Lantern City Quotes

He'd felt like a jack-o-lantern for the past few days, as if his guts had been yanked out with a fork and dumped in a heap while a grinning smile stayed plastered on his face.

To hear never-heard sounds, To see never-seen colors and shapes, To try to understand the imperceptible Power pervading the world; To fly and find pure ethereal substances That are not of matter But of that invisible soul pervading reality. To hear another soul and to whisper to another soul; To be a lantern in the darkness Or an umbrella in a stormy day; To feel much more than know. To be the eyes of an eagle, slope of a mountain; To be a wave understanding the influence of the moon; To be a tree and read the memory of the leaves; To be an insignificant pedestrian on the streets Of crazy cities watching, watching, and watching. To be a smile on the face of a woman And shine in her memory As a moment saved without planning.

I came out of the park. The city streets rose up around me. There was a hotel with a courtyard with metal tables and chairs for people to sit in more clement weather. Today they were snow-strewn and forlorn. A lattice of wire was strung across the courtyard. Paper lanterns were hanging from the wires, spheres of vivid orange that blew and trembled in the snow and the thin wind; the sea-grey clouds raced across the sky and the orange lanterns shivered against them. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

When my trust was suspended from the fragile thread of justice and in the whole city they were chopping up my heart's lanterns when they would blindfold me with the dark handkerchief of Law and from my anxious temples of desire fountains of blood would squirt out when my life had become nothing nothing but the tic-tac of a clock, I discovered I must must must love, insanely.

Night, forever. But within it, a city, shadowy and only real in certain ways. The entity cowered in its alley, where the mist was rising. This could not have happened! Yet it had. The streets had filled with… things. Animals! Birds! Changing shape! Screaming and yelling! And, above it all, higher than the rooftops, a lamb rocking back and forth in great slow motions, thundering over the cobbles… And then bars had come down, slamming down, and the entity had been thrown back. But it had been so close! It had saved the creature, it was getting through, it was beginning to have control… and now this… In the darkness of the inner city, above the rustle of the never-ending rain, it heard the sound of boots approaching. A shape appeared in the mist. It drew nearer. Water cascaded off a metal helmet and an oiled leather cloak as the figure stopped and, entirely unconcerned, cupped its had in front of its face and lit a cigar. Then the match was dropped on the cobbles, where it hissed out, and the figure said: “What are you?” The entity stirred, like an old fish in a deep pool. It was too tired to flee. “I am the Summoning Dark.” It was not, in fact, a sound, but had it been, it would have been a hiss. “Who are you?” “I am the Watchman.” “They would have killed his family!” The darkness lunged, and met resistance. “Think of the deaths they have caused! Who are you to stop me?” “He created me. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? Me. I watch him. Always. You will not force him to murder for you.” “What kind of human creates his own policeman?” “One who fears the dark.” “And so he should,” said the entity, with satisfaction. “Indeed. But I think you misunderstand. I am not here to keep the darkness out. I am here to keep it in.” There was a clink of metal as the shadowy watchman lifted a dark lantern and opened its little door. Orange light cut through the blackness. “Call me… the Guarding Dark. Imagine how strong I must be.” The Summoning Dark backed desperately into the alley, but the light followed it, burning it. “And now,” said the watchman, “get out of town.

Can a mordern city burn,' he asked Tom. 'One made mostly of concrete and metal and glass? Could it burn the way Chicago did after Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern?

But we didn’t, not in the moonlight, or by the phosphorescent lanterns of lightning bugs in your back yard, not beneath the constellations we couldn’t see, let alone decipher, or in the dark glow that replaced the real darkness of night, a darkness already stolen from us, not with the skyline rising behind us while a city gradually decayed, not in the heat of summer while a Cold War raged, despite the freedom of youth and the license of first love—because of fate, karma, luck, what does it matter?—we made not doing it a wonder, and yet we didn’t, we didn’t, we never did.

Vimes, listening with his mouth open, wondered why the hell it was that dwarfs believed that they had no religion and no priests. Being a dwarf was a religion. People went into the dark for the good of the clan, and heard things, and were changed, and came back to tell… And then, fifty years ago, a dwarf tinkering in Ankh-Morpork had found that if you put a simple fine mesh over your lantern flame it'd burn blue in the presence of the gas but wouldn't explode. It was a discovery of immense value to the good of dwarfkind and, as so often happens with such discoveries, almost immediately led to a war. "And afterwards there were two kinds of dwarf," said Cheery sadly. "There's the Copperheads, who all use the lamp and the patent gas exploder, and the Schmaltzbergers, who stick to the old ways. Of course we're all dwarfs," she said, "but relations are strained.

Is that you, Sergeant Angua?" said a voice in the gloom. A lantern was open, and lit the approaching face of Constable Visit. As he drew near, she could just make out the thick wad of pamphlets under his other arm. "Hello, Washpot," she said. "What's up?" "...looks like a twist of lemon..." said a damp voice from the shadows. "Mister Vimes sent me to search the bars of iniquity and low places of sin for you," said Visit. "And the literature?" said Angua. "By the way, the words "nothing personal" could have so easily been added to that last sentence.

I am Mother Nature. All of creation bows before me. When people leave their cities and learn of me—walk in my woods, bathe in my rivers, eat of my harvest—they will find healing to their souls. But stray from me and return to the supposed wisdom of men, and they will find themselves in chains once more.

Sometimes she felt she would like to engulf him like a trap-lantern, and never share him with anyone or anything else again, not even the light. Even his obsession with ruling Caverna pained her, as if the city were a woman, and a rival.

The Son family and other Lantern Man petitioners had wanted Hilo to send his men to intimidate the union bosses and break up their gatherings, rough folks up if needed, force them back to work. Hilo had snorted. "What do they think we are? Hired thugs?

