Fur Trapping Quotes

When a trapper entered the valley, I reflected back on my life as an Indian. "I'm sure as an Indian living  on the plains, I trapped animals for their fur and for their meat, I took what I needed for survival, but doing it for profit somehow rubbed me the wrong way

Peter had stolen a knife. We were seven years old, and we'd caught a rabbit in a trap. We looked at each other darkly, a look I'll never forget, one of a shared savage thrill, like young wolves taking down their first kill. A spill of blood issued from the rabbits neck, a quick red streak across pristine white fur, slow enough to be cruel. I hadn't cut deep enough. Had I wanted to spare its life or prolong its misery? I've never wanted to know the answer.

She told no one of the otter. Garrett would want to trap it; Faina would ask her to draw it. She refused to confine it by any means because, in some strange way, she knew it was her heart. Living, twisting muscle beneath bristly damp fur. Breaking through thin ice, splashing in cold creek water, sliding belly-down across snow. Joyful, though it should have known better.

All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his stinginess.

They killed us with traps. They killed us with poisons. They killed us with snares. They killed us with guns. They killed us with knives. They strangled us. They trampled us. They tore us apart with hounds. They baited steel-jawed traps. They starved us out. They burned us alive. They withheld water. They killed all our prey. They slit our throats. They filled in our burrows. They drowned us. They trampled us under horses’ hooves. They bred us for fur and bludgeoned us to death. They kept us in cages so small with so many we burst apart. They suffocated us with poison gas. They strangled us. They put us in sacks and beat us with clubs. They cut out our tongues so we bled to death. They skinned us alive. They detonated rock and stopped our hearts all unknowing. They swung us by our tails and smashed our skulls against stones. They murdered us in each and every year. They murdered us on each and every day.

We went too far when we put on the fur of lynxes, Of weasels trapped in winter when they’ve lost their tan; We went too far when we let the fox assist us To warm the hide that houses the soul of Man. The reek of the leopard and the stink of the inky cat Striped handsomely with white, are in the concert hall; We sleekly writhe from under them, and are above all that; But, the concert over, back into our pelts we crawl.

Jimmy (to Allison):We'll be together in our bear's cave, and our squirrel's drey, and we'll live on honey, and nuts-lots and lots of nuts. And we'll sing songs about ourselves-about warm trees and snug caves, and lying in the sun. And you'll keep those big eyes on my fur, and help me keep my claws in order, because I'm a bit of a soppy, scruffy sort of a bear. And I'll see that you keep that sleek, bushy tail glistening as it should, because you're a very beautiful squirre, but you're none too bright either, so we've got to be careful. There are cruel steel traps lying about everywhere, just waiting for rather mad, slightly satanic, and very timid little animals.

Naked Girl and Mirror This is not I. I had no body once- only what served my need to laugh and run and stare at stars and tentatively dance on the fringe of foam and wave and sand and sun. Eyes loved, hands reached for me, but I was gone on my own currents, quicksilver, thistledown. Can I be trapped at last in that soft face? I stare at you in fear, dark brimming eyes. Why do you watch me with that immoderate plea- 'Look under these curled lashes, recognize that you were always here; know me-be me.' Smooth once-hermaphrodite shoulders, too tenderly your long slope runs, above those sudden shy curves furred with light that spring below your space. No, I have been betrayed. If I had known that this girl waited between a year and a year, I'd not have chosen her bough to dance upon. Betrayed, by that little darkness here, and here this swelling softness and that frightened stare from eyes I will not answer; shut out here from my own self, by its new body's grace- for I am betrayed by someone lovely. Yes, I see you are lovely, hateful naked girl. Your lips in the mirror tremble as I refuse to know or claim you. Let me go-let me be gone. You are half of some other who may never come. Why should I tend you? You are not my own; you seek that other-he will be your home. Yet I pity your eyes in the mirror, misted with tears; I lean to your kiss. I must serve you; I will obey. Some day we may love. I may miss your going, some day, though I shall always resent your dumb and fruitful years. Your lovers shall learn better, and bitterly too, if their arrogance dares to think I am part of you.

