Good Forest Quotes

She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.

Hide yourself in God, so when a man wants to find you he will have to go there first.

The men in the room suddenly realized that they did not want to know her better. She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close. And she held her sword, and she smiled like a knife.

In the forest of primeval A school for Good and Evil Twin towers like two heads One for the pure And one for the wicked Try to escape you'll always fail, The only way out is Through a fairytale.

It's never been a perfect world. It's never going to be. It's going to be hard and scary, and if you're lucky, wonderful and awe-inspiring. But you have to push through the bad parts to get to the good.

But, of course, it isn't really Good-bye, because the Forest will always be there... and anybody who is Friendly with Bears can find it.

In battle, in forest, at the precipice in the mountains, On the dark great sea, in the midst of javelins and arrows, In sleep, in confusion, in the depths of shame, The good deeds a man has done before defend him.

I am one of the searchers. There are, I believe, millions of us. We are not unhappy, but neither are we really content. We continue to explore life, hoping to uncover its ultimate secret. We continue to explore ourselves, hoping to understand. We like to walk along the beach, we are drawn by the ocean, taken by its power, its unceasing motion, its mystery and unspeakable beauty. We like forests and mountains, deserts and hidden rivers, and the lonely cities as well. Our sadness is as much a part of our lives as is our laughter. To share our sadness with one we love is perhaps as great a joy as we can know - unless it be to share our laughter. We searchers are ambitious only for life itself, for everything beautiful it can provide. Most of all we love and want to be loved. We want to live in a relationship that will not impede our wandering, nor prevent our search, nor lock us in prison walls; that will take us for what little we have to give. We do not want to prove ourselves to another or compete for love. For wanderers, dreamers, and lovers, for lonely men and women who dare to ask of life everything good and beautiful. It is for those who are too gentle to live among wolves.

I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls with clean blood and organized drawers. I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests at night when no one else is alive or awake however you choose to see it and I live in my own flames sometimes burning too bright and too wild to make things last or handle myself or anyone else and so I run. run run run far and wide until my bones ache and lungs split and it feels good. Hear that people? It feels good because I am the slave and ruler of my own body and I wish to do with it exactly as I please

It's like you said the other day," said Adam. "You grow up readin' about pirates and cowboys and spacemen and stuff, and jus' when you think the world's full of amazin' things, they tell you it's really all dead whales and chopped-down forests and nucular waste hangin' about for millions of years. 'Snot worth growin' up for, if you ask my opinion.

But there is one thing you must remember, if you forget all else. There is no good or evil, save in the way you see the world. There is no dark or light save in your own vision. All changes in the blink of an eyelid; yet all remains the same.

As you walk through forests or the meadows of your mind, Stop and talk to those you fear Good friendships you may find

There's a monster in our wood. She'll get you if you're not good. Drag you under leaves and sticks. Punish you for all your tricks. Anest of hair and gnawed bone. You are never, ever coming... home.

The men in the room suddenly realized that they didn’t want to know her better. She was beautiful, but she was beautiful in the way a forest fire was beautiful: something to be admired from a distance, not up close.

I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. Tell me what the word home means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name just by the way you describe your bedroom when you were eight. See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate, and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms or would leave your snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree? And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name, and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel. Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old beating up little boys at school. If you were walking by a chemical plant where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds would you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud or would you whisper “That cloud looks like a fish, and that cloud looks like a fairy!” Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me — how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? See, I wanna know if you believe in any god or if you believe in many gods or better yet what gods believe in you. And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you asked come true? And if they didn’t, did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? Would you think less of me if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key? And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me who have learned the wisdom of silence. Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence? And if you do — I want you to tell me of a meadow where my skateboard will soar. See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving, and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes from other people’s wounds, and if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon — that if you wanted to, you could pop, but you never would ‘cause you’d never want it to stop. If a tree fell in the forest and you were the only one there to hear — if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness? And lastly, let me ask you this: If you and I went for a walk and the entire walk, we didn’t talk — do you think eventually, we’d… kiss? No, wait. That’s asking too much — after all, this is only our first date.

But I do like churches. The way it feels inside. It feels good when you just sit there, like you're in a forest and everything's really quiet, expect there's still this sound you can't hear.

sometimes bad things happen to make good things happen.

You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves. After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. That’s what I believe. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens. These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you.

That is the hallmark of a good partnership, you know - when one partner sees the forest and the other studies the trees.

He has his good side and his bad side. Very dark indeed is his majesty when he wants to be. When he was young, he made a choice, like a tree does when it decides to grow one way or the other. He grew large and green until he shadowed over the whole forest, but most of his branches are twisted.

I thank God daily for the good fortune of my birth, for I am certain I would have made a miserable peasant.

A great book is a homing device For navigating paradise. A good book somehow makes you care About the comfort of a chair. A bad book owes to many trees A forest of apologies.

I thought I was hallucinating,” Adam said, next to the lockers, an announcement droning on over the hall speakers. “Ronan Lynch in the halls of Aglionby.” Ronan slammed his locker. He had not put anything in it and had no reason to open or close it, but he liked the satisfying bang of the metal down the hall, the way it drowned out the announcements. He did it again for good measure. “Is this a real conversation, Parrish?” Adam didn’t bother to reply. He merely exchanged three textbooks for his gym hoodie. Ronan wrenched his tie loose. “You working after school?” “With a dreamer.” He held Ronan’s gaze over his locker door. School had improved. Adam gently closed his locker. “I’m done at four thirty. If you’re up for brainstorming some repair of your dream forest. Unless you have homework.” “Asshole,” Ronan said. Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable.

Ati sarvatra varjayet: Excess of anything is bad. Some of us are attracted to Good. But the universe tries to maintain balance. So what is good for some may end up being bad for others... Agriculture is good for us humans as it gives us an assured supply of food, but it is bad for the animals that lose their forest and grazing land.

To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.

The tree that never had to fight for sun and sky and air and light but stood out in the open plain and always got it share of rain, never became a forest king but lived and died a scrubby thing. Good timber does not grow with ease. The stronger wind, the stronger trees.

That was a good time in my life, in spite of having the sensation of floating on a cloud, surrounded by both lies and things left unspoken. Occasionally I thought I glimpsed the truth, but soon found myself once again lost in a forest of ambiguities.

My dad said that people who are sensitive to beauty are good by nature, and if they’re not good, then they can’t appreciate beauty.

Writing a novel— actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs— is a tremendous pain in the ass. Now that TV’s so good and the Internet is an endless forest of distraction, it’s damn near impossible. That should be taken into account when ranking the all-time greats. Somebody like Charles Dickens, for example, who had nothing better to do except eat mutton and attend public hangings, should get very little credit.

He told them tales of bees and flowers, the ways of trees, and the strange creatures of the Forest, about the evil things and the good things, things friendly and things unfriendly, cruel things and kind things, and secrets hidden under brambles.

Then they gave me a loaf of bread and told me to walk through the forest and give some to anyone who asked. I did exactly what they told me, and the second beggar-woman was a fairy in disguise, but instead of saying that whenever I spoke, diamonds and roses would drop from my mouth, she said that since I was so kind, I would never have any problems with my teeth.” “Really? Did it work?” “Well, I haven’t had a toothache since I met her.” “I’d much rather have good teeth than have diamonds and roses drop out of my mouth whenever I said something

Every hero is a villain, and every villain is a hero. It just depends on who you ask.

You grow up readings about pirates and cowboys and spacemen and stuff, and just when you think the world's all full of amazing things, they tell you it's really all dead whales and chopped-down forests and nuclear waste hanging about millions of years.

Are you sure this is a good idea?' whispered the unicorn. 'No,' said Rupert. 'But it's our best chance to find a dragon.' 'Frankly, that doesn't strike me as such a hot idea either,' muttered the unicorn.

