Garnet Quotes

After the keen still days of September, the October sun filled the world with mellow warmth...The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her...In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.

The garnets,' Sniff moaned. 'I didn't get a single one.' Snufkin sat down beside him and said kindly: 'I know. But that's how it is when you start wanting to have things. Now I just look at them, and when I go away I carry them in my head. Then my hands are always free, because I don't have to carry a suitcase.

I know what you are. I've always known from the beginning, Kushiel's Chosen. It is folly, to make claim on one whom the gods have marked for their own. And unlike the others, I am no fool, to grasp at that which burns to the touch. What you have given..." she raised one hand, palm upward, the garnet seal dangling at her wrist, "... I hold in an open hand.

The maple tree in front of the doorstep burned like a gigantic red torch. The oaks along the roadway glowed yellow and bronze. The fields stretched like a carpet of jewels, emerald and topaz and garnet. Everywhere she walked the color shouted and sang around her. The dried brown leaves crackled beneath her feet and gave off a delicious smoky fragrance. No one had ever told her about autumn in New England. The excitement of it beat in her blood. Every morning she woke with a new confidence and buoyancy she could not explain. In October any wonderful unexpected thing might be possible.

Her palace shimered with onyx, garnet, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue.

Humility is an essential quality in writers who want to write well.

Yet, the quest for knowledge will overcome us and we must know. And, at last, we must see where the road ends, even if it be the cliff.

H. H. GARNET. We need a thousand such representative

He's such a dear, Mr. Garnet. A beautiful, pure, bred Persian. He has taken prizes." "He's always taking something - generally food.

GARNET CITY LIMIT POPULATION 3145 “There’s bullet holes in that sign,” Tino observed drily. “There are,” Romeo agreed, starting at the dents and holes in the green metal. “Those are bullet holes, no question.” “They shot their own friggin’ sign.” Tino turned to arch an eyebrow at Romeo. “What the hell are they gonna do to us.

I waited a long time for you, love. I’ll wait as long as you need. You are mine.” And he was here in Quincy to claim me.

Melisande blinked rapidly, then looked back to the little box with garnet earrings. Her ears weren't even pierced. She touched one of the garnets with a fingertip and wondered if he'd ever looked-really looked- at her at all.

He was a prince. There was no hope in saying yes to the boy with the garnet eyes who left me reckless and confused at every turn. There was no future with him. None. Darren had duty. To the Crown. Gods only knew Priscilla and Blayne had spent enough time reminding me of that.

Enchantment and fulfillment were on the gold and garnet horizon - autumn's breath, a dormant dream reawakened, a yearning nearly satiated, a tender thank you with a brush of the lips, and a connection as fingers touch and go hand in hand.

I have never stopped loving you … And I never will.

A blond vampire in a garnet-red frock. She was lovely, and pale as new snow: Cordelia thought of the mundane women who paid to have their faces enameled white to preserve their youth and keep their fashionable pallor. They ought to just become vampires, she thought. It would be less expensive.

The gardens were brilliant with summer magic, with plump cushions of forget-me-nots, lemon balm, and vibrant yellow daylilies, surrounding plots of roses shot through with garnet clematis. Long rows of silvery lamb's-ear stretched between large stone urns filled with rainbow Oriental poppies.

You learned a lot by playing RPGs, although not all of it was useful, or real for that matter – unless you really believed that wolves normally carry seven gold pieces, a flawed garnet, a scroll of ice storm, and a lock pick somewhere about their person.

Let me get this straight. I can't take the vampire with me because if I remove the stake, he can kill us all. Now I can't take the girl because she's what? some kind of ninja witch?

I am shocked both that I hurt him and that my shoe hit him, because I do throw like the proverbial girl. I hurl stuff around secure in the knowledge I’ll miss my target.

Why is it tattooed on your body?” “As a reminder.” “Of what?” He gave me a sad smile. “Of what I lost.

Will you break my heart again?” “Never.” I’d die first. “Will you leave me?” “Never.” Not willingly. Not until the end. “Will you stop loving me?” “Never.” My love for her had no end. I’d love her in this world and the next. “Never, Tally. Never.