You know, I still feel in my wrists certain echoes of the pram-pusher’s knack, such as, for example, the glib downward pressure one applied to the handle in order to have the carriage tip up and climb the curb. First came an elaborate mouse-gray vehicle of Belgian make, with fat autoid tires and luxurious springs, so large that it could not enter our puny elevator. It rolled on sidewalks in a slow stately mystery, with the trapped baby inside lying supine, well covered with down, silk and fur; only his eyes moved, warily, and sometimes they turned upward with one swift sweep of their showy lashes to follow the receding of branch-patterned blueness that flowed away from the edge of the half-cocked hood of the carriage, and presently he would dart a suspicious glance at my face to see if the teasing trees and sky did not belong, perhaps to the same order of things as did rattles and parental humor. There followed a lighter carriage, and in this, as he spun along, he would tend to rise, straining at his straps; clutching at the edges; standing there less like the groggy passenger of a pleasure boat than like an entranced scientist in a spaceship; surveying the speckled skeins of a live, warm world; eyeing with philosophic interest the pillow he had managed to throw overboard; falling out himself when a strap burst one day. Still later he rode in one of those small contraptions called strollers; from initial springy and secure heights the child came lower and lower, until, when he was about one and a half, he touched ground in front of the moving stroller by slipping forward out of his seat and beating the sidewalk with his heels in anticipation of being set loose in some public garden. A new wave of evolution started to swell, gradually lifting him again from the ground, when, for his second birthday, he received a four-foot-long, silver-painted Mercedes racing car operated by inside pedals, like an organ, and in this he used to drive with a pumping, clanking noise up and down the sidewalk of the Kurfurstendamm while from open windows came the multiplied roar of a dictator still pounding his chest in the Neander valley we had left far behind.

I could feel Devon’s gaze on my face, reading my body language despite how hard I had tried to keep the irritation from showing. “They’d like you to move them to a tank they have set up. They’re going to trap them for this week and then let them go.” Of course they did. I managed to keep from rolling my eyes but between Devon’s presence and immediately being swarmed by otters the minute we got near the water, I end up wishing that I had. Otters are fast little mammals in the water; the fur keeps the water off their skin while making them slick and fast while in their preferred environment. The hard lesson I’d learned had been that they could scamper and bound pretty darn quickly on land. Nearly twenty of the brown friendly creatures swarmed up the banks of the tributary and made raucous sounds of greetings at me. Two vets stood nearby with nets and silly grins on their faces and a puny four otters ready to be transported to where ever in two tanks on trucks quietly humming with earth energy. Mags and Evan had backed up when I’d been swarmed but Devon had stuck by my side and seemed highly amused by the otters climbing over and around him to get to me. “They weren’t kidding about you and otters.” I shoot him a ‘no duh’ look and scoop up a pair to hand off to one of the Earth Elementals. We were saturating their habitat with majick, we’d been asked not to use majick on them, and so catching my willing victims by hand was the way I was going to do my task...

You should not torture or kill anyone for being a witch, or anyone with a different faith, or anyone with no faith at all. You should not prohibit the free expression of ideas, the free exercise of one’s conscience, or the free assembly of peacefully organized people. You should never enslave or beat into submission anyone anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances for the express purpose of servitude, nor treat any person as less than a human being, ever. You should not treat women as inferior to men, but rather with equal respect and dignity as equally valued members of society. You should not abuse animals, trap them, raise them in factory farms, hunt them for their furs, or needlessly experiment on them.

