in the swirling fog before his face. Even though he would never admit it to anyone, Niten loved this moment. He had no affection for what was to come, but this brief time, when all preparations for battle were made and there was nothing left to do but wait, when the world felt still, as if it was holding its breath, was special. This moment, when he was facing death, was when he felt completely, fully alive. He’d still been called Miyamoto Musashi and had been a teenager when he’d first discovered the genuine beauty of the quiet moment before a fight. Every breath suddenly tasted like the finest food, every sound was distinct and divine, and even on the foulest battlefields, his eyes would be drawn to something simple and elegant: a flower, the shape of a branch, the curl of a cloud. A hundred years ago, Aoife had given him a book as a birthday present. He hadn’t had the heart to tell her that she’d missed his birthday by a month, but he had treasured the book, the first edition of The Professor by Charlotte Bronte. It included a line he had never forgotten: In the midst of life we are in death. Years later, he’d heard Ghandi take the same words and shift them around to create something that resonated deeply within him: In the midst of death life persists.

Alex was right in front of the mantel now, bent forward, his nose mere inches from a picture of me. "Oh,God. Don't look at that!" It was from the year-end recital of my one and only year of ballet class. I was six: twig legs, a huge gap where my two front teeth had recently been, and a bumblebee costume. Nonna had done her best, but there was only so much she could do with yellow and black spandex and a bee butt. Dad had found one of those headbands with springy antennai attached. I'd loved the antennae. The more enthusiastic my jetes, the more they bounced. Of course, I'd also jeted my flat-chested little self out of the top of my costume so many times that, during the actual recital itself,I'd barely moved at all, victim to the overwhelming modesty of the six-year-old. Now, looking at the little girl I'd been, I wished someone had told her not to worry so much, that within a year, that smooth, skinny, little bare shoulder would have turned into the bane of her existence. That she was absolutely perfect. "Nice stripes," Alex said casually, straightening up. That stung. It should't have-it was just a photo-but it did. I don't know what I'd expected him to say about the picture. It wasn't that. But then, I didn't expect the wide grin that spread across his face when he got a good look at mine, either. "Those," he announced, pointing to a photo of my mulleted dad leaning against the painted hood of his Mustang "are nice stripes. That-" he pointed to the me-bee- "Is seriously cute." "You're insane," I muttered, insanely pleased. "Yeah,well, tell me something I don't know." He took the bottle and plate from me. "I like knowing you have a little vanity in there somewhere." He stood, hands full, looking expectant and completely beautiful. The reality of the situation hadn't really been all that real before. Now, as I started up the stairs to my bedroom, Alex Bainbridge in tow, it hit me. I was leading a boy, this boy, into my very personal space. Then he started singing. "You're so vain, I bet you think this song is about you. You're sooo vain....!" He had a pretty good voice. It was a truly excellent AM radio song. And just like that, I was officially In Deep

THOSE BORN UNDER Pacific Northwest skies are like daffodils: they can achieve beauty only after a long, cold sulk in the rain. Henry, our mother, and I were Pacific Northwest babies. At the first patter of raindrops on the roof, a comfortable melancholy settled over the house. The three of us spent dark, wet days wrapped in old quilts, sitting and sighing at the watery sky. Viviane, with her acute gift for smell, could close her eyes and know the season just by the smell of the rain. Summer rain smelled like newly clipped grass, like mouths stained red with berry juice — blueberries, raspberries, blackberries. It smelled like late nights spent pointing constellations out from their starry guises, freshly washed laundry drying outside on the line, like barbecues and stolen kisses in a 1932 Ford Coupe. The first of the many autumn rains smelled smoky, like a doused campsite fire, as if the ground itself had been aflame during those hot summer months. It smelled like burnt piles of collected leaves, the cough of a newly revived chimney, roasted chestnuts, the scent of a man’s hands after hours spent in a woodshop. Fall rain was not Viviane’s favorite. Rain in the winter smelled simply like ice, the cold air burning the tips of ears, cheeks, and eyelashes. Winter rain was for hiding in quilts and blankets, for tying woolen scarves around noses and mouths — the moisture of rasping breaths stinging chapped lips. The first bout of warm spring rain caused normally respectable women to pull off their stockings and run through muddy puddles alongside their children. Viviane was convinced it was due to the way the rain smelled: like the earth, tulip bulbs, and dahlia roots. It smelled like the mud along a riverbed, like if she opened her mouth wide enough, she could taste the minerals in the air. Viviane could feel the heat of the rain against her fingers when she pressed her hand to the ground after a storm. But in 1959, the year Henry and I turned fifteen, those warm spring rains never arrived. March came and went without a single drop falling from the sky. The air that month smelled dry and flat. Viviane would wake up in the morning unsure of where she was or what she should be doing. Did the wash need to be hung on the line? Was there firewood to be brought in from the woodshed and stacked on the back porch? Even nature seemed confused. When the rains didn’t appear, the daffodil bulbs dried to dust in their beds of mulch and soil. The trees remained leafless, and the squirrels, without acorns to feed on and with nests to build, ran in confused circles below the bare limbs. The only person who seemed unfazed by the disappearance of the rain was my grandmother. Emilienne was not a Pacific Northwest baby nor a daffodil. Emilienne was more like a petunia. She needed the water but could do without the puddles and wet feet. She didn’t have any desire to ponder the gray skies. She found all the rain to be a bit of an inconvenience, to be honest.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t some reason. He was handsome. Like, wow, that’s a handsome guy, and then you nudge your friend and get her to take a look as well. That kind of handsome. Though I couldn’t see him straight on, he had a nice, strong face, broad nose with a bump on the bridge, and just the right amount of stubble on his cheeks and jaw. His deep-set eyes looked rich brown, his longish, thick hair a shade darker than that and his brows even more so. I couldn’t tell how tall he was, he was at least a few inches taller than I was, but his body was fit and lean. His stomach looked washboard flat under his white dress shirt and his forearms that peeked out from the rolled up sleeves were muscular, the same color as wet sand, a beach in the afternoon light.

I think I fell in love with you,' Rhys murmured, stroking a finger down my arm, 'the moment I realised you were cleaving those bones to make a trap for the Middengard Wyrm. Or maybe the moment you flipped me off for mocking you. It reminded me so much of Cassian. For the first time in decades, I wanted to laugh.' 'You fell in love with me,' I said flatly, 'because I reminded you of your friend?' He flicked my nose. 'I fell in love with you, smartass, because you were one of us- because you weren't afraid of me, and you decided to end your spectacular victory by throwing that piece of bone at Amarantha like a javelin. I felt Cassian's spirit beside me in that moment, and could have sworn I heard him say, "if you don't marry her, you stupid prick, I will.

Working as a servant in the inn was an Asturian girl with a broad face, a back of the head that was flat, a nose that was snubbed, and one eye that was blind, while the other was not in very good condition. The truth is that the charm of her body made up for her other faults:

I began to feel slightly uneasy. You know I am not used to such ceremonies, and there was something ominous in the atmosphere. It was just as though I had been let into some conspiracy—I don’t know—something not quite right; and I was glad to get out. In the outer room the two women knitted black wool feverishly. People were arriving, and the younger one was walking back and forth introducing them. The old one sat on her chair. Her flat cloth slippers were propped up on a foot–warmer, and a cat reposed on her lap. She wore a starched white affair on her head, had a wart on one cheek, and silver–rimmed spectacles hung on the tip of her nose. She glanced at me above the glasses. The swift and indifferent placidity of that look troubled me. Two youths with foolish and cheery countenances were being piloted over, and she threw at them the same quick glance of unconcerned wisdom. She seemed to know all about them and about me, too. An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful. Often far away there I thought of these two, guarding the door of Darkness, knitting black wool as for a warm pall, one introducing, introducing continuously to the unknown, the other scrutinizing the cheery and foolish faces with unconcerned old eyes. AVE! Old knitter of black wool. MORITURI TE SALUTANT. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again—not half, by a long way.