This afternoon I walked through the city, making for a café where I was to meet Raphael. It was about half-past two on a day that had never really got light. It began to snow. The low clouds made a grey ceiling for the city; the snow muffled the noise of the cars until it became almost rhythmical; a steady, shushing noise, like the sound of tides beating endlessly on marble walls. I closed my eyes. I felt calm. There was a park. I entered it and followed a path through an avenue of tall, ancient trees with wide, dusky, grassy spaces on either side of them. The pale snow sifted down through bare winter branches. The lights of the cars on the distant road sparkled through the trees: red, yellow, white. It was very quiet. Though it was not yet twilight the streetlights shed a faint light. People were walking up and down on the path. An old man passed me. He looked sad and tired. He had broken veins on his cheeks and a bristly white beard. As he screwed up his eyes against the falling snow, I realised I knew him. He is depicted on the northern wall of the forty-eighth western hall. He is shown as a king with a little model of a walled city in one hand while the other hand he raises in blessing. I wanted to seize hold of him and say to him: In another world you are a king, noble and good! I have seen it! But I hesitated a moment too long and he disappeared into the crowd. A woman passed me with two children. One of the children had a wooden recorder in his hands. I knew them too. They are depicted in the twenty-seventh southern hall: a statue of two children laughing, one of them holding a flute. I came out of the park. The city streets rose up around me. There was a hotel with a courtyard with metal tables and chairs for people to sit in more clement weather. Today they were snow-strewn and forlorn. A lattice of wire was strung across the courtyard. Paper lanterns were hanging from the wires, spheres of vivid orange that blew and trembled in the snow and the thin wind; the sea-grey clouds raced across the sky and the orange lanterns shivered against them. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

Softly, softly, like two white paper lanterns on a night wind, the women moved over their lifetime and their past, and over the meadows where the tent cities glowed and the highways where supply trucks would be clustered and running until dawn. They hovered above it all for a long time.

Finding a taxi, she felt like a child pressing her nose to the window of a candy store as she watched the changing vista pass by while the twilight descended and the capital became bathed in a translucent misty lavender glow. Entering the city from that airport was truly unique. Charles de Gaulle, built nineteen miles north of the bustling metropolis, ensured that the final point of destination was veiled from the eyes of the traveller as they descended. No doubt, the officials scrupulously planned the airport’s location to prevent the incessant air traffic and roaring engines from visibly or audibly polluting the ambience of their beloved capital, and apparently, they succeeded. If one flew over during the summer months, the visitor would be visibly presented with beautifully managed quilt-like fields of alternating gold and green appearing as though they were tilled and clipped with the mathematical precision of a slide rule. The countryside was dotted with quaint villages and towns that were obviously under meticulous planning control. When the aircraft began to descend, this prevailing sense of exactitude and order made the visitor long for an aerial view of the capital city and its famous wonders, hoping they could see as many landmarks as they could before they touched ground, as was the usual case with other major international airports, but from this point of entry, one was denied a glimpse of the city below. Green fields, villages, more fields, the ground grew closer and closer, a runway appeared, a slight bump or two was felt as the craft landed, and they were surrounded by the steel and glass buildings of the airport. Slightly disappointed with this mysterious game of hide-and-seek, the voyager must continue on and collect their baggage, consoled by the reflection that they will see the metropolis as they make their way into town. For those travelling by road, the concrete motorway with its blue road signs, the underpasses and the typical traffic-logged hubbub of industrial areas were the first landmarks to greet the eye, without a doubt, it was a disheartening first impression. Then, the real introduction began. Quietly, and almost imperceptibly, the modern confusion of steel and asphalt was effaced little by little as the exquisite timelessness of Parisian heritage architecture was gradually unveiled. Popping up like mushrooms were cream sandstone edifices filigreed with curled, swirling carvings, gently sloping mansard roofs, elegant ironwork lanterns and wood doors that charmed the eye, until finally, the traveller was completely submerged in the glory of the Second Empire ala Baron Haussmann’s master plan of city design, the iconic grand mansions, tree-lined boulevards and avenues, the quaint gardens, the majestic churches with their towers and spires, the shops and cafés with their colourful awnings, all crowded and nestled together like jewels encrusted on a gold setting.

The princess stops us walking. She holds the lantern up between us, and she looks at me with the eyes of all the princesses and queens in the history book. Eyes as old as Judas The Hero and Micah's boat of stars. She is ancient and profound, and she has Internment fascinated, copying her hair and her clothing in an attempt to understand. She looks at me now the way the whole floating city looks at her--hoping for some sort of answer that doesn't exist.

Olmsted’s greatest concern, however, was that the main, Jackson Park portion of the exposition simply was not fun. “There is too much appearance of an impatient and tired doing of sight-seeing duty. A stint to be got through before it is time to go home. The crowd has a melancholy air in this respect, and strenuous measures should be taken to overcome it.” Just as Olmsted sought to conjure an aura of mystery in his landscape, so here he urged the engineering of seemingly accidental moments of charm. The concerts and parades were helpful but were of too “stated or programmed” a nature. What Olmsted wanted were “minor incidents … of a less evidently prepared character; less formal, more apparently spontaneous and incidental.” He envisioned French horn players on the Wooded Island, their music drifting across the waters. He wanted Chinese lanterns strung from boats and bridges alike. “Why not skipping and dancing masqueraders with tambourines, such as one sees in Italy? Even lemonade peddlers would help if moving about in picturesque dresses; or cake-sellers, appearing as cooks, with flat cap, and in spotless white from top to toe?” On nights when big events in Jackson Park drew visitors away from the Midway, “could not several of the many varieties of ‘heathen,’ black, white and yellow, be cheaply hired to mingle, unobtrusively, but in full native costume, with the crowd on the Main Court?