Then, suddenly again, Christopher Robin, who was still looking at the world, with his chin in his hand, called out "Pooh!" "Yes?" said Pooh. "When I'm--when--Pooh!" "Yes, Christopher Robin?" "I'm not going to do Nothing any more." "Never again?" "Well, not so much. They don't let you." Pooh waited for him to go on, but he was silent again. "Yes, Christopher Robin?" said Pooh helpfully. "Pooh, when I'm--you know--when I'm not doing Nothing, will you come up here sometimes?" "Just me?" "Yes, Pooh." "Will you be here too?" "Yes Pooh, I will be really. I promise I will be Pooh." "That's good," said Pooh. "Pooh, promise you won't forget about me, ever. Not even when I'm a hundred." Pooh thought for a little. "How old shall I be then?" "Ninety-nine." Pooh nodded. "I promise," he said. Still with his eyes on the world Christopher Robin put out a hand and felt Pooh's paw. "Pooh," said Christopher Robin earnestly, "if I--if I'm not quite--" he stopped and tried again-- "Pooh, whatever happens, you will understand, won't you?" "Understand what?" "Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!" "Where?" said Pooh. "Anywhere." said Christopher Robin. So, they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.

I know in my life there have been breaches, but I also know that I am very good at blocking out the memories that serve me no purpose.

You can stop a raging forest fire, a herd of stampeding buffalo or even a runaway freight train, but you can’t stop a good man".

Two hours. More than enough time to kidnap a man. Or to slice his throat, bury him in the forest, and steal his magic project. How the hell did de Harven fit into it? Did he surprise the thieves? Of course, Adam Kamen could've killed his uber-bodyguard and bolted with the goods. Because he was secretly a ninja, adept at mortal combat and vanishing into thin air. Yes, that was it. Case solved.

Instinct may not be greater than reason, but it's a million years older. Don't fight your instincts so hard. If they were not good the God of Creation would not have given them to you.

Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the cloak in which--the tree making a forest of itself for her to trip through, with her basket--Little Red Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, without making any impression on his appetite, and then ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the Noah's Ark there, and put him late in the procession on the table, as a monster who was to be degraded.

She is not afraid, Konstantin thought dourly. She does not fear God; she fears nothing. He saw it in her silences, her fey glance, the long hours she spent in the forest. In any case, no good Christian maid ever had eyes like that, or walked with such grace in the dark.

There is no good or evil, save in the way you see the world. There is no dark or light save in your own.

Where is the graveyard of dead gods? What lingering mourner waters their mounds? There was a time when Jupiter was the king of the gods, and any man who doubted his puissance was ipso facto a barbarian and an ignoramus. But where in all the world is there a man who worships Jupiter today? And who of Huitzilopochtli? In one year - and it is no more than five hundred years ago - 50,000 youths and maidens were slain in sacrifice to him. Today, if he is remembered at all, it is only by some vagrant savage in the depths of the Mexican forest. Huitzilopochtli, like many other gods, had no human father; his mother was a virtuous widow; he was born of an apparently innocent flirtation that she carried out with the sun. When he frowned, his father, the sun, stood still. When he roared with rage, earthquakes engulfed whole cities. When he thirsted he was watered with 10,000 gallons of human blood. But today Huitzilopochtli is as magnificently forgotten as Allen G. Thurman. Once the peer of Allah, Buddha and Wotan, he is now the peer of Richmond P. Hobson, Alton B. Parker, Adelina Patti, General Weyler and Tom Sharkey. Speaking of Huitzilopochtli recalls his brother Tezcatlipoca. Tezcatlipoca was almost as powerful; he consumed 25,000 virgins a year. Lead me to his tomb: I would weep, and hang a couronne des perles. But who knows where it is? Or where the grave of Quetzalcoatl is? Or Xiuhtecuhtli? Or Centeotl, that sweet one? Or Tlazolteotl, the goddess of love? Of Mictlan? Or Xipe? Or all the host of Tzitzimitl? Where are their bones? Where is the willow on which they hung their harps? In what forlorn and unheard-of Hell do they await their resurrection morn? Who enjoys their residuary estates? Or that of Dis, whom Caesar found to be the chief god of the Celts? Of that of Tarves, the bull? Or that of Moccos, the pig? Or that of Epona, the mare? Or that of Mullo, the celestial jackass? There was a time when the Irish revered all these gods, but today even the drunkest Irishman laughs at them. But they have company in oblivion: the Hell of dead gods is as crowded as the Presbyterian Hell for babies. Damona is there, and Esus, and Drunemeton, and Silvana, and Dervones, and Adsullata, and Deva, and Bellisima, and Uxellimus, and Borvo, and Grannos, and Mogons. All mighty gods in their day, worshipped by millions, full of demands and impositions, able to bind and loose - all gods of the first class. Men labored for generations to build vast temples to them - temples with stones as large as hay-wagons. The business of interpreting their whims occupied thousands of priests, bishops, archbishops. To doubt them was to die, usually at the stake. Armies took to the field to defend them against infidels; villages were burned, women and children butchered, cattle were driven off. Yet in the end they all withered and died, and today there is none so poor to do them reverence. What has become of Sutekh, once the high god of the whole Nile Valley? What has become of: Resheph Anath Ashtoreth El Nergal Nebo Ninib Melek Ahijah Isis Ptah Anubis Baal Astarte Hadad Addu Shalem Dagon Sharaab Yau Amon-Re Osiris Sebek Molech? All there were gods of the highest eminence. Many of them are mentioned with fear and trembling in the Old Testament. They ranked, five or six thousand years ago, with Yahweh Himself; the worst of them stood far higher than Thor. Yet they have all gone down the chute, and with them the following: Bilé Ler Arianrhod Morrigu Govannon Gunfled Sokk-mimi Nemetona Dagda Robigus Pluto Ops Meditrina Vesta You may think I spoof. That I invent the names. I do not. Ask the rector to lend you any good treatise on comparative religion: You will find them all listed. They were gods of the highest standing and dignity-gods of civilized peoples-worshiped and believed in by millions. All were omnipotent, omniscient and immortal. And all are dead.

In general, her family wasn't very good at talking about important stuff. And of all of them, she was the least good at it. When she tried, it felt like all the chains on all her imagined safes and trunks started rattling

One hand planted on the top rail, slick from a recent rain, I swung my legs sideways, up and over. Home free. Until my bottom foot clipped the post, and I spun as if caught in a crocodile’s death roll. Good news? The spongy forest floor cushioned my fall. Bad news? Momentum slammed my torso into a tree trunk. Couldn’t breathe. But good news again. I’d rolled under a fat, bushy pine, which, along with the fading twilight, concealed my position. I heard the beast fly overhead in pursuit, taking out a few treetops on its way by. Yeah, that was my plan all along. Man, I’m good. Except my body. It hurt.

Why should I be polished and improved like goods for sale? I might not even want to marry! And besides, I have many skills. I can read and write and play the flute and harp. Why should I change to please some man? If he doesn’t like me the way I am, then he can get some other girl for his wife.

The psychiatrist wants to know why I go out and hike around in the forests and watch the birds and collect butterflies. I'll show you my collection some day." "Good." "They want to know what I do with my time. I tell them that sometimes I just sit and think. But I won't tell them what. I've got them running. And sometimes, I tell them, I like to put my head back, like this, and let the rain fall in my mouth. It tastes just like wine. Have you ever tried it?

Mendanbar took a deep breath. “You could stay here. At the castle, I mean. With me.” This wasn’t coming out at all the way he had wanted it to, but it was too late to stop now. He hurried on, “As Queen of the Enchanted Forest, if you think you would like that. I would.” “Would you, really?” “Yes,” Mendanbar said, looking down. “I love you, and—and—” “And you should have said that to begin with,” Cimorene interrupted, putting her arms around him. Mendanbar looked up, and the expression on her face made his heart begin to pound. “Just to be sure I have this right,” Cimorene went on with a blinding smile, “did you just ask me to marry you?” “Yes,” Mendanbar said. “At least, that’s what I meant.” “Good. I will.” Mendanbar tried to find something to say, but he was too happy to think. He leaned forward two inches and kissed Cimorene, and discovered that he didn’t need to say anything at all.