Her eyebrows were plucked into thin arched lines, which gave her a permanent look of surprise, or outrage, or inquisitiveness, such as you might see on a startled child, but below them her eyelids were tired-looking. Not so her eyes, which were the flat hostile blue of a midsummer sky in bright sunlight, a blue that shuts you out. Her nose must once have been what was called cute but now was too small for her face. Her face was not fat but it was large. Two lines led downward from the corners of her mouth; between them was her chin, clenched like a fist.

The one-eyed man stood helplessly by. "I'll help ya if ya want," he said. "Know what that son-of-a-bitch done? He come by an' he got on white pants. An' he says, 'Come on, le's go out to my yacht.' By God, I'll whang him some day!" He breathed heavily. "I ain't been out with a woman sence I los' my eye. An' he says stuff like that." And big tears cut channels in the dirt beside his nose. Tom said impatiently, "Whyn't you roll on? Got no guards to keep ya here." "Yeah, that's easy to say. Ain't so easy to get a job - not for a one-eye' man." Tom turned on him. "Now look-a-here, fella. You got that eye wide open. An' ya dirty, ya stink. Ya jus' askin' for it. Ya like it. Lets ya feel sorry for yaself. 'Course ya can't get no woman with that empty eye flappin' aroun'. Put somepin over it an' wash ya face. You ain't hittin' nobody with no pipe wrench." "I tell ya, a one-eye' fella got a hard row," the man said. "Can't see stuff the way other fellas can. Can't see how far off a thing is. Ever'thing's jus' flat." Tom said, "Ya full of crap. Why, I knowed a one-legged whore one time. Think she was takin' two-bits in a alley? No, by God! She's gettin' half a dollar extra. She says, 'How many one-legged women you slep' with? None!' she says. 'O.K.,' she says. 'You got somepin pretty special here, an it's gonna cos' ya half a buck extry.' An' by God, she was gettin' 'em, too, an' the fellas comin' out thinkin' they're pretty lucky. She says she's good luck. An' I knowed a hump-back in - in a place I was. Make his whole livin' lettin' folk rub his hump for luck. Jesus Christ, an' all you got is one eye gone." The man said stumblingly, "Well, Jesus, ya see somebody edge away from ya, an' it gets into ya." "Cover it up then, goddamn it. Ya stickin' it out like a cow's ass. Ya like to feel sorry for yaself. There ain't nothin' the matter with ya. Buy yaself some white pants. Ya gettin' drunk and cryin' in ya bed, I bet." ... The one-eyed man said softly, "Think - somebody'd like - me?" "Why, sure," said Tom. "Tell 'em ya dong's growed sence you los' your eye.

Agreeable guests should be sought for among those who have this appearance. They receive all that is offered them, eat slowly, and taste advisedly. They do not seek to leave places too quickly where they have been kindly received. They are always in for all the evening, for they know all games, and all that is neccessary for a gastronomical soiree.   Those, on the contrary, to whom nature has refused a desire for the gratifications of taste, have a long nose and face. Whatever be their statures, the face seems out of order. Their hair is dark and flat, and they have no embonpoint. They invented pantaloons.

These old people I talk to, if you could of told em that there would be people on the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses speakin a language they couldnt even understand, well, they just flat out wouldnt of believed you. But what if you’d of told em it was their own grandchildren?

The years were never an element, because my parents didn’t age, they simply sickened. My father was mean and cocky like Cagney all the way to the dump. Flat on his back, his bones poking this way and that like the corpses in the camps, he still had a fiery eye, as though, but for those two coals, the grate held ash. There’s no easy way out of this life, and I do not look forward to the day they put those tubes up my nose, and a catheter shows my pee the way out like some well-trained servant. I saw how my father’s body broke his spirit like a match; and I saw how my mother’s broken spirit took her body under the way a ship stinks after being disemboweled by an errant bag of ice.

Something was in her mouth. Sami's tongue slid along the edges of something plastic. Flat, low ridges, holes-an adjustable strap. A baseball cap? Another taste. Hair spray. Gross. Someone had stuffed her baseball cap in her mouth, and from the feel of it they had taped it in place. Her arms were tied behind her and she lay face down on the floor-of what? Her car. The carpeting scraped her cheek every time they hit a bump. Panic flooded Sami's senses. She came instantly awake. Inhaling deeply through her nose, she willed herself to calm down. Her working motto flashed through her brain, panic never accomplished anything. Of course she had never been kidnapped and tied up before. In the dim light of passing cars, she glimpsed things-paper gum wrappers, an old straw, one whopper wrapper, a CD cover. That's where Sting went. Been looking for that for days. Man did she need to vacuum this car out. A metallic scent hit her nose. She'd recognize that smell until the day she died. Blood. And by the odor, someone had lost a great deal of it.

A low, angry growl hit Jatred’s ears like a hammer. He turned and saw a massive figure crashing its way through the snow. Although he’d only seen the drawings of the Winter monsters, he knew it was a Garhanan. There was nothing pleasing in the way the creature looked, smelled, or sounded. Even its movements were horrid. A flat nose sat in the middle of the meaty face. The Garhanan’s bushy white brows stuck out, shading small beady eyes. Its arms were muscular and swung down past its strong knees. The back, chest, and thighs were colossal too. The beast’s whole body was covered in white, sparse, long fur. “Great,” Jatred snarled, his jaws clenching. He tried not to show how much Garhanan scared him.

Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. “Harriet Manners, I’m about to give you six stamps. Then I’m going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it.” “OK …” “Then I’m going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I’m going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it.” Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn’t know where the nearest postbox was. “Deal,” I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes. “But why six stamps?” “Just wait and see.” A few seconds later, I understood. As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout. One of Nick’s ended up on his nose. And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning blur. Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this. So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then I reached out my hand. “Too late!” Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. “Got it, Manners!” And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over his head. So I promptly leapt off too. Straight into a bush. Thanks to a destabilised vestibular system – which is the upper portion of the inner ear – the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Nick, in the meantime, had ended up flat on his back on the grass next to me. With a small shout I leant down and kissed him hard on the lips. “HA!” I shouted, grabbing the envelope off him and trying to rip it open. “I don’t think so,” he grinned, jumping up and wrapping one arm round my waist while he retrieved it again. Then he started running in a zigzag towards the postbox. A few seconds later, I wobbled after him. And we stumbled wonkily down the road, giggling and pulling at each other’s T-shirts and hanging on to tree trunks and kissing as we each fought for the prize. Finally, he picked me up and, without any effort, popped me on top of a high wall. Like Humpty Dumpty. Or some kind of really unathletic cat. “Hey!” I shouted as he whipped the envelope out of my hands and started sprinting towards the postbox at the bottom of the road. “That’s not fair!” “Course it is,” he shouted back. “All’s fair in love and war.” And Nick kissed the envelope then put it in the postbox with a flourish. I had to wait three days. Three days of lingering by the front door. Three days of lifting up the doormat, just in case it had accidentally slipped under there. Finally, the letter arrived: crumpled and stained with grass. Ha. Told you I was faster. LBxx

Abruptly, Lara found herself flat on her back, her chair having been yanked out from under her with a quick jerk of her sister’s foot under the table. “You are such a bitch,” Lara muttered, rubbing the back of her head while Cresta and Bronwyn laughed. Sarhina circled the table, then bent down so that they were nose to nose. “I’m in charge, Your Majesty. Understood?