Then the violet coffin moved again and went in feet first. And behold! The feet burst miraculously into streaming ribbons of garnet coloured lovely flame, smokeless and eager, like pentecostal tongues, and as the whole coffin passed in it sprang into flame all over; and my mother became that beautiful fire.

It is possible for a writer to make, or remake at least, for a reader, the primary pleasures of eating, or drinking, or looking on, or sex. Novels have their obligatory tour-de-force, the green-flecked gold omelette aux fines herbes, melting into buttery formlessness and tasting of summer, or the creamy human haunch, firm and warm, curved back to reveal a hot hollow, a crisping hair or two, the glimpsed sex. They do not habitually elaborate on the equally intense pleasure of reading. There are obvious reasons for this, the most obvious being the regressive nature of the pleasure, a mise-en-abîme even, where words draw attention to the power and delight of words, and so ad infinitum, thus making the imagination experience something papery and dry, narcissistic and yet disagreeably distanced, without the immediacy of sexual moisture or the scented garnet glow of a good burgundy. And yet, natures such as Roland's are at their most alert and heady when reading is violently yet steadily alive. (What an amazing word "heady" is, en passant, suggesting both acute sensuous alertness and its opposite, the pleasure of the brain as opposed to the viscera—though each is implicated in the other, as we know very well, with both, when they are working.)

I feel like I'm seeing a sparrow in a cage, something young and innocent trapped by grasping hands. And I think that perhaps my own cage is simply larger than hers, so large I have never been fully aware of its edges.

The skanky vamp biting for bucks on the dark end of state street is your ex boyfriend?" William asked. The look on William's face implied he hoped I washed after interacting with Parrish

Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, a curse that is causeless does not alight.

Your dreams were my dreams, Tally. I lost them when I lost you.

I’m mad at you because I love you, not because I want you dead.

What?" I demand, too tired and frazzled to be polite. "Did you think I didn't care? Do you think I'm not human?" "No," he replies. "I think you are royal.

Garnet was very happy. She was so happy, for no especial reason, that she felt as if she must move carefully so she wouldn't jar or shake the feeling of happiness.

The garnets would have gone in the rucksack," said Sniff miserably. "You don't need hands for that. It's not the same thing at all just looking at them. I want to touch them and know they're mine.

[To find a kiss of yours] translated by Sarah Arvio. To find a kiss of yours what would I give A kiss that strayed from your lips dead to love My lips taste the dirt of shadows To gaze at your dark eyes what would I give Dawns of rainbow garnet fanning open before God— The stars blinded them one morning in May And to kiss your pure thighs what would I give Raw rose crystal sediment of the sun

The dishes," [Garnet] said. "Oh, let them stand for once!" cried Mrs. Linden grandly, "we can do them when we come home. This is an important day." "You're nice," said Garnet, and gave her mother a hug.

A guy who was lucky to have twenty bucks in his pocket and knew he’d never be able to give you the world.” She pulled her knees into her chest. “I never needed the world.” “But I wanted to give it to you anyway.

for the first time in a long time, I was beginning a year as my own man. Unless Talia would have me. Then I’d be hers until the end of my days.

I waited a long time for you, love. I’ll wait as long as you need. You are mine.

Humans are curious creatures. What we cannot see, our logical minds will try to deny.

Just let me go, Foster.” “I haven’t let you go in seven years. I’m not starting tonight.

There are three things in the world that are unclear to me, and a fourth one I do not comprehend: the path of an eagle in the sky, a snake on a rock, a ship at sea, and the path of a man to the heart of a woman.

Brother Luca Pacioli. It took him thirty years to write.” The book is bound in deepest green with a tooled border of gold, and its pages are edged in gilt, so that it blazes in the light. Its clasps are studded with blackish garnets, smooth, translucent. “I hardly dare open it,” the boy says. “Please. You will like it.” It is Summa de Arithmetica. He unclasps it to find a woodcut of the author with a book before him, and a pair of compasses.