But people aren’t math problems.” I gave a heavy shrug. “I can miss my dad and hate him at the same time. I can be worried about this book and torn up about my family and sick over the house I’m living in, and still look out at Lake Michigan and feel overwhelmed by how big it is. I spent all last summer thinking I’d never be happy again, and now, a year later, I still feel sick and worried and angry, but at moments, I’m also happy. Bad things don’t dig down through your life until the pit’s so deep that nothing good will ever be big enough to make you happy again. No matter how much shit, there will always be wildflowers. There will always be Petes and Maggies and rainstorms in forests and sun on waves.

Throughout the world what remains of the vast public spaces are now only the stuff of legends: Robin Hood’s forest, the Great Plains of the Amerindians, the steppes of the nomadic tribes, and so forth… Rousseau said that the first person who wanted a piece of nature as his or her own exclusive possession and transformed it into the transcendent form of private property was the one who invented evil. Good, on the contrary, is what is common.

I imagined my soul taking in these words like silicated water in the Petrified Forest, turning my wood to patterned agate. I liked it when my mother shaped me this way. I thought clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand.

Our dearest one. Fear nothing of the forest. There is no danger in solitude. We have no need of our brothers. Let us forget their good and our evil, let us forget all things save that we are together and that there is joy as a bond between us. Give us your hand. Look ahead. It is our own world, Golden One, a strange, unknown world, but our own.

The Good Lord Bird don't run in a flock. He Flies alone. You know why? He's searching. Looking for the right tree. And when he sees that tree, that dead tree that's taking all the nutrition and good things from the forest floor. He goes out and he gnaws at it, and he gnaws at it till the thing gets tired and it falls down. And the dirt from it raises other trees. It gives them good things to eat. It makes 'em strong. Gives 'em life. And the circle goes 'round.

She isn't traumatized, she isn't weighed down by any obvious grief. She's just sad, all the time. An evil little creature that wouldn't have shown up on any X-rays was living in her chest, rushing through her blood and filling her head with whispers, saying she wasn't good enough, that she was weak and ugly and would never be anything but broken. You can get it into your head to do some unbelievably stupid things when you run out of tears, when you can't silence the voices no one else can hear, when you've never been in a room where you felt normal. In the end you get exhausted from always tensing the skin around your ribs, never letting your shoulders sink, brushing along walls all your life with white knuckles, always afraid that someone will notice you, because no one's supposed to do that. All Nadia knew was that she had never felt like someone who had anything in common with anyone else. She had always been entirely alone in every emotion. She sat in a classroom full of her contemporaries, looking like everything was the same as usual, but inside she was standing in a forest screaming until her heart burst. The trees grew until one day the sunlight could no longer break through the foliage, and the darkness in here became impenetrable.

We do not need to plan or devise a "world of the future"; if we take care of the world of the present, the future will have received full justice from us. A good future is implicit in the soils, forests, grasslands, marshes, deserts, mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans that we have now, and in the good things of human culture that we have now; the only valid "futurology" available to us is to take care of those things. We have no need to contrive and dabble at "the future of the human race"; we have the same pressing need that we have always had - to love, care for, and teach our children. (pg. 73, "Feminism, the Body, and the Machine")

I will tell you, too, that every fairy tale has a moral. The moral of my story may be that love is a constraint, as strong as any belt. And this is certainly true, which makes it a good moral. Or it may be that we are all constrained in some way, either in our bodies, or in our hearts or minds, an Empress as well as the woman who does her laundry. ... Perhaps it is that a shoemaker's daughter can bear restraint less easily than an aristocrat, that what he can bear for three years she can endure only for three days. ... Or perhaps my moral is that our desire for freedom is stronger than love or pity. That is a wicked moral, or so the Church has taught us. But I do not know which moral is the correct one. And that is also the way of a fairy tale.

Now that we’ve settled that,” Rhys drawled from behind me, “can we please eat? I’m famished.” Amren opened her mouth with a wry smile, but he added, “Do not say what you were going to say, Amren.” Rhys gave Cassian a sharp look. Both of them were still bruised—but healing fast. “Unless you want to have it out on the roof.” Amren clicked her tongue and instead jerked her chin at me. “I heard you grew fangs in the forest and killed some Hybern beasts. Good for you, girl.” “She saved his sorry ass is more like it,” Mor said, filling her glass of wine. “Poor little Rhys got himself in a bind.” I held out my own glass for Mor to fill. “He does need unusual amounts of coddling.” Azriel choked on his wine, and I met his gaze—warm for once. Soft, even. I felt Rhys tense beside me and quickly looked away from the spymaster

Good Timber by Douglas Malloch The tree that never had to fight For sun and sky and air and light, But stood out in the open plain And always got its share of rain, Never became a forest king But lived and died a scrubby thing. The man who never had to toil To gain and farm his patch of soil, Who never had to win his share Of sun and sky and light and air, Never became a manly man But lived and died as he began. Good timber does not grow with ease: The stronger wind, the stronger trees; The further sky, the greater length; The more the storm, the more the strength. By sun and cold, by rain and snow, In trees and men good timbers grow. Where thickest lies the forest growth, We find the patriarchs of both. And they hold counsel with the stars Whose broken branches show the scars Of many winds and much of strife. This is the common law of life.

Saskia.” A hand covered hers. Saskia frowned. It was irritating enough that she only had one hand to work with. She didn’t need to have the movement of that one impeded as well. “I’m in the middle of – Oh! Tania! What – I thought you were in Canberra.” “I was yesterday. I returned this morning.” “Yesterday?” Saskia turned from staring at Tania to staring at her computer and the table. A half-empty mug of something sat next to a partly eaten sandwich and a mostly empty glass of water. “Oh,” she sat back in her chair. “I do this sometimes. I get caught up in things.” Her gaze fell on the lines and boxes on the monitor’s screen. She sat forward, her surroundings disappearing from her awareness again. “Tania, I think I’m close to figuring it out.” Tania’s hand, still on Saskia’s, squeezed gently. “Good. But now you need to take a rest.” “No. I can finish this. I’m on a roll.” “Yes. You can roll again later.” “Look! I think I’ve almost worked it out.” She tugged her hand from under Tania’s and pointed to her computer screen, which showed a bank statement. “Look at these transactions. I can match them to –” Tania peered at the screen. “Whose statement is that?

He had left off being a perfectionist then, when he discovered that not promptly kept appointments, not a house circumspectly clean, not membership in Onwentsia, or the Lake Forest Golf and Country Club, or the Lawyers' Club, not power, or knowledge, or goodness - not anything - cleared you through the terrifying office of chance; that it is chance and not perfection that rules the world.

Often I walked in the neighboring forest of fir and pine, whose beauties, wonderful winter solitudes, seemed to protect me from the onset of despair. Ineffably kind voices spoke down to me from the trees: 'You must not come to the hard conclusion that everything in the world is hard, false, and wicked. But come often to us; the forest likes you. In its company you will find health and good spirits again, and entertain more lofty and beautiful thoughts.

Who will you be when faced with the end? The end of a kingdom, The end of good men, Will you run? Will you hide? Or will you hunt down evil with a venomous pride? Rise to the ashes, Rise to the winter sky, Rise to the calling, Make heard the battle cry. Let it scream from the mountains From the forest to the chapel, Because death is a hungry mouth And you are the apple. So who will you be when faced with the end? When the vultures are circling And the shadows descend Will you cower? Or will you fight? Is your heart made of glass? Or a pure Snow White?

How could I not fall in love with him," she asked. And on the tail end of her words, her bedroom door flew open and closed just as fast. Jen bent over, panting heavily as she looked up at Sally. "Hey Sally girl. Who we falling in love with?" Jen asked breathlessly. "Jen, what's wrong?" Sally paused and then decided on a better question. "What have you done now?" Jen stood up and took two deep breaths. Seeming to have regained her wind, she spoke quickly. "First off, I've changed my mind. I don't want you to name your first born after me." Sally interrupted. "Thank goodness for that," she muttered. "I want you to name your entire freaking litter after me," Jen growled. "Do you know what I've been through?" Jen's arms were flinging around as she glared at Sally. "I did that little strip tease to try and keep things from escalating with the rest of the pack and Decebel was beyond pissed. I had to sneak out of the gathering room and make a run for it. I've been running through the freaking forest trying to throw him off by changing back and forth so that I could place my clothes that I carried in my freaking muzzle. CARRIED IN MY MUZZLE SALLY! I put them in different places to throw off him off my scent." Jen went over to Sally's window and was trying to judge the danger of using it as an exit.

