Hung Like A Horse Quotes

Marie: So why are you called Horse? Horse: Cause I'm hung like one.

I want to see the front of you.” “That’s what all the girls say.” “Do you expect me to roll you over? ’Cuz I will.” “Your mate’s not going to like this.” “As if that’s going to bother you?” “True. It actually makes it worth the effort.” With a groan, he shoved his palms into the shimmering silver pool of blood beneath him, and flopped over like the side of beef he was. “Wow,” she breathed. “I know, right? Hung like a horse.” “If you’re really nice—and you live through this—I’ll promise not to tell V.” “About my size.” She laughed a little. “No, that you assumed I’d look at you in any fashion other than professionally.

Wow," she breathed. "I know, right? Hung like a horse." "If you're really nice-and you live through this-I'll promise not to tell V." "About my size." She laughed a little, "No, that you assumed I'd look at you in any fashion other than professionally.

He was probably selfish in the sack. Probably selfish and greedy and...unsophisticated. And hung like a horse.

And yet there was something about his strength, his arrogance, his sheer size that got under my skin. He probably couldn't even spell vanilla. He was probably selfish in the sack. Probably selfish and greedy and...unsophisticated. And hung like a horse.

Anyway, no girl wants to bang a guy in a banana hammock. I don’t care if you’re built like a brick shithouse and hung like a freaking horse—if you’re wearing a man-thong? You look like a tool.

That night he dreamt of horses in a field on a high plain where the spring rains had brought up the grass and the wildflowers out of the ground and the flowers ran all blue and yellow far as the eye could see and in the dream he was among the horses running and in the dream he himself could run with the horses and they coursed the young mares and fillies over the plain where their rich bay and their rich chestnut colors shone in the sun and the young colts ran with their dams and trampled down the flowers in a haze of pollen that hung in the sun like powdered gold and they ran he and the horses out along the high mesas where the ground resounded under their running hooves and they flowed and changed and ran and their manes and tails blew off of them like spume and there was nothing else at all in that high world and they moved all of them in a resonance that was like a music among them and they were none of them afraid neither horse nor colt nor mare and they ran in that resonance which is the world itself and which cannot be spoken but only praised.

Of course the Man was wild too. He was dreadfully wild. He didn't even begin to be tame till he met the Woman, and she told him that she did not like living in his wild ways. She picked out a nice dry Cave, instead of a heap of wet leaves, to lie down in; and she strewed clean sand on the floor; and she lit a nice fire of wood at the back of the Cave; and she hung a dried wild-horse skin, tail down, across the opening of the Cave; and she said, 'Wipe your feet, dear, when you come in, and now we'll keep house.

Well, God knows what you used to be, then, because you’re built like a brick shithouse and hung like a horse.

So why are you called Horse?” “Cause I’m hung like one,” he replied, smirking.

Like he cared about a lot of stupid settlers and Indians and soldiers who hung around out here before he was even born. Hell, before his prehistoric grandparents had been born. Who gave a shit about Crazy Horse and Sitting Bullshit. He cared about X-Men and the box scores.

He sighed profoundly, and flung himself - there was a passion in his movements which deserves the word - on the earth at the foot of the oak tree. He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth's spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding; or the deck of a tumbling ship - it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out. To the oak tree he tied it and as he lay there, gradually the flutter in and about him stilled itself; the little leaves hung, the deer stopped; the pale summer clouds stayed; his limbs grew heavy on the ground; and he lay so still that by degrees the deer stopped nearer and the rooks wheeled round him and the swallows dipped and circled and the dragonflies shot past, as if all the fertility and amorous activity of a summer's evening were woven web-like about his body.

and this ache this trembling ache haunts me endlessly like you.

There it was, a sign above a shop that said 221B BAKER STREET. My mouth hung open. I looked around at the ordinary street and the white-painted buildings, looking clean in the morning rain. Where were the fog, the streetlights, the gray atmosphere? The horses pulling carriages, bringing troubled clients to Watson and Holmes? I had to admit I had been impressed with Big Ben and all, but for a kid who had devoured the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, this was really something. I was on Baker Street, driving by the rooms of Holmes and Watson! I sort of wished it were all in black and white and gray, like in the movies.

Unicorns are bad. So, so bad.” I’m dying. I just slapped a unicorn. “Your loss, baby. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m hung like a horse.” Kyrin snorts disgustedly. I clap my hands over my ears. But it’s too late. Unicorns are ruined for me. My childhood dream just got crushed by a unicorn’s boner.

Over the years, Gwen had found there were two kinds of men. Men who made eating a woman an art form because they were average—or barely—in size so they had to compensate. And men who were hung like horses but felt that nine-incher somehow exempted them from one of her favorite forms of entertainment. Yet somehow that Irish luck that had kept Gwen alive all these years deigned to reward on her the highest blessing a woman could hope for. A well-hung man who loved to give his woman head.

THE WEEPING WILLOW Flowing was the water showing in its mirror the willow trees. The weeping willows in the water were washing their hair! Striking the willows with their sparkling, bare swords the red horsemen were running to where the sun sets! Suddenly like a bird as if struck in the wing a wounded horseman rolled down from his horse! He didn't shout, he did'nt call back those who go along, he just looked with brimming eyes at the shining horseshoes of departing riders! O what a pity! What a pity for him that no more he shall lie on the foaming necks of galloping horses, no more he shall play his sword behind the white armies! The sounds of the horseshoes fades away slowly, the horsemen vanish at where the sun sets! Horsemen horsemen red horsemen, their horses winged with wind! Their horses winged with... Their horses winged... Their horses... Horse... Life has passed like the wind winged horsemen! The voice of the flowing water ceased. The shadows shadowed the colours wiped off. Black coverings came down over his blue eyes, the weeping willows hung down over his yellow hair! Weep not weeping willow weep not, in the mirror of the black water clasp not your hands! clasp not your hands! weep not!

It took a lot to render me silent, like learning my grandma had been a stripper in her youth, and that all male Werewolves were hung like horses… but this was horrific.

I'm hung like a fucking horse, dance over.

Benjamin and I sat in the middle of one of the large canoes with our grandmother in the stern, directing us past shoals and through rapids and into magnificent stretches of water. One day the clouds hung low and light rain freckled the slate-grey water that peeled across our bow. The pellets of rain were warm and Benjamin and I caught them on our tongues as our grandmother laughed behind us. Our canoes skimmed along and as I watched the shoreline it seemed the land itself was in motion. The rocks lay lodged like hymns in the breast of it, and the trees bent upward in praise like crooked fingers. It was glorious. Ben felt it too. He looked at me with tears in his eyes, and I held his look a long time, drinking in the face of my brother.

He called me Jess because that is the name of the hood which restrains the falcon. I was his falcon. I hung on his arm and fed at his hand. He said my nose was sharp and cruel and that my eyes had madness in them. He said I would tear him to pieces if he dealt softly with me. At night, if he was away, he had me chained to our bed. It was a long chain, long enough for me to use the chamber pot or to stand at the window and wait for the late owls. I love to hear the owls. I love to see the sudden glide of wings spread out for prey, and then the dip and the noise like a lover in pain. He used the chain when we went riding together. I had a horse as strong as his, and he’d whip the horse from behind and send it charging through the trees, and he’d follow, half a head behind, pulling on the chain and asking me how I liked my ride. His game was to have me sit astride him when we made love and hold me tight in the small of my back. He said he had to have me above him, in case I picked his eyes out in the faltering candlelight. I was none of these things, but I became them. At night, in June I think, I flew off his wrist and tore his liver from his body, and bit my chain in pieces and left him on the bed with his eyes open. He looked surprised, I don’t know why. As your lover describes you, so you are.

There were worse things than death. There would be a leap and a moment suspended, then a long hopeless curve to the rocks and river below. They would fall like leaves between clouds of swifts and then be washed away by the thundering rapids. Bramble clung to that thought. If their bodies washed away then there could be no identification, no danger of reprisals on her family. She hung on tighter. The roan's hindquarters bunched under her and they were in the air. It was like she had imagined: the leap, and then the moment suspended in air that seemed to last forever. Below her the swifts boiled up through the river mist, swerving and swooping, while she and the roan seemed to stay frozen above them. Bramble felt, like a rush of air, the presence of the gods surround her. The shock made her lose her balance and begin to slide sideways. She felt herself falling. With an impossible flick of both legs, the roan shrugged her back onto his shoulders. Then the long curve downward and she braced herself to see the cliffs rushing past as they fell. Time to die. Instead she felt a thumping jolt that flung her from the roan's back and tossed her among the rocks at the cliff's edge on the other side. On the other side. Her sight cleared, although the light still seemed dim. Her hearing came back a little. On the other side of the abyss a jumble of men and hounds were milling, shouting, astonished and very angry. "You can't do that!" one yelled. "It's impossible!" "Well, he shagging did it!" another said. "Can't be impossible!" "Head for the bridge!" Beck shouted. "We can still get him! I want that horse!

Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and pu the far side of the ruined ranks in a piping of boneflutes and dropping down off the sides of their mounts with one heel hung in the withers strap and their short bows flexing beneath the outstretched necks of the ponies until they had circled the company and cut their ranks in two and then rising up again like funhouse figures, some with nightmare faces painted on their breasts, riding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about on the ground with a peculiar bandylegged trot like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, head, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs and some who fell upon the dying and sodomized them with loud cries to their fellows.

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was; but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveler upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than before—upon the remodeled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

You have no clue how to treat her. So you can be happy she’s not mine all you want, but I would never tweet her that I’d be spending a weekend with my ex-girlfriend. Because if she was mine? Nothing would ever be more important than her. Nothing. You take this ring that tortured Dove yesterday and stuff it up your ass. And baby girl?” Now he looked into her eyes. “You remember that he may have all those good looks, but I’m hung like a horse and everything you do is okay with me. Even when you crap your pants.” Out of nowhere, Duke put his hands on either side of her face and gave her a full lip-to-lip kiss. And it turned out that Johnson was still holding her ass cheek.

It was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside the head that made everything crack, and seemed to spring every joint in my skull and made it overlap its neighbor.  Then the world went out in darkness, and I didn't feel anything more, and didn't know anything at all—at least for a while. When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak tree, on the grass, with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all to myself—nearly.  Not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down at me—a fellow fresh out of a picture-book.  He was in old-time iron armor from head to heel, with a helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with slits in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a prodigious spear; and his horse had armor on, too, and a steel horn projecting from his forehead, and gorgeous red and green silk trappings that hung down all around him like a bedquilt, nearly to the ground. "Fair sir, will ye just?" said this fellow.

Behind the abandoned house, two faerie horses chew on dandelions as they wait for their riders. Slight as deer, with a soft halo of light surrounding their bodies, they glide between the trees like ghosts. Oak goes to the first. Her coat a soft grey, her mane braided into something that looks like netting, and which is hung with gold beads. Tooled leather saddlebags rest against her flanks. She nuzzles into his hand.