Of course she is. Because she’s eight kinds of wonderful, and that’s just her legs.” Jeb furrows his brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?” “Taelor has all the diplomacy of a black widow spider. Garnet’s her birthstone. You’re wearing her birthday on your lip. Talk about spinning you up in her web.

The enormous vermilion sun was dropping toward the sea, its reflected glow making a blazing path across the water to the very beach, where the last ripple was spangled with garnets. Otherwise, the sea was periwinkle purple, spilling and whispering and sidling with an easy going prattle of foam round the steeper rocks.

Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris.

The Hermit I’d gladly climb the highest steeple To escape those middle minded people Jet Set Wedding I wake up screaming clutching my wedding band The garnet ring is still a constant companion on my finger But what happened to the marriage? Fruitland Ave He taught her not to love nor hate And he my friend was double gate The Closing (On Death and Acceptance) When he died the funeral took place at her bank And sadly enough she’s down to her very last frank The Misogynist He sits on his throne a hilltop alone For women’s neurosis cause men’s psychosis Home Sweet Home The neurotic builds the dreamhouse The psychotic becomes his spouse Monogamy I’d rather be someone’s concubine, smell the honeysuckle Taste the wine, than end up being a clinging vine The Gour Maid I like champagne, and french brie, and camembert And men that don’t get in my hair

You loved those jeans. I loved those jeans. They made your ass look fantastic.

I never needed the world.” “But I wanted to give it to you anyway.

As so many deaf people, he passionately loved opera,

We passed Columbia, the state furnace, inhaling hot garnet air as if straight from Aunt Bea's oven.

The singer could hardly have been drowned in a hip bath, but Mr. Garnet hoped for the best.

(when Sabastain asks for a mandake root harvested by the the new moon at crossroads, Garnet responds)...... Why not just ask for it grown under a gallows?

My first order of business was to look in the side pocket where I had hidden my garnet and gold necklace.

O, is de jacht op de surrogaten weer geopend?... Pas maar op, nieuw meisje. Dit jaar wordt ongetwijfeld gevaarlijk nu het om de hand van de lieve, kleine Exetor gaat. - Garnet

He taught me how to eat avocados by melting grape jelly and french dressing together in a saucepan and filling the cup of the pear with the garnet sauce.

Garnet could feel that he himself was not looking his best. He knew in a vague, impersonal way that his eyebrows were still somewhere in the middle of his forehead, whither they had sprung in the first moment of surprise, and that his jaw, which ad dropped, had not yet resumed its normal posture. Before committing himself to speech he made a determined effort to revise his facial expression.

Garnet woke up early. Before she was quite wide awake she lay with her eyes closed, half afraid to look for fear it might be raining. But even with them closed she knew it was going to be all right because the color behind her lids was clear and rosy and she knew the sunlight lay upon them. And she heard crickets in the meadow, and a fly buzzing against the screen, and somebody whistling outside. So it was all right and she opened her eyes. Oh what a day! She held up her arm in the sunlight; all the little hairs on it glittered like fine gold, and her closed fingers were ember-colored as if there were a light inside them.

The rock I'd seen in my life looked dull because in all ignorance I'd never thought to knock it open. People have cracked ordinary New England pegmatite - big, coarse granite - and laid bare clusters of red garnets, or topaz crystals, chrysoberyl, spodumene, emerald. They held in their hands crystals that had hung in a hole in the dark for a billion years unseen. I was all for it. I would lay about me right and left with a hammer, and bash the landscape to bits. I would crack the earth's crust like a piñata and spread to the light the vivid prizes in chunks within. Rock collecting was opening the mountains. It was like diving through my own interior blank blackness to remember the startling pieces of a dream: there was a blue lake, a witch, a lighthouse, a yellow path. It was like poking about in a grimy alley and finding an old, old coin. Nothing was at it seemed. The earth was like a shut eye. Mother's not dead, dear - she's only sleeping. Pry open the thin lid and find a crystalline intelligence inside, a rayed and sidereal beauty. Crystals grew inside rock like arithmetical flowers. They lengthened and spread, adding plane to plane in awed and perfect obedience to an absolute geometry that even the stones - maybe only the stones - understood.