I drink to the health of the child prodigy who finally met the gentleman with the golden ass. Vive little Sébastien, he’ll grow up. And the Schubert song that you said you only played for me, you little viper, you played it for him, your fingers melting on the notes like butter. You’re selling yourself. You’re giving yourself to a fur-trader, a man who’s going to kill seals on their sacred ground, who’s going to set traps for wolves in the wildest, most beautiful depths of the forests, who burns their territory — a merchant whom Jesus himself chased out of the temple! You’re the one who is riff-raff, not the man who kisses me on the mouth at the public pool! That’s what happens when you think you’re delicate, different from the others: you get yourself recognized by a pig. You’ve been recognized, now go lick his feet and anything else you want.

I understand she didn't take very good care of Prince Cardan.' I am thinking of the crystal globe in Eldred's rooms and the memory trapped inside. 'It wasn't as though she didn't dress him in velvets or furs; it's that she left them on until they grew ragged. Nor was it that she didn't feed him the most delectable cuts of meat and cake; but she forgot him for long enough that he had to scavenge for food in between. I don't think she loved him, but then I don't think she loved anyone. He was petted and fed wine and adored, then forgotten. But for all that, if he was bad with her, he was worse without her. They are cut from the same cloth.' I shudder, imagining the loneliness of that life, the anger. The desire for love. There is no banquet too abundant for a starving man. 'If you're looking for reasons why he disappointed you,' Oriana says, 'by all accounts, Prince Cardan was a disappointment from the beginning.

the following prayer by Dr. Jane Goodall, who was named a UN Messenger of Peace for her continued world efforts, she seems to touch on most aspects of world conflict as we know them today and as they pertain to all living things. Prayer for World Peace We pray to the great Spiritual Power in which we live and move and have our being. We pray that we may at all times keep our minds open to new ideas and shun dogma; that we may grow in our understanding of the nature of all living beings and our connectedness with the natural world; that we may become ever more filled with generosity of spirit and true compassion and love for all life; that we may strive to heal the hurts that we have inflicted on nature and control our greed for material things, knowing that our actions are harming our natural world and the future of our children; that we may value each and every human being for who he is, for who she is, reaching to the spirit that is within,knowing the power of each individual to change the world. We pray for social justice, for the alleviation of the crippling poverty that condemns millions of people around the world to lives of misery—hungry, sick, and utterly without hope. We pray for the children who are starving,who are condemned to homelessness, slave labor, and prostitution, and especially for those forced to fight, to kill and torture even members of their own family. We pray for the victims of violence and war, for those wounded in body and for those wounded in mind. We pray for the multitudes of refugees, forced from their homes to alien places through war or through the utter destruction of their environment. We pray for suffering animals everywhere, for an end to the pain caused by scientific experimentation, intensive farming, fur farming, shooting, trapping, training for entertainment, abusive pet owners, and all other forms of exploitation such as overloading and overworking pack animals, bull fighting, badger baiting, dog and cock fighting and so many more. We pray for an end to cruelty, whether to humans or other animals, for an end to bullying, and torture in all its forms. We pray that we may learn the peace that comes with forgiving and the strength we gain in loving; that we may learn to take nothing for granted in this life; that we may learn to see and understand with our hearts; that we may learn to rejoice in our being. We pray for these things with humility; We pray because of the hope that is within us, and because of a faith in the ultimate triumph of the human spirit; We pray because of our love for Creation, and because of our trust in God. We pray, above all, for peace throughout the world. I love this beautiful and magnanimous prayer. Each request is spelled out clearly and specifically, and it asks that love, peace, and kindness be shown to all of earth’s creatures, not just its human occupants.