His head bent over hers; she could feel the rush of his unsettled exhalations. The hairs on his chest were not flat and straight, but softly curling. She wanted to brush her nose and lips across them. He smelled of soap, male skin, clean earth and meadow grass, and every breath of him made her feel warm in places that hadn't been warm in years. When the placket was finally unfastened, Mr. Ravenel raised his arms and let the shirt settle over his head, wincing as the neat row of stitches at his side was strained. Phoebe reached up to tug at the hem of the garment. Her knuckles inadvertently grazed the dark fleece on his chest, and her stomach did an odd little flip. From the surface of her skin down to the marrow of her bones, her entire body was alive with sensation.

Merritt stared in bemusement at the big, wrathful Scotsman. He was an extraordinary sight, more than six feet of muscle and brawn dressed in a thin wet shirt and trousers that clung as if they'd been glued to his skin. An irritable shiver, almost certainly from the chill of evaporating alcohol, ran over him. Scowling, he reached up to remove his flat cap, revealing a shaggy mop of hair, several months past a good cut. The thick locks were a beautiful cool shade of amber shot with streaks of light gold. He was handsome despite his unkempt state. Very handsome. His blue eyes were alert with the devil's own intelligence, the cheekbones high, the nose straight and strong. A tawny beard obscured the line of his jaw- perhaps concealing a weak chin?- she couldn't tell. Regardless, he was a stunner.

Foolishness had never been an option in his life. He hadn’t acquired the knack for it. He should have known. Kisses, he’d learned through hard experience, complicated things, unless they were a means to a foregone conclusion or part of an ongoing sensual entanglement. He’d never had a kiss quite like that one. One he hadn’t planned. One that had seemed so . . . necessary. One that had nevertheless solved nothing. One that had led to him flattening himself behind a shrubbery and later, sneezing a tiny winged insect out of his nose on the walk back to the house. It had lodged there while he lay flat on his back, staring up at the crisp blue Autumn sky, contemplating his folly, listening to Miss Vale prevaricate wildly. He was almost sorry he hadn’t heard her invent a bawdy new verse to the Colin Eversea song.

The monstrous versions of himself and Hermione were gone: There was only Ron, standing there with the sword held slackly in his hand, looking down at the shattered remains of the locket on the flat rock. Slowly, Harry walked back to him, hardly knowing what to say or do. Ron was breathing heavily: His eyes were no longer red at all, but their normal blue; they were also wet. Harry stooped, pretending he had not seen, and picked up the broken Horcrux. Ron had pierced the glass in both windows: Riddle’s eyes were gone, and the stained silk lining of the locket was smoking slightly. The thing that had lived in the Horcrux had vanished; torturing Ron had been its final act. The sword clanged as Ron dropped it. He had sunk to his knees, his head in his arms. He was shaking, but not, Harry realized, from cold. Harry crammed the broken locket into his pocket, knelt down beside Ron, and placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. He took it as a good sign that Ron did not throw it off. “After you left,” he said in a low voice, grateful for the fact that Ron’s face was hidden, “she cried for a week. Probably longer, only she didn’t want me to see. There were loads of nights when we never even spoke to each other. With you gone…” He could not finish; it was only now that Ron was here again that Harry fully realized how much his absence had cost them. “She’s like my sister,” he went on. “I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. It’s always been like that. I thought you knew.” Ron did not respond, but turned his face away from Harry and wiped his nose noisily on his sleeve. Harry got to his feet again and walked to where Ron’s enormous rucksack lay yards away, discarded as Ron had run toward the pool to save Harry from drowning. He hoisted it onto his own back and walked back to Ron, who clambered to his feet as Harry approached, eyes bloodshot but otherwise composed. “I’m sorry,” he said in a thick voice. “I’m sorry I left. I know I was a--a--” He looked around at the darkness, as if hoping a bad enough word would swoop down upon him and claim him. “You’ve sort of made up for it tonight,” said Harry. “Getting the sword. Finishing off the Horcrux. Saving my life.” “That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was,” Ron mumbled. “Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was,” said Harry. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for years.” Simultaneously they walked forward and hugged, Harry gripping the still-sopping back of Ron’s jacket. “And now,” said Harry as they broke apart, “all we’ve got to do is find the tent again.

Molly had been a young girl when the Stevens first came to “Seaview,” and Mr. Stevens still treated her rather as a child. Her plainness was almost an affliction: her large flat face, her podgy nose and pale, freckled skin would have been repulsive without the unfailing good nature and patience that turned physical ugliness into a trivial thing. A stout little dynamo of energy worked her squat, stunted body and drove it unceasingly from dawn till night. She never seemed to tire and she never lost her cheerful smile.

You always said I knew nothing, but that was the place to begin. I would never claim to know what women in prison dreamed about, or the rights of beauty, or what the night’s magic held. If I thought for a second I did, I’d never have the chance to find out, to see it whole, to watch it emerge and reveal itself. I don’t have to put my face on every cloud, be the protagonist of every random event. Who am I, Mother? I’m not you. That’s why you wish I were dead. You can’t shape me anymore. I am the uncontrolled element, the random act, I am forward movement in time. You think you can see me? Then tell me, who am I? You don’t know. I am nothing like you. My nose is different, flat at the bridge, not sharp as a fold in rice paper. My eyes aren’t ice blue, tinted with your peculiar mix of beauty and cruelty. They are dark as bruises on the inside of an arm, they never smile. You forbid me to cry? I’m no longer yours to command. You used to say I had no imagination. If by that you meant I could feel shame, and remorse, you were right. I can’t remake the world just by willing it so. I don’t know how to believe my own lies. It takes a certain kind of genius.

One of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with black curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad and flat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantly compressed into an impudent, ironical—it might almost be called a malicious—smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned for a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A special feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which gave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of his hard look, and at the same time a sort of passionate and suffering expression which did not harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile and keen, self-satisfied bearing. He wore a large fur—or rather astrachan—overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while his neighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a Russian November night entirely unprepared. His wide sleeveless mantle with a large cape to it—the sort of cloak one sees upon travellers during the winter months in Switzerland or North Italy—was by no means adapted to the long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St. Petersburg.

While this dump was reviled by humans, to Shadow it was a magical place of the most succulent fragrances . . . of rotting meat and fermenting apples. He braved the ravaging moths and the mad hornets to romp among the piles of garbage, intoxicated by the smells of life on earth—of brine in the pick-ling vat, coffee grounds, blackened toast, the flat, moist plug of apple tobacco, decaying books, broken hens’ eggs, sawdust shavings, and the whiff of the cold metal in the mattress springs. His nose trembled in the flutter of his nostrils. The odor of metal was so potent he could taste the steel in his mouth.