Among my associates, there were no takers. Understandably the boys of my age and social group were captivated by the yellow-or light-brown-skinned girls, with hairy legs and smooth little lips, and whose hair “hung down like horses' manes.” And even those sought-after girls were asked to “give it up or tell where it is.” They were reminded in a popular song of the times, “If you can't smile and say yes, please don't cry and say no.

dashed across streets without looking, they got horsing around in the lake and suddenly realized they had floated far past their depth on their rubber rafts and had to paddle back, they fell off monkey-bars on their asses and out of trees on their heads. Now, standing here in the fading drizzle in front of a Trustworthy Hardware Store that had been a pawnshop in 1958 (Frati Brothers, Ben recalled, the double windows always full of pistols and rifles and straight-razors and guitars hung up by their necks like exotic animals), it occurred to him that kids were better at almost dying, and they were also better at incorporating the inexplicable into their lives. They believed implicitly in the invisible world. Miracles both bright and dark were to be taken into consideration, oh yes, most certainly, but they by no means stopped the world. A sudden upheaval of beauty or terror at ten did not preclude an extra cheesedog or two for lunch at noon.

One day there came from the South a stranger who was unlike any man that Shasta had seen before. He rode upon a strong dappled horse with flowing mane and tail, and his stirrups and bridle were inlaid with silver. The spike of a helmet projected from the middle of his silken turban and he wore a shirt of chain mail. By his side hung a curving scimitar; a round shield studded with bosses of brass hung at his back, and his right hand grasped a lance. His face was dark, but this did not surprise Shasta because all the people of Calormen are like that; what did surprise him was the man’s beard which was dyed crimson, and curled and gleaming with scented oil. But Arsheesh knew by the gold on the stranger’s bare arm that he was a Tarkaan or great lord, and he bowed kneeling before him till his beard touched the earth, and made signs to Shasta to kneel also. The stranger demanded hospitality for the night which of course the fisherman dared not refuse. All the best they had was set before the Tarkaan for supper (and he didn’t think much of it) and Shasta, as always happened when the fisherman had company, was given a hunk of bread and turned out of the cottage. On these occasions he usually slept with the donkey in its little thatched stable. But it was much too early to go to sleep yet, and Shasta, who had never learned that it is wrong to listen behind doors, sat down with his ear to a crack in the wooden wall of the cottage to hear what the grown-ups were talking about.

One Autumn night, in Sudbury town, Across the meadows bare and brown, The windows of the wayside inn Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves Their crimson curtains rent and thin.” “As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old Colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality; A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall. A region of repose it seems, A place of slumber and of dreams, Remote among the wooded hills! For there no noisy railway speeds, Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds; But noon and night, the panting teams Stop under the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, Through the wide doors the breezes blow, The wattled cocks strut to and fro, And, half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances on the sign. Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode Deep silence reigned, save when a gust Went rushing down the county road, And skeletons of leaves, and dust, A moment quickened by its breath, Shuddered and danced their dance of death, And through the ancient oaks o'erhead Mysterious voices moaned and fled. These are the tales those merry guests Told to each other, well or ill; Like summer birds that lift their crests Above the borders of their nests And twitter, and again are still. These are the tales, or new or old, In idle moments idly told; Flowers of the field with petals thin, Lilies that neither toil nor spin, And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse Hung in the parlor of the inn Beneath the sign of the Red Horse. Uprose the sun; and every guest, Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed For journeying home and city-ward; The old stage-coach was at the door, With horses harnessed, long before The sunshine reached the withered sward Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar Murmured: "Farewell forevermore. Where are they now? What lands and skies Paint pictures in their friendly eyes? What hope deludes, what promise cheers, What pleasant voices fill their ears? Two are beyond the salt sea waves, And three already in their graves. Perchance the living still may look Into the pages of this book, And see the days of long ago Floating and fleeting to and fro, As in the well-remembered brook They saw the inverted landscape gleam, And their own faces like a dream Look up upon them from below.

I looked back and forth between them, feeling the heat of their anger, the unspoken words swelling in the air like smoke. Jerry took a slow sip from his beer and lit another cigarette. "You don't know anything about that little girl," he told Nona. "You're just jealous because Cap belongs to her now." I could see Nona's heartbeat flutter beneath her t-shirt, the cords tightening in her neck. "Her mommy and daddy might have paid for him," she whispered. "But he's mine." I waited for Jerry to cave in to her, to apologize, to make things right between them. But he held her gaze, unwavering. "He's not." Nona stubbed her cigarette out on the barn floor, then stood. "If you don't believe me," she whispered, "I'll show you." My sister crossed the barn to Cap's stall and clicked her tongue at him. His gold head appeared in the doorway and Nona swung the stall door open. "Come on out." she told him. Don't!" I said, but she didn't pause. Cap took several steps forward until he was standing completely free in the barn. I jumped up, blocking the doorway so that he couldn't bolt. Jerry stood and widened himself beside me, stretching out his arms. "What the hell are you doing?" he asked. Nona stood beside Cap's head and lifted her arms as though she was holding an invisible lead rope. When she began to walk, Cap moved alongside her, matching his pace to hers. Whoa," Nona said quietly and Cap stopped. My sister made small noises with her tongue, whispering words we couldn't hear. Cap's ears twitched and his weight shifted as he adjusted his feet, setting up perfectly in showmanship form. Nona stepped back to present him to us, and Jerry and I dropped our arms to our sides. Ta da!" she said, clapping her hands at her own accomplishment. Very impressive," Jerry said in a low voice. "Now put the pony away." Again, Nona lifted her hands as if holding a lead rope, and again, Cap followed. She stepped into him and he turned on his heel, then walked beside her through the barn and back into his stall. Once he was inside, Nona closed the door and held her hands out to us. She hadn't touched him once. Now," she said evenly. "Tell me again what isn't mine." Jerry sank back into his chair, cracking open a fresh beer. "If that horse was so important to you, maybe you shouldn't have left him behind to be sold off to strangers." Nona's face constricted, her cheeks and neck darkening in splotches of red. "Alice, tell him," she whispered. "Tell him that Cap belongs to me." Sheila Altman could practice for the rest of her life, and she would never be able to do what my sister had just done. Cap would never follow her blindly, never walk on water for her. But my eyes traveled sideways to Cap's stall where his embroidered halter hung from its hook. If the Altmans ever moved to a different town, they would take Cap with them. My sister would never see him again. It wouldn't matter what he would or wouldn't do for her. My sister waited a moment for me to speak, and when I didn't, she burst into tears, her shoulders heaving, her mouth wrenching open. Jerry and I glanced at each other, startled by the sudden burst of emotion. You can both go to hell," Nona hiccuped, and turned for the house. "Right straight to hell.

The men rode into Beaver Run like two horsemen of the apocalypse, justice on a white horse and war on a red. The few citizens walking through the muddy streets hurried to get out of their path, while those milling on the plank walkways stared as the duo passed. Danger. Long and lean, both sat their saddles with the ease of men accustomed to mastering both the beasts beneath them and the world around them. Their dusters hung to the tops of their boots and were covered in trail dust. Their hats, pulled low, cast shadows over their faces. Rifles were mounted to their horses' saddles and each man had a gun strapped to his thigh.

One Autumn night, in Sudbury town, Across the meadows bare and brown, The windows of the wayside inn Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves Their crimson curtains rent and thin. As ancient is this hostelry As any in the land may be, Built in the old Colonial day, When men lived in a grander way, With ampler hospitality; A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, Now somewhat fallen to decay, With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall. A region of repose it seems, A place of slumber and of dreams, Remote among the wooded hills! For there no noisy railway speeds, Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds; But noon and night, the panting teams Stop under the great oaks, that throw Tangles of light and shade below, On roofs and doors and window-sills. Across the road the barns display Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay, Through the wide doors the breezes blow, The wattled cocks strut to and fro, And, half effaced by rain and shine, The Red Horse prances on the sign. Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode Deep silence reigned, save when a gust Went rushing down the county road, And skeletons of leaves, and dust, A moment quickened by its breath, Shuddered and danced their dance of death, And through the ancient oaks o'erhead Mysterious voices moaned and fled. These are the tales those merry guests Told to each other, well or ill; Like summer birds that lift their crests Above the borders of their nests And twitter, and again are still. These are the tales, or new or old, In idle moments idly told; Flowers of the field with petals thin, Lilies that neither toil nor spin, And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse Hung in the parlor of the inn Beneath the sign of the Red Horse. Uprose the sun; and every guest, Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed For journeying home and city-ward; The old stage-coach was at the door, With horses harnessed,long before The sunshine reached the withered sward Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar Murmured: "Farewell forevermore. Where are they now? What lands and skies Paint pictures in their friendly eyes? What hope deludes, what promise cheers, What pleasant voices fill their ears? Two are beyond the salt sea waves, And three already in their graves. Perchance the living still may look Into the pages of this book, And see the days of long ago Floating and fleeting to and fro, As in the well-remembered brook They saw the inverted landscape gleam, And their own faces like a dream Look up upon them from below.

Out beyond and way back and further past that still. And such was it since. But after all appearances and some afternoons misspent it came to pass not all was done and over with. No, no. None shally shally on that here hill. Ah, but that was idle then and change was not an old hand. No, no. None shilly shilly on that here first rung. So, much girded and with new multitudes, a sun came purple and the hail turned in a year or two. And that was not all. No, no. None ganny ganny on that here moon loose. Turns were taken and time put in, so much heft and grimace, there, with callouses, all along the diagonal. Like no other time and the time taken back, that too like none other that can be compared to a bovine heap raising steam, or the eye-cast of a flailing comet. Back and forth, examining the egg spill and the cord fray and the clowning barnacle. And all day with no break to unwrap or unscrew or squint and flex or soak the brush. No, no. None flim flim on that here cavorting mainstay. From tree to tree and the pond there deepening and some small holes appearing and any number of cornstalks twisting into a thing far from corn. That being the case there was some wretched plotting, turned to stone, holding nothing. No, no. None rubby rubby on that here yardstick. Came then from the region of silt and aster, all along the horse trammel and fire velvet, first these sounds and then their makers. When passed betwixt and entered fully, pails were swung and notches considered. There was no light. No, none. None wzm wzm on that here piss crater. And it being the day, still considered. Oh, all things considered and not one mentioned, since all names had turned in and handed back. Knowing this the hounds disbanded and knowing that the ground muddled headstones and milestones and gallows and the almond-shaped buds of freshest honeysuckle. And among this chafing tumult fates were scrambled and mortality made untidy and pithy vows took themselves a breather. This being the way and irreversible homewards now was a lifted skeletal thing of the past, without due application or undue meaning. No, no. None shap shap on that here domicile shank. From right foot to left, first by the firs, then by the river, hung and loitered, and the blaze there slow to come. All night waking with no benefit of sleeping and the breath cranking and the heart-place levering and the kerosene pervading but failing to jerk a flame from out any one thing. No, none. None whoosh whoosh on that here burnished cunt. Oh, the earth, the earth and the women there, inside the simpering huts, stamped and spiritless, blowing on the coals. Not far away, but beyond the way of return.