Inside the carriage, Cardan slumps. I stare at him, at the blood drying in tide lines over his body and crusting in his curls like tiny garnets. I force myself to look out the window instead. 'How long have I-' he hesitates. 'Not even three days,' I tell him. 'Barely any time at all.' I do not mention how long it has seemed. Nor do I say how he might have been trapped as a serpent for all time, bridled and bound. Or dead.

Everyone is afraid. But one person falls to pieces from fear, and another person keeps it together. You see: fear remains the same for everyone, but the ability to bear it increases with practice; that is where brave men and heroes come from.

Summer, in pursuit of greener pastures, packed its bags and left New Hampshire, ushering autumn to Red Grove. Overnight, the trees grew bolder personalities, dressing in garnet and persimmon and welcoming my Jeep home with an increasing number of free-spirited leaves.

Bouchalka was not a reflective person. He had his own idea of what a great prima donna should be like, and he took it for granted that Mme. Garnet corresponded to his conception. The curious thing was that he managed to impress his idea upon Cressida herself. She began to see herself as he saw her, to try to be like the notion of her that he carried everywhere in that pointed head of his. She was exalted quite beyond herself. Things that had been chilled under the grind came to life in her that winter, with the breath of Bouchalka’s adoration. Then, if ever in her life, she heard the bird sing on the branch outside her window; and she wished she were younger, lovelier, freer. She wished there were no Poppas, no Horace, no Garnets. She longed to be only the bewitching creature Bouchalka imagined her.

How do you always know about a birth?" Ruby asked with a mystified smile. "Wait a minute. Did Lorenzo call you?" "Nope." Hawke winked, the thick fan of his silver-gold lashes coming down over an eye of a blue so pale, it was immediately clear that Hawke was a changeling, was wolf. "It's an alpha thing." [...] "Garnet." Turning the screen in her direction, Garnet raised an eyebrow. "Yes?" She had a good idea of what was coming. Wolf-blue eyes gleamed. "Where's your mate?" Kenji shifted so he could scowl at Hawke. "Now you're just showing off.

In Nina Kimbereley's garden the scabiosa flowers were dark as garnet brooches; the nicotiana a veil of tossing crimson stars. Nothing was usual, or a dull color. All was exceptional, designed to be exceptional since it had been planned as the background for a beauty by the beauty.

It was strange to see that no matter what color the clothing first appeared—and they were all hues, from earthy copper and garnet to the blue of sky and shadow—in different light all turned to some shade of green, as if there were a third plane to the cloth’s weaving beyond the warp and weft.

It's Also Tradition to Wear White,I Study Myself in The Mirror Now,as Annabelle Curls My Hair. My Dress is Strapless,Layers of ivory chiffon Floating to The Floor.a Necklace of Diamonds and Rubies Sparkles at My Throat Garnet Leans Against The Newel Post and Whistles As I Come Down The Stairs. My Cheeks Flush. Have You Been To The Royal Palace Yet? Garnet Asks Me.I Stare at Him for a Second Wondering if He's Joking. Yes, I Say Slowly. You Bumped Into Me at The Exetor's Ball. Did I? Garnet's Eyebrows Pinch Together. Huh Well,You Haven't Seen Anytging Until You've Seen The Winter Ball Decorations. We are Escorted to a Extension Made Entirely of Glass. It is Lit with Thousands of Candles. Giving The Room a Beautiful Golden Glow. The Floor is Made Out Of Blue Glass and Enormous Ice Sculptures Glitter in The Flickering Light. I See What Garnet Meant-The Whole Effect is Magnificent.