Well, the traveling teachers do come through every few months," said the Baron. "Yes, sir, I know, sir, and they're useless, sir. They teach facts, not understanding. It's like teaching people about forests by showing them a saw. I want a proper school, sir, to teach reading and writing, and most of all thinking, sir, so people can find what they're good at, because someone doing what they really like is always an asset to any country, and too often people never find out until it's too late.

Promises are meant to be broken, that’s what people always say, but what if I want to keep mine? To this day, I’d sooner break my bones than go back on any of the words I said so dearly to you. We’re so young, God, we’re so young. Only sixteen with a pocketful of big dreams. The world is in our hands, that’s what people always say, but what if I’m afraid to carry it? What if I don’t want to be Atlas? You, my dear, are unshakeable. You hold your cards close to your chest. Courage finds a home in the space between your ribs. I’m too young to understand, that’s what people always say, but I am old enough to see. There’s a forest fire in your eyes that sets me alight. A bravery in your heart that beats in tune to mine. My darling, you’re something out of a story. Poetry doesn’t begin to do your soul justice. Change is inevitable, that’s what people always say, but what if that change is good? There’s a lightness to my steps there wasn’t before. There’s a brightness in my heart there wasn’t before. If you held me up to a candle, my silhouette would be covered in your name. Before you, I used to care what people always say your lovely heart led me astray in unexpected ways. Sometimes I think I’m going to burst into flames. From the spark you struck inside my chest. I wonder, how do you keep from setting yourself afire? But then comes the startling yet undeniable understanding. You are fireproof, lionheart and now I am, too.

But I want to extol not the sweetness nor the placidity of the dog, but the wilderness out of which he cannot step entirely, and from which we benefit. For wilderness is our first home too, and in our wild ride into modernity with all its concerns and problems we need also all the good attachments to that origin that we can keep or restore. Dog is one of the messengers of that rich and still magical first world. The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. There is not a dog that romps and runs but we learn from him. The other dog—the one that all its life walks leashed and obedient down the sidewalk—is what a chair is to a tree. It is a possession only, the ornament of a human life. Such dogs can remind us of nothing large or noble or mysterious or lost. They cannot make us sweeter or more kind. Only unleashed dogs can do that. They are a kind of poetry themselves when they are devoted not only to us but to the wet night, to the moon and the rabbit-smell in the grass and their own bodies leaping forward.

Eventually the Woodsman spoke. ‘We all have our routines,’ he said softly. ‘But they must have a purpose and provide an outcome that we can see and take some comfort from, or else they have no use at all. Without that, they are like the endless pacings of a caged animal. If they are not madness itself, then they are a prelude to it.’ The Woodsman stood and showed David his axe. ‘See here,’ he said, pointing with his finger at the blade. Every morning, I make certain that me axe is clean and keen. I look to my house and check that its windows and doors remain secure. I tend to my land, disposing of weeds and ensuring that the soil is watered. I walk through the forest, clearing those paths that need to be kept open. Where trees have been damaged, I do my best to repair what has been harmed. these are my routines and I enjoy doing them well.’ He laid a hand gently on David’s shoulder, and David saw understanding in his face. ‘Rules and routines are good, but they must give you satisfaction. Can you truly say you gain that from touching and counting?’ David shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I get scared when I don’t do them. I’m afraid of what might happen.’ ‘Then find routines that allow you to feel secure when they are done. You told me that you have a new brother: look to him each morning. Look to your father, and your stepmother. Tend to the flowers in the garden, or in the pots upon the window sill. Seek others who are weaker than you are, and try to give them comfort where you can. Let these be your routines, and the rules that govern your life.

The technologies which have had the most profound effects on human life are usually simple. A good example of a simple technology with profound historical consequences is hay. Nobody knows who invented hay, the idea of cutting grass in the autumn and storing it in large enough quantities to keep horses and cows alive through the winter. All we know is that the technology of hay was unknown to the Roman Empire but was known to every village of medieval Europe. Like many other crucially important technologies, hay emerged anonymously during the so-called Dark Ages. According to the Hay Theory of History, the invention of hay was the decisive event which moved the center of gravity of urban civilization from the Mediterranean basin to Northern and Western Europe. The Roman Empire did not need hay because in a Mediterranean climate the grass grows well enough in winter for animals to graze. North of the Alps, great cities dependent on horses and oxen for motive power could not exist without hay. So it was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York.

Does this mean I get to be part of the team?” She clapped her hands again. “Yes,” Nate said. “No,” Gabriel said at the same time. “Duuuude,” Nate said to Gabriel between his teeth. “I really want to talk to this Mr. Brooks guy.” “Fine.” Gabriel sighed. “Let her help. I don’t care. But if you die,” Gabriel pointed at Heather, “or get cursed or something, that’s your fault.” Heather nodded merrily, still clapping. “Yay, I’m part of the team.” “We’re not a team,” Gabriel said through gritted teeth. Heather ignored him and looked at Nate. “I think we need a team name.” “Ooh! Good idea.” Nate pointed a finger into the air. “How about Team Awesome?” Heather wrinkled her nose. “Too vague. Team Super Secret Fountain Seekers?” “Too specific.” Nate shook his head. “Team Ash Guy Hunters?” “Ashman.” Heather shook her head. “Too hard to say.” Nate scoffed. “And ‘Super Secret Fountain Seekers’ is easy to say?” Gabriel huffed and started walking toward the door. “You guys can stay here and pick a name and a Team Captain or whatever, but I’m going to find Mr. Brooks.” He opened the door to leave, night falling on the forest around them. Heather said, “Mr. Brooks doesn’t open his door when it’s dark outside.” She shrugged. “So we’re going to have to wait until tomorrow after school.” Frustrated, Gabriel closed the cabin door on the setting sun. “Tomorrow then.” “Perfect.” Nate nodded, shifting his eyes from Scarlet, to Gabriel, and then to Heather. A moment passed. “I call dibs on Team Captain,” Nate said. Gabriel rolled his eyes.

Suddenly, ahead of us, a group of men ran out of the forest and pulled a thick rope across the road. There was no time to look at them properly, but they didn’t look friendly. I still don’t know why, but my reflex reaction was to foot the accelerator and drive straight through – never a good idea on a dirt track, except perhaps for rally drivers. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or them, but I found myself looking in the rear-view mirror and seeing men lying on the road, I suppose pulled down by the force of the rope.

No man's really any good till he knows how bad he is, or might be; till he's realised exactly how much right he has to all this snobbery, and sneering, and talking about 'criminals,' as if they were apes in a forest ten thousand miles away; till he's got rid of all the dirty self-deception of talking about low types and deficient skulls; till he's squeezed out of his soul the last drop of the oil of the Pharisees; till his only hope is somehow or other to have captured one criminal, and kept him safe and sane under his own hat.

...but it was death that changed. People are still people. Some good, some bad. Death changed, and we don't know what death really means anymore. Maybe that was the point. Maybe this is an object lesson about the arrogance of our assumptions. Hard to say. But the world? She didn't change. She healed. We stopped hurting her and she began to heal. You can see it all around. The whole world is a forest now. The air is fresher. More trees, more oxygen.