Hey—we have a problem. You have some unexpected guests down at the gate. You should go check it out.” Guests? Who would come here to see me? I hop in the golf cart and drive down to the main gate. Just in time to hear Franny Barrister, the Countess of Ellington, tearing into a poor, clueless Matched security guard. “Don’t you tell me we can’t come in, you horse’s arse. Where’s Henry—what have you done with him?” Simon, my brother’s best friend, sees me approach, his sparkling blue eyes shining. “There he is.” I nod to security and open the gate. “Simon, Franny, what are you doing here?” “Nicholas said you didn’t sound right the last time he spoke to you. He asked us to peek in on you,” Simon explains. Franny’s shrewd gaze rakes me over. “He doesn’t look drunk. And he obviously hasn’t hung himself from the rafters—that’s better than I was expecting.” “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Simon peers around the grounds, at the smattering of crew members and staging tents. “What the hell is going on, Henry?” I clear my throat. “So . . . the thing is . . . I’m sort of . . . filming a reality dating television show here at the castle and we started with twenty women and now we’re down to four, and when it’s over one of them will get the diamond tiara and become my betrothed. At least in theory.” It sounded so much better in my head. “Don’t tell Nicholas.” Simon scrubs his hand down his face. “Now I’m going to have to avoid his calls—I’m terrible with secrets.” And Franny lets loose a peal of tinkling laughter. “This is fabulous! You never disappoint, you naughty boy.” She pats my arm. “And don’t worry, when the Queen boots you out of the palace, Simon and I will adopt you. Won’t we, darling?” Simon nods. “Yes, like a rescue dog.” “Good to know.” Then I gesture back to their car. “Well . . . it was nice of you to stop by.” Simon shakes his head. “You’re not getting rid of us that easily, mate.” “Yes, we’re definitely staying.” Franny claps her hands. “I have to see this!” Fantastic.

gentleman all over; and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that’s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn’t no more quality than a mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it.

Kat Godwin, Kipps’s right-hand operative, was a Listener like me, but that was about all we had in common. She was blonde, slim and pouty, which would have given me three good reasons to dislike her even if she’d been a sweet lass who spent her free time tending poorly hedgehogs. In fact she was flintily ambitious and cool-natured, and had less capacity for humour than a terrapin. Jokes made her irritable, as if she sensed something going on around her that she couldn’t understand. She was good-looking, though her jaw was a bit too sharp. If she’d repeatedly fallen over while crossing soft ground, you could have sewn a crop of beans in the chin-holes she left behind. The back of her hair was cut short, but the front hung angled across her brow in the manner of a horse’s flick. Her grey Fittes jacket, skirt and leggings were always spotless, which made me doubt she’d ever had to climb up inside a chimney to escape a Spectre, or battle a Poltergeist in the Bridewell sewers (officially the Worst Job Ever), as I had. Annoyingly, I always seemed to meet her after precisely that kind of incident. Like now

He sighed profoundly, and flung himself — there was a passion in his movements which deserves the word — on the earth at the foot of the oak tree. He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth’s spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding, or the deck of a tumbling ship — it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out. To the oak tree he tied it and as he lay there, gradually the flutter in and about him stilled itself; the little leaves hung, the deer stopped; the pale summer clouds stayed; his limbs grew heavy on the ground; and he lay so still that by degrees the deer stepped nearer and the rooks wheeled round him and the swallows dipped and circled and the dragonflies shot past, as if all the fertility and amorous activity of a summer’s evening were woven web-like about his body.

But the hawk knew the landscape; there were vast areas of it he avoided due to a scarcity of prey. Land that was overhunted—that land was the Great Sioux Reservation, bordered by the rugged Black Hills on the west, the Missouri River on the east. There, even scrawny squirrels and half-dead rabbits were precious. The smudges there were tepees, made out of fading buffalo hide, clustered together in groups, the groups too close to those from other tribes, but forced, due to the government, to live together. Misery hung over this landscape like a cloud, even on the sunniest day. So he kept to the south, swooping closer to the ground, and finally the peaceful-seeming landscape gave up some secrets. A fence post here, a clump of bushes there, an upturned wagon, haystacks. As his eyes adjusted, however, other secrets were discovered. What seemed like a line of small haystacks were, upon closer inspection as the hawk zeroed in, cows. Unmoving cows, statues; some on their sides, others standing, all frozen where they were. The hawk turned, uninterested, to investigate more dark shapes emerging from the blinding white; horses, their legs collapsed under them, eyes closed forever.

Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and up the far side of the ruined ranks in a piping of boneflutes and dropping down off the sides of their mounts with one heel hung in the withers strap and their short bows flexing beneath the outstretched necks of the ponies until they had circled the company and cut their ranks in two and then rising up again like funhouse figures, some with nightmare faces painted on their breasts, riding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about on the ground with a peculiar bandylegged trot like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, heads, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs and some who fell upon the dying and sodomized them with loud cries to their fellows.

In the water-thickets, the path wound tortuously between umber iron-bogs, albescent quicksands of aluminum and magnesium oxides, and sumps of cuprous blue or permanganate mauve fed by slow, gelid streams and fringed by silver reeds and tall black grasses. The twisted, smooth-barked boles of the trees were yellow-ochre and burnt orange; through their tightly woven foliage filtered a gloomy, tinted light. At their roots grew great clumps of multifaceted translucent crystal like alien fungi. Charcoal grey frogs with viridescent eyes croaked as the column floundered between the pools. Beneath the greasy surface of the water unidentifiable reptiles moved slowly and sinuously. Dragonflies whose webby wings spanned a foot or more hummed and hovered between the sedges: their long, wicked bodies glittered bold green and ultramarine; they took their prey on the wing, pouncing with an audible snap of jaws on whining, ephemeral mosquitoes and fluttering moths of april blue and chevrolet cerise. Over everything hung the heavy, oppressive stench of rotting metal. After an hour, Cromis’ mouth was coated with a bitter deposit, and he tasted acids. He found it difficult to speak. While his horse stumbled and slithered beneath him, he gazed about in wonder, and poetry moved in his skull, swift as the jewelled mosquito-hawks over a dark slow current of ancient decay.

The company was now come to a halt and the first shots were fired and the grey riflesmoke rolled through the dust as the lancers breached their ranks. The kid's horse sank beneath him with a long pneumatic sigh. He had already fired his rifle and now he sat on the ground and fumbled with his shotpouch. A man near him sat with an arrow hanging out of his neck. He was bent slightly as if in prayer. The kid would have reached for the bloody hoop-iron point but then he saw that the man wore another arrow in his breast to the fletching and he was dead. Everywhere there were horses down and men scrambling and he saw a man who sat charging his rifle while blood ran from his ears and he saw men and he saw men with their revolvers disassembled trying to fit the fit the spare loaded cylinders they carried and he saw men kneeling who tilted and clasped their shadows on the ground and he saw men lanced and caught up by the hair and scalped standing and he saw the horses of war trample down the fallen and a little whitefaced pony with one clouded eye leaned out of the murk and snapped at him like a dog and was gone. Among the wounded some seemed dumb and without understanding and some were pale through the masks of dust and some had fouled themselves or tottered brokenly onto the spears of the savages. Now driving in a wild frieze of headlong horses with eyes walled and teeth cropped and naked riders with clusters of arrows clenched in their jaws and their shields winking in the dust and up the far side of the ruined ranks in a pipping of boneflutes and dropping down off the side of their mounts with one heel hung in the the withers strap and their short bows flexing beneath the outstretched necks of the ponies until they had circled the company and cut their ranks in two and then rising up again like funhouse figures, some with nightmare faces painted on their breasts, ridding down the unhorsed Saxons and spearing and clubbing them and leaping from their mounts with knives and running about on the ground with a peculiar bandylegged like creatures driven to alien forms of locomotion and stripping the clothes from the dead and seizing them up by the hair and passing their blades about the skulls of the living and the dead alike and snatching aloft the bloody wigs and hacking and chopping at the naked bodies, ripping off limbs, heads, gutting the strange white torsos and holding up great handfuls of viscera, genitals, some of the savages so slathered up with gore they might have rolled in it like dogs and some who fell upon the dying and sodomized them with loud cries to their fellows. And now the horses of the dead came pounding out of the smoke and dust and circled with flapping leather and wild manes and eyes whited with fear like the eyes of the blind and some were feathered with arrows and some lanced through and stumbling and vomiting blood as they wheeled across the killing ground and clattered from sight again. Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair beneath their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodsoaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming

Years ago, when I used to wander of an evening from the fireside to the pleasant land of fairy-tales, I met a doughty knight and true. Many dangers had he overcome, in many lands had been; and all men knew him for a brave and well-tried knight, and one that knew not fear; except, maybe, upon such seasons when even a brave man might feel afraid and yet not be ashamed. Now, as this knight one day was pricking wearily along a toilsome road, his heart misgave him and was sore within him because of the trouble of the way. Rocks, dark and of a monstrous size, hung high above his head, and like enough it seemed unto the knight that they should fall and he lie low beneath them. Chasms there were on either side, and darksome caves wherein fierce robbers lived, and dragons, very terrible, whose jaws dripped blood. And upon the road there hung a darkness as of night. So it came over that good knight that he would no more press forward, but seek another road, less grievously beset with difficulty unto his gentle steed. But when in haste he turned and looked behind, much marveled our brave knight, for lo! of all the way that he had ridden there was naught for eye to see; but at his horse’s heels there yawned a mighty gulf, whereof no man might ever spy the bottom, so deep was that same gulf. Then when Sir Ghelent saw that of going back there was none, he prayed to good Saint Cuthbert, and setting spurs into his steed rode forward bravely and most joyously. And naught harmed him. There is no returning on the road of life. The frail bridge of time on which we tread sinks back into eternity at every step we take. The past is gone from us forever. It is gathered in and garnered.