Fire, fire! The branches crackle and the night wind of late autumn blows the flame of the bonfire back and forth. The compound is dark; I am alone at the bonfire, and I can bring it still some more carpenters' shavings. The compound here is a privileged one, so privileged that it is almost as if I were out in freedom -- this is an island of paradise; this is the Marfino "sharashka" -- a scientific institute staffed with prisoners -- in its most privileged period. No one is overseeing me, calling me to a cell, chasing me away from the bonfire, and even then it is chilly in the penetrating wind. But she -- who has already been standing in the wind for hours, her arms straight down, her head drooping, weeping, then growing numb and still. And then again she begs piteously "Citizen Chief! Please forgive me! I won't do it again." The wind carries her moan to me, just as if she were moaning next to my ear. The citizen chief at the gatehouse fires up his stove and does not answer. This was the gatehouse of the camp next door to us, from which workers came into our compound to lay water pipes and to repair the old ramshackle seminary building. Across from me, beyond the artfully intertwined, many-stranded barbed-wire barricade and two steps away from the gatehouse, beneath a bright lantern, stood the punished girl, head hanging, the wind tugging at her grey work skirt, her feet growing numb from the cold, a thin scarf over her head. It had been warm during the day, when they had been digging a ditch on our territory. And another girl, slipping down into a ravine, had crawled her way to the Vladykino Highway and escaped. The guard had bungled. And Moscow city buses ran right along the highway. When they caught on, it was too late to catch her. They raised the alarm. A mean, dark major arrived and shouted that if they failed to catch the girl, the entire camp would be deprived of visits and parcels for whole month, because of her escape. And the women brigadiers went into a rage, and they were all shouting, one of them in particular, who kept viciously rolling her eyes: "Oh, I hope they catch her, the bitch! I hope they take scissors and -- clip, clip, clip -- take off all her hair in front of the line-up!" But the girl who was now standing outside the gatehouse in the cold had sighed and said instead: "At least she can have a good time out in freedom for all of us!" The jailer had overheard what she said, and now she was being punished; everyone else had been taken off to the camp, but she had been set outside there to stand "at attention" in front of the gatehouse. This had been at 6 PM, and it was now 11 PM. She tried to shift from one foot to another, but the guard stuck out his head and shouted: "Stand at attention, whore, or else it will be worse for you!" And now she was not moving, only weeping: "Forgive me, Citizen Chief! Let me into the camp, I won't do it any more!" But even in the camp no one was about to say to her: "All right, idiot! Come on it!" The reason they were keeping her out there so long was that the next day was Sunday, and she would not be needed for work. Such a straw-blond, naive, uneducated slip of a girl! She had been imprisoned for some spool of thread. What a dangerous thought you expressed there, little sister! They want to teach you a lesson for the rest of your life! Fire, fire! We fought the war -- and we looked into the bonfires to see what kind of victory it would be. The wind wafted a glowing husk from the bonfire. To that flame and to you, girl, I promise: the whole wide world will read about you.

The drinking dens are spilling out There's staggering in the square There's lads and lasses falling about And a crackling in the air Down around the dungeon doors The shelters and the queues Everybody's looking for Somebody's arms to fall into And it's what it is It's what it is now There's frost on the graves and the monuments But the taverns are warm in town People curse the government And shovel hot food down The lights are out in the city hall The castle and the keep The moon shines down upon it all The legless and asleep And it's cold on the tollgate With the wagons creeping through Cold on the tollgate God knows what I could do with you And it's what it is It's what it is now The garrison sleeps in the citadel With the ghosts and the ancient stones High up on the parapet A Scottish piper stands alone And high on the wind The highland drums begin to roll And something from the past just comes And stares into my soul And it's cold on the tollgate With the Caledonian Blues Cold on the tollgate God knows what I could do with you And it's what it is It's what it is now What it is It's what it is now There's a chink of light, there's a burning wick There's a lantern in the tower Wee Willie Winkie with a candlestick Still writing songs in the wee wee hours On Charlotte Street I take A walking stick from my hotel The ghost of Dirty Dick Is still in search of Little Nell And it's what it is It's what it is now Oh what it is What it is now

In Japanese cities, much more so than in England, the restaurant owners, the teahouse proprietors, the shopkeepers all seem to will the darkness to fall; long before the daylight has faded, lanterns appear in the windows, lighted signs above doorways

I saw the sky descending, black and white, Not blue, on Boston where the winters wore The skulls to jack-o’-lanterns on the slates, And Hunger’s skin-and-bone retrievers tore The chickadee and shrike. The thorn tree waits Its victim and tonight The worms will eat the deadwood to the foot Of Ararat: the scythers, Time and Death, Helmed locusts, move upon the tree of breath; The wild ingrafted olive and the root Are withered, and a winter drifts to where The Pepperpot, ironic rainbow, spans Charles River and its scales of scorched-earth miles. I saw my city in the Scales, the pans Of judgement rising and descending. Piles Of dead leaves char the air— And I am a red arrow on this graph Of Revelations. Every dove is sold. The Chapel’s sharp-shinned eagle shifts its hold On serpent-Time, the rainbow’s epitaph. In Boston serpents whistle at the cold. The victim climbs the altar steps and sings: “Hosannah to the lion, lamb, and beast Who fans the furnace-face of IS with wings: I breathe the ether of my marriage feast.” At the high altar, gold And a fair cloth. I kneel and the wings beat My cheek. What can the dove of Jesus give You now but wisdom, exile? Stand and live, The dove has brought an olive branch to eat.

Before her escort could react, she sprinted out from their little pool of lantern-light into the darkness, her feet pounding the soft, treacherous clods of the field. The guards called after her for a while, but did not pursue, In a lost city, how could they chase down every lost soul who became a little more lost?

The parallel is not quite exact. For those Dark Ages were not really so very dark—they were full of flickering lanterns, and even if the light had gone out of Europe altogether, there were other rays, literally from China to Peru, at which it could have been rekindled. But the Dark Ages that are to come will cover the whole world in a single pall; there will be neither escape nor sanctuary, save such as are too secret to be found or too humble to be noticed. And Shangri-La may hope to be both of these. The airman bearing loads of death to the great cities will not pass our way, and if by chance he should he may not consider us worth a bomb.

A few more years of the same, though, and I got used to it: I would load entire libraries from country castles and city mansions, fine, rare, leather- and Morroco-bound books, load whole trains full, and as soon as a train had thirty cars, off it would go to Switzerland or Austria, one kilogram of rare books for the equivalent of one crown of convertible currency, and nobody blinked an eye, nobody shed a tear, not even I myself, no, all I did was stand there smiling as I watched the train hauling those priceless libraries off to Switzerland and Austria for one crown in convertible currency a kilo. By then I had mustered the strength to look upon misfortune with composure, to still my emotions, by then I had begun to understand the beauty of destruction and I loaded more and more freight cars, and more and more trains left the station heading west at one crown per kilogram, and as I stood there staring after the red lantern hanging from the last car, as I stood there leaning on a lamppost like Leonardo da Vinci, who stood leaning on a column and looking on while French soldiers used his statue for target practice, shooting away horse and rider bit by bit, I thought how Leonardo, like me, standing and witnessing such horrors with complete composure, had realized even than that neither the heavens are humane nor is any man with a head on his shoulders.