A Faint Music by Robert Hass Maybe you need to write a poem about grace. When everything broken is broken, and everything dead is dead, and the hero has looked into the mirror with complete contempt, and the heroine has studied her face and its defects remorselessly, and the pain they thought might, as a token of their earnestness, release them from themselves has lost its novelty and not released them, and they have begun to think, kindly and distantly, watching the others go about their days— likes and dislikes, reasons, habits, fears— that self-love is the one weedy stalk of every human blossoming, and understood, therefore, why they had been, all their lives, in such a fury to defend it, and that no one— except some almost inconceivable saint in his pool of poverty and silence—can escape this violent, automatic life’s companion ever, maybe then, ordinary light, faint music under things, a hovering like grace appears. As in the story a friend told once about the time he tried to kill himself. His girl had left him. Bees in the heart, then scorpions, maggots, and then ash. He climbed onto the jumping girder of the bridge, the bay side, a blue, lucid afternoon. And in the salt air he thought about the word “seafood,” that there was something faintly ridiculous about it. No one said “landfood.” He thought it was degrading to the rainbow perch he’d reeled in gleaming from the cliffs, the black rockbass, scales like polished carbon, in beds of kelp along the coast—and he realized that the reason for the word was crabs, or mussels, clams. Otherwise the restaurants could just put “fish” up on their signs, and when he woke—he’d slept for hours, curled up on the girder like a child—the sun was going down and he felt a little better, and afraid. He put on the jacket he’d used for a pillow, climbed over the railing carefully, and drove home to an empty house. There was a pair of her lemon yellow panties hanging on a doorknob. He studied them. Much-washed. A faint russet in the crotch that made him sick with rage and grief. He knew more or less where she was. A flat somewhere on Russian Hill. They’d have just finished making love. She’d have tears in her eyes and touch his jawbone gratefully. “God,” she’d say, “you are so good for me.” Winking lights, a foggy view downhill toward the harbor and the bay. “You’re sad,” he’d say. “Yes.” “Thinking about Nick?” “Yes,” she’d say and cry. “I tried so hard,” sobbing now, “I really tried so hard.” And then he’d hold her for a while— Guatemalan weavings from his fieldwork on the wall— and then they’d fuck again, and she would cry some more, and go to sleep. And he, he would play that scene once only, once and a half, and tell himself that he was going to carry it for a very long time and that there was nothing he could do but carry it. He went out onto the porch, and listened to the forest in the summer dark, madrone bark cracking and curling as the cold came up. It’s not the story though, not the friend leaning toward you, saying “And then I realized—,” which is the part of stories one never quite believes. I had the idea that the world’s so full of pain it must sometimes make a kind of singing. And that the sequence helps, as much as order helps— First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing

The image of a wood has appeared often enough in English verse. It has indeed appeared so often that it has gathered a good deal of verse into itself; so that it has become a great forest where, with long leagues of changing green between them, strange episodes of poetry have taken place. Thus in one part there are lovers of a midsummer night, or by day a duke and his followers, and in another men behind branches so that the wood seems moving, and in another a girl separated from her two lordly young brothers, and in another a poet listening to a nightingale but rather dreaming richly of the grand art than there exploring it, and there are other inhabitants, belonging even more closely to the wood, dryads, fairies, an enchanter's rout. The forest itself has different names in different tongues- Westermain, Arden, Birnam, Broceliande; and in places there are separate trees named, such as that on the outskirts against which a young Northern poet saw a spectral wanderer leaning, or, in the unexplored centre of which only rumours reach even poetry, Igdrasil of one myth, or the Trees of Knowledge and Life of another. So that indeed the whole earth seems to become this one enormous forest, and our longest and most stable civilizations are only clearings in the midst of it.

What discordant vespers do the tinker's goods chime through the long twilight and over the brindled forest road, him stooped and hounded through the windy recrements of day like those old exiles who divorced of corporeality and enjoined ingress of heaven or hell wander forever the middle warrens spoorless increate and anathema. Hounded by grief, by guilt, or like this cheerless vendor clamored at heel through wood and fen by his own querulous and inconsolable wares in perennial tin malediction.

I remember the first time I saw you,” Allie said. “I thought you smelled me first.” “Right,” said Allie. “The chocolate. But then I saw you as I sat up in the dead forest, thinking I knew you. At the time, I thought I must have seen you through the windshield when our cars crashed…. But that wasn’t it. I think, way back then, I was seeing you as you are now. Isn’t that funny?” “Not as funny as the way I always complained, and the way you always bossed me around!” They embraced and held each other for a long time. “Don’t forget me,” Nick said. “No matter where your life goes, no matter how old you get. And if you ever get the feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder, but there’s nobody there, maybe it’ll be me.” “I’ll write to you,” said Allie, and Nick laughed. “No really. I’ll write the letter then burn it, and if I care just enough it will cross into Everlost.” “And,” added Nick, “it will show up as a dead letter at that the post office Milos made cross into San Antonio!” Allie could have stood there saying good-bye forever, because it was more than Nick she was saying good-bye to. She was leaving behind four years of half-life in a world that was both stunningly beautiful, and hauntingly dark. And she was saying good-bye to Mikey. I’ll be waiting for you, he had said…. Well, if he was, maybe she wasn’t saying good-bye at all. Nick hefted the backpack on his shoulder. “Shouldn’t you be heading off to Memphis?” he said. “You’d better hit the road…. Jack.” Then he chuckled by his own joke, and walked off.

She sat silently in her rocking chair. Some people are good at talking, but Granny Weatherwax was good at silence. She could sit so quiet and still that she faded. You forgot she was there. The room became empty. Tiffany thought of it as the I’m-not-here spell, if it was a spell. She reasoned that everyone had something inside them that told the world they were there. That was why you could often sense when someone was behind you, even if they were making no sound at all. You were receiving their I-am-here signal. Some people had a very strong one. They were the people who got served first in shops. Granny Weatherwax had an I-am-here signal that bounced off the mountains when she wanted it to; when she walked into a forest, all the wolves and bears ran out the other side. She could turn it off, too. She was doing that now. Tiffany was having to concentrate to see her. Most of her mind was telling her that there was no one there at all.

Because there is nothing, nothing on Urras that we Anarresti need! We left with empty hands, a hundred and seventy years ago, and we were right. We took nothing. Because there is nothing here but States and their weapons, the rich and their lies, and the poor and their misery. There is no way to act rightly, with a clear heart, on Urras. There is nothing you can do that profit does not enter into, and fear of loss, and the wish for power. You cannot say good morning without knowing which of you is ‘superior’ to the other, or trying to prove it. You cannot act like a brother to other people, you must manipulate them, or command them, or obey them, or trick them. You cannot touch another person, yet they will not leave you alone. There is no freedom. It is a box—Urras is a box, a package, with all the beautiful wrapping of blue sky and meadows and forests and great cities. And you open the box, and what is inside it? A black cellar full of dust, and a dead man. A man whose hand was shot off because he held it out to others.

In the mid–path of my life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood,' writes Dante, in The Divine Comedy, beginning a quest that will lead to transformation and redemption. A journey through the dark of the woods is a motif common to fairy tales: young heroes set off through the perilous forest in order to reach their destiny, or they find themselves abandoned there, cast off and left for dead. The road is long and treacherous, prowled by wolves, ghosts, and wizards — but helpers also appear along the way, good fairies and animal guides, often cloaked in unlikely disguises. The hero's task is to tell friend from foe, and to keep walking steadily onward.

The painter Kramskoy has a remarkable painting entitled The Contemplator: it depicts a forest in winter, and in the forest, standing all by himself on the road, in deepest solitude, a stray little peasant in a ragged caftan and bast shoes; he stands as if he were lost in thought, but he is not thinking, he is "contemplating" something. If you nudged him, he would give a start and look at you as if he had just woken up, but without understanding anything. It's true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it--why and what for, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both. There are a good many "contemplatives" among our peasants. And Smerdyakov was probably one of them. And he was probably greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why.

I'm here, Sorcha. I would not believe it at first; it had been so long since he had touched my mind in this way. I'm here. Try to let go, dear one. I know how it hurts. Lean on me; let me take your burden for a while. I could scarcely see him; he was on the far side of the fire, behind the others and half turned away, with his head still in his hands. It seemed as if he had scarcely moved at all. How can you? How can you know? I know. Let me help you. I felt the strength of his mind flow into mine, and somehow he managed to close off the terrible, the dark and secret things that he had dreaded sharing with me, and fill my head with pictures of all that was good and brave.