The explosion was deafening; a huge cloud of fire rolled out the window after us, its immense heat brushing my face as we tumbled into the snow. We hit the ground and rolled. Flaming debris from the house came down around us; Griffin shoved me flat on my back, covering us both with his heavy coat. The echoes of the explosion reflected back across the river, then slowly dwindled away, like dying thunder. The leaping flames threw warm light onto the falling snow, turning it into a storm of sparks pouring down from the heavens. Griffin started to push himself off of me, then stoped. His hands were braced on either side of my shoulders, his legs twined with mine. Mt heart pounded, my palms sweated, and I was suddenly, acutely aware of how close his face was to mine. "You're a madman," he whispered. "An utter madman." "Perhaps," I allowed. "But it worked." The leaping light from the burning house painted his features in gold, highlighting his patrician nose and finding threads of brown and blue in his green eyes. His pupils widened, the irises contracting to silver. "Whatever am I going to do with you?" he murmured. The warmth of his breath feathered over my skin. Heat collected in my groin, my lips. My mouth was dry, my voice hoarse, and perhaps he was right and it was madness when I whispered, "Whatever you want." A shiver went through his body, perhaps because we were lying on the cold ground. But instead of getting up, he leaned closer, his overlong hair tumbling over his forehead. He paused, his mouth almost touching mine, his eyes seeming to ask a question. It was madness; it was folly; it was sheer selfishness. I was delusional, misguided, wrong, out of control. I needed to pull back, to say something sane, to re-establish mastery over myself. I could not do this. I could not take the risk. Later tonight, I'd relive this moment in my lonely bed and wonder if I'd done the right thing. But at least that would be familiar, would be something I knew how to cope with. And yet the very thought felt like dying. I surged forward, crossing the final, tiny gap and pressing my lips to his. It was awkward and desperate and frantic, but the feel of his mouth against mine sent a bolt of electricity straight down my spine. Just a moment, just this one kiss, surely that would be enough... Then he kissed me back, and it would never be enough, a thousand years of this would not be enough. His mouth was hungry and insistent, his tongue probing my lips, asking for greater intimacy. I granted it, tongues swirling together, mine followed his when it retreated and tasting him in return. There came the clanging of bells in the distance, the fire company alerted to the explosion. Griffin drew back a fraction. His breath was as raged as mine, which left me dazed with wonder. "My dear," he whispered against my lips. Then he swallowed convulsively. "We should leave, before the fire companies come." "Y-Yes." It was amazing I managed that much coherence. He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against mine, our breaths mingling. "Will you come home with me?" Was he asking...? "Yes." Oh, God, yes. His lips curved into a smile.

Tobias,” I say anyway. My hands shake, but not from fear this time—from anger. “Where is he? What are you doing to him?” “I see no reason to provide that information,” says Jeanine. “And since you are all out of leverage, I see no way for you to give me a reason, unless you would like to change the terms of our agreement.” I want to scream at her that of course, of course I would rather know about Tobias than about my Divergence, but I don’t. I can’t make hasty decisions. She will do what she intends to do to Tobias whether I know about it or not. It is more important that I fully understand what is happening to me. I breathe in through my nose, and our through my nose. I shake my hands. I sit down in the chair. “Interesting,” she says. “Aren’t you supposed to be running a faction and planning a war?” I say. “What are you doing here, running tests on a sixteen-year-old girl?” “You choose different ways of referring to yourself depending on what is convenient,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “Sometimes you insist that you are not a little girl, and sometimes you insist that you are. What I am curious to know is: How do you really view yourself? As one or the other? As both? As neither?” I make my voice flat and factual, like hers. “I see no reason to provide that information.” I hear a faint snort. Peter is covering his mouth. Jeanine glares at him, and his laughter effortlessly transforms into a coughing fit.

We didn’t talk any more about Boris’s love interest, at least not that day, but then a few days later when I came out of math I saw him looming over this girl by the lockers. While Boris wasn’t especially tall for his age, the girl was tiny, despite how much older than us she seemed: flat-chested, scrawny-hipped, with high cheekbones and a shiny forehead and a sharp, shiny, triangle-shaped face. Pierced nose. Black tank top. Chipped black fingernail polish; streaked orange-and-black hair; flat, bright, chlorine-blue eyes, outlined hard, in black pencil. Definitely she was cute – hot, even; but the glance she slid over me was anxiety-provoking, something about her of a bitchy fast-food clerk or maybe a mean babysitter.

Dude,” Percy said, “first off, you heard Athena—don’t blame my nose. Second, Gaea’s the earth. She can pop up anywhere she wants. Besides, she told us she was going to do this. She said the first thing on her to-do list was destroying our camp. Question is, how do we stop her?” Frank looked at Zeus. “Um, sir, Your Majesty, can’t you gods just pop over there with us? You’ve got the chariots and the magic powers and whatnot.” “Yes!” Hazel said. “We defeated the giants together in two seconds. Let’s all go—” “No,” Zeus said flatly. “No?” Jason asked. “But, Father—” Zeus’s eyes sparked with power, and Jason realized he’d pushed his dad as far as he could for today...and maybe for the next few centuries. “That’s the problem with prophecies,” Zeus growled.

But about the gentleman thing.” She waved her glass. “I want to make it plain as the nose on your face. I can stand anything in the book but gentlemen. Because I've spent a lot of time, too much time with them, and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals. So they say to themselves one fine morning: 'What can I be that's no trouble at all and that doesn't amount to a damned thing, but yet will make everyone look up to me?' The answer's simple. Be a gentleman. Take life flat on your back, cry in private, and then in a well-modulated voice.

Linnaeus divided the genus Homo into two species, Homo sapiens (man) and Homo troglodytes (ape), and divided Homo sapiens into four natural varieties—H. sapiens americanus, H. sapiens europaeus, H. sapiens asiaticus, and H. sapiens afer—linked to the four known regions of the world, America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. He color-coded the subspecies red, white, yellow, and black and assigned each a set of physical, personality, cultural, and social traits. Linnaeus was influenced by the classical concept of the Great Chain of Being described by Saint Thomas Aquinas, which placed everything in the universe—from stones to angels—in a grand hierarchy established by God. At the pinnacle of beauty and intelligence Linnaeus placed H. sapiens europaeus: “Vigorous, muscular. Flowing blond hair. Blue eyes. Very smart, inventive. Covered by tight clothing. Ruled by law.” H. sapiens americanus, according to Linnaeus, was “Ill-tempered, impassive. Thick straight black hair; wide nostrils; harsh face; beardless. Stubborn, contented, free. Paints himself with red lines. Ruled by custom.” Linnaeus described H. sapiens asiaticus as “Melancholy, stern. Black hair; dark eyes. Strict, haughty, greedy. Covered by loose garments. Ruled by opinion.” And at the bottom, he placed H. sapiens afer: “Sluggish, lazy. Black kinky hair; silky skin; flat nose; thick lips; females with genital flap and elongated breasts. Crafty, slow, careless. Covered by grease. Ruled by caprice.” Here lies the origin of the color scheme for mankind American children still sing about in Sunday school: red, yellow, black, and white.

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing. In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay blowing their whistles. The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying. Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down to the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again-quiet and magical. Its normal life returns. The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress-tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora's emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong's grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale through the junk in the grass-grown lot for some pan or piece of wood or metal he needs for the boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora's-- the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. Callers arrive at Western Biological to see Doc, and he crosses the street to Lee Chong's for five quarts of beer. How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise-- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream-- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will on to a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.