He then said something in Arabic to Ali, who made a sign of obedience and withdrew, but not to any distance. As to Franz a strange transformation had taken place in him. All the bodily fatigue of the day, all the preoccupation of mind which the events of the evening had brought on, disappeared as they do at the first approach of sleep, when we are still sufficiently conscious to be aware of the coming of slumber. His body seemed to acquire an airy lightness, his perception brightened in a remarkable manner, his senses seemed to redouble their power, the horizon continued to expand; but it was not the gloomy horizon of vague alarms, and which he had seen before he slept, but a blue, transparent, unbounded horizon, with all the blue of the ocean, all the spangles of the sun, all the perfumes of the summer breeze; then, in the midst of the songs of his sailors, -- songs so clear and sonorous, that they would have made a divine harmony had their notes been taken down, -- he saw the Island of Monte Cristo, no longer as a threatening rock in the midst of the waves, but as an oasis in the desert; then, as his boat drew nearer, the songs became louder, for an enchanting and mysterious harmony rose to heaven, as if some Loreley had decreed to attract a soul thither, or Amphion, the enchanter, intended there to build a city. At length the boat touched the shore, but without effort, without shock, as lips touch lips; and he entered the grotto amidst continued strains of most delicious melody. He descended, or rather seemed to descend, several steps, inhaling the fresh and balmy air, like that which may be supposed to reign around the grotto of Circe, formed from such perfumes as set the mind a dreaming, and such fires as burn the very senses; and he saw again all he had seen before his sleep, from Sinbad, his singular host, to Ali, the mute attendant; then all seemed to fade away and become confused before his eyes, like the last shadows of the magic lantern before it is extinguished, and he was again in the chamber of statues, lighted only by one of those pale and antique lamps which watch in the dead of the night over the sleep of pleasure. They were the same statues, rich in form, in attraction, and poesy, with eyes of fascination, smiles of love, and bright and flowing hair. They were Phryne, Cleopatra, Messalina, those three celebrated courtesans. Then among them glided like a pure ray, like a Christian angel in the midst of Olympus, one of those chaste figures, those calm shadows, those soft visions, which seemed to veil its virgin brow before these marble wantons. Then the three statues advanced towards him with looks of love, and approached the couch on which he was reposing, their feet hidden in their long white tunics, their throats bare, hair flowing like waves, and assuming attitudes which the gods could not resist, but which saints withstood, and looks inflexible and ardent like those with which the serpent charms the bird; and then he gave way before looks that held him in a torturing grasp and delighted his senses as with a voluptuous kiss. It seemed to Franz that he closed his eyes, and in a last look about him saw the vision of modesty completely veiled; and then followed a dream of passion like that promised by the Prophet to the elect. Lips of stone turned to flame, breasts of ice became like heated lava, so that to Franz, yielding for the first time to the sway of the drug, love was a sorrow and voluptuousness a torture, as burning mouths were pressed to his thirsty lips, and he was held in cool serpent-like embraces. The more he strove against this unhallowed passion the more his senses yielded to its thrall, and at length, weary of a struggle that taxed his very soul, he gave way and sank back breathless and exhausted beneath the kisses of these marble goddesses, and the enchantment of his marvellous dream.

Please,” they say, and their eyes glitter in the light. “Tell us what he found inside the goddess’s magical book.” “When Aethon peered into it,” she says, “he saw the heavens and the earth and all its lands scattered around the ocean, and all the animals and birds upon it. The cities were full of lanterns and gardens, and he could faintly hear music and singing, and he saw a wedding in one city with girls in bright linen robes, and boys with gold swords on silver belts, jumping through rings, doing handsprings and leaping and dancing in time. But on the next page he saw dark, flaming cities in which men were slaughtered in their fields, their wives enslaved in chains, and their children pitched over the walls onto pikes. He saw hounds eating corpses, and when he bent his ear low to the pages, he could hear the wailing. And as he looked, turning the leaf over and back, Aethon saw that the cities on both sides of the page, the dark ones and the bright ones, were one and the same, that there is no peace without war, no life without death, and he was afraid.

show me your face i crave flowers and gardens open your lips i crave the taste of honey come out from behind the clouds i desire a sunny face your voice echoed saying "leave me alone" i wish to hear your voice again saying "leave me alone" i swear this city without you is a prison i am dying to get out to roam in deserts and mountains i am tired of flimsy friends and submissive companions i die to walk with the brave am blue hearing nagging voices and meek cries i desire loud music drunken parties and wild dance one hand holding a cup of wine one hand caressing your hair then dancing in orbital circle that is what i yearn for i can sing better than any nightingale but because of this city's freaks i seal my lips while my heart weeps yesterday the wisest man holding a lit lantern in daylight was searching around town saying i am tired of all these beasts and brutes i seek a true human we have all looked for one but no one could be found they said yes he replied but my search is for the one who cannot be found

The city's earthly lights blotted out the stars as always. The sky was nice and clear, but only a few stars were visible, the very bright ones that twinkled as pale points here and there. Still, the moon stood out clearly against the sky. It hung up there faithfully, without a word of complaint concerning the city lights or the noise or the air pollution. It he focused hard on the moon, he could make out the strange shadows formed by its gigantic craters and valleys. Tengo's mind emptied as he stared at the light of the moon. Inside him, memories that had been handed down from antiquity began to stir. Before human beings possessed fire or tools or language, the moon had been their ally. It would calm people's fears now and then by illuminating the dark world like a heavenly lantern. Its waxing and waning gave people an understanding of the concept of time. Even now, when darkness had been banished from most parts of the world, there remained a sense of human gratitude toward the moon and its unconditional compassion. It was imprinted upon human genes likes a warm collective memory.

As historian A. Roger Ekirch explains in his 2005 book, At Day’s Close, the idea of lighting the streets of Paris back in the 1600s originally came from the police. Streetlights were one of many new patrol tools implemented by Louis XIV’s lieutenant general of police, Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie. De la Reynie’s plan ordered that lanterns be hung over the streets every sixty feet—with the unintended side effect that Paris soon gained its popular moniker, the City of Light. The world’s most romantic city takes its nickname from a police operation.