As the Knight sang the last words of the ballad, he gathered up the reins, and turned his horse’s head along the road by which they had come. “You’ve only a few yards to go,” he said, “down the hill and over that little brook, and then you’ll be a Queen—But you’ll stay and see me off first?” he added as Alice turned with an eager look in the direction to which he pointed. “I shan’t be long. You’ll wait and wave your handkerchief when I get to that turn in the road? I think it’ll encourage me, you see.” “Of course I’ll wait,” said Alice: “and thank you very much for coming so far—and for the song—I liked it very much.” “I hope so,” the Knight said doubtfully: “but you didn’t cry so much as I thought you would.” So they shook hands, and then the Knight rode slowly away into the forest. “It won’t take long to see him off, I expect,” Alice said to herself, as she stood watching him. “There he goes! Right on his head as usual! However, he gets on again pretty easily—that comes of having so many things hung round the horse—” So she went on talking to herself, as she watched the horse walking leisurely along the road, and the Knight tumbling off, first on one side and then on the other. After the fourth or fifth tumble he reached the turn, and then she waved her handkerchief to him, and waited till he was out of sight. “I hope it encouraged him,” she said, as she turned to run down the hill: “and now for the last brook, and to be a Queen! How grand it sounds!” A very few steps brought her to the edge of the brook. “The Eighth Square at last!” she cried as she bounded across, and threw herself down to rest on a lawn as soft as moss, with little flower-beds dotted about it here and there. “Oh, how glad I am to get here! And what is this on my head?” she exclaimed in a tone of dismay, as she put her hands up to something very heavy, and fitted tight all round her head. “But how can it have got there without my knowing it?

Over To Candleford Chapter XXVIII: Growing Pains "This accumulated depression of months slid from her at last in a moment. She had run out into the fields one day in a pet and was standing on a small stone bridge looking down on brown running water flecked with cream-coloured foam. It was a dull November day with grey sky and mist. The little brook was scarcely more than a trench to drain the fields; but overhanging it were thorn bushes with a lacework of leafless twigs; ivy had sent trails down the steep banks to dip in the stream, and from every thorn on the leafless twigs and from every point of the ivy leaves water hung in bright drops, like beads. A flock of starlings had whirred up from the bushes at her approach and the clip, clop of a cart-horse's hoofs could be heard on the nearest road, but these were the only sounds. Of the hamlet, only a few hundred yards away, she could hear no sound, or see as much as a chimney-pot, walled in as she was by the mist. Laura looked and looked again. The small scene, so commonplace and yet so lovely, delighted her." It was so near the homes men and yet so far removed from their thoughts. The fresh green moss, the glistening ivy, and the reddish twigs with their sparkling drops seemed to have been made for her alone and the hurrying, foam-flecked water seemed to have some message for her. She felt suddenly uplifted. The things which had troubled her troubled her no more. She did not reason. She had already done plenty of reasoning. Too much, perhaps. She simply stood there and let it all sink in until she felt that her own small affairs did not matter. Whatever happened to her, this, and thousands of other such small, lovely sights would remain and people would come suddenly upon them and look and be glad. A wave of pure happiness pervaded her being, and, although it soon receded, it carried away with it her burden of care. Her first reaction was to laugh aloud at herself. What a fool she had been to make so much of so little.

When we are young, we yearn for battle. In the firelit halls we listen to the songs of heroes; how they broke the foemen, splintered the shield wall, and soaked their swords in the blood of enemies. As youngsters we listen to the boast of warriors, hear their laughter as they recall battle, and their bellows of pride when their lord reminds them of some hard-won victory. And those youngsters who have not fought, who have yet to hold their shield against a neighbour's shield in the wall, are despised and disparaged. So we practise. Day after day we practise, with spear, sword, and shield. We begin as children, learning blade-craft with wooden weapons, and hour after hour we hit and are hit. We fight against men who hurt us in order to teach us, we learn not to cry when the blood from a split skull sheets across the eyes, and slowly the skill of the sword-craft builds. Then the day comes when we are ordered to march with the men, not as children to hold the horses and to scavenge weapons after the battle, but as men. If we are lucky we have a battered old helmet and a leather jerkin, maybe even a coat of mail that hangs like a sack. We have a sword with a dented edge and a shield that is scored by enemy blades. We are almost men, not quite warriors, and on some fateful day we meet an enemy for the first time and we hear the chants of battle, the threatening clash of blades on shields, and we begin to learn that the poets are wrong and that the proud songs lie. Even before the shield walls meet, some men shit themselves. They shiver with fear. They drink mead and ale. Some boast, but most are quiet unless they join a chant of hate. Some men tell jokes, and the laughter is nervous. Others vomit. Our battle leaders harangue us, tell us of the deeds of our ancestors, of the filth that is the enemy, of the fate our women and children face unless we win, and between the shield walls the heroes strut, challenging us to single combat, and you look at the enemy's champions and they seem invincible. They are big men; grim-faced, gold hung, shining in mail, confident, scornful, savage. The shield wall reeks of shit, and all a man wants is to be home, to be anywhere but on this field that prepares for battle, but none of us will turn and run or else we will be despised for ever. We pretend we want to be there, and then the wall at last advances, step by step, and the heart is thumping fast as a bird's wing beating, the world seems unreal. Thought flies, fear rules, and then the order to quicken the charge is shouted, and you run, or stumble, but stay in your rank because this is the moment you have spent a lifetime preparing for, and then, for the first time, you hear the thunder of shield walls meeting, the clangour of battle swords, and the screaming begins. It will never end. Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight.

So, is the Italian stereotype true? Are you hung like a horse?” I hear Gabriel choke on his drink, and at the same time, I break out of my trance and holler, “Carmen!

He’s a low-down scoundrel! He accused Cliff of being a horse thief, refused to chase after the posse that hung him, and asked me to marry him, all in the same breath!” A woman could sure get upset over the least little thing. “Now, darlin’, don’t get all fussed about that.” “Fussed! About a man calling Cliff a horse thief,” Sophie stormed. “I will never stand by and listen to talk like that!” Clay carefully reached for his hat, hoping Sophie wouldn’t notice he was planning to run for it. She was fuming at him with her back mostly turned, only peering over her shoulder once in a while to scorch him with a furious look. Clay tried to placate her. “After all, the man had a job to do, Sophie darlin’, and what man wouldn’t want you to marry him?” There, a little flattery. Wasn’t that what women wanted?

The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. —Psalm 145:9 (KJV) The gray clouds hung below the mountain peaks, smothering the sun. A cold breeze brushed across my cheeks as I tossed hay in the feeder for the horses and mules. I glanced at the brown grass in the pasture rimmed by the skeletal trees. Not a sprig of life showed anywhere. The gloomies seeped into my soul. How I longed for signs of life! Lord, I need You to brighten my day. I heard a low bellow from the neighbors’ pasture a few hundred yards away. Uh-oh, it sounds like a cow’s having problems giving birth. The neighbors lived miles away and wouldn’t be back to check on the cows for a couple more hours. “C’mon, Sunrise,” I called to my golden retriever, “let’s go check it out.” As we neared the pasture, I noticed a lone black cow standing with her head down. Keeping my distance, I stood on tiptoes, craning my neck. A brand-new wet calf lay on the ground. “Isn’t this exciting? What a cute baby!” Sunrise’s nose wiggled as she caught the scent of the baby. For the next hour I sat in the pasture, watching the newborn struggle to stand on its stiltlike legs. I giggled as the calf sucked on its mom’s knees and elbows before it found the udder and slurped. Lord, when my days are glum, remind me to ask You to brighten them. —Rebecca Ondov Digging Deeper: Pss 8, 84:11

A horse and a chicken are playing in a meadow. The horse falls into a mud hole and is sinking fast. He calls to the chicken to go and get the farmer to help pull him out to safety. The chicken runs to the farm but the farmer can’t be found, so he drives the farmer’s Mercedes back to the mud hole and ties some rope around the bumper. He then throws the other end of the rope to the horse and drives the car forward, saving him from sinking! A few days later the chicken and the horse are playing in the meadow again and the chicken falls into the same mud hole. The chicken yells to the horse to go and get the farmer to save him. The horse says, “There’s no time for that! I think I can stand over the hole!” So he stretches over the width of the hole and says, “Grab for my cock and pull yourself up.” The chicken does as he’s told and pulls himself to safety. The moral of the story? If you are hung like a horse, you don’t need a Mercedes to pick up chicks.

Pilgrims WHEN MY OLD MAN said he’d hired her, I said, “A girl?” A girl, when it wasn’t that long ago women couldn’t work on this ranch even as cooks, because the wranglers got shot over them too much. They got shot even over the ugly cooks. Even over the old ones. I said, “A girl?” “She’s from Pennsylvania,” my old man said. “She’ll be good at this.” “She’s from what?” When my brother Crosby found out, he said, “Time for me to find new work when a girl starts doing mine.” My old man looked at him. “I heard you haven’t come over Dutch Oven Pass once this season you haven’t been asleep on your horse or reading a goddamn book. Maybe it’s time for you to find new work anyhow.” He told us that she showed up somehow from Pennsylvania in the sorriest piece of shit car he’d ever seen in his life. She asked him for five minutes to ask for a job, but it didn’t take that long. She flexed her arm for him to feel, but he didn’t feel it. He liked her, he said, right away. He trusted his eye for that, he said, after all these years. “You’ll like her, too,” he said. “She’s sexy like a horse is sexy. Nice and big. Strong.” “Eighty-five of your own horses to feed, and you still think horse is sexy,” I said, and my brother Crosby said, “I think we got enough of that kind of sexy around here already.” She was Martha Knox, nineteen years old and tall as me, thick-legged but not fat, with cowboy boots that anyone could see were new that week, the cheapest in the store and the first pair she’d ever owned. She had a big chin that worked only because her forehead and nose worked, too, and she had the kind of teeth that take over a face even when the mouth is closed. She had, most of all, a dark brown braid that hung down the center of her back, thick as a girl’s arm. I danced with Martha Knox one night early in the season. It was a day off to go down the mountain, get drunk, make phone calls, do laundry, fight. Martha Knox was no dancer. She didn’t want to dance with me. She let me know this by saying a few times that she wasn’t going to dance with me, and then, when she finally agreed, she wouldn’t let go of her cigarette. She held it in one hand and let that hand fall and not be available. So I kept my beer bottle in one hand, to balance her out, and we held each other with one arm each. She was no dancer and she didn’t want to dance with me, but we found a good slow sway anyway, each of us with an arm hanging down, like a rodeo cowboy’s right arm, like the right arm of a bull rider, not reaching for anything. She wouldn’t look anywhere but over my left shoulder, like that part of her that was a good dancer with me was some part she had not ever met and didn’t feel

