Island Wedding Quotes

In the enchanted woodland wild, The Prince shall wed a Fairy child. Dragon, Human, and Fairy, Their union will be bound by three. And when these lovers intertwine, Three races in one child combine. Dragon, Fey, and Humankind, Bound in one bloodline.

If people were to tell other people everything about themselves, we’d live in a dull world.

It's just that we'd like to think that craziness and sanity are on opposite ends of an ocean, but really they're more like neighboring islands.

But not everyone needs to be a warrior, my dear. Otherwise we’d never have poets, artists, scientists …’ ‘I disagree,’ said Defne into her wine glass. ‘There are moments in life when everyone has to become a warrior of some kind. If you are a poet, you fight with your words; if you are an artist, you fight with your paintings … But you can’t say, “Sorry, I’m a poet, I’ll pass.” You don’t say that when there’s so much suffering, inequality, injustice.

Because we live in a world under siege,” I say. “Life sucks for mages and magicians- you taught me that. Bad things happen to those of us who get involved, but if we didn't fight, we'd be in an even worse state. None of it it’s your fault, any more than it’s the fault of the moon or the stars.” Dervish nods slowly, then arches an eyebrow “The moon or the stars?” “I always get poetic when I'm dealing with self-pitying simpletons.

What would we do, each of us, if we were young people in 1930s Burgos, caught up in the midst of civil war? It’s easy to claim in hindsight we’d do the right thing. But, in truth, none of us knows where we would be when the fire is raging.

We couldn't bear to be apart. So if Kizuki had lived, I'm sure we would have been together, loving each other, and gradually growing unhappy." Unhappy? Why's that?" With her fingers, Naoko combed her hair back several times. She had taken her barrette off, which made the hair fall over her face when she dropped her head forward. Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it," she said, raising her eyes to mine. "The pain of growing up. We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here. We were like kids who grew up naked on a desert island. If we got hungry, we'd just pick a banana; if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms. But that kind of thing doesn't last forever. We grew up fast and had to enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were the link connecting us with the outside world. We were struggling through you to fit in with the outside world as best we could. In the end, it didn't work, of course." I nodded. I wouldn't want you to think that we were using you, though. Kizuki really loved you. It just so happened that our connection with you was our first connection with anyone else. And it still is. Kizuki may be dead, but you are still my only link with the outside world. And just as Kizuki loved you, I love you. We never meant to hurt you, but we probably did; we probably ended up making a deep wound in your heart. It never occurred to us that anything like that might happen.

I'd been to the island on most weekends up until I got shot, and Thomas had often come with me. We'd used some fresh lumber, some material salvaged from the ruined town, and some pontoons made from plastic sheathing and old tractor-tire inner tubes to construct a floating walkway to serve as a dock, anchored to the old pilings that had once supported a much larger structure. Upon completion, I had dubbed it the Whatsup Dock, and Thomas had chucked me twenty feet out into the lake, thus proving his utter lack of appreciation for reference-orientated humour. (And then I'd thrown him forty feet out with magic, once I got dry. Because come on, he's my brother. It was the only thing to do.)

Who’s Beth?” Keri asked. “The bartender at your wedding.” “Oh, that’s right. How could I forget when my husband almost got thrown out of our own reception for trying to hire her like a hooker or something.” “What’s a hooker?” Bobby asked. Keri’s island tan flushed pink. “Oops.” “You put it on the end of a fishing pole, dummy,” Brian explained. Bobby frowned. “Uncle Joe tried to hire a worm?

I don’t know why we fight. It takes much too effort to stay mad at you. To dodge your skin in the hallway and leave the kitchen without bringing you a treat. It takes much too effort to stare at the sink so my eyes don’t smile at you in the mirror. It takes much too effort to look away as we undress and lie apart in the now bigger bed. It takes much too effort to stiffen my body because sleepy limbs forget fights and pride is always lost in dreams. It takes much too effort to awaken every hour to make sure we are islands with a gulf of white sheets separating us. I dread the light peeking through the parted curtains and empathise with your groans — I didn’t get any sleep either. I really don’t know why we fight. It takes much too effort to stay mad at one another when it’s so easy for us to love.

Being left at the altar was not for sissies. Aside from the humiliation and hurt, there were actual logistics to worry about. Odds were if a guy was willing to leave you standing alone in front of three hundred of your closest friends and relatives, not to mention both your mothers, he wasn't going to sweat the little stuff like returning the gifts and paying the caterer.

A sound of laughter was heard-they turned sharply. Vera Claythorne was standing in the yard. She cried out in a high shrill voice, shaken with wild bursts of laughter: "Do they keep bees on this island? Tell me that. Where do we go for honey? Ha! ha!" They stared at her uncomprehendingly. It was as though the sane well-balanced girl had gone mad right before their eyes. She went on in that high unnatural voice: "Don't stare like that! As though you thought I was mad. It's sane enough what I'm asking. Bees, hives, bees! Oh, don't you understand? Haven't you read that idiotic rhyme? It's up in all of your bedrooms-put it there for you to study! We might have come here straightaway if we'd had sense. Seven little soldiers chopping up sticks. And the next verse, I know the whole thing by heart, I tell you! Six little soldier boys playing with a hive. And that's why I'm asking-do they keep bees on this island- isn't it damned funny...?

I asked her to leave with me on our wedding night.” “What?” my grandfather said, his composure further weakened. He too had believed this was all a childish bluff and suddenly felt the ground shifting under his feet. “Oh, yes. We could have been in the Epidi Islands by now, or Mur. I would have taken her anywhere she wanted,” Eugenides assured him. “She wouldn’t abandon her people—she knew how Erondites would rule if she did.

I cannot think that man is meant to find happiness so easily! Happiness is like one of those palaces on an enchanted island, its gates guarded by dragons. One must fight to gain it; and, in truth, I do not know what I have done to deserve the good fortune of becoming Mercédès, husband.

And she wanted him. And anyway, once a mermaid saved a man, wasn’t he destined to be her true love, with weddings on ships or private islands and happily-ever-afters filled with music and sparkles and talking fish?

The word wrath jumped out at me. I thought about the alcohol and drugs we’d found in Toby’s room. I thought about the fire on Hawthorne Island and the way the press had lauded Toby as such an outstanding young man.

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together He said that everything would be better than before He said we were on the edge of a new relation He said he would never again cringe before his father He said that he was going to invent full-time He said he loved me that going into me He said was going into the world and the sky He said all the buckles were very firm He said the wax was the best wax He said Wait for me here on the beach He said Just don't cry I remember the gulls and the waves I remember the islands going dark on the sea I remember the girls laughing I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse I remember she added : Women who love such are the worst of all I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer. I would have liked to try those wings myself. It would have been better than this.

They were trying to escape. They asked us "Where's the railway?" We'd never seen a railway. They asked "Where's Moscow? Leningrad?" They were asking the wrong people: we'd never heard of those places. We're Ostyaks. People were running away starving. They were given a handful of flour. They mixed it with water and drank it and then they immediately got diarrhea. The things we saw! People were dying everywhere; they were killing each other.... On the island there was a guard named Kostia Venikov, a young fellow. He was courting a pretty girl who had been sent there. He protected her. One day he had to be away for a while, and he told one of his comrades, "Take care of her," but with all the people there the comrade couldn't do much.... People caught the girl, tied her to a poplar tree, cut off her breasts, her muscles, everything they could eat, everything, everything.... They were hungry, they had to eat. When Kostia came back, she was still alive. He tried to save her, but she had lost too much blood.

No man is an island, no woman lives in a vacuum, and as much as we’d like to compartmentalize, our actions and decisions affect those around us… even if that’s not our intention.

How old did someone have to be before they could be put to use to make tea?

What if you were to get lost,” he pointed out. Oh, that was the final straw. She whirled around. “However could that happen, my lord?” She notched her chin up a bit. “We’re standing on an island. Eventually I would come to an edge.

Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark-- which was a candle in a cabin window... It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened; Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could 'a' laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable... because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest. Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.