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

The oranges were more plentiful than usual that year. They glowed in their arbours of burnished green leaf like lanterns, flickering up there among the sunny woods. It was as if they were eager to celebrate our departure from the little island -- for at last the long-awaited message from Nessim had come, like a summons back to the Underworld. A message which was to draw me back inexorably to the one city which for me always hovered between illusion and reality, between the substance and the poetic images which its very name aroused in me.... Alexandria, the capital of memory!

Early risers strolling along the Thames would see the toshers wading through the muck of low tide, dressed almost comically in flowing velveteen coats, their oversized pockets filled with stray bits of copper recovered from the water’s edge. The toshers walked with a lantern strapped to their chest to help them see in the predawn gloom, and carried an eight-foot-long pole that they used to test the ground in front of them, and to pull themselves out when they stumbled into a quagmire. The pole and the eerie glow of the lantern through the robes gave them the look of ragged wizards, scouring the foul river’s edge for magic coins.

Perhaps I should stay. We all know the princess rarely serves as a proper chaperone.” “I don’t need to,” Ro said, adjusting her metal breastplate as she sat up straighter. “Gigantor does enough fun-killing for everybody. Plus, our girl’s still rocking the ‘adorably oblivious’ thing—which, I gotta say, gets less adorable by the day.” Her eyes narrowed at Sophie. “I’d be happy to spell it all out for you if you want. We could make a pros and cons list together!” “Pros and cons of what?” Sophie asked. Ro sighed dramatically, glancing at Keefe as she said, “See what I mean?” Keefe threw Mrs. Stinkbottom at her head, but Ro swatted the stuffed green gulon right back at him—and when he ducked, it knocked into one of the lanterns lining Keefe’s bedside table, sending it crashing to the floor. Sandor rubbed the center of his forehead. “It’s going to be a long afternoon.

Police have announced the untimely and gruesome death of local poet and Leeds historian Michael Dooley. Mr. Dooley’s piteous remains were found in the pond of Langford Primary School, in the lunch bags of four children who attend the self-same school, in the confessional at Leeds Catholic Church, in the lanterns that line the catwalk that stretches between McCauliffe Park and Tremens Terrace, in a collection of small metal lock-boxes owned by local box collector Ruth Swaddleston, and wound around the trunks of ancient trees in the loneliest reaches of Look Park. Two toes each were found in stewpots in the kitchens of Mary Lowerton, Richard Frogtoucher, Susan Diggle, Nathaniel Ronstadt, and Robert Grain-Toggle. The poor man’s face was found hanging from a coat-hanger of local doctor Elias Stonehearse. It expected that more of Mr. Dooley will turn up when, once again, spring thaws the rivers and roads of our lovely city.

At such a time [at dawn] I would dream of being a baker who delivers bread, a fitter from the electric company, or an insurance man collecting the weekly installments. Or at least a chimney sweep. In the morning, at dawn, I would enter some half-opened gateway, still lighted by the watchman's lantern. I would put two fingers to my hat, crack a joke, and enter the labyrinth to leave late in the evening, at the other end of the city. I would spend all day going from apartment to apartment, conducting one never-ending conversation from one end of the city to the other, divided into parts among the householders; I would ask something in one apartment and receive a reply in another, make a joke in one place and collect the fruits of laughter in the third or fourth. Among the banging of doors I would squeeze through narrow passages, through bedrooms full of furniture, I would upset chamberpots, walk into squeaking perambulators in which babies cry, pick up rattles dropped by infants. I would stop for longer than necessary in kitchens and hallways, where servant girls were tidying up. The girls, busy, would stretch their young legs, tauten their high insteps, play with their cheap shining shoes, or clack around in loose slippers.

The walls behind the counter had deep floor-to-ceiling shelves for vases and jam jars and scented candles, and there was an old wrought-iron revolving stand for cards. But most of the space in the long, narrow shop was taken up with flowers and plants. Today there were fifty-two kinds of cut blooms, from the tiny cobalt-blue violets that were smaller than Lara's little fingernail to a purple-and-green-frilled brassica that was bigger than her head. The flowers were set out in gleaming metal buckets and containers of every shape and size. They were lined up on the floor three deep and stacked on the tall three-tier stand in the middle of the shop. The plants, huge leafy ferns and tiny fleshy succulents, lemon trees and jasmine bushes and freckled orchids, were displayed on floating shelves that were built at various heights all the way up to the ceiling. Lara had spent weeks getting the lighting right. There were a few soft spotlights above the flower displays, and an antique crystal chandelier hung low above the counter. There were strings of fairy lights and dozens of jewel-colored tea lights and tall, slender lanterns dotted between the buckets. When they were lit, they cast star and crescent moon shapes along the walls and the shop resembled the courtyard of a Moroccan riad- a tiny walled garden right in the middle of the city.

The wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upwards of twenty years. During that period, he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in his matrimonial felicity – when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife, long, long ago, resigned to her autumnal widowhood – he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day’s absence, and became a loving spouse till death. [...] He is in the next street to his own, and at his journey’s end. He can scarcely trust his good fortune, in having got thither unperceived – recollecting that, at one time, he was delayed by the throng, in the very focus of a lighted lantern; and, again, there were footsteps that seemed to tread behind his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp around him; and, anon, he heard a voice shouting afar, and fancied that it called his name. Doubtless, a dozen busybodies had been watching him, and told his wife the whole affair. Poor Wakefield! Little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this great world! No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy bed, foolish man... - Wakefield (1835) -