Her hand just above my knee, the palm flat and soft against my jeans and her index finger making slow, lazy circles that crept toward the inside of my thigh, and with one layer between us, God I wanted her. And lying there, amid the tall, still grass and beneath the star-drunk sky, listening to the just-this-side-of-inaudible sound of her rhythmic breathing and the noisy silence of the bullfrogs, the grasshoppers, the distant cars rushing endlessly on I-65, I thought it might be a fine time to say the Three Little Words. And I steeled myself to say them as I stared up at that starriest night, convinced myself that she felt it, too, that her hand so alive and vivid against my leg was more than playful, and fuck Lara and fuck Jake because I do, Alaska Young, I do love you and what else matters but that and my lips parted to speak and before I could even begin to breathe out the words, she said, “It’s not life or death, the labyrinth.” “Um, okay. So what is it?” “Suffering,” she said. “Doing wrong and having wrong things happen to you. That’s the problem. Bolívar was talking about the pain, not about the living or dying. How do you get out of the labyrinth of suffering?” “What’s wrong?” I asked. And I felt the absence of her hand on me. “Nothing’s wrong. But there’s always suffering, Pudge. Homework or malaria or having a boyfriend who lives far away when there’s a good-looking boy lying next to you. Suffering is universal. It’s the one thing Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims are all worried about.” I turned to her. “Oh, so maybe Dr. Hyde’s class isn’t total bullshit.” And both of us lying on our sides, she smiled, our noses almost touching, my unblinking eyes on hers, her face blushing from the wine, and I opened my mouth again but this time not to speak, and she reached up and put a finger to my lips and said, “Shh. Shh. Don’t ruin it.

In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm. My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect. Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him. I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting. One chance. What the heck. Neil shook his head at me, smiling. “God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors. “You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy--and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.) The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy. “I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly. The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve. He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me. “Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly. Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself. And with that the pilot took off and disappeared from view. Mick and Henry were laughing. “If you pull this one off, Bear, I will eat my socks. You just love to push it, don’t you?” Mick said, smiling. “Yep, good try, but you aren’t going to see him again, I guarantee you,” Henry added. Thanks to the pilot’s big balls, he was wrong. The heli returned empty, I leapt aboard, and with the rotors whirring at full power to get some grip in the thin air, the bird slowly lifted into the air. The stall warning light kept buzzing away as we fought against gravity, but then the nose dipped and soon we were skimming over the rocks, away from base camp and down the glacier. I was out of there--and Mick was busy taking his socks off.

Life is an adventure to be certain," Milo replied. "Especially if one has a nose for trouble. Isn't that right, my perceptive darling?" Sometimes one could have too much adventure. I was suddenly very weary of this holiday. It would be nice to get back to England, to rest at Thornecrest and enjoy our London flat. I was ready to go home. "Can we go back to London at once?" I asked Milo. "Very well, darling." He came to me and pulled me into his arms. "But let's not start packing just yet." I looked up at him smiling. "You don't mind us going home? I know how much you love your nights spent running wild in Paris." "Je n'aime que toi, ma chérie," he murmured, leaning to kiss me. Emile seemed to appreciate the sentiment for he screeched loudly, clapping his paws together with approval and smacking his lips. Milo glanced at the monkey with an annoyed sigh. "That will do, Emile. You've been most helpful, but I'm afraid I've had enough of your interference for one day." And then he swept me up into his arms and carried me to the bedroom, kicking the door firmly closed behind us.

The mochi gradually began to take on color and swell out. When their skin seared with brown grill marks started to split open, revealing glimpses of their sparkling white insides, Rika took them out of the toaster. She perched a generous wedge of butter on top of each, and prepared the sugared soy sauce in a small dish. Watching as the molten butter flowed gently over both the burnished surface and the soft white interior, her stomach rumbled. Though she knew it was bad manners to eat standing up, she stuffed one of the mochi in her mouth right there at the counter. The heady aroma that rose up through her nose, the crispiness of the skin as it broke open beneath her teeth, the silkiness of the gooey insides that spread themselves flat across every bit of flesh in her mouth and refused to let go... The hot butter fused the sugar and soy sauce together, clinging to the sweet, soft, shapeless mass in her mouth, swimming around its outside as though to ascertain its contours. The grease of the butter melded with the grit of the sugar and the pungent soy sauce. By the time she'd finished chewing, the roots of her teeth were trembling pleasurably.

All of this could fall flat, feel too much like a caricature of a Sicilian trattoria, if the food itself weren't so damn good: arancini, saffron-scented rice fried into crunchy, greaseless golf balls; polpette di pesce spada, swordfish meatballs with a taste so deep and savory they might as well be made of dry-aged beef; and a superlative version of caponata di melanzane, that ubiquitous Sicilian starter of eggplant, capers, and various other vegetation, stewed into a sweet and savory jam that you will want to smear on everything. Everything around you screams Italy, but those flavors on the end of the fork? The sweet-and-sour tandem, the stain of saffron, the grains of rice: pure Africa. The pasta: even better. Chewy noodles tinted jet black with squid ink and tossed with sautéed rings and crispy legs of calamari- a sort of nose-to-tail homage to the island's cherished cephalopod. And Palermo's most famous dish, pasta con le sarde, a bulge of thick spaghetti strewn with wild fennel, capers, raisins, and, most critically, a half dozen plump sardines slow cooked until they melt into a briny ocean ragù. Sweet, salty, fatty, funky- Palermo in a single bite.

And in a few steps, she’s outside. The smell is on her before she reaches the trees—the scent of resin and wide western places. The clean smell of her childhood’s only untouched days. The music of the trees, too, tuning the wind. She remembers. Her nose slips into one of those dark fissures between the flat terra-cotta plates. She falls into the smell, a devastating whiff of two hundred million years ago. She can’t imagine what such perfume was ever meant to do. But it does something to her now. Mind control. It’s neither vanilla nor turpentine, but replete with highlights of each. A shot of spiritual butterscotch. A sprig of pineapple incense. It smells like nothing but itself, pungent and sublime. She breathes in, eyes closed, the tree’s real name. She stands with her nose in the bark, perversely intimate. She doses herself for a long time, like a hospice patient self-administering the morphine. Chemicals rush down her windpipe, through the bloodstream to her body’s provinces, across the blood-brain barrier and into her thoughts. The smell grips her brain stem until she and the dead man are fishing side by side again, under the pine shade where the fish hide, in the soul’s innermost national park.

build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar--except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else. When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her, too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a sober gray; they had taken the red from her cheeks and lips, and they were gray also. She was thin and gaunt, and never smiled now. When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at. Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke. It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings. Toto was not gray; he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose. Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly. Today, however, they were not playing. Uncle Henry sat upon the doorstep and looked anxiously at the sky, which was even grayer than usual. Dorothy stood in the door with Toto in her arms, and looked at the sky too. Aunt Em was washing the

What's that?" he asked. "A balance sheet," I said. "To keep track of your payments." He asked whether Pop had written it or me. When I answered truthfully, he handed the paper back like the useless thing it was. "Thank you," he said. "I won't be needing this." Which took me by surprise and set me stammering how it was proof he was making his payments, and how he should take it because it was the right and proper way to do business. "The rules aren't the same for me as they are for you," Joseph replied, shaking his head. "Don't you know that, Will?" Which put my nose out of joint so bad that I told him he was being rude, and that I was only trying to do him a favor at no small risk to myself. Joseph's face went blank as the cloudless sky overhead. He eyed the receipt. Said, "Thank you, Mr. William. But I can't accept." And got back on his bicycle. "That all you got to say?" I near shouted, frustrated at how easily he'd turned my good intentions into a fool's errand. And the quickest flash of hate you ever did see danced across the dark of his eyes. I stood there, feeling awkward and a fool. Joseph put one foot on a pedal and said, real quiet, "If you'll excuse me, I've a funeral to attend." Only then did I notice the band of mourning black around his upper arm. "Who died?" I asked stupidly. Joseph's eyes were flat. "Nobody important, Mr. William. Only a Negro boy like me.