We are all standing on the vagina of our planet, as it births fresh new land right before our very eyes in the form of this beautiful molten lava flowing below us. This island is literally growing in size every day, like a teenager in puberty watching her titties swell…

The Three-Decker "The three-volume novel is extinct." Full thirty foot she towered from waterline to rail. It cost a watch to steer her, and a week to shorten sail; But, spite all modern notions, I found her first and best— The only certain packet for the Islands of the Blest. Fair held the breeze behind us—’twas warm with lovers’ prayers. We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs. They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse confessed, And they worked the old three-decker to the Islands of the Blest. By ways no gaze could follow, a course unspoiled of Cook, Per Fancy, fleetest in man, our titled berths we took With maids of matchless beauty and parentage unguessed, And a Church of England parson for the Islands of the Blest. We asked no social questions—we pumped no hidden shame— We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came: We left the Lord in Heaven, we left the fiends in Hell. We weren’t exactly Yussufs, but—Zuleika didn’t tell. No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared, The villain had his flogging at the gangway, and we cheered. ’Twas fiddle in the forc’s’le—’twas garlands on the mast, For every one got married, and I went ashore at last. I left ’em all in couples a-kissing on the decks. I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques. In endless English comfort by county-folk caressed, I left the old three-decker at the Islands of the Blest! That route is barred to steamers: you’ll never lift again Our purple-painted headlands or the lordly keeps of Spain. They’re just beyond your skyline, howe’er so far you cruise In a ram-you-damn-you liner with a brace of bucking screws. Swing round your aching search-light—’twill show no haven’s peace. Ay, blow your shrieking sirens to the deaf, gray-bearded seas! Boom out the dripping oil-bags to skin the deep’s unrest— And you aren’t one knot the nearer to the Islands of the Blest! But when you’re threshing, crippled, with broken bridge and rail, At a drogue of dead convictions to hold you head to gale, Calm as the Flying Dutchman, from truck to taffrail dressed, You’ll see the old three-decker for the Islands of the Blest. You’ll see her tiering canvas in sheeted silver spread; You’ll hear the long-drawn thunder ’neath her leaping figure-head; While far, so far above you, her tall poop-lanterns shine Unvexed by wind or weather like the candles round a shrine! Hull down—hull down and under—she dwindles to a speck, With noise of pleasant music and dancing on her deck. All’s well—all’s well aboard her—she’s left you far behind, With a scent of old-world roses through the fog that ties you blind. Her crew are babes or madmen? Her port is all to make? You’re manned by Truth and Science, and you steam for steaming’s sake? Well, tinker up your engines—you know your business best— She’s taking tired people to the Islands of the Blest!

Waiting for Icarus " He said he would be back and we’d drink wine together He said that everything would be better than before He said we were on the edge of a new relation He said he would never again cringe before his father He said that he was going to invent full-time He said he loved me that going into me He said was going into the world and the sky He said all the buckles were very firm He said the wax was the best wax He said Wait for me here on the beach He said Just don’t cry I remember the gulls and the waves I remember the islands going dark on the sea I remember the girls laughing I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse I remember she added : Women who love such are the Worst of all I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer. I would have liked to try those wings myself. It would have been better than this.

Between the three of us, we’d be fine. It’d be fun. Magic. That’s what those days felt like. Not how Libby made it sound. Sure, there were problems, but what about all those days lying on our bellies in the Coney Island sand reading until the sun set? Or nights spent in a row on our sofa, eating junk food and watching old movies?

What if we are all getting stupid at more or less the same rate and we don’t realize it because we are all declining together? You might argue that we’d see a general fall in IQ scores, but what if it’s not the kind of deterioration that shows up in IQ tests? What if it were reflected in just, say, poor judgment or diminished taste? We

It was so awful! And he kept on looking at me and I knew I must get out of bed or he'd come and touch me. I did, too, but when I got out I wasn't me-I was a little white bunny. And he started out of the room and I had to go with him for fear he'd touch me. It felt so horrid, going out with him and looking back at mother there asleep. "We went into the main part of the house, and one of the big front doors was open, and we went out through it. And then he gave a big jump, and so did I, and it took us clear up into the sky. We couldn't fly, but we kept jumping and jumping. "Sometimes we stayed in the sky a little while, jumping from cloud to cloud, and the moon would get closer and closer and bigger and bigger, and its face would change and get horrible and grin at us until it seemed like its mouth was a mile wide and open, to swallow us up. And then we'd come down again and jump from one cliff to another, and the sea would be roaring down under us, and the waves all grey and cold and moving around and boiling like they were mad or afraid. "We went all over the island and sometimes we jumped over the sea to the mainland and back again; and sometimes I tried to get away and run back to Mother - I thought she'd know me even if I was a bunny - but always, whichever way I turned, the hare was there in front of me, and his teeth were shining. "We kept it up all night, and I was so tired and cold and miserable, and so scared. I didn't know whether he would ever let me go home or whether he would take me to Aunt Sarai. Then finally I did get away and the hare chased me!" She broke off, her voice rising again to a wail. "It was so awful! I ran all over the island, into all sorts of queer little places that I never knew were there before - it seems so different after dark - and finally, when two or three times I'd been so tired that I thought I just couldn't go any farther, before he caught me, I saw the house in front of me and the front door still open and I started to run in, and then I thought - what if they'd planned it that way, and Aunt Sarai had come down from her portrait and was inside there in the dark, waiting for me?

As I write, I am reminded of that passage from the Bible—the one that is read at every wedding: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.” Now, I understand as an adult. Maybe for the first time in my life. This article would break my mother’s heart, and perhaps even worse, her spirit. That didn’t matter to me a week ago; in fact, I wanted to hurt her then. My only excuse: then I was a child.

Nobody ever said I don’t know or I’m afraid, and they acted like the masks they wore were their real faces and that they could sustain themselves forever on their own self-assurance—like they really believed they didn’t need anybody else. What was that John Donne poem we’d read in Weinstein’s class, “No Man Is An Island”? Not here. We were a goddamn social archipelago that called itself a community. Why did I feel like I was the only one who lived in a nightmare?

At once I understood that I had been looking at things with the right intention but from the wrong angle. My marriage was imperfect and my job lacked meaning, but I had been searching for complicated solutions instead of addressing the common denominator in both equations - me. Moreover, I'd been approaching my life as a zero-sum game. As Alex had just pointed out, meeting my own needs for a change didn't mean my family would collapse or sink into bankruptcy-level debt. There were certain parts of my marriage that might never be fixed - wasn't that what "for better or for worse" was all about? - but that wouldn't necessarily put Sanjay and me on a one-way dinghy to divorce island. And even if we did split, that wouldn't be the end of everything. It would hurt like hell, but it wouldn't erase the good times we'd had My children would still have two parents who loved them and who would not opt out of their lives just because things were hard.

The song she heard from the meadow was the same tune as the bird's call.She looked up in the trees.For a moment she thought she'd lost the bird, and she nearly cried out for him, but he fluttered down,landed right at her feet, and grew into a man." "Oh." Meg sighed.She'd always liked that part. "He whistled the tune once more, then the fey man said, 'My lady,will you dance?" "'I will.' She crossed the bridge to the meadow,and danced with the whistler." "Tell us they married," Meg said. "The story doesn't go like that," Poppy reminded. "It should." Meg stroked Tom's blood-clotted hair. I fumbled with the charcoal in my blackened fingers. As the story went, the girl danced through the seasons, but when she wandered home at last and reached her cottage door, she was a shriveled-up old women, for a hundred years had passed while she danced with the whistler,and everyone she'd known in her former life had died. Meg knew how it went.But when our eyes locked, I saw tonight she couldn't bear it. I found another bit of charcoal. "That very spring when the meadow was in bloom,the whistler, who had fey power to transform into a bird and sing any girl he wished to into the wood, chose the one girl who'd followed him so bravely and so far to be his wife. And she lived with him and the fey folk deep in Dragonswood in DunGarrow Castle, a place that blends into the mountainside and cannot be seen with human eyes unless the fairies will it so." I drew the couple hand in hand, rouch sketches on the cave wall; the stone wasn't smooth by any means. "She lived free among the fey folk and never wanted to return to her old life that had been full of hunger and sorrow under her father's roof." I sketched what came next before I could think of it. "A dragon came to their wedding," I said, drawing his right wing so large, I had to use the ceiling. "He lit a bonfire to celebrate their union." I drew the left wing spanning over the couple in the meadow. "And they lived all their lives content in Dragonswood.

He’s threatening us!” Tempest flailed. She slammed Wasp on the back so hard the communal eyeball popped right out of her socket. Wasp snatched it—and with a terrible show of fumbling, intentionally chucked it over her shoulder, right into my lap. I screamed. The sisters screamed, too. Anger, now bereft of guidance, swerved all over the road, sending my stomach into my esophagus. “He’s stolen our eye!” cried Tempest. “We can’t see!” “I have not!” I yelped. “It’s disgusting!” Meg whooped with pleasure. “THIS. IS. SO. COOL!” “Get it off!” I squirmed and tilted my hips, hoping the eye would roll away, but it stayed stubbornly in my lap, staring up at me with the accusatory glare of a dead catfish. Meg did not help. Clearly, she didn’t want to do anything that might interfere with the coolness of us dying in a faster-than-light car crash. “He will crush our eye,” Anger cried, “if we don’t recite our verses!” “I will not!” “We will all die!” Wasp said. “He is crazy!” “I AM NOT!” “Fine, you win!” Tempest howled. She drew herself up and recited as if performing for the people in Connecticut ten miles away: “A dare reveals the path that was unknown!” Anger chimed in: “And bears destruction; lion, snake-entwined!” Wasp concluded: “Or else the princeps never be o’erthrown!” Meg clapped. I stared at the Gray Sisters in disbelief. “That wasn’t doggerel. That was terza rima! You just gave us the next stanza of our actual prophecy!” “Well, that’s all we’ve got for you!” Anger said. “Now give me the eye, quick. We’re almost at camp!” Panic overcame my shock. If Anger couldn’t stop at our destination, we’d accelerate past the point of no return and vaporize in a colorful streak of plasma across Long Island. And yet that still sounded better than touching the eyeball in my lap. “Meg! Kleenex?” She snorted. “Wimp.” She scooped up the eye with her bare hand and tossed it to Anger. Anger shoved the eye in her socket. She blinked at the road, yelled “YIKES!” and slammed on the brakes so hard my chin hit my sternum.