Sleepless City (Brooklyn Bridge Nocturne)" Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one. No one sleeps. Lunar creatures sniff and circle the dwellings. Live iguanas will come to bite the men who don’t dream, and the brokenhearted fugitive will meet on street corners an incredible crocodile resting beneath the tender protest of the stars. Out in the world, no one sleeps. No one, no one. No one sleeps. There is a corpse in the farthest graveyard complaining for three years because of an arid landscape in his knee; and a boy who was buried this morning cried so much they had to call the dogs to quiet him. Life is no dream. Watch out! Watch out! Watch out! We fall down stairs and eat the humid earth, or we climb to the snow’s edge with the choir of dead dahlias. But there is no oblivion, no dream: raw flesh. Kisses tie mouths in a tangle of new veins and those in pain will bear it with no respite and those who are frightened by death will carry it on their shoulders. One day horses will live in the taverns and furious ants will attack the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cattle. Another day we’ll witness the resurrection of dead butterflies, and still walking in a landscape of gray sponges and silent ships, we’ll see our ring shine and rose spill from our tongues. Watch out! Watch out! Watch out! Those still marked by claws and cloudburst, that boy who cries because he doesn’t know bridges exist, or that corpse that has nothing more than its head and one shoe— they all must be led to the wall where iguanas and serpents wait, where the bear’s teeth wait, where the mummified hand of a child waits and the camel’s fur bristles with a violent blue chill. Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one. No one sleeps. But if someone closes his eyes, whip him, my children, whip him! Let there be a panorama of open eyes and bitter inflamed wounds. Out in the world, no one sleeps. No one. No one. I’ve said it before. No one sleeps. But at night, if someone has too much moss on his temples, open the trap doors so he can see in moonlight the fake goblets, the venom, and the skull of the theaters.

Antonia Valleau cast the first shovelful of dirt onto her husband’s fur-shrouded body, lying in the grave she’d dug in their garden plot, the only place where the soil wasn’t still rock hard. I won’t be breakin’ down. For the sake of my children, I must be strong. Pain squeezed her chest like a steel trap. She had to force herself to take a deep breath, inhaling the scent of loam and pine. I must be doing this. She drove the shovel into the soil heaped next to the grave, hefted the laden blade, and dumped the earth over Jean-Claude, trying to block out the thumping sound the soil made as it covered him. Even as Antonia scooped and tossed, her muscles aching from the effort, her heart stayed numb, and her mind kept playing out the last sight of her husband. The memory haunting her, she paused to catch her breath and wipe the sweat off her brow, her face hot from exertion in spite of the cool spring air. Antonia touched the tips of her dirty fingers to her lips. She could still feel the pressure of Jean-Claude’s mouth on hers as he’d kissed her before striding out the door for a day of hunting. She’d held up baby Jacques, and Jean-Claude had tapped his son’s nose. Jacques had let out a belly laugh that made his father respond in kind. Her heart had filled with so much love and pride in her family that she’d chuckled, too. Stepping outside, she’d watched Jean-Claude ruffle the dark hair of their six-year-old, Henri. Then he strode off, whistling, with his rifle carried over his shoulder. She’d thought it would be a good day—a normal day. She assumed her husband would return to their mountain home in the afternoon before dusk as he always did, unless he had a longer hunt planned. As Antonia filled the grave, she denied she was burying her husband. Jean-Claude be gone a checkin’ the trap line, she told herself, flipping the dirt onto his shroud. She moved through the nightmare with leaden limbs, a knotted stomach, burning dry eyes, and a throat that felt as though a log had lodged there. While Antonia shoveled, she kept glancing at her little house, where, inside, Henri watched over the sleeping baby. From the garden, she couldn’t see the doorway. She worried about her son—what the glimpse of his father’s bloody body had done to the boy. Mon Dieu, she couldn’t stop to comfort him. Not yet. Henri had promised to stay inside with the baby, but she didn’t know how long she had before Jacques woke up. Once she finished burying Jean-Claude, Antonia would have to put her sons on a mule and trek to where she’d found her husband’s body clutched in the great arms of the dead grizzly. She wasn’t about to let his last kill lie there for the animals and the elements to claim. Her family needed that meat and the fur. She heard a sleepy wail that meant Jacques had awakened. Just a few more shovelfuls. Antonia forced herself to hurry, despite how her arms, shoulders, and back screamed in pain. When she finished the last shovelful of earth, exhausted, Antonia sank to her knees, facing the cabin, her back to the grave, placing herself between her sons and where their father lay. She should go to them, but she was too depleted to move.