What if something were to happen? What if something suddenly started throbbing? Then they would notice it was there and they'd think their hearts were going to burst. Then what good would their dykes, bulwarks, power houses, furnaces and pile drivers be to them? It can happen any time, perhaps right now: the omens are present. For example, the father of a family might go out for a walk, and, across the street, he'll see something like a red rag, blown towards him by the wind. And when the rag has gotten close to him he'll see that it is a side of rotten meat, grimy with dust, dragging itself along by crawling, skipping, a piece of writhing flesh rolling in the gutter, spasmodically shooting out spurts of blood. Or a mother might look at her child's cheek and ask him: "What's that, a pimple?" and see the flesh puff out a little, split, open, and at the bottom of the split an eye, a laughing eye might appear. Or they might feel things gently brushing against their bodies, like the caresses of reeds to swimmers in a river. And they will realize that their clothing has become living things. And someone else might feel something scratching in his mouth. He goes to the mirror, opens his mouth: and his tongue is an enormous, live centipede, rubbing its legs together and scraping his palate. He'd like to spit it out, but the centipede is a part of him and he will have to tear it out with his own hands. And a crowd of things will appear for which people will have to find new names, stone eye, great three cornered arm, toe crutch, spider jaw. And someone might be sleeping in his comfortable bed, in his quiet, warm room, and wake up naked on a bluish earth, in a forest of rustling birch trees, rising red and white towards the sky like the smokestacks of Jouxtebouville, with big bumps half way out of the ground, hairy and bulbous like onions. And birds will fly around these birch trees and pick at them with their beaks and make them bleed. Sperm will flow slowly, gently, from these wounds, sperm mixed with blood, warm and glassy with little bubbles.

There is not one single invention of (Nature's), however subtle or impressive it may be thought to be, that the human spirit cannot create; no forest of Fontainebleu or moonlit scene that cannot be produced with a floodlit stage set; no waterfall that hydraulics cannot imitate so perfectly as to be indistinguishable from the original; no rock that papier-mâché cannot copy; no flower that specious taffetas and delicately painted papers cannot rival! There is no doubt whatever that this eternally self-replicating old fool has now exhausted the good-natured admiration of all true artists, and the moment has come to replace her, as far as that can be achieved, with artiface.

Wow," said Samirah as we approached the dock. "You're right, Alex. That ship is really yellow." I sighed. "Not you, too." Alex grinned. "I vote we name it the Big Banana. All in favour?" "Don't you dare," I said. "I love it," Mallory said, throwing Alex a mooring line. Keen and Gunderson had emerged from belowdecks in an apparent truce, though both sported fresh black eyes. "It's decided, then!" bellowed Halfborn. "The good ship Mikillgulr!" T.J. scratched his head. "There's an Old Norse term for big banana?" "Well, not exactly," Halfborn admitted. "The Vikings never sailed far enough south to discover bananas. But Mikillgulr means big yellow. That's close enough!" I looked skyward with a silent prayer: Frey, god of summer, Dad, thanks for the boat. But could I suggest that forest green is also a great summery colour, and please stop embarrassing me in front of my friends? Amen.

Just try to keep your mind in the present. Whatever arises in the mind, just watch it and let go of it. Don't even wish to be rid of thoughts. Then the mind will return to its natural state. No discriminating between good and bad, hot and cold, fast and slow. No me and no you, no self at all—just what there is. When you walk there is no need to do anything special. Simply walk and see what is there. No need to cling to isolation or seclusion. Wherever you are, know yourself by being natural and watching. If doubts arise, watch them come and go. It's very simple. Hold on to nothing. It's as though you are walking down a road. Periodically you will run into obstacles. When you meet defilements, just see them and overcome them by letting them go. Don't think about the obstacles you've already passed; don't worry about those you have not yet seen. Stick to the present. Don't be concerned about the length of the road or the destination. Everything is changing. Whatever you pass, don't cling to it. Eventually the mind will reach its natural balance where practice is automatic. All things will come and go of themselves.

There was more than one Cabeswater. Or more than one of whatever it was. How many? He didn't know. How alive was it? He didn't know that, either. Did it THINK, was it an alien, did it die, was it good, was it right? He didn't know. But he knew there was more than one, and this one stretched its fingers out as hard as it could to reach the other. The enormity of the enormity of the world grew and grew inside Adam, and he didn't know if he could hold it. He was just a boy. Was he meant to know this? They had transformed Henrietta already by waking this ley line and strengthening Cabeswater. What would a world look like with more forests woken all over it? Would it tear itself apart with crackling energy and magic, or was this a pendulum swing, a result of hundreds of years of sleep? How many kings slept?

But the most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive. Only some stumps are thus nourished. Perhaps they are the parents of the trees that make up the forest of today. A tree’s most important means of staying connected to other trees is a “wood wide web” of soil fungi that connects vegetation in an intimate network that allows the sharing of an enormous amount of information and goods. Scientific research aimed at understanding the astonishing abilities of this partnership between fungi and plant has only just begun. The reason trees share food and communicate is that they need each other. It takes a forest to create a microclimate suitable for tree growth and sustenance. So it’s not surprising that isolated trees have far shorter lives than those living connected together in forests. Perhaps the saddest plants of all are those we have enslaved in our agricultural systems. They seem to have lost the ability to communicate, and, as Wohlleben says, are thus rendered deaf and dumb. “Perhaps farmers can learn from the forests and breed a little more wildness back into their grain and potatoes,” he advocates, “so that they’ll be more talkative in the future.” Opening

She says it’s wrong to be frittering away my hours asking questions when there’s work to be done. But I don’t see how a question can be wrong. Can you, Pa? Ma says the Bible sets out what’s right and wrong so we don’t have to bother ourselves with it none but it seems to me that it ain’t so matter-of-fact. Like when you kilt that old cow last week and I didn’t want to eat it ’cause he was my favorite and so gentle besides. Ma said I was sinful to waste food. But I said that maybe we shouldn’t go about killing and eating cows when they was so peaceful-like. Ma said that was foolishness and that God put the cows here just so as we can eat ’em. But that don’t seem like such a good deal for the cows to me. Preacher told us not more than four Sundays ago that God loves all his creatures, but it ain’t loving to my way of thinking to create a thing just for it to be food. Them cows ain’t never done nothing to us. Which got me to thinking that maybe we got it wrong and they got a purpose we don’t know nothing about.

The forge and dove shall break the cage. Wasn’t that the prophecy line? That meant Piper and he would have to figure out how to break into that magic rock prison, assuming they could find it. Then they’d unleash Hera’s rage, causing a lot of death. Well, that sounded fun! Leo had seen Tía Callida in action; she liked knives, snakes, and putting babies in roaring fires. Yeah, definitely let’s unleash her rage. Great idea. Festus kept flying. The wind got colder, and below them snowy forests seemed to go on forever. Leo didn’t know exactly where Quebec was. He’d told Festus to take them to the palace of Boreas, and Festus kept going north. Hopefully, the dragon knew the way, and they wouldn’t end up at the North Pole. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” Piper said in his ear. “You were up all night.” Leo wanted to protest, but the word sleep sounded really good. “You won’t let me fall off?” Piper patted his shoulder. “Trust me, Valdez. Beautiful people never lie.” “Right,” he muttered. He leaned forward against the warm bronze of the dragon’s neck, and closed his eyes.

The Source of all things, the luminescence, has more forms than heaven’s stars, sure. And one good thought is all it takes to make it shine. But a single mistake can burn down a forest in your heart, hiding all the stars, in all the skies. And while a mistake’s still burning, ruined love or lost faith can make you think you’re done, and you can’t go on. But it’s not true. It’s never true. No matter what you do, no matter where you’re lost, the luminescence never leaves you. Any good thing that dies inside can rise again, if you want it hard enough. The heart doesn’t know how to quit, because it doesn’t know how to lie. You lift your eyes from the page, fall into the smile of a perfect stranger, and the searching starts all over again. It’s not what it was. It’s always different. It’s always something else. But the new forest that grows back in a scarred heart is sometimes wilder and stronger than it was before the fire. And if you stay there, in that shine within yourself, that new place for the light, forgiving everything and never giving up, sooner or later you’ll always find yourself right back there where love and beauty made the world: at the beginning. The beginning. The beginning.