His former mother-in-law attempted to ease the new couple’s burdens by bestowing on them a wedding present in the form of a household slave. In a town where one in five families owned enslaved people, it was a traditional gift. Adams balked. “A slave cannot live in my house,” he declared, insisting, “If she comes, she must be free.” Emancipated, Surrey remained a fixture at the Adams address for nearly fifty years. In conjunction with a Rhode Island doctor, Adams began to formulate a campaign against slavery.

Where are we going?" "East. To where the sun rises." "Seriously?" He thumped the dash-not too hard-and I actually felt a little burst of warm air. "You've been to Long Beach Island, right?You told me that in an e-mail." "yeah, Surf City." "We have a house in Barnegat Light. I thought we'd go there. We'll have breakfast somewhere and come back. You okay with that?" The beach. In late December. At night. "I'm absolutely fine with it." "So," he said. "So." "We okay?" "I think so," I answered. "I hope we'll be a lot better than that." "Yeah,me,too.

He arranged the ceremony for two o'clock in the afternoon a week before she was to leave. The exam had gone well and she was almost certain that she would qualify. Because other couples to be married came with family and friends, their ceremony seemed brisk and over quickly and caused much curiosity among those waiting because they had come alone. On their journey to Coney Island on the train that afternoon Tony raised the question for the first time of when they might marry in church and live together. 'I have money saved,' he said, 'so we could get an apartment and then move to the house when it's ready.' 'I don't mind,' she said. 'I wish we were going home together now.' He touched her hand. 'So do I,' he said. 'And the ring looks great on your finger.' She looked down at the ring. 'I'd better remember to take it off before Mrs Kehoe sees it.' The ocean was rough and grey and the wind blew white billowing clouds quickly across the sky. They moved slowly along the boardwalk and down the pier, where they stood watching the fishermen. As they walked back and sat eating hot dogs at Nathan's, Eilis spotted someone at the next table checking out her wedding ring. She smiled at herself. 'Will we ever tell our children that we did this?' she asked.

And much as Lou loved his mother, his adoration of his Eleanor was out of this world. All the affection that had been denied him as a child, all the limitless affection he had to give on his own part and which had never had a chance to expand, came to a head in and about Eleanor. Strong as Mom was, Lou was stronger when it came to his determination to marry Eleanor, and the wedding was set for September, 1933, at the Long Island home of a friend of Eleanor’s. They were to live in an apartment in New Rochelle so as to be near Mom. Mom of course couldn’t understand why Lou didn’t go on living in the house with them so that she could cook and look after him as usual.

North American LGBT activists, wedded to epistemologies of the closet, often implicitly or explicitly equate this culture of semivisibility with the Global South’s lack of progress. In Sirena Selena, the Puerto Rican novelist Mayra Santos-Febres parodies the North’s conflation of “developing” nations’ electrical power outages and their lack of sexual enlightenment through the words of a Canadian tourist in Santo Domingo. He sighs, “I don’t want to criticize, you know — with all the problems these islands have, it’s understandable that they’re less evolved. . . . You can’t compare our problems with the atrocities a gay man has to face in these countries. . . . It’s all hanky-panky in the dark, like in the fifties in Canada.

My father became High King, and my mother his queen, yet this island on which you stand, this place … my mother claimed it for herself. The very island where she had once served as a slave became her domain, her sanctuary. The Daglan female who’d ruled it before her had chosen it for its natural defensive location, the mists that kept it veiled from the others. So, too, did my mother. But more than that, she told me many times that she and her heirs were the only ones worthy of tending this island. Nesta murmured to Azriel, “The Prison was once a royal territory?” Bryce didn’t care—and Azriel didn’t reply. Silene had glossed over how Theia and Fionn had used the Trove and Cauldron against the Asteri, and why the Hel had she come to this planet if not to learn about that? Yet once again, Silene’s memory plowed forward. And with the Daglan gone, as the centuries passed, as the Tithe was no longer demanded of us or the land, our powers strengthened. The land strengthened. It returned to what it had been before the Daglan’s arrival millennia before. We returned to what we’d been before that time, too, creatures whose very magic was tied to this land. Thus the land’s powers became my mother’s. Dusk, twilight—that’s what the island was in its long-buried heart, what her power bloomed into, the lands rising with it. It was, as she said, as if the island had a soul that now blossomed under her care, nurtured by the court she built here. Islands, like those they’d seen in the carvings, rose up from the sea, lush and fertile.

Lord Macaulay, ready as ever with a flush of gorgeous hyperbole, evokes the circumstances of the Grub Street authors: Sometimes blazing in gold-laced hats and waistcoats; sometimes lying in bed because their coats had gone to pieces, or wearing paper cravats because their linen was in pawn; sometimes drinking champagne and Tokay with Betty Careless; sometimes standing at the window of an eating-house in Porridge Island, to snuff up the scent of what they could not afford to taste; they knew luxury; they knew beggary; but they never knew comfort. He goes on, ‘They looked on a regular and frugal life with the same aversion which an old gypsy or a Mohawk hunter feels for a stationary abode … They were as untameable, as much wedded to their desolate freedom, as the wild ass.

Battered by shifing currents and a cold, unrelenting wind, we sailed past deserted islands crowded with pines and a ghost tree growing staight out of the water, its gaunt trunk and scrawny branches raised heavenward like an outcast pleading for his life. Now, having reached the north shore, we were doggedly searching for the hidden rivulet that would take us into The Peak. We were trapped in muddy water barbed with grasses and covered with thick green algae, which broke apart in clumps, then, after we'd edged through, resealed, erasing all signs of our passing. The wind had dissipated - strange, as it'd been so turbulent minutes ago out on the lake. Dense trees surrounded us, packed like hordes of stranded prisoners. There wasn't a single bird, not a scuttle through the branches, not a cry - as if everything alive had fled.

So much of the most important personal news I'd received in the last several years had come to me by smartphone while I was abroad in the city that I could plot on a map, could represent spatially the events, such as they were, of my early thirties. Place a thumbtack on the wall or drop a flag on Google Maps at Lincoln Center, where, beside the fountain, I took a call from Jon informing me that, for whatever complex of reasons, a friend had shot himself; mark the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, where I read the message ("Apologies for the mass e-mail...") a close cousin sent out describing the dire condition of her newborn; waiting in line at the post office on Atlantic, the adhan issuing from the adjacent mosque, I received your wedding announcement and was shocked to be shocked, crushed, and started a frightening multi week descent, worse for being so embarrassingly cliched; while in the bathroom at the SoHo Crate and Barrel--the finest semipublic restroom in lower Manhattan--I learned I'd been awarded a grant that would take me overseas for a summer, and so came to associate the corner of Broadway and Houston with all that transpired in Morocco; at Zucotti Park I heard my then-girlfriend was not--as she'd been convinced--pregnant; while buying discounted dress socks at the Century 21 department store across from Ground Zero, I was informed by text that a friend in Oakland had been hospitalized after the police had broken his ribs. And so on: each of these experiences of reception remained, as it were, in situ, so that whenever I returned to a zone where significant news had been received, I discovered that the news and an echo of its attendant affect still awaited me like a curtain of beads.

Reader, I married him. It turned out the sounds I heard coming from the attic weren't the screams of Mr Rochester's mad wife Bertha. It wasn't the wife who burned to death in the fire that destroyed Thornfield Hall and blinded my future husband when he tried to save her. After we'd first got engaged, he'd had to admit that he was already married, and we'd broken off our engagement. He'd asked me to run away with him anyway. Naturally, I'd refused. But later, after we were properly married, he insisted that it hadn't happened that way. It turned out there had been no wife. It turned out that it had been a parrot, screaming in the attic. The parrot had belonged to his wife. She had got it in the islands, where she had also contracted the tropical fever that killed her. She'd died long before I came to work for him as a governess. That was never Bertha, in the attic.