Areli kicked her dragon upwards and followed Aquilina and Fides through the lanterns and rock, out into clean mountain air. Aquilina had picked only the two, whom she said were hands down the greatest riders on the team, to ride with her. Areli didn’t know how to respond to that, except to turn red and cover her mouth with surprise. And now she was flying, not in an arena, but in free air, a privilege given to only the best professional riders. They flew over the city. The buildings looked like small blocks and the carriages looked like gold-colored ants roaming about. The sweep of the cool air was refreshing against Areli’s face. They flew over the trees leading to Emperor Abhiraja’s forest, which looked like nothing but a tossed salad from their view. And then they were over Emperor Abhiraja’s trees. Back at the boarding facility, before they left, Aquilina told them there was only one rule if they were to ride with her . . . keep up. Aquilina veered down towards the trees. Fides took after her and Areli followed. Areli sat hard into her seat and pulled the reins to her right. She leaned her leg into Kaia’s left shoulder and held on tight to the saddle horn. Kaia leaned her body and they knifed through the air. Areli shifted her legs and hands, chasing after Fides and Aquilina. They slipped through a tiny gap in the tops of the massive trees. Areli saw the red of Fidelja’s dragon ahead of her, and then it disappeared. She saw shades of brown and green coming up fast. Areli pulled on the reins, keeping her hands light, and sunk into the seat, leveling off their descent into the forest. She immediately started kicking Kaia forward as she saw Fides dragon’s tail wrap past a tree. Areli commanded Kaia in a way she never had before. Using every skill she ever learned, she cued Kaia right, then left, then into a roll to get through two narrowly placed trees, and then up, always following the blur of red in front of her. They came out above the trees again and then they swooped back down. This time it was into the Columns of Abhi. They curved around the large rock structures like a knife full of butter caressing a freshly baked roll. Areli didn’t think she could feel this exhilarated. But there was something utterly breathtaking about flying without walls, without spectators or trainers. This was true freedom, according to Areli. Freedom from homework, freedom from fears, freedom from worries. This was the place where she could be . . . just to be.

To those who have looked at Rome with the quickening power of a knowledge which breathes a growing soul into all historic shapes, and traces out the suppressed transitions which unite all contrasts, Rome may still be the spiritual centre and interpreter of the world. But let them conceive one more historical contrast: the gigantic broken revelations of that Imperial and Papal city thrust abruptly on the notions of a girl who had been brought up in English and Swiss Puritanism, fed on meagre Protestant histories and on art chiefly of the hand-screen sort; a girl whose ardent nature turned all her small allowance of knowledge into principles, fusing her actions into their mould, and whose quick emotions gave the most abstract things the quality of a pleasure or a pain; a girl who had lately become a wife, and from the enthusiastic acceptance of untried duty found herself plunged in tumultuous preoccupation with her personal lot. The weight of unintelligible Rome might lie easily on bright nymphs to whom it formed a background for the brilliant picnic of Anglo-foreign society; but Dorothea had no such defence against deep impressions. Ruins and basilicas, palaces and colossi, set in the midst of a sordid present, where all that was living and warm-blooded seemed sunk in the deep degeneracy of a superstition divorced from reverence; the dimmer but yet eager Titanic life gazing and struggling on walls and ceilings; the long vistas of white forms whose marble eyes seemed to hold the monotonous light of an alien world: all this vast wreck of ambitious ideals, sensuous and spiritual, mixed confusedly with the signs of breathing forgetfulness and degradation, at first jarred her as with an electric shock, and then urged themselves on her with that ache belonging to a glut of confused ideas which check the flow of emotion. Forms both pale and glowing took possession of her young sense, and fixed themselves in her memory even when she was not thinking of them, preparing strange associations which remained through her after-years. Our moods are apt to bring with them images which succeed each other like the magic-lantern pictures of a doze; and in certain states of dull forlornness Dorothea all her life continued to see the vastness of St. Peter's, the huge bronze canopy, the excited intention in the attitudes and garments of the prophets and evangelists in the mosaics above, and the red drapery which was being hung for Christmas spreading itself everywhere like a disease of the retina. Not that this inward amazement of Dorothea's was anything very exceptional: many souls in their young nudity are tumbled out among incongruities and left to "find their feet" among them, while their elders go about their business. Nor can I suppose that when Mrs. Casaubon is discovered in a fit of weeping six weeks after her wedding, the situation will be regarded as tragic. Some discouragement, some faintness of heart at the new real future which replaces the imaginary, is not unusual, and we do not expect people to be deeply moved by what is not unusual. That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

Soon they were just glimmering specks a few hundred feet above drifting east toward downtown, over the darkened side streets of East Orange where they had all inhabited various residences over the years, over the streaming headlights along the I-280 and the Garden State Parkway and Central Avenue and South Orange Avenue and the other thoroughfares that radiated like spokes from downtown Newark to the nether regions, over Bloomfield and Vailsburg and Irvington, over St. Benedict’s Preparatory Academy for Boys and the Passaic River and the rusty yet mighty bridges spanning it, a vantage point Rob had seen leaving for and returning from all his trips, from which the city looked so serene and sometimes, at the right angle and at the right time of night, even beckoning. At a certain point, the lights disappeared from view beyond the trees and eaves of the neighboring homes, leaving the Burger Boyz to sit down once again in the plastic fold-out chairs and wonder how long it would be before the flames flickered out and the lanterns began their descent. And once that happened, they wondered where each would fall.

There were reactions. Some people found the balloon 'interesting'. As a response this seemed inadequate to the immensity of the balloon, the suddenness of its appearance over the city; on the other hand, in the absence of hysteria or other societally-induced anxiety, it must be judged a calm, 'mature' one. There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the 'meaning' of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena. It was agreed that since the meaning of the balloon could never be known absolutely, extended discussion was pointless, or at least less purposeful than the activities of those who, for example, hung green and blue paper lanterns from the warm gray underside, in certain streets, or seized the occasion to write messages on the surface, announcing their availability for the performance of unnatural acts, or the availability of acquaintances.

Venice took on the feeling of a city paved with black glass, the odd lantern, torch, or candle reflecting in the canals like distant windows into hell, the crescent moon throwing silver scythes across the water where it could find its way between buildings.