Dragging his lips down between her thighs, Kev rooted in the hot silk of her, finding the delicate blunt point of her clitoris, using the velvet flat of his tongue to paint and caress. She clutched his head more tightly and sobbed his name, the throaty sound exciting him. When the responsive movements of her hips took on a regular rhythm, he pulled his mouth from her and pushed her knees wide and apart. He took an eternity to ease into the lush clenching flesh. Fully seated, he wrapped his arms around her, securing her against his body. She wriggled, urging him to thrust, but he held still and fast and pressed his mouth to her ear, and whispered that he would make her come just like this, he would stay hard inside her as long as it took. Her ear turned scarlet, and she tightened and throbbed around him. "Please, move," she whispered, and he gently said no. "Please, move, please..." No. But after a while he began to flex his hips in a subtle rhythm. She whimpered and trembled as he drove into her, nudging deeper, relentless in his restraint. The climax broke over her finally, tearing low cries from her lips, bringing wild shudders to the surface. Kev was quiet, experiencing a release so acute and paralyzing that it robbed him of all sound. Her slender body pulled at him, milked him, enclosed him in delicate heat. The pleasure was so great it caused an unfamiliar stinging in his eyes and nose, and that shook him to his foundations.

Tonight Ray will tape the the drenched oasis inside of the silver bowl that sits on the top of the candelabra and fill it with the pale green hydrangeas, pink English garden roses, lilies of the valley, and extravagant lavender sweet peas that R.L., the local florist/antique dealer, delivered a few hours ago. The flowers are all soaking in their respective sugar water jugs in her kitchen- out of the direct sunlight, of course- as is the oasis which she'll mold into every bowl and vase in the house with a similar arrangement. She's even going to make an arrangement in a flat sweetgrass basket to hang on the front door and a round little pomander of pale green hydrangea with a sheer white ribbon for Little Hilda to hold as she greets the guests in the foyer. Ray is tempted to snip the last blossoms of gardenias growing secretly behind Cousin Willy's shed. In her estimation they are the quintessential wedding flower, with their intoxicating fragrance and their delicate cream petals surrounded by those dark, waxy leaves. She bought the seedlings when R.L. and the gals weren't looking at the Southern Gardener's Convention in Atlanta four years ago, and no one has any idea she's been growing them. Sometimes she worries that the fragrance will give her away, but they bloom the same time as the confederate jasmine, which grows along the lattice work of the shed, and she can always blame the thick smell on them. It would take a truly trained nose to pick the gardenias out, and Ray possesses the trained nose of the bunch.

I push my eye farther into the crack, smushing my cheek. The door rattles. Her arm freezes. The needle stops. Instantly, her shadow fills the room, a mountain on the wall. “Leidah?” I hold my breath. No hiding in the wood-box this time. Before I even have time to pull my eye away, the door opens. My mother's face, like the moon in the dark hallway. She squints and takes a step toward me. “Lei-lee?” I want to tell her I’ve had a nightmare about the Sisters, that I can’t sleep with all this whispering and worrying from her—and what are you sewing in the dark, Mamma? I try to move my lips, but I have no mouth. My tongue is gone; my nose is gone. I don’t have a face anymore. It has happened again. I am lying on my back, flatter than bread. My mother’s bare feet slap against my skin, across my belly, my chest. She digs her heel in, at my throat that isn’t there. I can see her head turning toward her bedroom. Snores crawl under the closed door. The door to my room is open, but she can’t see my bed from where she stands, can’t see that my bed is empty. She nods to herself: everything as it should be. Her foot grinds into my chin. The door to the sewing room closes behind her. I struggle to sit up. I wiggle my hips and jiggle my legs. It is no use. I am stuck, pressed flat into the grain of wood under me. But it’s not under me. It is me. I have become the floor. I know it’s true, even as I tell myself I am dreaming, that I am still in bed under the covers. My blood whirls inside the wood knots, spinning and rushing, sucking me down and down. The nicks of boot prints stomp and kick at my bones, like a bruise. I feel the clunk of one board to the next, like bumps of a wheel over stone. And then I am all of it, every knot, grain, and sliver, running down the hall, whooshing like a river, ever so fast, over the edge and down a waterfall, rushing from room to room. I pour myself under and over and through, feeling objects brush against me as I pass by. Bookshelves, bedposts, Pappa’s slippers, a fallen dressing gown, the stubby ends of an old chair. A mouse hiding inside a hole in the wall. Mor’s needle bobbing up and down. How is this possible? I am so wide, I can see both Mor and Far at the same time, even though they are in different rooms, one wide awake, the other fast asleep. I feel my father’s breath easily, sinking through the bed into me, while Mor’s breath fights against me, against the floor. In and out, each breath swimming away, away, at the speed of her needle, up up up in out in out outoutout—let me out, get me out, I want out. That’s what Mamma is thinking, and I hear it, loud and clear. I strain my ears against the wood to get back into my own body. Nothing happens. I try again, but this time push hard with my arms that aren’t there. Nothing at all. I stop and sink, letting go, giving myself into the floor. Seven, soon to be eight… it’s time, time’s up, time to go. The needle is singing, as sure as stitches on a seam. I am inside the thread, inside her head. Mamma is ticking—onetwothreefourfivesix— Seven. Seven what? And why is it time to go? Don’t leave me, Mamma. I beg her feet, her knees, her hips, her chest, her heart, my begging spreading like a big squid into the very skin of her. It’s then that I feel it. Something is happening to Mamma. Something neither Pappa nor I have noticed. She is becoming dust. She is drier than the wood I have become. - Becoming Leidah Quoted by copying text from the epub version using BlueFire e-reader.

A little later, strolling about the town, I, stopped into a shop near the museum, where they sold souvenirs and post-cards. I looked over the cards leisurely; the ones I liked best were soiled and wrinkled. The man, who spoke French fluently, offered to make the cards presentable. He asked me to wait a few minutes while he ran over to the house and cleaned and ironed them. He said he would make them look like new. I was so dumbfounded that before I could say anything he had disappeared, leaving me in charge of the shop. After a few minutes his wife came in. I thought she looked strange for a Greek woman. After a few words had passed I realized that she was French and she, when she learned that I hailed from Paris, was overjoyed to speak with me. We got along beautifully until she began talking about Greece. She hated Crete, she said. It was too dry, too dusty, too hot, too bare. She missed the beautiful trees of Normandy, the gardens with the high walls, the orchards, and so on. Didn't I agree with her? I said NO, flatly. "Monsieur!" she said, rising up in her pride and dignity, as if I had slapped her in the face. "I don't miss anything," I said, pressing the point home. "I think this is marvellous. I don't like your gardens with their high walls, I don't like your pretty little orchards and your well-cultivated-fields. I like this …" and I pointed outdobrs to the dusty road on which a sorely-laden donkey was plodding along dejectedly. "But it's not civilized," she said, in a sharp, shrill voice which reminded me of the miserly tobacconiste in the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire. "Je m'en fous da la civilisation européenne!" I blurted out. "Monsieur!" she said again, her feathers ruffled and her nose turning blue with malice. Fortunately her husband reappeared at this point with the post-cards which he had given a dry-cleaning.