I’m sorry,” said Peter. “It’s my fault for coming this way. We’re lost. I’ve never seen this place in my life before.” The Dwarf gave a low whistle between his teeth. “Oh, do let’s go back and go the other way,” said Susan. “I knew all along we’d get lost in these woods.” “Susan!” said Lucy, reproachfully, “don’t nag at Peter like that. It’s so rotten, and he’s doing all he can.” “And don’t you snap at Su like that, either,” said Edmund. “I think she’s quite right.” “Tubs and tortoiseshells!” exclaimed Trumpkin. “If we’ve got lost coming, what chance have we of finding our way back? And if we’re to go back to the Island and begin all over again--even supposing we could--we might as well give the whole thing up. Miraz will have finished with Caspian before we get there at that rate.” “You think we ought to go on?” said Lucy. “I’m not sure the High King is lost,” said Trumpkin. “What’s to hinder this river being the Rush?” “Because the Rush is not in a gorge,” said Peter, keeping his temper with some difficulty.

Torn The internet’s all show, no actual cunnilingus has transpired between us. This has been smoke signals from eye to eye. And just like the telegraph, the telephone gave us a means to the ends of staying ever closer to home, ever farther from the ear we’d dot-dash or whisper into, what a sad story for flesh, marooned. First by the womb, then the word traveled fast and free of lips, now your hips can thrive in my brain without entering my life. I might as well be on the moon. The evolution of communication’s to mythologize togetherness as we drift entropically apart. That’s what the kids call a thesis statement. But god you’re hot, and your crescendo of breath so fully apes the real deal, is it possible we can be islanded and still come to prefer absence to presence, the digital to the palpable? I fear the question answers itself by nodding to the fact that I can write a poem and you read it with no hand having touched metal or paper or words that don’t dissolve as soon as a switch is thrown. Half of my soul says, Get used to it. The other million percent begs, Don’t.

What are you so worried about? What makes you think if we got together that we’d even stay together? We wouldn’t, most likely. Nothing is permanent, especially in this town. Everything is just another set, waiting to be dismantled and hauled to the dumpster. We’d hook up, have some fun for a few weeks, a few laughs, nothing wrong with that. And then we’d go out separate ways. It would end the way most things end. I’d think about you for a while. Maybe you’d think about me. I’d ache for you a little bit, the way one does when things are over, even things that aren’t meant to be. I’d get busy with my life. You’d get busy with yours. We’d say we’d keep in touch. But we never would. And when people asked, we’d say we had a thing once, you and me. One minute it was, and the next it wasn’t. It didn’t mean it wasn’t real. It just wasn’t forever. And years later maybe we’d run into each other on the street somewhere, and you’d barely remember my name. And I’d barely remember yours. I’d say to you, hey, remember how you once loved me? And you’d say sorry, not really. And I’d say yeah, me neither.

A letter from John Pearl asking for news of Chicago. As if I had any to give him. I know no more about it than he does. He wanted to go to New York but now sounds nostalgic and writes with deep distaste about his "peeling environment." "Peeling furniture, peeling walls, posters, bridges, everything is peeling and scaling in South Brooklyn. We moved here to save money, but I'm afraid we'd better start saving ourselves and move out again. It's the treelessness, as much as anything, that hurts me. The unnatural, too human deadness." I'm sorry for him. I know what he feels, the kind of terror, and the danger he sees of the lack of the human in the too-human. We find it, as others before us have found it in the last two hundred years, and we bolt for "Nature." It happens in all cities. And cities are "natural," too. He thinks he would be safer in Chicago, where he grew up. Sentimentality! He doesn't mean Chicago. It is no less inhuman. He means his father's house and the few blocks adjacent. Away from these and a few other islands, he would be just as unsafe. But even such a letter buoys me up. It gives me a sense of someone else's recognition of the difficult, the sorrowful, what to others is merely neutral, the environment.

Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally. It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves. There were few reference works in English that offered information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his "description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera": 'The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odor with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk.

seemed relentless. ‘We can’t leave yet,’ Laura said reluctantly. ‘We have to try to disable this ship. H.I.V.E. has no chance while this thing is floating out here raining missiles down on the island.’ Wing knew that Laura was right, but at the same time he needed to find Cypher. He was not prone to letting his emotions control him but the burning anger he felt when he visualised that black glass mask was fierce and relentless. He had no idea what Cypher was hoping to achieve with his assault on the school, but he knew that he was going to stop him, or die trying. ‘We must return to the island,’ Wing replied. ‘Once the situation there is resolved we can worry about this ship.’ ‘I know you want to go after him, Wing,’ Laura said, ‘but we have to do this first.’ ‘Or we could just do both,’ Shelby said, knowing that if Wing and Laura started to argue it would just be a competition to see who could be most stubborn. A very long, very boring competition that they really didn’t have time for right now. ‘What do you propose?’ Wing asked. ‘Well, why don’t you take the boat back to the island and we’ll stay here and try to disable this thing,’ Shelby said. ‘Splitting up seems ill advised at this point,’ Wing said calmly. ‘Maybe, but what other choice do we have? And besides, what makes you think we’d need your help anyway?’ Shelby said with a grin.

So to avoid the twin dangers of nostalgia and despairing bitterness, I'll just say that in Cartagena we'd spend a whole month of happiness, and sometimes even a month and a half, or even longer, going out in Uncle Rafa's motorboat, La Fiorella, to Bocachica to collect seashells and eat fried fish with plantain chips and cassava, and to the Rosary Islands, where I tried lobster, or to the beach at Bocagrande, or walking to the pool at the Caribe Hotel, until we were mildly burned on our shoulders, which after a few days started peeling and turned freckly forever, or playing football with my cousins, in the little park opposite Bocagrande Church, or tennis in the Cartagena Club or ping-pong in their house, or going for bike rides, or swimming under the little nameless waterfalls along the coast, or making the most of the rain and the drowsiness of siesta time to read the complete works of Agatha Christie or the fascinating novels of Ayn Rand (I remember confusing the antics of the architect protagonist of The Fountainhead with those of my uncle Rafael), or Pearl S. Buck's interminable sagas, in cool hammocks strung up in the shade on the terrace of the house, with a view of the sea, drinking Kola Roman, eating Chinese empanadas on Sundays, coconut rice with red snapper on Mondays, Syrian-Lebanese kibbeh on Wednesdays, sirloin steak on Fridays and, my favourite, egg arepas on Saturday mornings, piping hot and brought fresh from a nearby village, Luruaco, where they had the best recipe.

I pushed Mom off me and slapped Audrey across her wet face. I know! But I was just so mad. “I pray for you,” Audrey said. “Pray for yourself,” I said. “My mother’s too good for you and those other mothers. You’re the one everyone hates. Kyle is a juvie who doesn’t do sports or any extracurriculars. The only friends he has are because he gives them drugs and because he’s funny when he’s making fun of you. And your husband is a drunk who has three DUIs but he gets off because he knows the judge, and all you care about is that nobody finds out, but it’s too late because Kyle tells the whole school everything.” Audrey said quickly, “I am a Christian woman so I will forgive that.” “Give me a break,” I said. “Christians don’t talk the way you talked to my mother.” I got into the car, shut the door, turned off Abbey Road, and just started whimpering. I was sitting in an inch of water, but I didn’t care. The reason I was so scared had nothing to do with a sign or a stupid mudslide or because Mom and I didn’t get invited to stupid Whidbey Island, like we’d ever want to go anywhere with those jerks in a million years, but because I knew, I just knew, that now everything was going to be different. Mom got in and shut the door. “You’re supercool,” she said. “You know that?” “I hate her,” I said. What I didn’t say, because I didn’t need to, because it was implied, and really, I can’t tell you why, because we’d never kept secrets from him before, but me and Mom both just understood: we weren’t going to tell Dad.

when she saw Emmanuel walking towards us. ‘What is it?’ I asked, reaching out to stop her from leaving. She looked at me, then blinked. ‘He’s not the kind of man you want to get involved with, is all I need to say – I just—’ She broke off, shook her head and hurried away, and I was left staring after her retreating back and wondering what she meant. As we drove home, there was none of the easy silence we’d shared on the way to the market. Though this time it was me who was being reticent. I couldn’t help thinking about what that woman had said to me. The warning she had given me. Of course, I wasn’t at all ready or willing to enter into any kind of relationship so soon after my husband’s death, but it got me worried nonetheless. Who was this man that I had welcomed into my home? Shared my meals with? Had I been wrong to put my trust in him? Was I so in need of a friend that I had looked for one in the wrong place? Was Emmanuel, with his quiet, sombre ways and his irreverent humour, someone I needed to worry about? Because in a way that’s what I had been hoping – that we’d be friends. That’s what today had felt like. Besides, he was the first person I’d met here who seemed to really understand the kind of pain I was in. He turned to me as we were driving. ‘Is everything okay, Charlotte?’ It was always a surprise when he said my name, and I startled. Shook my head. The women’s warning racing through my head. He’s not the kind of man you want to get involved with. What had she meant by that? Had she meant that he was some kind of adulterer? Or was it something else? There had been something in the woman’s eyes that had seemed to imply that the warning ran deeper than that.