I recently visited New Zealand and learned that it has a very diverse ecosystem. Until the arrival of humans, it was populated almost entirely by birds. They occupied every niche in the food chain, from tiny ɻightless things to predators so enormous they could snatch a hundred-pound prey for dinner. For millions of years, birds dominated their man-less, mammal-less world, a universe of feathers, beaks, and talons, knowing of no other form of higher life. The birds acquired a host of abilities and natural defenses optimal for their environment. But then in the thirteenth century, while the Europeans were still busy with their crusades, Polynesian explorers came, and with them came rats—with fur instead of feathers, teeth instead of beaks, and tiny paws instead of fearsome talons. The defense mechanisms that worked well against other birds failed against the rats. Small ɻightless birds who, when sensing danger, would remain perfectly still to avoid being spotted by predators ɻying overhead, would do the same when encountering a rat. Fighting for its life, in its passive way, the little bird focused its every eʃort on not moving a single muscle—only to be gobbled up where it stood. The scientific term for animals like the little bird who had not encountered rats or humans is naïve. I find this charming, as if the little bird existed in a moral universe of which his New Zealand was a kind of Eden, its inhabitants living a peaceful existence disrupted only by the victimization of a cunning intruder, preying on their relative innocence. I often think the people I encounter are naïve, but only because they may never have encountered someone quite like me. Sociopaths see things that no one else does because they have diʃerent expectations about the world and the people in it. While you and observer from certain harsh truths, the sociopath remains undistracted. We are like rats on an island of birds. I have never identified with the little bird, trapped by fear and an instinct for passivity, the wide-eyed victim of circumstance. I have never pined for an Eden of peace on earth and goodwill toward men. I am the rat, and I will take every advantage I can without apology or excuse. And there are others like me.

Here are your choices, as I see them. First, you could go to Hampshire in a cloud of social scorn, and content yourself with the knowledge that at least you didn’t get trapped into a loveless marriage. Or you could marry a man who wants you beyond anything, and live like a queen.” He paused. “And don’t forget the country house and carriage.” Poppy could not contain a smile. “Bribery again.” “I’ll throw in the castle and tiara,” Harry said ruthlessly. “Gowns, furs, a yacht—” “Hush,” Poppy whispered, and touched his lips gently with her fingers, not knowing how else to make him stop. She took a deep breath, hardly able to believe what she was about to say. “I’ll settle for a betrothal ring. A small, simple one.” Harry stared at her as if he were afraid to trust his own ears. “Will you?” “Yes,” Poppy said, her voice a bit suffocated. “Yes, I will marry you.

Audrey,” Beatrix implored, “do let me sit next to Lord Annandale.” As if it were some coveted privilege. “If you insist.” Audrey leaped from the settee as if she had been launched by a spring mechanism. Before Beatrix took her place, she bent to rummage beneath the settee. Dragging out a drowsing gray cat, she settled it on Annandale’s lap. “Here you are. Nothing warms you faster than a cat in your lap. Her name is Lucky. She’ll purr if you pet her.” The old man regarded it without expression. And to Christopher’s astonishment, the old man began to stroke the sleek gray fur. “This cat is missing a leg,” he remarked to Beatrix. “Yes, I would have named her Nelson, after the one-armed admiral, but she’s female. She belonged to the cheesemaker until her foot was caught in a trap.” “Why did you name her Lucky?” Annandale asked. “I hoped it would change her fortunes.” “And did it?” “Well, she’s sitting in the lap of an earl, isn’t she?” Beatrix pointed out, and Annandale laughed outright. He touched the cat’s remaining paw. “She is fortunate to have been able to adapt.” “She was determined,” Beatrix said. “You should have seen the poor thing, not long after the amputation. She kept trying to walk on the missing leg, or jump down from a chair, and she would stumble and lose her balance. But one day, she woke up and seemed to have accepted the fact that the leg was gone for good. And she became nearly as agile as before.” She added significantly, “The trick was forgetting about what she had lost…and learning to go on with what she had left.” Annandale gave her a fascinated stare, his lips curving. “What a clever young woman you are.