It's Also Tradition to Wear White,I Study Myself in The Mirror Now,as Annabelle Curls My Hair. My Dress is Strapless,Layers of ivory chiffon Floating to The Floor.a Necklace of Diamonds and Rubies Sparkles at My Throat Garnet Leans Against The Newel Post and Whistles As I Come Down The Stairs. My Cheeks Flush.  Have You Been To The Royal Palace Yet? Garnet Asks Me.I Stare at Him for a Second Wondering if He's Joking. Yes, I Say Slowly. You Bumped Into Me at The Exetor's Ball. Did I? Garnet's Eyebrows Pinch Together. Huh Well,You Haven't Seen Anything Until You've Seen The Winter Ball Decorations. We are Escorted to a Extension Made Entirely of Glass. It is Lit with Thousands of Candles. Giving The Room a Beautiful Golden Glow. The Floor is Made Out Of Blue Glass and Enormous Ice Sculptures Glitter in The Flickering Light. I See What Garnet Meant-The Whole Effect is Magnificent.” 

Nothing is always, no one is forever.

I waited a long time for you, love. I’ll wait as long as you need. You are mine.” And he was here in Quincy to claim me.

I grabbed the bottle of wine to refill my glass because I’d most definitely be drinking it. “The bubble.” “What bubble?” “Our bubble. It’s about to burst.

The man I’d dated for one year, two months and eleven days. The man I’d loved with my whole heart. The man I’d vowed to forget.

This project was part of my penance. For Talia, I’d bear every ache and pain.

When did you buy this ring?” She held up the pouch again. “Was it hers?

I have never been, and never will be, in love with Vivienne,” he said. “I have never stopped loving you.” “Foster—” “And I never will.

Your dreams were my dreams, Tally. I lost them when I lost you.” He hooked a finger under my chin. “Did I lose you?

There were far worse things in a human body to break than bones.

You were a coward. Do not say you were protecting me.

Do you usually show so little self restraint, special agent? Or do you ask all the girls to marry you?

For with all that is grand, grander is the expansion of the mind.

The wind blowing through the cracks in the walls was fitting for this isolated and lonely place.

The heavy smell of incense gave me an uneasy feeling as if I had walked into a tomb

As my body recalled my soul, I began to quiver with pain and gasp for air.

I don't know where we are, but we'll soon find our way home!" Le avventure di Pinocchio

Nobody’s going to be safe until everybody’s armed.  You’d think the world would learn from the carnage in gun free zones. 

People, these strange animals who walk on their rear paws and are naturally naked, so they have to wear other animal's skins to keep warm, are ridiculously clumsy and helpless.

If we are to dream of things impossible, let's dream big.

Love is the best language tutor.

It is a well-known fact that kings and clowns frequently call each other cousin.

Then it was she saw him again. On the upper reaches of the scaffolding, a sheerness of presence, no more. It was as if he took the space from the air about him and against the darkness was etched, like the brightness which seeps through a door ajar, hinting at nameless, fathomless brilliances beyond, the slightest margin of light. Impossible to look too closely, but some way below, beneath where the long feet might have rested, she made out the girl's huddled shape, her arms folded over her head like some small broken-winged, storm-tossed bird.

I know to-night how an outlaw feels when the posse's at his heels and he rides with murder in his heart," the girl went on with hardness in her young voice. "I know to-night why he makes them pay dear for his life when he takes his last stand behind a rock." "Oh, Essie, don't!" Mrs. Terriberry wrung her garnet and moonstone-ringed fingers together in distress. "You mustn't get reckless!" "What

In 1913, George Bernard Shaw described witnessing the cremation of his mother. Her body was placed in a violet coffin and loaded feet-first into the flames. “And behold!” he wrote. “The feet burst miraculously into streaming ribbons of garnet coloured lovely flame, smokeless and eager, like Pentecostal tongues, and as the whole coffin passed in it sprang into flame all over; and my mother became that beautiful fire.

Tana,” Aidan said as soon as he saw her. “Tana, they’re going to come in as soon as it’s dark. They told us.” He looked pale and frantic, worse than she remembered him looking when she’d left. “We’re going to die, Tana.” “Condamné à mort,” a voice rasped from the other side of the door. She could hear the creatures whispering to one another in the hall, shifting hungrily, waiting for the sun to set. Her hands shook. She whirled on Gavriel, who was watching her with those eerie garnet eyes, huddled in the corner like a black crow. “What does that mean?” “There are so many odd dappled patches of sunlight here,” he called to them from his pile of blankets and jackets, ignoring her. “Come in. I long to watch your skin blister. I long to—” “Don’t say that!” she cut him off, panicked. If the vampires pushed their way in, she had no idea what she would do.