North American LGBT activists, wedded to epistemologies of the closet, often implicitly or explicitly equate this culture of semivisibility with the Global South’s lack of progress. In Sirena Selena, the Puerto Rican novelist Mayra Santos-Febres parodies the North’s conflation of “developing” nations’ electrical power outages and their lack of sexual enlightenment through the words of a Canadian tourist in Santo Domingo. He sighs, “I don’t want to criticize, you know — with all the problems these islands have, it’s understandable that they’re less evolved. . . . You can’t compare our problems with the atrocities a gay man has to face in these countries. . . . It’s all hanky-panky in the dark, like in the fifties in Canada.”5 But the “dark” or semivisibility of Caribbean same-sex sexuality can be something other than a blackout. It can also read as the “tender and beautiful” night that Ida Faubert imagines in “Tropical Night,” a space of alternative vision that nurtures both eroticism and resistance. The tactically obscured has been crucial to Caribbean and North American slave societies, in which dances, ceremonies, sexual encounters, abortions, and slave revolts all took place under the cover of night. Calling on this different understanding of the half seen, Édouard Glissant exhorts scholars engaging Caribbean cultures to leave behind desires for transparency and instead approach with respect for opacity: a mode of seeing in which the difference of the other is neither completely visible nor completely hidden, neither overexposed nor erased.6 The difference that Glissant asks us to (half ) look at is certainly not that of sexuality (since it is never mentioned) nor of gender (since he includes in his work a diatribe against feminism).

Sidney, is that what you girls go for these days?” Kathleen asked, pointing toward her oldest son. “All this scruffy whatnot?” Well, nothing like putting her on the spot here. Personally, Sidney thought that the dark hint of scruff along Vaughn’s angular jaw looked fine. Better than fine, actually. She would, however, rather be trapped for the next thirty-six hours in a car with the crazy pregnant lady before admitting that in front of him. “I generally prefer clean-shaven men.” She shrugged—sorry—when Vaughn gave her the side-eye as he began setting the table. “See? If you don’t believe me, at least listen to her,” Kathleen said, while peeling a carrot over a bowl at the island. “If you want to find a woman of quality, you can’t be running around looking like you just rolled out of bed.” “I’ll keep that in mind. But for now, the ‘scruffy whatnot’ stays. I need it for an undercover role,” Vaughn said. Surprised to hear that, Sidney looked over as she dumped the tomatoes into a large salad bowl filled with lettuce. “You’re working undercover now?” “Well, I’m not in the other identity right this second,” Vaughn said. “I’m kind of guessing my mother would be able to ID me.” Thank you, yes, she got that. “I meant, how does that work?” Sidney asked him. “You just walk around like normal, being yourself, when you’re not . . . the other you?” “That’s exactly how it works. At least, when we’re talking about a case that involves only part-time undercover work.” “But what if I were to run into the other you somewhere? Say . . . at a coffee shop.” A little inside reference there. “If I called you ‘Vaughn’ without realizing that you were working, wouldn’t that blow your cover?” “First of all, like all agents who regularly do undercover work, I tell my friends and family not to approach me if they happen to run into me somewhere—for that very reason. Second of all, in this case, the ‘other me’ doesn’t hang out at coffee shops.” “Where does the other you hang out?” Sidney asked. Not to contribute to his already healthy ego, but this was pretty interesting stuff. “In dark, sketchy alleys doing dark, sketchy things,” Vaughn said as he set the table with salad bowls. “So the other you is a bad guy, then.” Sidney paused, realizing something. “Is what you’re doing dangerous?” “The joke around my office is that the agents on the white-collar crime squad never do anything dangerous.” Sidney noticed that wasn’t an actual answer to her question

I’d met Madison, as I’ve already mentioned, two months earlier, in Budapest. I’d been at a conference. She’d been there with some girlfriends. We’d got talking in the hotel bar. An anthropologist, she’d said; that’s … exotic. Not at all, I’d replied; I work for an incorporated business, in a basement. Yes, she said, but … But what? I asked. Dances, and masks, and feathers, she eventually responded: that’s the essence of your work, isn’t it? I mean, even if you’re writing a report on workplace etiquette, or how to motivate employees or whatever, you’re seeing it all through a lens of rituals, and rites, and stuff. It must make the everyday all primitive and strange—no? I saw what she was getting at; but she was wrong. For anthropologists, even the exotic’s not exotic, let alone the everyday. In his key volume Tristes Tropiques, Claude Lévi-Strauss, the twentieth century’s most brilliant ethnographer, describes pacing the streets, all draped with new electric cable, of Lahore’s Old Town sometime in the nineteen-fifties, trying to piece together, long after the event, a vanished purity—of local colour, texture, custom, life in general—from nothing but leftovers and debris. He goes on to describe being struck by the same impression when he lived among the Amazonian Nambikwara tribe: the sense of having come “too late”—although he knows, from having read a previous account of life among the Nambikwara, that the anthropologist (that account’s author) who came here fifty years earlier, before the rubber-traders and the telegraph, was struck by that impression also; and knows as well that the anthropologist who, inspired by the account that Lévi-Strauss will himself write of this trip, shall come back in fifty more will be struck by it too, and wish—if only!—that he could have been here fifty years ago (that is, now, or, rather, then) to see what he, Lévi-Strauss, saw, or failed to see. This leads him to identify a “double-bind” to which all anthropologists, and anthropology itself, are, by their very nature, prey: the “purity” they crave is no more than a state in which all frames of comprehension, of interpretation and analysis, are lacking; once these are brought to bear, the mystery that drew the anthropologist towards his subject in the first place vanishes. I explained this to her; and she seemed, despite the fact that she was drunk, to understand what I was saying. Wow, she murmured; that’s kind of fucked. 2.8 When I arrived at Madison’s, we had sex. Afterwards,

We’d known enough girls jilted by Americans promising marriage and plane tickets. Two girls in my neighborhood had babies by men who had returned to the United States and left false addresses. The faces of their mixed-race kids declared their humiliation to everyone.

You know, if you’d told me a year ago that the world might end because of an ancient breed of flesh-eating spiders, I might have believed that. But if you’d told me that the world was almost going to end because of an ancient breed of flesh-eating spiders and that, when it didn’t end, we’d all end up on an island off the coast of Maine and your husband would still be working as a defense lawyer? That,

She was making a shawl for the child. The knitting was so intricate that it looked like one of the wedding veils worn in his grandparents’ day. Then, the women had said the yarn should be so fine that you should be able to pull the veil through a wedding ring.

It had been often commented upon that Vibe offspring tended to be crazy as bedbugs. ‘Fax’s brother Cragmont had run away with a trapeze girl, then brought her back to New York to get married, the wedding being actually performed on trapezes, groom and best man, dressed in tails and silk opera hats held on with elastic, swinging upside down by their knees in perfect synchrony across the perilous Æther to meet the bride and her father, a carnival “jointee” or concessionaire, in matched excursion from their own side of the ring, bridesmaids observed at every hand up twirling by their chins in billows of spangling, forty feet above the faces of the guests, feathers dyed a deep acid green sweeping and stirring the cigar smoke rising from the crowd. Cragmont Vibe was but thirteen that circus summer he became a husband and began what would become, even for the day, an enormous family. The third brother, Fleetwood, best man at this ceremony, had also got out of the house early, fast-talking his way onto an expedition heading for Africa. He kept as clear of political games as of any real scientific inquiry, preferring to take the title of “Explorer” literally, and do nothing but explore. It did not hurt Fleetwood’s chances that a hefty Vibe trust fund was there to pick up the bills for bespoke pith helmets and meat lozenges and so forth. Kit met him one spring weekend out at the Vibe manor on Long Island. “Say, but you’ve never seen our cottage,” ‘Fax said one day after classes. “What are you doing this weekend? Unless there’s another factory girl or pizza princess or something in the works.” “Do I use that tone of voice about the Seven Sisters material you specialize in?” “I’ve nothing against the newer races,” ‘Fax protested. “But you might like to meet Cousin Dittany anyway.” “The one at Smith.” “Mount Holyoke, actually.” “Can’t wait.” They arrived under a dourly overcast sky. Even in cheerier illumination, the Vibe mansion would have registered as a place best kept clear of—four stories tall, square, unadorned, dark stone facing looking much older than the known date of construction. Despite its aspect of abandonment, an uneasy tenancy was still pursued within, perhaps by some collateral branch of Vibes . . . it was unclear. There was the matter of the second floor. Only the servants were allowed there. It “belonged,” in some way nobody was eager to specify, to previous occupants. “Someone’s living there?” “Someone’s there.” . . . from time to time, a door swinging shut on a glimpse of back stairway, a muffled footfall . . . an ambiguous movement across a distant doorframe . . . a threat of somehow being obliged to perform a daily search through the forbidden level, just at dusk, so detailed that contact with the unseen occupants, in some form, at some unannounced moment, would be inevitable . . . all dustless and tidy, shadows in permanent possession, window-drapes and upholstery in deep hues of green, claret, and indigo, servants who did not speak, who would or could not meet one’s gaze . . . and in the next room, the next instant, waiting . . . “Real nice of you to have me here, folks,” chirped Kit at breakfast. “Fellow sleeps like a top. Well, except . . .” Pause in the orderly gobbling and scarfing. Interest from all around the table. “I mean, who came in the room in the middle of the night like that?” “You’re sure,” said Scarsdale, “it wasn’t just the wind, or the place settling.” “They were walking around, like they were looking for something.” Glances were exchanged, failed to be exchanged, were sent out but not returned. “Kit, you haven’t seen the stables yet,” Cousin Dittany offered at last. “Wouldn’t you like to go riding?