When we reached the street that branched off into the western section of the city, I expected Saadi to conintue north, but he did not. We dismounted and walked side by side, leading our horses, until my house came into view. “You should leave,” I said to him, hoping I didn’t sound rude. “Let me help you take King to your stable.” I hesitated, unsure of the idea, then motioned for him to follow me as I cut across the property to approach the barn from the rear. After putting King in his private stall at the back of the building, sectioned off from the mares, I lit a lantern and grabbed a bucket. While Saadi watched me from the open door of the building, I went to the well to fill it. “You should really go now,” I murmured upon my return, not wanting anyone to see us or the light. He nodded and hung the lantern on its hook, but he did not leave. Instead, he took the bucket from me, placing it in King’s stall, and I noticed he had tossed in some hay. Brushing off his hands, he approached me. “Tell your family I returned the horse to your care, that our stable master found him too unruly and disruptive to serve us other than to sire an occasional foal.” “Yes, I will,” I mumbled, grateful for the lie he had provided. I had been so focused on recovering the stallion that explaining his reappearance had not yet entered my mind. Then an image of Rava, standing outside the barn tapping the scroll against her palm, surfaced. What was to prevent her return? “And your sister? What will you tell her?” He smirked. “You seem to think Rava is in charge of everything. Well, she’s not in charge of our stables. And our stable master will be content as long as we can still use the stallion for breeding. As for Rava, keep the horse out of sight and she’ll likely never know he’s back in your hands.” “But what if you’re wrong and she does find out?” “Then I’ll tell her that I have been currying a friendship with you. That you have unwittingly become an informant. That the return of the stallion, while retaining Cokyrian breeding rights, furthered that goal.” I gaped at him, for his words flowed so easily, I wondered if there was truth behind them. “And is that what this is really all about?” I studied his blue eyes, almost afraid of what they might reveal. But they were remarkably sincere when he addressed the question. “In a way, I suppose, for I am learning much from you.” He smiled and reached out to push my hair back from my face. “But it is not the sort of information that would be of interest to Rava.” His hand caressed my cheek, and he slowly leaned toward me until his lips met mine. I moved my mouth against his, following his lead, and a tingle went down my spine. With my knees threatening to buckle, I put my hands on his chest for balance, feeling his heart beating beneath my palms. Then he was gone. I stood dumbfounded, not knowing what to do, then traced my still-moist lips, the taste of him lingering. This was the first time I’d been kissed, and the experience, I could not deny, had been a good one. I no longer cared that Saadi was Cokyrian, for my feelings on the matter were clear. I’d kiss him again if given the chance.

My eyes roved over each and every one of the horses, approximating their age and probably stage in training, assessing their form and temperament and noting their reproductive potential. Eventually it dawned on me that silence had fallen. I turned toward Grayden to offer some excuse, but to my surprise, he was gazing at me with affection and sympathy in his green eyes. He smiled and produced a small box, which he extended to me. “What’s this?” I asked, thoroughly confused. He shrugged. “A token of friendship. I would be honored if you would accept it.” Curiously, I took the box from his hand. Anticipating jewelry, I prepared for a show of fake enthusiasm. Such a gift would be a sweet gesture, and undoubtedly beautiful, but I was not one for baubles. The box did contain jewelry, but not of the type I supposed. On a lovely chain of gold hung a small, golden horse, head high, legs outstretched in a gallop. I looked at Grayden, stupefied, although I didn’t need to feign my pleasure. “As I said, your uncle told me of your love for horses,” he explained almost shyly. “That it was a love you shared with your father.” “But I…I don’t understand. What are you…?” Seeing how flustered I was, he reached out and took my hand. “I’m not asking for anything, Shaselle. I just…I think you’re used to being seen as a problem. Maybe it’s presumptuous of me to say that, but your family apologized for so many things about you that I can’t help drawing the conclusion.” Not sure how to react, I opted to remain silent. “I think you’re only a problem for those people who are trying to turn you into something you’re not.” “A lady?” I wryly suggested, regaining my sense of humor. I leaned back on the fence, certain he would agree. “No,” he said, and there was conviction in his voice. “They need to stop trying to turn a free spirit into a traditional wife.” I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. Could he truly believe what he was saying? Men played games to placate women. But I knew of no man other than my father who would enjoy seeing a horse pendant around the neck of the woman he was courting. “I do have a question for you,” Grayden said, leaning against the fence next to me. He hesitated, obviously uncertain about where our relationship stood. “The Harvest Festical is approaching. If you have no other plans to attend, would you consider accompanying me?” My eyes again filled with tears. There was no good reason--why should I be breaking down now, when Grayden was being so understanding, so tolerant of my eccentricities? “Come,” he said softly. “I’ll take you back to your cousin.” I let him escort me into the house, feeling like an ungrateful fool. I hadn’t even thanked him for his gift, and I desperately wanted to do so. But I couldn’t conjure the words to convey how I was feeling, and so I murmured farewell at the door.

If she were a few years younger, he would just smile and nod, but still send Conner back to his village.  There would have been some kicking and screaming and yelling and tantrums, but in the end she would have lost the battle.  But now that she was older, with power and clout, her words meant something and her orders were to be listened to.  She would have to be obeyed.  At least until the king heard of it.  And then he would take care of it.  He could handle his daughter and the anger that would ensue.  His large shoulders and even larger heart would handle that burden.  He also was the only one who had the authority right now to tell the princess no. Conner stood like a man, waiting for Brace to say something.  All the knights stood waiting for something to be said.  Brace knew what this all meant, probably more so than the princess did.  Certainly more than Conner did.  Maybe the princess thought it was a game, or maybe she really did understand what being a Champion meant.  But Conner was certainly not a Champion.  Yes, he was able to help her survive the forest, keep her from the ambushers and bring her back to safety.  But a Champion must stand up to any who would come against her or challenged her authority.  He had a hunting bow and was a good shot.  A small knife hung at his side.  It was unlikely that Conner ever even held a sword, much less swung one.  A Champion would have to know the skills of the blade and be ready to defend the princess.  He would go along with this game for the moment, but he knew that the king would put an end to it.  This boy, for all his heart and confidence, could not possibly serve properly as her champion. He felt sorry for Conner because he was simply a victim in this game.  He didn’t act proud to be called the Princess’ Champion.  In fact, based on the way his cheeks turned red each time it was mentioned, it was likely that Conner really didn’t want the honor.  But the princess asked him, and he accepted.  So for at least for the time being, he was her Champion.   But the king would put an end to it and then the boy would go back to his home.  Maybe he’d be lucky enough to spend a night or two in the castle, but it wouldn’t be long.  He’d be given a decent reward and a horse to return to his home.  He’d probably even be allowed to keep the horse for his trouble.  But he would be forgotten in time.  The princess would move on to be courted by serious men.  Men who would be able to provide her with a proper blood line, men who would be able to stand in until a male heir was able to take the crown.  Conner was a commoner, and that was all that he could ever be.

Once, after I’d left him, I stayed in bed for three days with a stack of novels and several packets of custard creams and I bled without restraint. I wanted to see how much of a gorgeous, spicy mess one womb-governed body could make. I wanted to turn the bed sheet into a Rorschach test, a map, a missive, a squeeze, a jubilant shout. I made scabs and poppies. I bred silky scarlet gloop and jammy crusts, liver spots, dropped plums. Then I let it dry and pinned it up on the wall. I spent a lot of time looking at it, deciphering the shapes. There were horses, waves, church spires, tulips, crocuses, lotus flowers, fiery dragoons. It was really quite beautiful and energising to see it hung like a painting, exuding the vague scents of malt, seaweed and yeast. It made me feel quite empowered. All that blood. All my thick, rich healthy blood. All those clever stains I’d created.

I have new words for the dictionary. to knock boots, phr., to have sexual intercourse tracks, n., contract (as in “I got a track to kill him”) to do, v., to fuck to do, v., to kill clean, adj., handsome to Brodie, v., to jump, usually from a building or a bridge; taken from a Mr. Brodie who claimed to have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge to lash, v., to urinate chronic, n., marijuana, esp. high-quality smudge, n., black person Ape Avenue, n., Eighth Avenue (police slang) puppy, n., handgun (Jamaican word) scrambler, n., low-level runner for a drug dealer cocola, n., black person (Puerto Rican word) spliv, n., black person to be hung like a horse, phr., to have influential connections in the police department; also a guy who is hung like a horse ground ball, phr., something easy or simple to pull a train, v., to have group sex, gang-bang stinger, n., drug dealer to inflash, v., to inform (as in “he inflash me with the bitch’s scenario”) to double, v., to double-park to sleep in a tent, exp., to have a large penis to be built like a tripod, phr., to have a large penis dixie cup, n., a person who is considered disposable her, she, pron., wife

One Headlight" So long ago, I don't remember when That's when they say I lost my only friend Well they said she died easy of a broken heart disease As I listened through the cemetery trees I seen the sun coming up at the funeral at dawn The long broken arm of human law Now it always seemed such a waste She always had a pretty face So I wondered how she hung around this place Hey, come on try a little Nothing is forever There's got to be something better than In the middle But me and Cinderella We put it all together We can drive it home With one headlight She said it's cold It feels like Independence Day And I can't break away from this parade But there's got to be an opening Somewhere here in front of me Through this maze of ugliness and greed And I seen the sun up ahead At the county line bridge Saying all is good and nothingness is dead We'd run until she's out of breath She ran until there's nothing left She hit the end, it's just her window ledge Hey, come on try a little Nothing is forever There's got to be something better than In the middle But me and Cinderella We put it all together We can drive it home With one headlight This place is old It feels just like a beat up truck I turn the engine, but the engine doesn't turn What smells of cheap wine and cigarettes This place is always such a mess Sometimes I think I'd like to watch it burn I'm so alone, I feel just like somebody else Man, I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same But somewhere here in between the city walls of dying dreams I think her death it must be killing me Hey Hey Hey, come on try a little Nothing is forever There's got to be something better than In the middle But me and Cinderella We put it all together We can drive it home With one headlight The Wallflowers, Bringing Down the Horse (1996)

The man was seriously sexy. His shirtsleeves hugged the solid muscles of his biceps, and his forearms flexed and corded as he pounded nails into the wall and hung her pictures. She wasn’t normally this affected by a man. Heck, she was around men all the time, but none of them had her heart pounding like a jackhammer in her chest or her libido on DEFCON 1 alert every time she was within a foot of them.

O’ course, I still hung up my stocking on Hogswatch Eve, and in the morning, you know, you know what? Our dad had put in this little horse he’d carved his very own self . . . ” AH, said Death. AND THAT WAS WORTH MORE THAN ALL THE EXPENSIVE TOY HORSES IN THE WORLD, EH? Albert gave him a beady look. “No!” he said. “It weren’t. All I could think of was it wasn’t the big horse in the window.” Death looked shocked. BUT HOW MUCH BETTER TO HAVE A TOY CARVED WITH— “No. Only grown-ups think like that,” said Albert. “You’re a selfish little bugger when you’re seven.

He’s a Fairy... you know, as in ‘I’ve got wings, and I’m really sexy, and I’m magic, and I’m hung like a horse’... you know.

Women and men with bodies covered in feathers and heads crowned with tiny curved horns dangled from the ceiling, twirling and spinning around thick sheets of gold or magenta silk that hung like massive party ribbons. Below them, performers in costumes made of fur, more feathers and paint slathered over skin, prowled and crawled as if they were wild chimeras escaped from another world. Tella saw performers dressed to look like tigers with dragon wings, horses with forked tails, snakes with lion manes, and wolves with ram horns, who growled and nipped and sometimes licked at the hells of guests. There were a few low balconies where shirtless men with wings as large as angels' and fallen stars pushed grinning couples back and forth on giant swings hanging from canopies of thorns and flowers.