He discovered wonderful stories, also, about jewels. In Alphonso's Clericalis Disciplina a serpent was mentioned with eyes of real jacinth, and in the romantic history of Alexander, the Conqueror of Emathia was said to have found in the vale of Jordan snakes 'with collars of real emeralds growing on their backs.' There was a gem in the brain of the dragon, Philostratus told us, and 'by the exhibition of golden letters and a scarlet robe' the monster could be thrown into a magical sleep and slain. According to the great alchemist, Pierre de Boniface, the diamond rendered a man invisible, and the agate of India made him eloquent. The cornelian appeased anger, and the hyacinth provoked sleep, and the amethyst drove away the fumes of wine. The garnet cast out demons, and the hydropicus deprived the moon of her color. The selenite waxed and waned with the moon, and the meloceus, that discovers thieves, could be affected only by the blood of kids. Leonardus Camillus had seen a white stone taken from the brain of a newly killed toad, that was a certain antidote against poison. The bezoar, that was found in the heart of the Arabian deer, was a charm that could cure the plague. In the nests of Arabian birds was the aspirates, that, according to Democritus, kept the wearer from any danger by fire.

I hate you for being so fucking hard to forget.” A tear dripped down my cheek as I threw the next punch. My eyes flooded and Foster was blurry but I just kept on swinging. “Ashamed of you? I would have done anything for you.

A young man with goat feet and horns, wearing a shirt of golden scale mail and holding a thing-bladed rapier, steps in the pool of light near a building. His face is expressionless, like someone in a dream. I note the curls of his tawny blond hair tucked behind his pointed ears, the garnet-coloured cloak tossed over wide shoulders, the scar along one side of his throat, a circlet at his brow. He moves as though he expects the world to bend to his will. ... His amber eyes are bright, like those of a fox, but there is nothing warm in them.

Julius explained that the palace rooms where they stood were called Wunderkammers, or wonder rooms. Souvenirs of nature, of travels across continents and seas; jewels and skulls. A show of wealth, intellect, power. The first room had rose-colored glass walls, with rubies and garnets and bloodred drapes of damask. Bowls of blush quartz; semiprecious stone roses running the spectrum of red down to pink, a hard, glittering garden. The vaulted ceiling, a feature of all the ten rooms Julius and Cymbeline visited, was a trompe l'oeil of a rosy sky at down, golden light edging the morning clouds. The next room was of sapphire and sea and sky; lapis lazuli, turquoise and gold and silver. A silver mermaid lounged on the edge of a lapis lazuli bowl fashioned in the shape of an ocean. Venus stood aloft on the waves draped in pearls. There were gold fish and diamond fish and faceted sterling silver starfish. Silvered mirrors edged in silvered mirror. There were opals and aquamarines and tanzanite and amethyst. Seaweed bloomed in shades of blue-green marble. The ceiling was a dome of endless, pale blue. A jungle room of mica and marble followed, with its rain forest of cats made from tiger's-eye, yellow topaz birds, tortoiseshell giraffes with stubby horns of spun gold. Carved clouds of smoky quartz hovered over a herd of obsidian and ivory zebras. Javelinas of spotted pony hide charged tiny, life-sized dik-diks with velvet hides, and dazzling diamond antlers mingled with miniature stuffed sable minks. Agate columns painted a medley of dark greens were strung with faceted ropes of green gold. A room of ivory: bone, teeth, skulls, and velvet. A room crowded with columns all sheathed in mirrors, reflecting world maps and globes and atlases inlaid with silver, platinum, and white gold; the rubies and diamonds that were sometimes set to mark the location of a city or a town of conquest resembled blood and tears. A room dominated by a fireplace large enough to hold several people, upholstered in velvets and silks the colors of flame. Snakes of gold with orange sapphire and yellow topaz eyes coiled around the room's columns. Statues of smiling black men in turbans offering trays of every gem imaginable-emerald, sapphire, ruby, topaz, diamond-stood at the entrance to a room upholstered in pistachio velvet, accented with malachite, called the Green Vault. Peridot wood nymphs attended to a Diana carved from a single pure crystal of quartz studded with tiny tourmalines. Jade tables, and jade lanterns. The royal jewels, blinding in their sparkling excess: crowns, tiaras, coronets, diadems, heavy ceremonial necklaces, rings, and bracelets that could span a forearm, surrounding the world's largest and most perfect green diamond. Above it all was a night sky of painted stars, with inlaid cut crystal set in a serious of constellations.