I got myself to the middle and sort of groped along there with one hand out in front. And something groped back at me. It sort of dabbed at me, whatever it was, wet and cold and desperate. It groped at my hand and then at my face. I went backward with a shriek and sat down in a puddle. It had felt like a snake. But the thing shrieked and went backward too. The ground shook under my behind. I sat staring, shaking all over. There was just enough gray light for me to pick out what seemed to be a couple of small trees, with the snake coiling this way and that down from them. I thought I must have walked into a forest. "Oh, please!" said the forest--unless it was the snake. "Help me! I'm lost! I'm stuck!" "What kind of a snake are you?" I said. "I'm not a snake! I'm an elephant!" it said despairingly. Elephants that talked now! I thought. But I'd already met a panther that I could understand, so, why not? It was all one long, mad dream. "It's more like a nightmare, I think," the elephant objected. "And I"m not exactly talking. You must be good at picking up four-legged thoughts. Please help me!

I didn’t want to answer any weird questions about Ren. I knew he’d probably tell his side of the story when he became a man again, but I didn’t care. I kept my version of the trip factual, unemotional, and, more importantly, Renless. Mr. Kadam said we’d be stopping at a hotel soon, but he wanted to find a good place to leave Ren first. I demurred, “Of course,” and smiled a sickly sweet smile back at the attentive tiger. Mr. Kadam worried, “I hope our hotel won’t be too far away for him.” I patted Mr. Kadam’s arm and reassured him, “Oh, don’t worry about him. He’s very good at getting what he wants. I mean…taking care of his needs. I’m sure he’ll find his long night alone in the jungle extremely enlightening.” Mr. Kadam shot me a puzzled glance, but he eventually nodded and pulled over near a forested area. Ren got out of the Jeep, came around to my side of the car, and stared at me with icy blue eyes. I just turned my body away so I wouldn’t have to look at him. When Mr. Kadam got back in the Jeep, I peeked out my window again, but Ren was gone. I reminded myself that he deserved it an sat back against the seat with my arms folded over my chest and an intense expression on my face. Mr. Kadam spoke softly, “Kelsey, are you alright? You seem very…tense, since I last saw you.” I muttered under my breath, “You have no idea.

As they were speaking, a dog that had been lying asleep raised his head and pricked up his ears. This was Argos, whom Odysseus had bred before setting out for Troy, but he had never had any enjoyment from him. In the old days he used to be taken out by the young men when they went hunting wild goats, or deer, or hares, but now that his master was gone he was lying neglected on the heaps of mule and cow dung that lay in front of the stable doors till the men should come and draw it away to manure the great close; and he was full of fleas. As soon as he saw Odysseus standing there, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master. When Odysseus saw the dog on the other side of the yard, dashed a tear from his eyes without Eumaeus seeing it, and said: 'Eumaeus, what a noble hound that is over yonder on the manure heap: his build is splendid; is he as fine a fellow as he looks, or is he only one of those dogs that come begging about a table, and are kept merely for show?' 'This dog,' answered Eumaeus, 'belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do. There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead and gone, and the women take no care of him. Servants never do their work when their master's hand is no longer over them, for Zeus takes half the goodness out of a man when he makes a slave of him.' So saying he entered the well-built mansion, and made straight for the riotous pretenders in the hall. But Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had fulfilled his destiny of faith and seen his master once more after twenty years…

I come to call you Home. Those who resonate with my words and follow them internally, will find that place and know It's completeness, its joy and fullness. I have come to call you away from suffering, from fear and from a life of sorrow and into your own, divine Being. I did not come here to give you decorative stories, to excite your imagination, or sign you up for some long program but to show you how available Truth is, and to remind you that you are never separate from It. No person on this planet is apart from the Truth in the Heart and yet the world is so vast and varied in expression. The greatest good and greatest evil is here. In this forest of duality and complexity you must find your way Home. You must win your Self back. Wisdom and trust will be your compass. Many voices came to call us but we are here today because we are freshly called by the voice of God, Love, Truth. Do not come half way home, but fully home. I know the voice that called you is true and Truth and that where you are being called to is also Real. It is inside your own Heart. It is what gives me the strength to be here. I love to see the beings being set free from the hypnosis of conditioning; from fears, false projection and the grip of ego. And I know that to be liberated is not difficult. It requires only openness and the sincere desire to be free. I don't need to hear anything about your past. Your stories are of no interest to me. That is not how I know you. I know you only through your Heart. That is my true connection with you - the living power of God. It is That which I respond to in you and it is only This that I know. I can only keep reminding you of It by pointing you again and again to the obvious in yourself. Now you must respond to my pointing. This will complete this yoga of seeing. Find and be one with That which is imperishable. Be merged in the Absolute. Don't go to sleep.

I'll be right here. Good luck, or break a leg, or something.” As Jay and Gregory turned and headed into the crowd, my traitorous eyes returned to the corner and found another pair or eyes staring darkly back. I dropped my gaze for three full seconds, and then lifted my eyes again, hesitant. The drummer was still staring at me, oblivious to the three girls trying to win back his attention. He put up one finger at the girls and said something that looked like, “Excuse me.” Oh, my goodness. Was he...? Oh, no. Yes, he was walking this way. My nerves shot into high alert. I looked around, but nobody else was near. When I looked back up, there he was, standing right in front of me. Good gracious, he was sexy-a word that had not existed in my personal vocabulary until that moment. This guy was sexy like it was his job or something. He looked straight into my eyes, which threw me off guard, because nobody ever looked me in the eye like that. Maybe Patti and Jay, but they didn't hold my stare like he was doing now. He didn't look away, and I found that I couldn't take my gaze off those blue eyes. “Who are you?” he asked in a blunt, almost confrontational way. I blinked. It was the strangest greeting I'd ever received. “I'm...Anna.” “Right. Anna. How very nice.” I tried to focus on his words and not his luxuriously accented voice, which made everything sound lovely. He leaned in closer. “But who are you?” What did that mean? Did I need to have some sort of title or social standing to enter his presence? “I just came with my friend Jay?” Oh, I hated when I got nervous and started talking in questions. I pointed in the general direction of the guys, but he didn't take his eyes off me. I began rambling. “They just wrote some songs. Jay and Gregory. That they wanted you to hear. Your band, I mean. They're really...good?” His eyes roamed all around my body, stopping to evaluate my sad, meager chest. I crossed my arms. When his gaze landed on that stupid freckle above my lip, I was hit by the scent of oranges and limes and something earthy, like the forest floor. It was pleasant in a masculine way. “Uh-huh.” He was closer to my face now, growling in that deep voice, but looking into my eyes again. “Very cute. And where is your angel?” My what? Was that some kind of British slang for boyfriend? I didn't know how to answer without continuing to sound pitiful. He lifted his dark eyebrows, waiting. “If you mean Jay, he's over there talking to some man in a suit. But he's not my boyfriend or my angel or whatever.” My face flushed with heat and I tightened my arms over my chest. I'd never met anyone with an accent like his, and I was ashamed of the effect it had on me. He was obviously rude, and yet I wanted him to keep talking to me. It didn't make any sense. His stance softened and he took a step back, seeming confused, although I still couldn't read his emotions. Why didn't he show any colors? He didn't seem drunk or high. And that red thing...what was that? It was hard not to stare at it. He finally looked over at Jay, who was deep in conversation with the manager-type man. “Not your boyfriend, eh?” He was smirking at me now. I looked away, refusing to answer. “Are you certain he doesn't fancy you?” Kaidan asked. I looked at him again. His smirk was now a naughty smile. “Yes,” I assured him with confidence. “I am.” “How do you know?” I couldn't very well tell him that the only time Jay's color had shown mild attraction to me was when I accidentally flashed him one day as I was taking off my sweatshirt, and my undershirt got pulled up too high. And even then it lasted only a few seconds before our embarrassment set in.