Walking around the Quarter with its horses and buggies, cobblestone streets, and kerosene lamps felt like stepping back in time, all the way back to the time when Louise was a small child living in Fayetteville. I imagined her in a linen jumper with a white collar, skipping along the cobblestones, avoiding the cracks that would break her mother's back. It was quiet outside as well as sweltering August temperatures kept tourists off the streets and residents inside their homes. The blocks felt private and sensual as Gabriel and I held hands and walked under the lush vegetation spilling from the baskets that hung off the balconies of the houses on St. Philip. I could smell the sweet olive and the jasmine and I had the pleasant sensation of knowing that they were coming from outside of my body. New Orleans was my equal in scent, and as long as it was night and the air was a degree or two cooler than in the daytime I was sure I could walk around freely without attracting any unwanted attention.

The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The first part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been horses stabled in the barn they would have stamped and champed and broken it to pieces. If there had been a crowd of guests, even a handful of guests bedded down for the night, their restless breathing and mingled snores would have gently thawed the silence like a warm spring wind. If there had been music…but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained. Inside the Waystone a man huddled in his deep, sweet-smelling bed. Motionless, waiting for sleep, he lay wide-eyed in the dark. In doing this he added a small, frightened silence to the larger, hollow one. They made an alloy of sorts, a harmony. The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the thick stone walls of the empty taproom and in the flat, grey metal of the sword that hung behind the bar. It was in the dim candlelight that filled an upstairs room with dancing shadows. It was in the mad pattern of a crumpled memoir that lay fallen and un-forgotten atop the desk. And it was in the hands of the man who sat there, pointedly ignoring the pages he had written and discarded long ago. The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the weary calm that comes from knowing many things. The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn's ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.

You knew that the women had tramp-stamps and you know this man is hung like a horse and shoots sperm more powerful than a locomotive and faster than a speeding bullet;

Bucharest, as I understood it at the age of nineteen, when I had already read everything, was not like other cities that developed over time, exchanging its huts and warehouses for condominium towers, replacing horse-drawn trams with electric ones. It had appeared all at once, already ruined, shattered, with its facades fallen and its gargoyles’ noses chipped, with electric wires hung over the streets in melancholic fixtures, with an imaginatively varied industrial architecture.

In a realm of soft hues and blooming blossoms, a young girl lay amidst a field of flowers, a celestial veil gracing her features with a gentle, translucent touch. Her arms extended gracefully above her, eyes closed, she seemed to dance on the edge of dreams. The flowers painted the canvas in shades of blue, purple, and pink, their petals swaying in a tender breeze. Dew-kissed blades of grass formed a sea of diamonds, reflecting the soft glow of an unseen moon. As the girl stirred in her slumber, a distant echo of horse steps reached her ears, a melody that danced through the flowered meadow. Slowly, she rose from her flowery bed, the veil slipping away like morning mist to unveil her enchanting presence. Her gown, a masterpiece of celestial elegance, cascaded around her. A floor-length creation in light blue, it cradled her form with a sweetheart neckline, the bodice adorned in gold, floral designs. Layers of tulle formed the flowing skirt, adorned with accents of blueish flowers, and a train that trailed behind her like a comet's tail. Around her neck hung a pendant, a crescent moon cradling a star, both crafted from silver and adorned with blue gemstones, a twin to the one she wore in the enchanted garden. Her golden locks, a cascade of loose curls, framed her face with ethereal grace, flowing like strands of sunlight. Awakening from the meadow's embrace, her deep blue eyes sought the source of the approaching steps. With a sense of dreamlike purpose, she floated towards the sound, the forest mist enveloping her like a lover's caress. In the heart of the foggy woodland, a clearing revealed itself, trees standing sentinel in the distance. From the shroud of mist emerged a figure on horseback, a man in the regalia of a medieval warrior. The horse, a noble steed of white, carried him forward with determined grace. His attire, a tapestry of dark fabric and gilded accents, spoke of a history steeped in honor and battle. High collars and embroidered shoulder pads, buttons, and chains of gold, all adorned his form. His cape billowed behind him, a canvas of golden threads dancing in the breeze. Their eyes met innocence and determination woven together in the tapestry of fate. As he approached, still astride his noble mount, he extended a hand, a silent invitation. With an innocence that matched the morning dew, she lifted her hand to meet his, and at that moment, the world seemed to swirl and dance around them.

In a realm of soft hues and blooming blossoms, a young girl lay amidst a field of flowers, a celestial veil gracing her features with a gentle, translucent touch. Her arms extended gracefully above her, eyes closed, she seemed to dance on the edge of dreams. The flowers painted the canvas in shades of blue, purple, and pink, their petals swaying in a tender breeze. Dew-kissed blades of grass formed a sea of diamonds, reflecting the soft glow of an unseen moon. As the girl stirred in her slumber, a distant echo of horse steps reached her ears, a melody that danced through the flowered meadow. Slowly, she rose from her flowery bed, the veil slipping away like morning mist to unveil her enchanting presence. Her gown, a masterpiece of celestial elegance, cascaded around her. A floor-length creation in light blue, it cradled her form with a sweetheart neckline, the bodice adorned in gold, floral designs. Layers of tulle formed the flowing skirt, adorned with accents of blueish flowers, and a train that trailed behind her like a comet's tail. Around her neck hung a pendant, a crescent moon cradling a star, both crafted from silver and adorned with blue gemstones, a twin to the one she wore in the enchanted garden. Her golden locks, a cascade of loose curls, framed her face with ethereal grace, flowing like strands of sunlight. Awakening from the meadow's embrace, her deep blue eyes sought the source of the approaching steps. With a sense of dreamlike purpose, she floated towards the sound, the forest mist enveloping her like a lover's caress. In the heart of the foggy woodland, a clearing revealed itself, trees standing sentinel in the distance. From the shroud of mist emerged a figure on horseback, a man in the regalia of a medieval warrior. The horse, a noble steed of white, carried him forward with determined grace. His attire, a tapestry of dark fabric and gilded accents, spoke of a history steeped in honor and battle. High collars and embroidered shoulder pads, buttons, and chains of gold, all adorned his form. His cape billowed behind him, a canvas of golden threads dancing in the breeze. Their eyes met innocence and determination woven together in the tapestry of fate. As he approached, still astride his noble mount, he extended a hand, a silent invitation. With an innocence that matched the morning dew, she lifted her hand to meet his, and at that moment, the world seemed to swirl and dance around them. Yet, just as the dance was about to begin, Princess Mehjabeen's eyes fluttered open, the enchanting dream slipping away like mist beneath the twilight.

So why are you called Horse?” “’Cause I’m hung like one,” he replied, smirking.

ahead. He urged the horse a little faster and when he was within her hearing, he whistled. The piercing sound cut through the air and Vanni turned her mount toward him. She took one look at him, turned and kicked Chico’s flank, taking off. “Goddammit!” he swore. So, this was how it would be—not easy. He was going to have to take off the gloves. He risked being thrown by giving Liberty a snap with the end of his rein. The stallion reared. Paul hung on, then leaned low in the saddle while Liberty closed the space between them. By God, he was going to catch her, make her listen, get through to her. There was no one within shouting distance to distract them. For once in his life, he was going to finish! Even if he had to cover Vanessa’s mouth with his hand! It only took him a few minutes to catch up to her, thanks to Liberty, the champion of the stable. Pulling alongside Vanni he reached out over her hands and grabbed her reins, pulling Chico to a stop. The expression she turned on him was fierce. “What?” she demanded. “Listen to me!” he retorted. “Make it quick!” “Fine. Here’s quick. I love you. I’ve always loved you.I loved you before Matt saw you, but I didn’t have hisguts and I hung back. I’ve regretted that forever. Now I have—” “A baby coming,” she interrupted, lifting her chin. “Listen! I don’t know much about being a father! Just what I watched when I was growing up! And you know what I saw? I saw my parents with their arms around each other all the time! I saw them look at each other with all kinds of emotions—love and trust and commitment and—Vanni, here’s the ugly truth—if I made a baby, I’m not angry about that. It wasn’t on purpose, but I’m not angry. I’ll do my damn best, and I’m real sorry that I’m not in love with the baby’s mother. I’ll still take care of them—and not just by writing a check. I’ll be involved—take care of the child like a real father, support the mother the best I can. What that child is not going to see is his parents looking at each other like they’ve made a terrible mistake. I want him to see his dad with his arms around his wife and—” “Did you try?” she asked. “Did you give the woman who’s got your baby in her a chance?” “Is that what you want for her? She’s a decent person, Vanessa—she didn’t get pregnant on purpose. You want her stuck with a man who’s got another woman on his mind? I didn’t want this to happen to her—I’m not sticking her with half a husband! She deserves a chance to find someone who can give her the real thing.” “But she loves you. She does, doesn’t she? She wanted to get married.” “Vanessa, she’s scared and alone. It’s what comes to mind. She’ll be all right when she realizes I’m not going to let her down. And I’m not going to—” “All this because you couldn’t open your mouth and say how you felt, what you wanted,” she said hotly. “I wanted so little from you—just a word or gesture—some hint that you had feelings for me. Instead, you took your wounded little heart to another woman and—” She stopped her tirade as she saw his eyes narrow and his frown deepen. He glared at her for a long moment, then he jumped off the stallion, her mount’s reins still in his hands. He led the horses the short distance to the river’s edge, to a bank of trees. “What are you doing?” she asked, hanging on to the pommel. He secured the horses at a fallen tree, then reached up to her, grabbed her around the waist and pulled her none too gently out of the saddle. He whirled her around and pressed her up against a tree, holding her wrists over her head and pinioning her there with the whole length of his body. His face was close to hers. “You never opened your mouth, either,” he said. She was stunned speechless. She couldn’t remember a time Paul had ever behaved like this—aggressive, commanding. He leaned closer. “Open it now,” he demanded of her just before he covered her mouth with his.