Billy pulled her snug against his body, forgetting his arousal in the urgent need to give her comfort. He felt her stiffen, sought the reason, and realized she must have felt his erection. She shoved him away with the flat of her palms and stared up at him, her eyes wide with surprise. Or maybe shock was a better word. Billy knew instantly what he’d lost. The wariness in her gaze spoke for itself. She’d always trusted him implicitly. Like a brother. But it was a lover’s body she’d felt. He could see she was astonished that he’d become aroused by touching her. He let his hands drop to his sides. He didn’t think excuses would work, but he was willing to give them a try. His mouth curled up on one side in a cock-eyed grin. “Sorry about that. The feel of a female body does that to a man, whether he wants it to happen or not.” “It shouldn’t happen between us,” she said with certainty. “We’re friends.” He shrugged. “You’re female. I’m male. Sometimes it happens.” “Not to us,” she insisted. She stared into his face suspiciously. “Or has it?” “It might have happened once or twice. No big deal.” She stared at the visible bulge in his jeans, then glanced up at him, her face flushed and said, “It looks pretty big to me.” Billy couldn’t help grinning. “Summer, you can’t be this naïve. This is how a man reacts when he’s around an attractive woman.” “You find me attractive?” He saw the startled interest in her eyes and realized he’d opened another can of worms. He didn’t want her judging him as a prospective suitor. There was no way he could match up to the men her father presented to her on a silver platter. “Any man would find a pretty girl like you attractive,” he said, backpedaling as fast as he could. He flipped one of her golden curls back from her shoulder and said, “Curls this bouncy, and eyes like topaz jewels, and a nose this nosy.” He tapped her playfully on the nose. “What man wouldn’t react like I did?

Quote from "The Dish Keepers of Honest House" ....TO TWIST THE COLD is easy when its only water you want. Tapping of the toothbrush echoes into Ella's mind like footsteps clacking a cobbled street on a bitter, dry, cold morning. Her mind pushes through sleep her body craves. It catches her head falling into a warm, soft pillow. "Go back to bed," she tells herself. "You're still asleep," Ella mumbles, pushes the blanket off, and sits up. The urgency to move persuades her to keep routines. Water from the faucet runs through paste foam like a miniature waterfall. Ella rubs sleep-deprieved eyes, then the bridge of her nose and glances into the sink. Ella's eyes astutely fixate for one, brief millisecond. Water becomes the burgundy of soldiers exiting the drain. Her mouth drops in shock. The flow turns green. It is like the bubbling fungus of flockless, fishless, stagnating ponds. Within the iridescent glimmer of her thinking -- like a brain losing blood flow, Ella's focus is the flickering flashing of gray, white dust, coal-black shadows and crows lifting from the ground. A half minute or two trails off before her mind returns to reality. Ella grasps a toothbrush between thumb and index finger. She rests the outer palm against the sink's edge, breathes in and then exhales. Tension in the brow subsides, and her chest and shoulders drop; she sighs. Ella stares at pasty foam. It exits the drain as if in a race to clear the sink of negativity -- of all germs, slimy spit, the burgundy of imagined soldiers and oppressive plaque. GRASPING THE SILKY STRAND between her fingers, Ella tucks, pulls and slides the floss gently through her teeth. Her breath is an inch or so of the mirror. Inspections leave her demeanor more alert. Clouding steam of the image tugs her conscience. She gazes into silver glass. Bits of hair loosen from the bun piled at her head's posterior. What transforms is what she imagines. The mirror becomes a window. The window possesses her Soul and Spirit. These two become concerned -- much like they did when dishonest housekeepers disrupted Ella's world in another story. Before her is a glorious bird -- shining-dark-as-coal, shimmering in hues of purple-black and black-greens. It is likened unto The Raven in Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem of 1845. Instead of interrupting a cold December night with tapping on a chamber door, it rests its claws in the decorative, carved handle of a backrest on a stiff dining chair. It projects an air of humor and concern. It moves its head to and fro while seeking a clearer understanding. Ella studies the bird. It is surrounded in lofty bends and stretches of leafless, acorn-less, nearly lifeless, oak trees. Like fingers and arms these branches reach below. [Perhaps they are reaching for us? Rest assured; if they had designs on us, I would be someplace else, writing about something more pleasant and less frightening. Of course, you would be asleep.] Balanced in the branches is a chair. It is from Ella's childhood home. The chair sways. Ella imagines modern-day pilgrims of a distant shore. Each step is as if Mother Nature will position them upright like dolls, blown from the stability of their plastic, flat, toe-less feet. These pilgrims take fate by the hand. LIFTING A TOWEL and patting her mouth and hands, Ella pulls the towel through the rack. She walks to the bedroom, sits and picks up the newspaper. Thumbing through pages that leave fingertips black, she reads headlines: "Former Dentist Guilty of Health Care Fraud." She flips the page, pinches the tip of her nose and brushes the edge of her chin -- smearing both with ink. In the middle fold directly affront her eyes is another headline: "Dentist Punished for Misconduct." She turns the page. There is yet another: "Dentist guilty of urinating in surgery sink and using contaminated dental instruments on patients." This world contains those who are simply insane! Every profession has those who stray from goals....

In a matter of sixty short minutes, that thing could whisk Neil away to civilization, I thought. Hmm. My goodness, that was a beautiful prospect. Somehow I had to get on that chopper with him. I packed in thirty seconds flat, everything from the past three months. I taped a white cross onto my sleeve, and raced out to where Neil was sat waiting. One chance. What the heck. Neil shook his head at me, smiling. “God, you push it, Bear, don’t you?” he shouted over the noise of the rotors. “You’re going to need a decent medic on the flight,” I replied, with a smile. “And I’m your man.” (There was at least some element of truth in this: I was a medic and I was his buddy--and yes, he did need help. But essentially I was trying to pull a bit of a fast one.) The pilot shouted that two people would be too heavy. “I have to accompany him at all times,” I shouted back over the engine noise. “His feet might fall off at any moment,” I added quietly. The pilot looked back at me, then at the white cross on my sleeve. He agreed to drop Neil somewhere down at a lower altitude, and then come back for me. “Perfect. Go. I’ll be here.” I shook his hand firmly. Let’s just get this done before anyone thinks too much about it, I mumbled to myself. And with that the pilot took off and disappeared from view. Mick and Henry were laughing. “If you pull this one off, Bear, I will eat my socks. You just love to push it, don’t you?” Mick said, smiling. “Yep, good try, but you aren’t going to see him again, I guarantee you,” Henry added. Thanks to the pilot’s big balls, he was wrong. The heli returned empty, I leapt aboard, and with the rotors whirring at full power to get some grip in the thin air, the bird slowly lifted into the air. The stall warning light kept buzzing away as we fought against gravity, but then the nose dipped and soon we were skimming over the rocks, away from base camp and down the glacier. I was out of there--and Mick was busy taking his socks off. As we descended, I spotted, far beneath us, this lone figure sat on a rock in the middle of a giant boulder field. Neil’s two white “beacons” shining bright. I love it. I smiled. We picked Neil up, and in an instant we were flying together through the huge Himalayan valleys like an eagle freed. Neil and I sat back in the helicopter, faces pressed against the glass, and watched our life for the past three months become a shimmer in the distance. The great mountain faded into a haze, hidden from sight. I leaned against Neil’s shoulder and closed my eyes. Everest was gone.