Traveling with us did have its advantages. Before Barack’s presidency was over, our girls would enjoy a baseball game in Havana, walk along the Great Wall of China, and visit the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio one evening in magical, misty darkness. But it could also be a pain in the neck, especially when we were trying to tend to things unrelated to the presidency. Earlier in Malia’s junior year, the two of us had gone to spend a day visiting colleges in New York City, for instance, setting up tours at New York University and Columbia. It had worked fine for a while. We’d moved through NYU’s campus at a brisk pace, our efficiency aided by the fact that it was still early and many students were not yet up for the day. We’d checked out classrooms, poked our heads into a dorm room, and chatted with a dean before heading uptown to grab an early lunch and move on to the next tour. The problem is that there’s no hiding a First Lady–sized motorcade, especially on the island of Manhattan in the middle of a weekday. By the time we finished eating, about a hundred people had gathered on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, the commotion only breeding more commotion. We stepped out to find dozens of cell phones hoisted in our direction as we were engulfed by a chorus of cheers. It was beneficent, this attention—“Come to Columbia, Malia!” people were shouting—but it was not especially useful for a girl who was trying quietly to imagine her own future. I knew immediately what I needed to do, and that was to bench myself—to let Malia go see the next campus without me, sending Kristin Jones, my personal assistant, as her escort instead. Without me there, Malia’s odds of being recognized went down. She could move faster and with a lot fewer agents. Without me, she could maybe, possibly, look like just another kid walking the quad. I at least owed her a shot at that.

And your husband? Where is he?” I was tempted to tell him it was none of his business. After all, we’d paid for the tickets, hadn’t we? “He’s in New York. Waiting for us.” “He’d better be,” the man said. “If he doesn’t come to collect you from Ellis Island, they’ll just send you straight home again. They don’t want women and children who’ll be a burden on the state.

You can take the Governor’s pinnace; that’s small, but it’s seaworthy.” Grey fumbled through the drawer of his desk. “I’ll write an order for the dockers to hand it over to you.” “Aye, we’ll need the boat—I canna risk the Artemis; as she’s Jared’s—but I think we’d best steal it, John.” Jamie’s brows were drawn together in a frown. “I wouldna have ye be involved wi’ me in any visible way, aye? You’ll be having trouble enough with things, without that.” Grey smiled unhappily. “Trouble? Yes, you might call it trouble, with four plantation houses burnt, and over two hundred slaves gone—God knows where! But I vastly doubt that anyone will take notice of my social acquaintance, under the circumstances. Between fear of the Maroons and fear of the Chinaman, the whole island is in such a panic that a mere smuggler is the most negligible of trivialities.” “It’s a great relief to me to be thought trivial,” Jamie said, very dryly. “Still, we’ll steal the boat. And if we’re taken, ye’ve never heard my name or seen my face, aye?” Grey stared at him, a welter of emotions fighting for mastery of his features, amusement, fear, and anger among them. “Is that right?” he said at last. “Let you be taken, watch them hang you, and keep quiet about it—for fear of smirching my reputation? For God’s sake, Jamie, what do you take me for?

Almost as soon as we got our baby home, we packed her up to leave. Bindi was six days old when she embarked on her first film shoot (actually, her second, if you count filming her birth). Steve, Bindi, and I headed off for the United States, with a stop first at Australia’s Double Island to film turtles. We drove through the Double Island sand dunes, spending a day filming on the area’s spectacular beaches. Bindi did marvelously. Some of the four-wheel driving was a bit rough, so I would lean over her capsule in the back of the four-wheel drive, helping to hold her head, so that the bouncing of the truck wouldn’t jostle her around too much. Once we arrived on location, she was absolutely content. Fraser, one of the assistants on the shoot, stayed with Bindi while Steve and I filmed. Then we’d walk around behind the camera to hug and kiss her, and I could feed her. She didn’t squeak or squawk. I swear she seemed to keep quiet when John called out “Rolling!

I jogged along the deck to the stern, tracking the shipwreck as it disappeared beneath our wake. Then, just as I was starting to wonder if we’d need climbing gear to get onto the island, its steep cliffs sloped down to meet us. We rounded a headland to enter a rocky half-moon bay. In the distance I saw a little harbor bobbing with colorful fishing boats, and beyond it a town set into a green bowl of land. A patchwork of sheep-speckled fields spread across hills that rose away to meet a high ridge, where a wall of clouds stood like a cotton parapet. It was dramatic and beautiful, unlike any place I’d seen. I felt a little thrill of adventure as we chugged into the bay, as if I were sighting land where maps had noted only a sweep of undistinguished blue.

He’d left her stranded in front of three hundred wedding guests, wearing a white dress and glass slippers like some deranged Cinderella, while he caught a plane to the Cayman Islands with a knock-kneed stripper named Chrysanthemum Greene and several million dollars embezzled from the Stardust Savings and Loan.

Ritual characterizes every aspect of life here, and even mundane, daily activities take on an ageless quality. The daily rhythm begins at dawn, as the fishermen launch boats from countless harbors, an event that has taken place for centuries. The women go to market, exchanging greetings and comments. Ritual rules the care and time taken with every detail of the midday meal, from the hearty seafood appetizers to the strong, syrupy coffee that marks the end of the feast. The day winds down with the evening stroll, a tradition thoroughly ingrained in the culture of the Greek Isles. In villages and towns throughout the islands, sunset brings cooler air and draws people from their homes and the beaches for an enjoyable evening walk through town squares, portside promenades, and narrow streets. Ancient crafts still flourish in the artisans’ studios and in tidy homes of countless mountain villages and ports. Embroidery--traditionally the province of Greek women--is created by hand to adorn the regional costumes worn during festivals. Artists craft delicate silver utensils, engraved gems, blown glass, and gold jewelry. Potters create ceramic pieces featuring some of the same decorative patterns and mythological subjects that captured their ancestors’ imagination. Weddings, festivals, saints’ days. And other celebrations with family and friends provide a backdrop for grave and energetic Greek dancing. For centuries--probably ever since people have lived on the islands--Greek islanders have seized every opportunity to play music, sing, and dance. Dancing in Greece is always a group activity, a way to create and reinforce bonds among families, friends, and communities, and island men have been dancing circle dances like the Kalamatianos and the Tsamikos since antiquity. Musicians accompany revelers on stringed instruments like the bouzouki--the modern equivalent of the lyre. While traditional attire is reserved mainly for festive occasions, on some islands people still sport these garments daily. On Lefkada and Crete, it is not unusual to find men wearing vraka, or baggy trousers, and vests, along with the high boots known as stivania. Women wear long, dark, pleated skirts woven on a traditional loom, and long silk scarves or kerchiefs adorn their heads. All the garments are ornamented by hand with rich brocades and elaborate embroidery. All over the Greek Isles, Orthodox priests dress in long black robes, their shadowy figures contrasting with the bright whites, blues, and greens of Greek village architecture.

I'm going to explode," my dad says, rubbing his stomach gleefully. He's just put down a massive sandwich piled with corned beef, pastrami, chopped liver, and Swiss cheese, with a slide of crispy onion strings and a vanilla malt. "Tilt," I say, making the time-out signal with my hands. I managed to get three-quarters of the way through a turkey club with no tomatoes and Thousand Island instead of mayo, with a pile of extra-crispy fries and a chocolate phosphate. Not to mention the bucket of pickles, and the soup, chicken with kreplach and noodles for him, sweet-and-sour cabbage for me.