We are used to danger," the faceless voice assured her. "It comes with our job. Every day we are expected to carry untamed pastries and savage cheeses, advance down corridors to see whether assassins have left traps, cover for the mistakes of our betters, and risk our lives for members of the Court. We look out for our own because nobody else will. Do you know how many courtiers have been willing to risk their lives for one of us?" "No. How many?" "One," came the answer. "Precisely one in five hundred years." The sedan door opened. Pulling off her goggles, Neverfell stepped out into the low-ceilinged alcove just off the silent thoroughfare, the walls etched with the whorls and rib frills of fossilized sea things. She turned toward the man who had been speaking with her, the owner of the soft-as-fur voice, and found herself looking into the face of the manservant she had saved at the first banquet. "Good luck," he said, and with that he and his fellow servant lifted the sedan and trotted away, their feet making less sound than the stray drips falling from the ceiling to the sodden dust.

Their era was ending when Jim Clyman got to Independence in ’44 and found Bill Sublette, who had first taken wagons up the Platte Valley in 1830, now taking invalids to Brown’s Hole for a summer’s outing. It was twenty-one years since Jim had first gone up the Missouri, forty years since Lewis and Clark wintered at the Mandan villages, thirty-three years since Wilson Hunt led the Astorians westward, twenty years since Clyman with Smith and Fitzpatrick crossed South Pass, eighteen years since Ashley, in the Wasatch Mountains, sold his fur company to Smith, Sublette, and Jackson. Thirty-two years ago Robert McKnight had been imprisoned by the Spanish for taking goods to Santa Fe. Twenty-three years ago William Becknell had defied the prohibition and returned from Santa Fe in triumph. Eighteen years ago the Patties had got to San Diego by the Gila route and Jed Smith had blazed the desert trail to San Bernardino Valley; fourteen years ago Ewing Young, with Kit Carson, had come over the San Bernardino Mountains, making for the San Joaquin. There had been a trading post at the mouth of Laramie Creek for just ten years. Bent’s Fort was fifteen years old. Now the streams were trapped out, and even if beaver should come back, the price of plews would never rise again. There were two or three thousand Americans in Oregon, a couple of hundred in California, and in Independence hundreds of wagons were yoking up. Bill Sublette and Black Harris were guiding movers. Carson and Fitzpatrick were completing the education of John Charles Frémont. Forty years since Lewis and Clark. Think back to that blank paper with some names sketched in, the Wind River peaks, the Tetons, the Picketwire River, the Siskidee, names which, mostly, the mountain men sketched in — something under a million square miles, the fundamental watershed, a thousand mountain men scalped in this wilderness, the deserts crossed, the trails blazed and packed down, the mountains made known, the caravans carrying freight to Santa Fe, Bill Bowen selling his place to go to Oregon, half a dozen wagonwrights setting up at Independence … and, far off, like a fly buzzing against a screen, Joe Meek’s cousin, Mr. Polk, preparing war. Whose country was it? III Pillar of Cloud ALL through February Congress debated the resolution to terminate the joint occupancy of Oregon, and by its deliberation, Polk thought, informed the British that we were irresolute.

used to hunt sea otters and fur seals for the furs. There was no trapping during the war.