No Mirrors in My Nana’s House” Sweet Honey in the Rock LYRICS BY YSAYE MARIA BARNWELL Sweet Honey in the Rock is a Grammy Award–winning vocal group of black women vocalists founded in 1973 by Bernice Johnson Reagon. The group’s members have changed during its long tenure, but it retains a core of five vocalists and a sign-language interpreter. Their performances are deeply embodied celebrations of black women’s lived experiences. The group’s name is derived from Psalm 81:16: “But you would be fed with the finest of wheat; with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.” Sign-language interpreter Dr. Ysaye Barnwell joined Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1979 and appears in more than thirty recordings with the group. She is the author of one of the group’s most popular recordings, “No Mirrors in My Nana’s House.” It is a stirring piece that reveals how the loving protection of black women can shield black girls from a painful world that seeks to negate their beauty and worth. In 1998 the lyrics became a children’s book published by Harcourt Brace. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. And the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). I never knew that my skin was too black. I never knew that my nose was too flat. I never knew that my clothes didn’t fit. I never knew there were things that I’d missed, cause the beauty in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun); . . . was in her eyes. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. And the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). I was intrigued by the cracks in the walls. I tasted, with joy, the dust that would fall. The noise in the hallway was music to me. The trash and the rubbish just cushioned my feet. And the beauty in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). . . . was in her eyes. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. And the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). The world outside was a magical place. I only knew love. I never knew hate, and the beauty in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun). . . . was in her eyes. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. There were no mirrors in my Nana’s house, no mirrors in my Nana’s house. And the beauty that I saw in everything was in her eyes (like the rising of the sun).

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

Did you just take something off?” I ask the darkness. “Sam,” she scolds. I roll onto my side to face her. “What was it?” I whisper. “Nothing,” she hisses back. But I can hear laughter in her voice and I love it. “You took your shorts off, didn’t you?” I say quietly. “Maybe.” “You did.” I wait a beat. Just long enough for silence to settle around the room. “Do you know what that means?” “It means you should shut up and go to sleep.” She giggles. God, that’s a pretty sound. She’s quiet for a second. “What does it mean?” she suddenly asks. “It means your naked thighs are pressed against my sheets.” I groan. I’m turning myself on. Or she’s turning me on. “Sam,” she warns. But she’s laughing, too. She’s so far away from me that I imagine she’s going to roll right off the bed. “You’re awfully far away.” “There’s a reason for that,” she whispers. “What is it?” I whisper back. “Because I have this awful feeling that you’re going to break my heart,” she says. No stutter, so she must have found something to tap on. But I kind of would prefer to think she didn’t. “I don’t plan to hurt you.” God, she might as well have stabbed me in the gut. “No one plans to hurt anyone else. It just happens. Even to good people. So I’m trying not to let myself like you.” “You like me?” “I like you a lot. Too much.” “You like me,” I sing-song in a playful voice. “Sam,” she says on a heavy breath. “What?” “Don’t hurt me, okay?” I can hear the quiver in her voice and tension radiates off of her even from across the bed. It’s like a wire pulled taut. I reach out a hand and feel for her stomach. When I find it, I lift the edge of her shirt and lay my palm on her hip. She squeals when I roll her over and pull her to me. “Sam!” she cries. I adjust her until her bottom is cradled by my thighs. The scent of her hair tickles my nose, so I brush it out of my face, pushing it down between us. It’s silky smooth and she smells so damn good. “Um, Sam…” I nuzzle my face into the nape of her neck and press a kiss to her shoulder. “What?” “You promised to stay on your side of the bed.” “I am on my side of the bed.” She chuckles. “Go to sleep.” She wiggles her bottom in my lap, and I have to pull back a little and adjust my junk. “Um…” “That’s just my dick. I told you he likes you. He’ll give up in a minute. Go to sleep.” My head is lying on my bicep and I feel her turn her head ever so slightly and press a kiss against the tender skin of my inner arm. Damn, that feels good. My hand creeps up a little. This is the first time I’ve touched her naked stomach, and my fingertips are a little greedy. Her hand covers mine and holds it flat against her belly. “Sorry,” I whisper. She doesn’t say anything. She just holds my hand there against her skin, wrapped in hers. After a couple of minutes, she goes soft in my arms. I realize in that moment that I am in serious trouble. Like the awful, terrible, no good, very bad kind. Because I think I’m in love with her. No. I don’t think it. I know it. What I don’t know is whether or not she’s capable of loving me back.

Kode’s older sister, Kira, was leaning over a display of jewelry, fisting a jade-green necklace in one hand. Her nose was two inches from the Braetic across the table, the two exchanging intimidating glares. Eena watched for a few seconds as Kira all but crawled over a pile of merchandise, her face scrunched up with resentment, yet enviably stunning as always. “Hey Kode,” the young queen whispered. “Hey, girl.” “What’s going on?” “Kira’s bartering.” Eena watched the fistful of necklace come within a whisker of smacking the merchant’s nose. “She isn’t going to hurt the guy, is she?” Kode snorted on a chuckle. “Not if the dude’s got any sense.” Validly concerned, Eena inched closer to the confrontation, straining to hear their growled dialogue. Kode and Niki crept closer too. Efren, however, stayed where he was, testing the flagpole’s ability to support his body weight. They watched the feisty Mishmorat hold up a small pouch and shake it in front of the Braetic’s eyes. Kira’s fingers curled like claws around the purse. She seemed to smirk for a second when the merchant flinched. In a blink he was back in her face again, shoving aside the purse. “What is she trying to trade?” Eena asked, her voice still hushed as though she might disturb the haggling taking place across the way. “Viidun coins,” Kode said. “Ef gave ‘em to her.” “Are they worth much?’ Kode grinned wryly, “He sure as hell don’t freakin’ think so.” Eena foresaw Niki’s disapproving smack to the back of Kode’s head before he even finished his sentence. He cursed at his girlfriend for the physical abuse, an unwise response that earned him an additional thump on the head. “Freakin’ tyrant,” Kode grumbled. “Vulgar grogfish,” Niki retorted. Still unable to hear well enough to satisfy her curiosity, Eena stole in closer to the scene of heated bartering. She stopped when Kira’s strong voice carried over the murmur of the crowd. Kode and his girlfriend were right on her heels. “This purse is worth ten of those gaudy necklaces. You oughta be payin’ me to take ‘em off your hands, Braetic!” “That alien money is worthless to me, Mishmorat. In all my life I’ve never left Moccobatran soil. And even if I were to take an interstellar trip someday, you’d never catch the likes of me on a barbarian planet like Rapador!” Kira jerked her head, causing her black, cascading hair to ripple over her shoulder. The action made the trader flinch again. His eyes tapered, appearing to fume over what he perceived as intentional bullying. “You ain’t gonna sell this crap to no one else,” the exotic Mishmorat said. “Be smart and take the money. Hell, you could make a dozen pieces of jewelry from these coins. Sell ’em all for ten times the worth of anything you got here.” The Braetic shoved his finger at Kira’s chest, breathing down her throat at the same time. “Why don’t you just take your pretty little backside away from my table and make your own Viidun jewelry. Sell it yourself and then come back with a reasonable offer for my necklace.” His palm opened flat, demanding she hand over the jade stones still in her fist. “You wanna make me?” Kira breathed. “What do you plan to do, steal it?” The merchant challenged her in a gesture, nostrils flaring. “I’m no thief, but I’m not above beating some sense into you ‘til you choose to barter like a respectable Braetic!” Caught up in the intense interaction, Kode supported his sister a little too loudly. “Teach the freakin’ crook a lesson, Sis!” Niki smacked her boyfriend upside the head without missing a beat.