The Golden Gate Bridge was a tall orange suspension bridge that connected the city of Don Francisco to the Marin Headlands on the other side. It had been built millennia ago by some ancient civilization,

Medieval + Alpine = Soccer Dragon, Pearl Dragon, or Flaming Rock Dragon Medieval + Alpine, Pearl + Alpine, Jade + Star, Zombie + Mud, or Pearl + Flaming Rock= Armadillo Dragon Neon + Nenufar, Rattlesnake + Lantern fish, or Neon + Cloud Dragons= Pirate Dragon Zombie + Mud = Petroleum Dragon Laser + Dandelion, Firebird + Fluorescent, Firebird + Star, Jade + Star, or Neon + Nenufar= Gummy Dragon Laser + Dandelion= Fluorescent Dragon Cool fire + Gummy= Laser Legendary Hybrid Dragons Legendary hybrid dragons are the most difficult to produce. If you are lucky, you

Fire+ Water= Blizzard Dragon or Cloud Dragon Fire + Plant= Spicy Dragon or Firebird Dragon Fire + Electric= Laser Dragon or Hot Metal Dragon Fire + Metal= Medieval Dragon or Steam punk Dragon Fire + Dark= Vampire Dragon or Dark Fire Dragon Water Dragon Hybrids Water + Earth = Mud Dragon Water + Fire = Cloud Dragon or Blizzard Dragon Water + Plant = Nenufar Dragon Water + Plant = Coral Dragon Water + Electric = Lantern Fish Dragon or Storm Dragon

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.

Turns out, Tokyo is a city of romantics, forgiveness, and graciousness. Since the Women Now! article published, stuffed bears, lanterns, origami, plates of dorayaki, and notes have been placed outside the gates. The guards bring them in by the armload, sifting through to make sure there are no security risks---like a kawaii doll with laser beams for eyes---and bring them to me. Its mostly from teenage girls. Their notes are in the shape of hearts and express their undying support of my non-relationship with Akio. There are other letters, too, from Japanese born abroad who identify with my story and who want to share their own. The response is overwhelming. I never thought I'd ignite such a flame. I'm committed to writing back to everyone who has left an address. Mr. Fuchigami does not like it. But he has left time in my schedule for me to respond. So there.

Tokyo." Mr. Fuchigami's voice inflates with pride. "Formerly Edo, almost destroyed by the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake, then again in 1944 by nighttime firebombing raids. Tens of thousands were killed." The chamberlain grows silent. "Kishikaisei." "What does that mean?" There's a skip in my chest. We've entered the city now. The high-rises are no longer cut out shapes against the skyline, but looming gray giants. Every possible surface is covered in signs---neon and plastic or painted banners---they all scream for attention. It's noisy, too. There is a cacophony of pop tunes, car horns, advertising jingles, and trains coasting over rails. Nothing is understated. "Roughly translated, 'wake from death and return to life.' Against hopeless circumstances, Tokyo has risen. It is home to more than thirty-five million people." He pauses. "And, in addition, the oldest monarchy in the world." The awe returns tenfold. I clutch the windowsill and press my nose to the glass. There are verdant parks, tidy residential buildings, upmarket shops, galleries, and restaurants. For each sleek, new modern construction, there is one low-slung wooden building with a blue tiled roof and glowing lanterns. It's all so dense. Houses lean against one another like drunk uncles. Mr. Fuchigami narrates Tokyo's history. A city built and rebuilt, born and reborn. I imagine cutting into it like a slice of cake, dissecting the layers. I can almost see it. Ash from the Edo fires with remnants of samurai armor, calligraphy pens, and chipped tea porcelain. Bones from when the shogunate fell. Dust from the Great Earthquake and more debris from the World War II air raids. Still, the city thrives. It is alive and sprawling with neon-colored veins. Children in plaid skirts and little red ties dash between business personnel in staid suits. Two women in crimson kimonos and matching parasols duck into a teahouse.

Time to them was a lantern lighting a step before, a step behind—the rest was indistinguishable dark.

Leeds, Massachusetts lived in Gaspar Bantam’s memory as a city of perpetual gloaming, of eternal October. In every memory, in every dream, the faces of jack-o’-lanterns flickered from cornhusk-garlanded porches, treetops glowed orange and red under a sky of charcoal clouds, leaves crunched under your shoes like the snaps and cracks of radio static. The baskets at the farmer’s market spilled over with red and yellow peppers curled like beckoning fingers, and bulbs of garlic hung from knotted strings like clustered nests of pupae. You’d pull the comforter around you for warmth in the mornings but throw your jacket over the bike rack in the sun-seared afternoons before playing Pirates of the Woods. The whole village thrummed and hummed to the constant soundtrack of the peepers and the crickets and the whoosh of trucks on the rush and rumble Interstate. Autumn is said to solemnly herald a kind of dying, but in Leeds, in that shadowy little city tucked into a curve of the mighty Connecticut River, the season is an ecstatic celebration of the fury of death’s rebirth.

Edison soon made an announcement that thrilled his new Florida neighbors. For his Fort Myers laboratory to function properly, it must have electricity and lights. Accordingly, he would import a massive dynamo/generator system and electrify the entire isolated community. To this point, Fort Myers homes were lit with kerosene lanterns and candles. Outside of a few major cities, this was true all over Florida. By this one act of its new favorite son, a tiny backwater would leap forward in both reputation and self-respect. A town with electricity mattered.

But Mr. Gradgrind prefers the lantern unlighted. Material facts are good enough for him. Until it comes to religion. And then, suddenly, the child who has been forbidden to believe in Jack the Giant Killer must believe in Goliath and David. There are no fairies, but you must believe that there are angels. The magic sword and the magic buckler are nonsense, but the child must not have any doubts about the breastplate of righteousness and the sword of the Spirit. What spiritual reaction do you expect when, after denying all the symbolic stories and legends, you suddenly confront your poor little Materialist with the Most Wonderful Story in the world?

Jasmine gazed out through the window, past the lantern-lit gardens and sparkling crystal fountains of the palace grounds, toward the sand dunes and mountains towering in the distance. They were promises of thrills waiting to be discovered... if she could only get to them. "Do you remember what you said when we first met, when you thought I was a handmaiden?" she asked Aladdin. "You told me the palace was your favorite view in the whole world." "It was the most amazing sight I'd ever seen, that's for sure. After you, of course." He ruffled her hair playfully. "To see those white-and-gold domed roofs towering over the city, the castle rising from the dunes... it was a wonder, especially from where I was sitting. It still is." "My favorite view has always been this one." Jasmine's expression turned wistful as she nodded at the window. "You wanted to get in, while I was desperate to get out and see the world. And now..." "Now you're locked in," he finished, his smile fading. "And everyone wants me out." "Well. Hardly everyone," she reminded him.