He urged the horse a little faster and when he was within her hearing, he whistled. The piercing sound cut through the air and Vanni turned her mount toward him. She took one look at him, turned and kicked Chico’s flank, taking off. “Goddammit!” he swore. So, this was how it would be—not easy. He was going to have to take off the gloves. He risked being thrown by giving Liberty a snap with the end of his rein. The stallion reared. Paul hung on, then leaned low in the saddle while Liberty closed the space between them. By God, he was going to catch her, make her listen, get through to her. There was no one within shouting distance to distract them. For once in his life, he was going to finish! Even if he had to cover Vanessa’s mouth with his hand! It only took him a few minutes to catch up to her, thanks to Liberty, the champion of the stable. Pulling alongside Vanni he reached out over her hands and grabbed her reins, pulling Chico to a stop. The expression she turned on him was fierce. “What?” she demanded. “Listen to me!” he retorted. “Make it quick!” “Fine. Here’s quick. I love you. I’ve always loved you.I loved you before Matt saw you, but I didn’t have hisguts and I hung back. I’ve regretted that forever. Now I have—” “A baby coming,” she interrupted, lifting her chin. “Listen! I don’t know much about being a father! Just what I watched when I was growing up! And you know what I saw? I saw my parents with their arms around each other all the time! I saw them look at each other with all kinds of emotions—love and trust and commitment and—Vanni, here’s the ugly truth—if I made a baby, I’m not angry about that. It wasn’t on purpose, but I’m not angry. I’ll do my damn best, and I’m real sorry that I’m not in love with the baby’s mother. I’ll still take care of them—and not just by writing a check. I’ll be involved—take care of the child like a real father, support the mother the best I can. What that child is not going to see is his parents looking at each other like they’ve made a terrible mistake. I want him to see his dad with his arms around his wife and—” “Did you try?” she asked. “Did you give the woman who’s got your baby in her a chance?” “Is that what you want for her? She’s a decent person, Vanessa—she didn’t get pregnant on purpose. You want her stuck with a man who’s got another woman on his mind? I didn’t want this to happen to her—I’m not sticking her with half a husband! She deserves a chance to find someone who can give her the real thing.” “But she loves you. She does, doesn’t she? She wanted to get married.” “Vanessa, she’s scared and alone. It’s what comes to mind. She’ll be all right when she realizes I’m not going to let her down. And I’m not going to—” “All this because you couldn’t open your mouth and say how you felt, what you wanted,” she said hotly. “I wanted so little from you—just a word or gesture—some hint that you had feelings for me. Instead, you took your wounded little heart to another woman and—” She stopped her tirade as she saw his eyes narrow and his frown deepen. He glared at her for a long moment, then he jumped off the stallion, her mount’s reins still in his hands. He led the horses the short distance to the river’s edge, to a bank of trees. “What are you doing?” she asked, hanging on to the pommel. He secured the horses at a fallen tree, then reached up to her, grabbed her around the waist and pulled her none too gently out of the saddle. He whirled her around and pressed her up against a tree, holding her wrists over her head and pinioning her there with the whole length of his body. His face was close to hers. “You never opened your mouth, either,” he said. She was stunned speechless. She couldn’t remember a time Paul had ever behaved like this—aggressive, commanding. He leaned closer. “Open it now,” he demanded of her just before he covered her mouth with his.

Evie, is there anything I can do?” The name had slipped out, harking back to a time when he’d been more an older-brother-by-association to his fellow officers’ sisters. “Evie?” She cuddled closer, like a suffering animal looking for relief. “My mama used to rub my neck. I hate this.” She was helpless too, he realized, and equally unhappy about it. How strange, that after growing increasingly quarrelsome with each other, they’d find pride as their common ground. This temporary truce put him in mind of the way the French and British armies would declare an unspoken détente regarding the use of rivers and streams flowing between their respective warring camps on the Peninsula. “Let’s try something.” He pulled a lap rug from under the padded bench and spread it over his knees. “Down you go.” With him braced against a corner of the coach, he eased Eve facedown over the makeshift pillow on his knees. When she made no protest, he found her nape with his bare hand and started a slow massage. “Does that help?” “Heavenly.” He could feel her ease somewhat, though in deference to her condition, the horses were moving only at a walk. “Shall I take your pins out?” “Please, God. I can feel them. My hair hurts.” He might have smiled, but her torment was obvious in her voice. Carefully, so carefully, he eased the pins from her coiffure, until her hair hung down in a long, golden braid. She was unmoving against him while he alternated between gently squeezing the sides of her neck and rubbing her nape. They

What are you doing?” “Taking you for a ride.” As she sputtered with questions, he touched a gentle forefinger to her lips. “Trust me,” he whispered. Amelia complied in a daze as he pulled her from the bed, wrapped the velvet robe around her, and tucked her feet into soft slippers. Clasping her hand firmly in his, Cam led her from the room. The house was still and soundless, the walls hung with portraits of aristocrats with disapproving faces. They went out the back of the house to the great stone terrace, its wide curving steps leading down to the gardens. The moonlight was crossed with shredded clouds that glowed against a sky the color of black plums. Puzzled but willing, Amelia went with Cam to the bottom of the steps. He stopped and gave a short whistle. “What—” Amelia gasped as she heard the pounding of heavy hooves and saw a huge black form rushing toward them like something from a nightmare. Alarm darted through her, and she burrowed against Cam, her face hidden against his chest. His arm went around her, tucking her close. When the thundering stopped, Amelia risked a glance at the apparition. It was a horse. A huge black horse, with puffing breaths that rose like wraiths in the raw air. “Is this really happening?” she asked. Cam reached in his pocket and fed the horse a sugar lump, and ran his hand over the sleek midnight neck. “Have you ever had a dream like this?” “Never.” “Then it must be happening.” “You actually have a horse who comes when you whistle?” “Yes, I trained him.” “What is his name?” His smile gleamed white in the darkness. “Can’t you guess?” Amelia thought for a moment. “Pooka?” The horse turned his head to look at her as if he understood. “Pooka,” she repeated with a faint smile. “Do you have wings, by any chance?” At Cam’s subtle gesture, the horse shook his head in an emphatic no, and Amelia laughed shakily. Walking to Pooka’s side, Cam swung up onto the packsaddle in a graceful movement. He sidled close to the step on which Amelia was standing and reached down to her. She took his hand, managing to gain a foothold on the stirrup. She was lifted easily onto the saddle in front of him. Momentum carried her a little too far, but Cam’s arm locked around her, keeping her in place. Amelia leaned back into the hard cradle of his chest and arm. Her nostrils were filled with the scents of autumn, damp earth, horse and man and midnight. “You knew I’d come with you, didn’t you?” she asked. Cam leaned over her, kissing her temple. “I only hoped.” His thighs tightened, setting the horse to a gallop, and then a smooth canter. And when Amelia closed her eyes, she could have sworn they were flying.

At noon one day Will Hamilton came roaring and bumping up the road in a new Ford. The engine raced in its low gear, and the high top swayed like a storm-driven ship. The brass radiator and the Prestolite tank on the running board were blinding with brass polish. Will pulled up the brake lever, turned the switch straight down, and sat back in the leather seat. The car backfired several times without ignition because it was overheated. “Here she is!” Will called with a false enthusiasm. He hated Fords with a deadly hatred, but they were daily building his fortune. Adam and Lee hung over the exposed insides of the car while Will Hamilton, puffing under the burden of his new fat, explained the workings of a mechanism he did not understand himself. It is hard now to imagine the difficulty of learning to start, drive, and maintain an automobile. Not only was the whole process complicated, but one had to start from scratch. Today’s children breathe in the theory, habits, and idiosyncracies of the internal combustion engine in their cradles, but then you started with the blank belief that it would not run at all, and sometimes you were right. Also, to start the engine of a modern car you do just two things, turn a key and touch the starter. Everything else is automatic. The process used to be more complicated. It required not only a good memory, a strong arm, an angelic temper, and a blind hope, but also a certain amount of practice of magic, so that a man about to turn the crank of a Model T might be seen to spit on the ground and whisper a spell. Will Hamilton explained the car and went back and explained it again. His customers were wide-eyed, interested as terriers, cooperative, and did not interrupt, but as he began for the third time Will saw that he was getting no place. “Tell you what!” he said brightly. “You see, this isn’t my line. I wanted you to see her and listen to her before I made delivery. Now, I’ll go back to town and tomorrow I’ll send out this car with an expert, and he’ll tell you more in a few minutes than I could in a week. But I just wanted you to see her.” Will had forgotten some of his own instructions. He cranked for a while and then borrowed a buggy and a horse from Adam and drove to town, but he promised to have a mechanic out the next day.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. This one sentence could well serve as a crash course in how to create atmosphere. First the bare wires of where and when are suggested (a country road; an autumn day in a time period when men still road on horseback to reach their destinations). Then lights and sound are added: the scene is dark and shadowy; a palpable silence reigns. It’s not a peaceful quiet, the kind that might soothe a tired traveler. Rather, it’s a disturbing silence described only in terms of what it lacks : “soundless.” Other details add to the foreboding: clouds hanging low; a lone rider. And beneath it all a subliminal music plays. I imagine an oboe or a cello, its tones mournfully forlorn. Soon it’s joined by a chorus of deep vowels whose tones are split by harsh consonants and stopped rhythms striking like gongs foretelling doom: dull, dark, soundless, day. Each phrase of the description, like each step of the rider’s horse, draws us deeper toward the gloom that awaits us. Nothing

His brother Najib owned an auto-parts store at bustling Shikarpur Gate, the mouth of the narrow road linking their village to the city—an ancient byway that had once led southward through the passes all the way to India. At dusk it is clogged with a riot of vegetable sellers’ handcarts beset by shoppers, Toyota pickup trucks, horse-drawn taxis, and three-wheeled rickshaws clambering around and through the throng like gaudy dung beetles. Nurallah’s brother Najib had gone to Chaman, just across the border in Pakistan, where the streets are lined with cargo containers serving as shops, and used motor oil cements the dust to the ground in a glossy tarmac, and every variety of automotive organ or sinew is laid bare, spread out, and strung up for sale. He had made his purchases and set off back to Kandahar. “He paid his customs dues”—Nurallah emphasized the remarkable point—“because that’s the law. He paid at every checkpoint on the way back, fifty afghanis, a hundred afghanis.” A dollar or two every time an unkempt, underage police boy in green fatigues slouched out of a sandbagged lean-to into the middle of the road—eight times in the sixty-six miles when last I counted. “And then when he reached the entrance to town, the police there wanted five hundred afghanis. Five hundred!” A double arch marks the place where the road that swoops down from Kabul joins the road leading in from Pakistan. The police range from one side to the other, like spear fishermen hunting trout in a narrows. “He refused,” Nurallah continued. “He said he had paid his customs dues—he showed them the receipt. He said he had paid the bribes at every checkpoint all along the way, and he was not paying again.” I waited a beat. “So what happened?” “They reached into his window and smacked him.” “They hit him?” I was shocked. Najib might be a sunny guy, but Kandahar tempers are strung on tripwires. For a second I thought we’d have to go bail him out. “What did he do?” Nurallah’s eyes, beneath his widow’s peak, were banked and smoldering. “What could he do? He paid the money. But then he pulled over to the side of the road and called me. I told him to stay right there. And I called Police Chief Matiullah Qatih, to report the officer who was taking the bribes.” And Matiullah had scoffed at him: Did he die of it? The police buzzards had seen Najib make the call. They had descended on him, snatched the phone out of his hand, and smashed it. “You call that law?” Now Nurallah was ablaze. “They’re the police! They should be showing people what the law is; they should be enforcing the law. And they’re the ones breaking it.” Nurallah was once a police officer himself. He left the force the day his own boss, Kabul police chief Zabit Akrem, was assassinated in that blast in the mosque in 2005.1 Yet so stout was Nurallah’s pride in his former profession that he brought his dark green uniform into work and kept it there, hung neatly on a hook in his locker. “My sacred oath,” he vowed, concluding: “If I see someone planting an IED on a road, and then I see a police truck coming, I will turn away. I will not warn them.” I caught my breath. So maybe he didn’t mean it literally. Maybe Nurallah wouldn’t actually connive with the Taliban. Still, if a former police officer like him was even mouthing such thoughts, then others were acting on them. Afghan government corruption was manufacturing Taliban.