It's a queer thing is a man's soul. It is the whole of him. Which means it is the unknown him, as well as the known. It seems to me just funny, professors and Benjamins fixing the functions of the soul. Why, the soul of man is a vast forest, and all Benjamin intended was a neat back garden. And we've all got to fit into his kitchen garden scheme of things. Hail Columbia ! The soul of man is a dark forest. The Hercynian Wood that scared the Romans so, and out of which came the white- skinned hordes of the next civilization. Who knows what will come out of the soul of man? The soul of man is a dark vast forest, with wild life in it. Think of Benjamin fencing it off! Oh, but Benjamin fenced a little tract that he called the soul of man, and proceeded to get it into cultivation. Providence, forsooth! And they think that bit of barbed wire is going to keep us in pound for ever? More fools they. ... Man is a moral animal. All right. I am a moral animal. And I'm going to remain such. I'm not going to be turned into a virtuous little automaton as Benjamin would have me. 'This is good, that is bad. Turn the little handle and let the good tap flow,' saith Benjamin, and all America with him. 'But first of all extirpate those savages who are always turning on the bad tap.' I am a moral animal. But I am not a moral machine. I don't work with a little set of handles or levers. The Temperance- silence-order- resolution-frugality-industry-sincerity - justice- moderation-cleanliness-tranquillity-chastity-humility keyboard is not going to get me going. I'm really not just an automatic piano with a moral Benjamin getting tunes out of me. Here's my creed, against Benjamin's. This is what I believe: 'That I am I.' ' That my soul is a dark forest.' 'That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.' 'Thatgods, strange gods, come forth f rom the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.' ' That I must have the courage to let them come and go.' ' That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.' There is my creed. He who runs may read. He who prefers to crawl, or to go by gasoline, can call it rot.

I had recently read to my dismay that they have started hunting moose again in New England. Goodness knows why anyone would want to shoot an animal as harmless and retiring as the moose, but thousands of people do—so many, in fact, that states now hold lotteries to decide who gets a permit. Maine in 1996 received 82,000 applications for just 1,500 permits. Over 12,000 outof-staters happily parted with a nonrefundable $20 just to be allowed to take part in the draw. Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old. That’s all there is to it. Without doubt, the moose is the most improbable, endearingly hopeless creature ever to live in the wilds. Every bit of it—its spindly legs, its chronically puzzled expression, its comical oven-mitt antlers—looks like some droll evolutionary joke. It is wondrously ungainly: it runs as if its legs have never been introduced to each other. Above all, what distinguishes the moose is its almost boundless lack of intelligence. If you are driving down a highway and a moose steps from the woods ahead of you, he will stare at you for a long minute (moose are notoriously shortsighted), then abruptly try to run away from you, legs flailing in eight directions at once. Never mind that there are several thousand square miles of forest on either side of the highway. The moose does not think of this. Clueless as to what exactly is going on, he runs halfway to New Brunswick before his peculiar gait inadvertently steers him back into the woods, where he immediately stops and takes on a startled expression that says, “Hey—woods. Now how the heck did I get here?” Moose are so monumentally muddle-headed, in fact, that when they hear a car or truck approaching they will often bolt out of the woods and onto the highway in the curious hope that this will bring them to safety. Amazingly, given the moose’s lack of cunning and peculiarly-blunted survival instincts, it is one of the longest-surviving creatures in North America. Mastodons, saber-toothed tigers, wolves, caribou, wild horses, and even camels all once thrived in eastern North America alongside the moose but gradually stumbled into extinction, while the moose just plodded on. It hasn’t always been so. At the turn of this century, it was estimated that there were no more than a dozen moose in New Hampshire and probably none at all in Vermont. Today New Hampshire has an estimated 5,000 moose, Vermont 1,000, and Maine anywhere up to 30,000. It is because of these robust and growing numbers that hunting has been reintroduced as a way of keeping them from getting out of hand. There are, however, two problems with this that I can think of. First, the numbers are really just guesses. Moose clearly don’t line up for censuses. Some naturalists think the population may have been overstated by as much as 20 percent, which means that the moose aren’t being so much culled as slaughtered. No less pertinent is that there is just something deeply and unquestionably wrong about killing an animal that is so sweetly and dopily unassuming as a moose. I could have slain this one with a slingshot, with a rock or stick—with a folded newspaper, I’d almost bet—and all it wanted was a drink of water. You might as well hunt cows.

When you make a mistake with metal, you can melt things down and start afresh. It is irritating, and it costs in time and soot and sweat, but it can be done. There is a comfort in iron, knowing that a fresh start is always possible. But a city is not a sword. It is a living thing, and living things defy simple fixing. Roots cannot be reforged. They scar, and broken branches must be cut and sealed with tar, and this makes me angry, as it always has, and my anger has no place to go. It was easier when I was young. I could use my anger like a hammer against the world. I was so sure of myself and my friends and my rightness. I would hammer at the world, and breaking felt like making to me, and I was good at it. And while I was not wrong, neither was I entirely right. Nothing is simple. I do not work in wood. I am not brave enough for that. There is a comfort in iron, a promise of safety, a second chance if mistakes are made. But a city is more a forest than a sword. No, it needs more tending than that. Perhaps a city is like a garden, then. So these days, it seems I have become a gardener. I dig foundations in the earth. I sow rows of houses. I plan and plant. I watch the skies for rain and ruin. I cannot help but think that you would be better at this, but circumstance has put both of us in our own odd place. You are forced to be a hammer in the world, and my ungentle hands are learning how to tend a plot of land. We must do what we can do. Did you know that there are some seeds that cannot sprout unless they are first burned? A friend once told me that. She was– she was a bookish sort. I think of gardening constantly these days. I wear your gift, and I think of you, and I think it is interesting that there are some living things that need to pass through fire before they flourish. I ramble. You have the heart of a gardener, and because of this, you think of consequence, and your current path pains you. I am not wise, and I do not give advice, but I have come to know a few things: sometimes breaking is making, even iron can start again, and there are many things that move through fire and find themselves much better for it afterward.

I watched the light flicker on the limestone walls until Archer said, "I wish we could go to the movies." I stared at him. "We're in a creepy dungeon. There's a chance I might die in the next few hours. You are going to die in the next few hours. And if you had one wish, it would be to catch a movie?" He shook his head. "That's not what I meant. I wish we weren't like this. You know, demon, demon-hunter. I wish I'd met you in a normal high school, and taken you on normal dates, and like, carried your books or something." Glancing over at me, he squinted and asked, "Is that a thing humans actually do?" "Not outside of 1950s TV shows," I told him, reaching up to touch his hair. He wrapped an arm around me and leaned against the wall, pulling me to his chest. I drew my legs up under me and rested my cheek on his collarbone. "So instead of stomping around forests hunting ghouls, you want to go to the movies and school dances." "Well,maybe we could go on the occasional ghoul hunt," he allowed before pressing a kiss to my temple. "Keep things interesting." I closed my eyes. "What else would we do if we were regular teenagers?" "Hmm...let's see.Well,first of all, I'd need to get some kind of job so I could afford to take you on these completely normal dates. Maybe I could stock groceries somewhere." The image of Archer in a blue apron, putting boxes of Nilla Wafers on a shelf at Walmart was too bizarre to even contemplate, but I went along with it. "We could argue in front of our lockers all dramatically," I said. "That's something I saw a lot at human high schools." He squeezed me in a quick hug. "Yes! Now that sounds like a good time. And then I could come to your house in the middle of the night and play music really loudly under your window until you took me back." I chuckled. "You watch too many movies. Ooh, we could be lab partners!" "Isn't that kind of what we were in Defense?" "Yeah,but in a normal high school, there would be more science, less kicking each other in the face." "Nice." We spent the next few minutes spinning out scenarios like this, including all the sports in which Archer's L'Occhio di Dio skills would come in handy, and starring in school plays.By the time we were done, I was laughing, and I realized that, for just a little while, I'd managed to forget what a huge freaking mess we were in. Which had probably been the point. Once our laughter died away, the dread started seeping back in. Still, I tried to joke when I said, "You know, if I do live through this, I'm gonna be covered in funky tattoos like the Vandy. You sure you want to date the Illustrated Woman, even if it's just for a little while?" He caught my chin and raised my eyes to his. "Trust me," he said softly, "you could have a giant tiger tattooed on your face, and I'd still want to be with you." "Okay,seriously,enough with the swoony talk," I told him, leaning in closer. "I like snarky, mean Archer." He grinned. "In that case, shut up, Mercer.