My hands are clammy. It’s a terrible kind of anticipation, not knowing what we’re walking into. The last time I felt this way I was in the waiting rooms at Ellis Island. We were tired, and Mam wasn’t well, and we didn’t know where we were going or what kind of life we would have. But now I can see all I took for granted: I had a family. I believed that whatever happened, we’d be together. A policeman blows a whistle

Gerald and I saw the Azore Islands, Talcahuano, Tumbez, San Francisco, and Nome from afar while the captain and officers rowed to shore for fresh food and fresh whalers. Even at Nome, not two days ago, Gerald and I watched the Alaskan town from the ship. We saw Talcahuano at night, the town alive with lights and torches. We heard music across the water. People celebrated an event on shore. We thought it might be a wedding. We imagined walking the clay, brick roads, ordering crabs and clams near the sea, sampling the local exotic fruits and plants growing in their vibrant colors and prickly skins, and of course, seducing the dark- skinned indigenous women emanating macadamia oil, musk, and leafy air. Merihim laughed at our children’s eyes and said to act like men, not like guttersnipes at a bakery window.

The kids stood together on the dock, watching as the sun came up over the horizon. Brooklynn hugged Sammy and Yasmina as Kenji punched Darius playfully on the arm. Darius smiled. Darius thought back to the story he was trying to tell the other kids, back at the camp, back before everything fell apart. “We thought it’d be fun,” Darius said, sitting down. It seemed like ages since he had been off his feet. “We thought we’d be safe. But we didn’t realize the horror waiting for us on the island. Claws…teeth…screaming. So much screaming. But we’ll keep fighting. That’s the promise we make every day we get. That despite all the hardships, you never give up. We will survive. We will get home. Because no matter what happens…no matter what this place throws at us next…none of us are in this alone.

Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it," she said, raising her eyes to mine. "The pain of growing up. We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here. We were like kids who grew up naked on a desert island. If we got hungry, we'd just pick a banana; if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms. But that kind of thing doesn't last forever. We grew up fast and had to enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were the link connecting us with the outside world. We were struggling through you to fit in with the outside world as best we could. In the end, it didn't work, of course.

Island we’d lost our Internet access to insolvency months ago.

Three days after their wedding they were standing at the base of Liffey Falls, at the brisk death of winter, watching an airborne river thrash its way earthward. The water tumbled through high ridges, crowded with the princes of the island's wetter wildernesses: blackheart sassafras, dappled leatherwoods, contortions of mossy myrtles. Giant stringybarks rose above them all, their gum-topped crowns fighting for space in the clouds. The forest loomed, wet-dark and thickly green in the morning dew, and through the ancient roots of its trees the Liffey ran and broke and fell to splash the boots of the gazing newlyweds. p.68

You marry for money, you earn it.

The men made war, he thought, not for the first time. The women suffered, and fought for the peace.

The sea was a collector of things. It took things we cherished—most things we’d forgotten—and I still found myself drawn to her, unable to resist her call, needing to step into the graveyard of the lost, wild, and treasured.

No matter my shape, I wear my dresses. I don’t let my dresses wear me.” I also thought it to be the same for scars. After all, there were only ever two options. We could either wear our scars with dignity to tell the world where we’d come from and that we survived, or let these heavy things wear us.

We’d become two desperate souls stripped of control with the cruel desire to tangle artfully together, sort of like a punishing kiss.

her American son became the forefather of many Icelanders. Their American adventure did not change the world – the colonists were too few and the European prizes were too rich. Yet, as a newly discovered Milanese document reveals, knowledge of the continent’s existence was passed down by Nordic sailors.[*16] A Danish king Harthacnut still ruled England, recognizing as his heir the Aethling Edward, son of Aethelred, later celebrated for saintly piety as the Confessor. But on 8 June 1042 Harthacnut, attending a wedding in London, raised a toast to the bride and ‘suddenly fell to the earth with an awful convulsion’. The saintly Edward probably poisoned him. Edward was supported by the prince blinder, mass-scalper and kingmaker Godwin of Wessex, who, married to Canute’s sister-in-law, had helped destroy his father and killed at least one brother. But now they soothed these crimes with marriage: Edward married Godwin’s daughter Edith and raised his son Harold to earl. When Godwin died, Harold, half Anglo-Saxon, half Dane, succeeded as the first potentate of the kingdom, earl of Wessex. Since Edward had no children, who would inherit England? The island was on the edge of Europe, but Canute’s Roman trip showed how this Scando-Britannic empire was now linked by Mediterranean trade routes to Asia. Two coins from a resurgent China have been found in Edward’s England, while in Egypt the Mad Caliph, al-Hakim, had gone much further, contacting the new Chinese emperor.

For my vacation rental business, Escape Club, we had a session to brainstorm how we could make the business more successful. It yielded modest results. A few days later, I called the team back and asked a different question: “What is something Escape Club can provide that no one else on the island is doing?” The results were amazing. Within thirty minutes we had come up with really powerful ideas, including exclusive access to services like a miniature golf course and renting the company’s pontoon—something no one else had on the island. We also decided to offer luxury services like Westin Heavenly beds and to develop a consistent feel between properties. Lastly, we realized that we could link up the properties for weddings and other events. The results of all this? We were able to cross-promote our properties and get a higher return rate of customers.

Celestial was a tricky woman to figure out; she almost didn’t marry me, although I never doubted her love. For one thing, I made a couple of procedural errors with my proposal, but more than that, I don’t think she planned on getting married at all. She kept this display she called a “vision board,” basically a corkboard where she tacked up words like prosperity, creativity, passion! There were also magazine pictures that showed what she wanted out of life. Her dream was for her artworks to be part of the Smithsonian, but there was also a cottage on Amelia Island and an image of the earth as seen from the moon. No wedding dress or engagement ring factored into this little collage. It didn’t bother me, but it bothered me.

Her dream was for her artworks to be part of the Smithsonian, but there was also a cottage on Amelia Island and an image of the earth as seen from the moon. No wedding dress or engagement ring factored into this little collage. It didn’t bother me, but it bothered me.

The entire incident forms a horrid parody of an Oedipal wedding night; these emotions, the sensations aroused by murder and death, and the overpowering and unaccustomed emotions of sexual love experienced by the half-grown boys, plus their own irrational fears and blind terrors, release the forces of death and the devil on the island.

If we were all perfect in our pasts then we’d have nothing to hope for in our futures.

goals,

The Confessor laughed gently. “How very sweet. But you’re not quite one of them, are you, Cass? You’re worth more than any of them. This Piper, at least, must have realized what you could be worth to them, or he’d have killed you as soon as he got hold of you, to be rid of Zach.” She cocked her head slightly as she stared at me. “Though I’m beginning to wonder whether I didn’t overestimate you. Whether we all didn’t. I’m sure you have your moments. I’m guessing we have you to thank for the evacuation of most of the islanders; probably the fire at New Hobart, too. But I’m surprised at your blind spots. You still haven’t harnessed what you’re capable of, it seems.” She’d drawn even closer to us, but as always it was her mental presence that was most confronting. The calculation behind her still eyes; the probing that made me want to wince. “You’re disappointing, Cass. Like these machines. It turns out they’re not everything we might have hoped. Oh, they’re great for storing the information. It’s all in there.” She waved vaguely at the stacks of machines below. “You should have seen the record chambers at Wyndham, before Zach and I had it moved into the computers here. They had the information, but it was so unwieldy. Now, if I need to find something straightforward, it’s phenomenally good. Think of the thousands of clerks we’d need, all scuttling about with millions of files, just to keep track of the basic details. With the computer, it’s all synthesized, in one system. Like a live thing. So I can tap into it, interact with it, use the information as fluently as thinking. If we’d stayed with paper records, we’d never have been able to do what we’ve done.” “And what a tragic loss that would be.

a country so minuscule, it didn't even have a capital city. If the sea birds were quiet, one end of the island could easily hear what was going on at the other end without much of a problem.

Other than James. I knew if I could win him, I would have everything I ever wanted. A husband, kids.” Her voice broke and she lifted a hand to wipe tears from her eyes. “I told him that your mother had moved on. Said she’d never really cared for him.” Ouch. It wasn’t merely that he’d chosen her Ginny over her mother; Ginny really had stolen him. “I take it Mom had done no such thing?” “She was planning to look for a job in Jacksonville when she got out of college. It’s a long drive, but within driving distance of here. She wanted to marry him.” “But you married him first.” Andie didn’t have to ask; she knew. Ginny had married James the spring that her mother had been a junior in college. “She didn’t come for the wedding, of course. Only Mama. Athena had passed away from an overdose a couple months before, and Grandmother wasn’t healthy enough to make the drive.” They’d originally been from a small town in northeast Georgia. Andie’s grandmother hadn’t passed away until Andie was seven, and she and Cassie had never visited her. She seemed to remember Cassie going to the funeral, though. Alone. “Mama couldn’t forgive Cassie for not coming down for the wedding, especially after losing Athena earlier in the year. She didn’t know what had transpired between us.” That made sense. So Cassie had lost the love of her life, her sister, and her mother all at the same time. Not to mention her other sister dying that same year and her father the year before. No wonder she was

It never ceased to amaze me how disinterested half the knights were in our own history, in taking advantage of the extraordinary gifts we’d been handed the night we were tapped into Rose & Grave. To them, it was just another privilege they’d been born into, like admission to Eli or their Long Island mansions. Did they have any idea how much more it was to…other people?