When the wind blows, the sapling bends, the flowers lie low against the earth, the grass is flattened.” He thumped his chest with his fist. “I am your wind, Blue Eyes. Bend or break.” Bend or break. In all her life, she had never felt quite so helpless. Her attention moved to the knife on his hip. If only he would drop his guard--just for a moment. As if he sensed what she was thinking, he smiled another humorless smile and lowered his gaze to her chest where the water lapped just above her splayed fingertips. She tightened her arms around herself. He said nothing more, but words weren’t necessary. She couldn’t stay in the river forever, and when she emerged, he would be waiting. She was trapped. Always, forever, with no horizon. The seconds stretched into minutes. Loretta grew numb with cold. The Comanche grew tired of crouching and stretched out on the sandy bank, one knee bent, his upper body propped on one elbow so he could watch her. Loretta felt certain her blood had turned to ice. Shivers set in. Her teeth began to clack. And still he watched her, his mouth twisted into that mocking sneer she was coming to know so well. When at last he sprang to his feet, she retreated a step, lifting her chin so the lapping water couldn’t reach her mouth. He bent to retrieve the buffalo robe and beckoned for her. “Keemah.” She knew by now that the word meant “come.” She shuddered and looked longingly at the fur he held. “Keemah,” he repeated. When she made no move to obey, he sighed. Sinking lower into the water, Loretta accidentally took a mouthful and choked. He glanced skyward, clearly exasperated. “This Comanche is not stupid. You would run like the wind if I took my eyes from you.

mother was under virtual sentence of death, and Vicky flew to the bedside and knelt beside her. ‘Oh, Mama,’ she whispered, stricken with guilt. ‘I should have been here.’ Juba heated rounded river stones in the open fire and wrapped them in blankets. They packed them around Robyn’s body, and then covered her with four karosses of wild fur. She fought weakly to throw off the covers, but Mungo held her down. Despite the internal heat of the fever and the external temperature of the hot stones trapped under the furs, her skin was burning dry and her eyes had the flat blind glitter of water-worn rock crystal. Then as the sun touched the tree-tops and the light in the room turned to sombre orange, the fever broke and oozed from the pores of her marble pale skin like the juice of crushed sugar cane from the press. The sweat came up in fat shining beads across her forehead and chin, each drop joining with the others until they ran in thick oily snakes back into her hair, soaking it as though she had been held under water. It ran into her eyes, faster than Mungo could wipe it away. It poured down her neck and wetted and matted the fur of the kaross. It soaked through the thin mattress and pattered like rain on the hard dry floor below. The temperature of her body plunged dramatically, and when the sweat had passed, Juba and the twins sponged her naked body. She had dehydrated and wasted, so that the rack of her ribs stood out starkly, and her pelvis formed a bony hollowed basin. They handled her with exaggerated care, for any rough movement might rupture the delicate damaged walls of the renal blood vessels and bring on the torrential haemorrhage which so often ended this disease. When

I have lots of ideas if we get hijacked. I've played every Grand Theft Auto game plus the expansion packs." "Those games are dope," Emma said. "I spent an entire winter playing GTA after a bad breakup involving a trucker with a furry fetish. I mean, on a cold winter night, sure, I'd put on the suit, but in summer I'd be sweating buckets and the last thing you want to do when you're trapped in four inches of foam and fur and wearing a giant bear head is build more heat. I was slipping around in that thing like a greased-up sausage. Like, dude, why not ears and a tail, maybe some paws, and do the bear bare." Anil's eyes glazed over. "I have questions." "I'm sure you do," I said.

To hunt, trap, and trade—or to fight the king’s war: these were the choices open to Chickasaw males during the Revolution. Whereas many Native Americans were tugged in opposite directions by emissaries of the British and the patriots, the Chickasaws were pulled on the one hand by official agents of the king who urged them to take up the hatchet, and on the other by traders who preferred they venture into the woods in search of furs and pelts.