There’s really only one thing you can do—ride the wave of notoriety for all it’s worth. Who knows, you might actually get a rich, hot, famous guy who’s hung like a horse. And then you’ll fuck your way into the sunset and live happily ever after with a big cock in your bed every night.

For a moment, I felt sorry for him. The pain and disappointment of his life hung about him like a cloak. It permeated the air, giving him a rank and bitter scent. This, I mused, was an example of human betrayal left festering, and I felt some compassion for the man whose life had been so disturbed by his wife's ambitions and dishonesty.

Amah would not have approved of her meekly standing aside, twisting her hands as if she had no more resources than those girls who hung themselves without first exacting any retribution from their heartless lovers. He would not get away with it. She walked, like an automaton, to her horse. Her fingers dug out the jar of salve, but left behind the pilules that must be taken while one used the salve. He was already mounted when she approached him. A quartet of birds trilled raucously as she presented the jar to him. Perhaps they were trying to warn him. Or her. 'Here, a parting gift,' she said softly.

To be frank, I think the elegant, long sentence is a thing of beauty, a self-contained entity worthy of study all by itself. Consider this sentence by Dylan Thomas from Quite Early One Morning: I was born in a large Welsh town at the beginning of the Great War—an ugly, lovely town (or so it was and is to me), crawling, sprawling by a long and splendid curving shore where truant boys and sandfield boys and old men from nowhere, beachcombed, idled and paddled, watched the dock-bound ships or the ships streaming away into wonder and India, magic and China, countries bright with oranges and loud with lions; threw stones into the sea for the barking outcast dogs; made castles and forts and harbours and race tracks in the sand; and on Saturday afternoons listened to the brass band, watched the Punch and Judy, or hung about on the fringes of the crowd to hear the fierce religious speakers who shouted at the sea, as though it were wicked and wrong to roll in and out like that, white-horsed and full of fishes.

The outcome of their battle was a foregone conclusion, and Loretta knew it. His friends encouraged him, whooping with ribald laughter each time her ruffles flashed. She snatched the dirty peace flag from the wooden shaft and threw it to the earth, grinding it beneath the heel of her shoe. After fending off several more passes, exhaustion claimed its victory, and Loretta realized the folly in fighting. She stood motionless, breasts heaving, her eyes staring fixedly at nothing, head lifted. The warrior circled her, guiding his stallion’s flashing hooves so close to her feet that her toes tingled. When she didn’t move, he reined the horse to a halt and studied her for several seconds before he leaned forward to finger the bodice of her dress. Her breath snagged when he slid a palm over her bosom to the indentation of her waist. “Ai-ee,” he whispered. “You learn quick.” Raising tear-filled eyes to his, she again spat in his face. This time he felt the spray and wiped his cheek, his lips quivering with something that looked suspiciously like suppressed laughter, friendly laughter this time. “Maybe not so quick. But I am a good teacher. You will learn not to fight me, Yellow Hair. It is a promise I make for you.” In that moment, what she felt for him went beyond hate, a black, churning ugliness that made her want to seize the lance he brandished and skewer him with it. I claim her. He planned to take her, then? Her gaze traveled from his woven wool belt of army blue to the muscular tracks that rippled in his belly. The hilt of his knife protruded from a leather scabbard on his hip. How many soldiers had he killed? One, a hundred, perhaps a thousand? Her hair hung from his belt, trailing in a spray of gold down the dark leather on his pants. She felt certain she had never seen him before. Yet he had her hair. The Indian down by the river must have given it to him, and he had come from God only knew where to get her. With a start, she noticed the warrior had stretched out a hand to her. A wide leather band encircled his wrist to protect him from his bowstring. Staring at his dark palm and strong fingers, she shook her head in denial. “Hi, tai,” he said in a low voice. Guiding his stallion closer, he bent to touch her chin. Her eyelid quivered when he brushed at a tear on her cheek. “Ka taikay, ka taikay, Tohobt Nabituh,” he whispered. The words made no sense. Puzzled, she met his gaze. “Tosa ehr-mahr.” Raising his hand, he showed her the glistening wetness on his fingertips. “Silver rain, tosa ehr-mahr.” He compared her tears to silver rain? She searched his eyes for some trace of humanity and found none. After a moment he straightened, raising his lance in what looked like a salute. “Suvate!” he yelled, his glittering eyes sweeping the line of encircling riders. A low rumble of answering voices replied, “Suvate!

The outcome of their battle was a foregone conclusion, and Loretta knew it. His friends encouraged him, whooping with ribald laughter each time her ruffles flashed. She snatched the dirty peace flag from the wooden shaft and threw it to the earth, grinding it beneath the heel of her shoe. After fending off several more passes, exhaustion claimed its victory, and Loretta realized the folly in fighting. She stood motionless, breasts heaving, her eyes staring fixedly at nothing, head lifted. The warrior circled her, guiding his stallion’s flashing hooves so close to her feet that her toes tingled. When she didn’t move, he reined the horse to a halt and studied her for several seconds before he leaned forward to finger the bodice of her dress. Her breath snagged when he slid a palm over her bosom to the indentation of her waist. “Ai-ee,” he whispered. “You learn quick.” Raising tear-filled eyes to his, she again spat in his face. This time he felt the spray and wiped his cheek, his lips quivering with something that looked suspiciously like suppressed laughter, friendly laughter this time. “Maybe not so quick. But I am a good teacher. You will learn not to fight me, Yellow Hair. It is a promise I make for you.” In that moment, what she felt for him went beyond hate, a black, churning ugliness that made her want to seize the lance he brandished and skewer him with it. I claim her. He planned to take her, then? Her gaze traveled from his woven wool belt of army blue to the muscular tracks that rippled in his belly. The hilt of his knife protruded from a leather scabbard on his hip. How many soldiers had he killed? One, a hundred, perhaps a thousand? Her hair hung from his belt, trailing in a spray of gold down the dark leather on his pants. She felt certain she had never seen him before. Yet he had her hair. The Indian down by the river must have given it to him, and he had come from God only knew where to get her.

Were you going to tell me you're coming to visit?" "Were you going to tell me you're banging my contractor?" "No. It's none of your business," I say firmly, trying not to sound shocked that he knows. I'm going to have to murder Sadie or Dixie later, whichever one told him. Maybe killing them both would be easiest. "Why are you coming?" "Why are you banging the contractor?" I grit my teeth. He's in one of those snarky moods that he's been perfecting since he was a preteen. Back then he used to parrot back everything I said on our twelve-hour drives to Maine from Toronto and it would get me so mad I would scream. If he wants to play, I'll play to win. "Well, where can I start ... he's built like a tank and hung like a horse." "Winnie!" "Not to mention that scruffy beard and the way it feels between my--

We’d get through this little arrangement of ours better if you didn’t lie to me, Nash.” “Christ, Dani. I needed to get out of town for a few hours today, okay? Quinn’s got me running so many chores in her mom-wagon, I can feel my balls shrinking in daily increments. So I went to get a little girlie-action. So what? That was never verboten in our agreement. Unless you want to amend your anti-sex-with-me stance?” I glared at him, not appreciating his suggestion, or the fact that he used Mick as an excuse for girlie-action-getting. “Fine!” He held up his hands in surrender. “I went with Sindy, if you must know.” “To pick up girls in Atlantic City?” “No.” He hung his head in shame. “It was a little pony-action. She likes the horse races, okay? It’s just a little embarrassing to say I drove an old lady down there.” I planted my hands on my hips. “Okay, so she drove! I hate the traffic on the turnpike.

WELL, THAT went well. Not. Remi all but ran out of here. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed, but damn it to the pit and back, the scent of his desire was driving me mad. He wanted me. I wanted him. Neither of us wanted to bottom, so how the hell was that going to work? Okay, to be fair, I’d never tried it. It’s just… the whole dynamics of bottoming made me uncomfortable. Allowing a man to top me meant I’d have to give up control, and that was hard for me. Especially for me. I knew being a bottom didn’t necessarily mean a man was submissive, either in the bedroom or in everyday life. It didn’t make him less of a man. Likewise, being a top didn’t mean a man was inclined to be dominant in his interactions with others. It didn’t make him more of a man. I got that. I really did… but. But I knew myself well enough to know I couldn’t just let anyone into my body. It wasn’t all about the fear of being penetrated, but that was some of it. It’s why I took time to open my partner up. To get him riled up and desperate. What was the point of sex if it didn’t feel good? Then, of course, there were the usual perceptions: big, muscular black man… of course he’d only top. Of course he had to be hung like a horse too. I hated it when guys talked about me as if I were nothing more than a big black cock.

nodded to show I’d heard. “What about free time?” “For all your scintillating hobbies?” Rohan plucked an apple out of the fruit bowl on the table and bit into it. “Yes. As well as the many good works I do.” He arched his eyebrow, miming giving a hand job. “Are you ever going to let that go?” He took another bite. “Not when there are still hours of fun to be had from it. You know you don’t have to jerk the demons off to kill them, right?” “It was one time.” He slapped the table. “Knew it! Baruch owes me twenty.” I groaned at the fact that I’d just confirmed his suspicions. “Don’t feel bad,” he said with a smirk, “I puzzled it out when reaching for the curupira’s dick was your first move.” “I couldn’t not reach for Mount Phallus. He was hung like a horse.” He held up his hands. “If that’s your kink, then hey, no judgment.

Yes. As well as the many good works I do.” He arched his eyebrow, miming giving a hand job. “Are you ever going to let that go?” He took another bite. “Not when there are still hours of fun to be had from it. You know you don’t have to jerk the demons off to kill them, right?” “It was one time.” He slapped the table. “Knew it! Baruch owes me twenty.” I groaned at the fact that I’d just confirmed his suspicions. “Don’t feel bad,” he said with a smirk, “I puzzled it out when reaching for the curupira’s dick was your first move.” “I couldn’t not reach for Mount Phallus. He was hung like a horse.” He held up his hands. “If that’s your kink, then hey, no judgment.