In a few more weeks, the ferry that runs between the island and the mainland would shut down for a couple of months. Then we’d be trapped. Deranged killers and psychos would have a field day before the first thaw. And no one would know until it was too late. Hadn’t I seen that scenario in a movie? I shuddered at the thought. “So why do you think the owners wanted to sell the place?” I asked. “Because it’s haunted.

Ibiza wedding - An island based wedding association and specialized cooking business. We advocate particular events, Ibiza catering, Ibiza wedding at little cost.

We’ve got things under control here.” “‘We’?” Kerry repeated. “Shouldn’t you be out sampling cake or agonizing over invitation fonts? Assuming you don’t have clients to design interiors for.” “I have clients,” Fiona replied easily, honest joy beaming from her every pore. “Very happy ones. Trust me, after running McCrae Interiors, I can juggle Fiona’s Finds and planning a wedding at the same time with my eyes closed.” Kerry gave her sister a hard time--it was what they did--but she was truly happy for Fiona, with both her new business success and her lovely and loving relationship with their longtime family friend, Ben Campbell. Fiona had sold a successful business in Manhattan to return home and start over. She’d just opened a small design studio in a converted cottage near the harbor, focusing on recycling and repurposing antique and vintage items into something fresh and new. Her designs were both eco-friendly and wallet friendly, and the Cove had embraced her return home and her new business with equal enthusiasm. “Remember you said that,” Kerry commented. “When it’s go time on the big aisle walk and you’re still running around like a crazy person trying to pull everything together at the last second, I don’t want to hear about it.” Fiona batted her eyelashes again as she took an extralong sip on the straw in her glass of lemon water. “I’m the epitome of a happy, relaxed bride. McCrae girls don’t do bridezilla. Well, Hannah didn’t, Alex was lovely, and I’m charming of course.” She looked at Kerry over the tip of her straw, smiling sweetly. “We’ll reserve final judgment until it’s your turn.” “Har, har,” Kerry said, but Fiona was high on wedding crack again so she let her run with it. “Besides, after handling weddings for Logan, Hannah, and the Grace-Delia double do out on that island, this will be a cakewalk. Ha!” Fiona went on, then laughed. “Cakewalk.” “You’re a designer? And you do weddings?” Maddy turned on her stool and spun Fiona on hers until they were facing each other. She gripped Fiona’s forearms and grinned. “Hello, my new best and dearest friend.” “Oh, brother.” Kerry surrendered, tossing her towel on the bar.

Captain Joseph Frye One of the nicest parks in present day downtown Tampa, Florida, is the Cotanchobee Fort Brooke Park. The 5-acre park, which lies between the Tampa Bay Times Forum (Amalie Arena) and the mouth of the Hillsborough River at the Garrison Channel, is used for many weddings and special events such as the dragon boat races and the duck race. Few people give thought to the historic significance of the location, or to Captain Joseph Frye, considered Tampa’s first native son, who was born there on June 14, 1826. Going to sea was a tradition in the Frye family, starting with his paternal great-grandfather Samuel Frye from East Greenwich, Rhode Island, who was the master of the sloop Humbird. As a young man, Joseph attended the United States Naval Academy and graduated with the second class in 1847. Starting as an Ensign, he served as a commissioned officer in the U.S. Navy until the Civil War, at which time he resigned and took a commission as a Lieutenant in the Confederate Navy. The Ten Years’ War, also known as “the Great War,” which started in 1868 became the first of three wars of Cuban Independence. In October 1873, following the defeat of the Confederacy and five years into the Cuban revolution, Frye became Captain of a side-wheeler, the S/S Virginius. His mission was to take guns and ammunition, as well as approximately 300 Cuban rebels to Cuba, with the intent of fighting the Spanish army for Cuban Independence. Unfortunately, the mission failed when the ship was intercepted by the Spanish warship Tornado. Captain Frye and his crew were taken to Santiago de Cuba and given a hasty trial and before a British warship Commander, hearing of the incident, could intervene, they were sentenced to death. After thanking the members of his crew for their service, Captain Frye and fifty-three members of his crew were put to death by firing squad, and were then decapitated and trampled upon by the Spanish soldiers. However, the British Commander Sir Lambton Lorraine of HMS Niobe did manage to save the lives of a few of the remaining crewmembers and rebels.

Iceberg wedges with a homemade Thousand Island dressing and bacon bits. Prime rib, slow roasted in a very forgiving technique I developed after years of trying to make it for weddings and parties where the timing of the meal can be drastically changed based on length of ceremony, or toasts, or how well the venue staff can change over a room. Twice-baked potatoes, creamed spinach. I have a stack of crepes already made, ready to be turned into crepes suzette with butter and brown sugar and orange zest and flambeed with Grand Marnier, because if you go all old school, something needs to be set on fire. With homemade vanilla bean gelato to cut the richness, of course!

The waitress serving the wedding party was a short young blonde. She took their orders efficiently and delivered everyone’s food correctly. "If only she knew my story," Melora mused. then she thought again, "Better yet, maybe she’s in the middle of her own story." Who knew what things might have happened already on the island to this typical college-age waitress.

The waitress serving the wedding party was a short young blonde. She took their orders efficiently and delivered everyone’s food correctly. "If only she knew my story," Melora mused. then she thought again, "Better yet, maybe she’s in the middle of her own story." Who knew what things might have happened already on the island to this typical college-age waitress.

planning the wedding. “We’ll

She considers a tray of flaky 'jesuites,' their centers redolent of frangipani cream, decorated with violet buds preserved in clouds of black crystal sugar. Or 'dulce de leche' tarts- caramelized swirls on a 'pate sucree' crust, glowing with chocolate, tiny muted peaks, ruffles of white pastry like Edwardian collars. But nothing seems special enough and nothing seems right. Nothing seems like Stanley. Avis brings out the meticulous botanical illustrations she did in school, pins them all around the kitchen like a room from Audubon's house. She thinks of slim layers of chocolate interspersed with a vanilla caramel. On top she might paint a frosted forest with hints of white chocolate, dashes of rosemary subtle as deja vu. A glissando of light spilling in butter-drops from one sweet lime leaf to the next. On a drawing pad she uses for designing wedding cakes, she begins sketching ruby-throated hummingbirds in flecks of raspberry fondant, a sub-equatorial sun depicted in neoclassical butter cream. At the center of the cake top, she draws figures regal and languid as Gauguin's island dwellers, meant to be Stanley, Nieves, and child. Their skin would be cocoa and coffee and motes of cherry melded with a few drops of cream. Then an icing border of tiny mermaids, nixies, selkies, and seahorses below, Pegasus, Icarus, and phoenix above.

Just like that. It had been almost seven years since the legions left our shores, having declared the Island of the Mighty sufficiently conquered. In all that time, the Romans had not returned to Prydain, the island they called Britannia in their strident native tongue. Of course, the traders had never left—they’d been here before Caesar had set foot on our shore, and they’d stayed when he’d departed, “triumphant.” Since that time, we’d been left in peace.

Soon after joining the agency, Marks set out to lessen the danger. His first step was to get rid of the codes that the agency had been using to communicate with its people in the field. They had come from MI6, which, for the first two years of SOE’s existence, had controlled its wireless circuits and provided its sets and coding. Marks was dismayed by the simplicity of the codes, which were based on classic English poems by Shakespeare and others that were “so familiar that an educated German was quite capable of recognizing them and guessing the cipher.” To replace them, he wrote poems of his own, ranging from ribald verses to tender love poems. He gave one of the latter, entitled “The Life That I Have,” to a twenty-one-year-old agent named Violette Szabo, who, after being parachuted into France in 1942, was eventually captured, tortured, and killed by the Gestapo. It read: The life that I have Is all that I have And the life that I have Is yours. The love that I have Of the life that I have Is yours and yours and yours. A sleep I shall have A rest I shall have Yet death will be but a pause For the peace of my years In the long green grass Will be yours and yours and yours. Since then, the poem has developed a life of its own. It has been used in a movie about Szabo’s life, found in poetry anthologies, reprinted on a 9/11 victims’ website, and recited by Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky at their wedding in 2010. “Every code,” Marks would later say, “has a human face.