It is the pomegranate that gives 'fesenjoon' its healing capabilities. The original apple of sin, the fruit of a long gone Eden, the pomegranate shields itself in a leathery crimson shell, which in Roman times was used as a form of protective hide. Once the pomegranate's bitter skin is peeled back, though, a juicy garnet flesh is revealed to the lucky eater, popping and bursting in the mouth like the final succumber of lovemaking. Long ago, when the earth remained still, content with the fecundity of perpetual spring, and Demeter was the mother of all that was natural and flowering, it was this tempting fruit that finally set the seasons spinning. Having eaten six pomegranate seeds in the underworld, Persephone, the Goddess of Spring's high-spirited daughter, had been forced to spend six months of the year in the eternal halls of death. Without her beautiful daughter by her side, a mournful Demeter retreated to the dark corners of the universe, allowing for the icy gates of winter to finally creak open. A round crimson herald of frost, the pomegranate comes to harvest in October and November, so 'fesenjoon' is best made with its concentrate during other times of the year.

How much happier the wide-awake indolents, the monarchs among men, the rich monstrous brains deriving intense enjoyment and rapturous pangs from the balustrade of a terrace at nightfall, from the lights and the lake below, from the distant mountain shapes melting into the dark apricot of the afterglow, from the black conifers outlined against the pale ink of the zenith, and from the garnet and green flounces of the water along the silent, sad, forbidden shoreline. Oh my sweet Boscobel! And the tender and terrible memories, and the shame, and the glory, and the maddening intimations, and the star that no party member can ever reach.

I hate you for choosing Vivienne.” Another punch. “I hate you for not loving me the way I loved you.” Then another punch. “I hate you for being so fucking hard to forget.” A tear dripped down my cheek as I threw the next punch. My eyes flooded and Foster was blurry but I just kept on swinging. “Ashamed of you? I would have done anything for you.

What is it?” I hissed at Kamala. “I thought you were going to talk right then and there and then we would’ve been thrown out.” Kamala wouldn’t look at me. “It’s the Dharma Raja.” I froze. “What about him?” “I can sense him.” The blue veins that once stood out so prominently on her skin had begun to sink beneath pearlescent hair. Even the garnet gaze of her eyes had receded into something bright and black. Thoroughly animal. “And?” “He was here, but only for a moment.” “Where did he go?” “I couldn’t tell you that, not for all the salk-skin in the world.” Kamala sighed. “Do you know where he was?” “That’s the thing I was trying to tell you, maybe-queen!” exclaimed Kamala, pawing at the ground. “He was at the Chakara Forest. You were right.” I was right. There was a soft glow of warmth in that knowledge, even if knowing that I had just missed him rent through me like a new wound. I had trusted my instinct and it had been right.

While he digs he is free to let his mind wander, and he dreams his kingdom of pear trees in the orchard across to his left, growing skywards, gnarling, putting forth fat green soft fruits with ease each year. The trees that already grow in the orchards he loves almost as women in his life; the Catherine pear, the Chesil or pear Nouglas, the great Kentish pear, the Ruddick, the Red Garnet, the Norwich, the Windsor, the little green pear ripe at Kingsdon Feast; all thriving where they were planted in his father's ground at Lytes Cary before the management of the estate became his own responsibility as the eldest son. So much has happened these last six years since his father handed over and left for his house in Sherborne: there have been births and deaths - Anys herself was taken from him only last year. But the pear trees live on, reliably flowering and yielding variable quantities as an annual crop that defines the estate, and he has plans to add more.