The wind whipped Lucky’s fur and he shivered, crouching low to the ground. The Moon-Dog had vanished, leaving only a scattering of stars to cast their shallow light. He squinted into the darkness. As his eyes adjusted, he realized he was perching on a blade of black rock, a tiny stone island surrounded by water. He took a tentative step over the rock and faltered. The water wasn’t moving—it was frozen to ice. As Lucky lowered his head, he could see white patterns across its surface like spiders’ webs. Ahead, the sky of no-sun was as thick and dark as a storm cloud, yet craning his head Lucky could just make out a circle of amber light. Was it the Sun-Dog rising, or something else? He took a step forward, placing his forepaw on the ice. The freezing cold was sharper than a blast of fire and Lucky whipped away his paw with a howl of pain. He licked it, gazing into the distance. He could still see a light, though now it looked farther away. . . . Somehow he knew he had to reach it, but he didn’t think he’d make it over the long stretches of ice. He backed over the black rock, wondering what to do. He was alone, trapped on the island—and the Ice Wind was coming. He heard hissing and spun around. The ice was clawing its way over the edge of the island. Its touch turned the rock a shiny white, like clear-stone. Lucky’s breath caught in his throat. He threw a frantic look over his shoulder. The ice was creeping onto the land from all sides, fizzing and murmuring with its cool, white tongue, freezing the land beneath its ghostly pelt. Lucky cried out. “Bella! Sweet!” No dog answered his calls. The ice was close now, whispering and crackling at his paws. Lucky watched in horror as it climbed up his legs, searing him with its deathly touch, turning his fur brittle and white as frost. He tried to pull away, but his legs were frozen. He tried to cry out again, but his jaw was locked with cold. Far in the distance, the amber light flickered and died. Now there was only chill and darkness. And then, in the darkness, the furious howls of fighting dogs.

There is one human a few miles away,” Mikhail stated. “I can detect no others. He is in the direction of Jacques’ old home. Do we go? Light was steaking the sky now, gray patches despite the dark, roiling clouds and the steady drizzle of rain. “Go, Mikhail,” Raven insisted softly. “You have to. Otherwise I would always feel I killed him. If you do not go, it will be because of me.” “You have to,” Shea added, looking into Jacques’ black eyes. He did, too; Shea felt it with great conviction. There would come a time when Jacques would remember his childhood, his great friendship with Byron, and how he had backed away from Byron’s attempt at reconciliation. He needed to do this for the sake of his own sanity. I know. His reply was a soft assent in her mind as he shared her thoughts. “I will go, Mikhail,” he said aloud. “You stay and protect the women. It is the only way.” “It could very well be a trap,” Gregori cautioned. “More than likely it is a trap. Otherwise this would be very careless on the part of one so cunning.” “That’s why all of you should go,” raven said. “Shea and I will wait here. We can destroy all evidence of her research while we wait.” Shea could not prevent the gasp that escaped her. She lifted her chin defiantly. She was not going to be intimidated by these powerful creatures. Her eyes flashed from one to the other. “I spent several years of my life gathering that data,” she said hotly. Raven caught her hand and squeezed it in warning. She tugged Shea away from Jacques and right up to the door of the cabin. “All right, Shea, we’ll talk about it.” “You are to leave this place and go to safety if the hour becomes too late or you receive warning from us,” Mikhail cautioned his lifemate. “No playing the heroine. On this I will have your word.” Raven smiled into his eyes, an intimate, tender acknowledgement. She nodded. “I would never endanger our child, my love.” Mikhail reached out and touched Raven’s face, trailing his fingertips tenderly down her skin even as his form wavered, contorted, began to snap and pop. Fur shimmered along his arms, his back. His powerful frame bent, and he leapt away, landed running, a large black wolf.

The crowd had grown sweatier and louder and drunker. It was like being trapped in a Toulouse-Lautrec painting, green-lit faces spinning around me with ghoulish expressions. I wanted to set Bad on them, all teeth and burnished bronze fur. I wanted to scream myself hoarse. I wanted to draw a door in the air, a door to somewhere else, and walk through it.

A dinner party is the oldest experiment. Trap a bunch of souls in a room. Faces move like painted moons, rising and setting, as talk blows in from the east. The thunk and freckles of a hand slammed down on the table in laughter, the noise of a long night unscrolled like a map. Madeira and Roquefort. Paper towels for napkins. The maroon wall telephone rings: next round of folks on their way!