The map of Florence, a bird’s-eye view from the north, shows the city embraced by a diamond-shaped circuit of walls and split in half by the River Arno, spanned by its four bridges. Many of Florence’s churches and various other monuments are shown inside the walls, all identified by inscriptions helpfully added by a scribe in reddish ink. The artist, Piero del Massaio, even included the copper ball that in 1471 Andrea del Verrocchio added to the lantern at the top of Brunelleschi’s dome. The map also shows, on the south side of the Arno, between the Ponte Rubaconte and the Ponte Vecchio, a handsome private home. The reddish ink clearly identifies the occupant: Domus Vespasiani—the house, that is, of Vespasiano. The inclusion of Vespasiano’s home in Via de’ Bardi indicates his friendship with Duke Alfonso, who must have appreciated this little in-joke, and who may have been a visitor to Vespasiano’s house during his stay in Florence. It also gives proof of Vespasiano’s eminence: his house, like that of Niccolò Niccoli many years earlier, had become one of the sights of Florence.

I've been thinking of this guy my whole life. And his universe. Not Batman's Gotham City or Superman's Metropolis or Captain America's New York or Green Lantern's Coast City or Antman's L.A. I'm discussing Smallville, where Superman's nice fosters looked after him till the day he got his wings and tore out of there. I recall some ripping up of pages, as a kid reading that. Not even understanding really why it broke my heart. But Jesus, even a kid knows the basics. Why wouldn't any of them want to look after us?

She stepped within by slow steps, letting eyes adjust. The cabin was large, with several round windows grimed with dust. A table to one side where plates still rested, clumps of rot implying a meal never finished. She looked about for candles or a lantern, something to make a light. But of a sudden, two lights glowed of their own volition. Casting no illumination, for all they were bright and white as angelic wings in a stained-glass depiction of the Upper House. Two eyes, set at feline slant. They blinked once in solemn greeting. Behold a cat, black as night in the deepest pits of Nix. The creature perched upon the table and pondered Collen, who stood fixed; still as stone, still as mouse in cat’s gaze. At long length the cat spoke, voice high, words clear. “Found you,” said Shadow Night-Creep.

The arching prow had been carved like a stag’s head, twin lanterns hanging from the branches of its mighty horns.

Our spread over the earth was fuelled by reducing the higher species of vegetation to charcoal, by incessantly burning whatever would burn. From the first smouldering taper to the elegant lanterns whose light reverberated around eighteenth-century courtyards and from the mild radiance of these lanterns to the unearthly glow of the sodium lamps that line the Belgian motorways, it has all been combustion. Combustion is the hidden principle behind every artefact we create. The making of a fish-hook, manufacture of a china cup, or production of a television programme, all depend on the same process of combustion. Like our bodies and like our desires, the machines we have devised are possessed of a heart which is slowly reduced to embers. From the earliest times, human civilization has been no more than a strange luminescence growing more intense by the hour, of which no one can say when it will begin to wane and when it will fade away. For the time being, our cities still shine through the night, and the fires still spread.

In the end, I left just two syllables on the lantern. Gyu-ho. My only wish.

I love Johannesburg – like one loves and protects a fragile puppy, like one removes weeds from beds of blossoming tulips and roses. I am drawn to its formless danger, the lurking disquiets of a big city, by how minute and faceless I have become in the vast frontiers of its palaces and dungeons, how my stargazing crawls by unnoticed by my countrymen. There are other stargazers too, there must be, real stargazers who camp and live and thrive in the wild: lantern carriers and owners of books and celestial maps about the history and unknown charms in the world of stars. There must be true worshippers and disciples of these heavenly fires, these celestial corpses that have long died, exploded into trillions of graveyards that adorn the night skies. There seems, if I concentrate long enough, to be a certain secret that draws me to the stars: their ancient silence, their insistence on commanding attention without shouting from rooftops, unlike the shamelessness of thunder and rain, unaffected by their distance or determination. Stars are quiet – arrogant, maybe – but also of a particular crispness that takes refuge in every pore, every fragment of every hair that covers every slope and plane of the body. It is possible that Michael K is peering from behind the night clouds, content not to be bothered. He has seen the zealots and charlatans coming from miles away, preserved his soul in the most elementary of ways: the ways of silence.

The Leningrad Public Library remained open throughout the siege and became a place for people to congregate. The heat in the library gave out early, and the plumbing eventually froze and burst. In late January, the building finally lost its electricity. The librarians still searched the shadowed stacks with lanterns, and, when they ran our of oil, with burning pieces of wood. They still served patrons and sought out the answers to practical questions posed by the city government: alternative methods of making matches or candles, forgotten sources of edible yeast.

I sought Him where my logic led. “This friend is always sure and right; His lantern is sufficient light. I need no Star,” I said. I sought Him in the city square. Logic and I went up and down The marketplace of many a town, But He was never there. I tracked Him to the mind’s far rim. The valiant intellect went forth To east and west and south and north, But found no trace of Him. We walked the world from sun to sun, Logic and I, with Little Faith, But never came to Nazareth, Nor met the Holy One. We sought in vain. And finally, Back to the heart’s small house I crept, And fell upon my knees, and wept; And Lo! He came to me!

It’s a geode. You can sess that, the way the rock around you abruptly changes to something else. The pebble in the stream, the warp in the weft; countless aeons ago a bubble formed in a flow of molten mineral within Father Earth. Within that pocket, nurtured by incomprehensible pressures and bathed in water and fire, crystals grew. This one’s the size of a city. Which is probably why someone built a city in this one. You stand before a vast, vaulted cavern that is full of glowing crystal shafts the size of tree trunks. Big tree trunks. Or buildings. Big buildings. They jut forth from the walls in an utterly haphazard jumble: different lengths, different circumferences, some white and translucent and a few smoky or tinged with purple. Some are stubby, their pointed tips ending only a few feet away from the walls that grew them—but many stretch from one side of the vast cavern into the indistinct distance. They form struts and roads too steep to climb, going in directions that make no sense. It is as if someone found an architect, made her build a city out of the most beautiful materials available, then threw all those buildings into a box and jumbled them up for laughs. And they’re definitely living in it. As you stare, you notice narrow rope bridges and wooden platforms everywhere. There are dangling lines strung with electric lanterns, ropes and pulleys carrying small lifts from one platform to another. In the distance a man walks down a wooden stairway built around a titanic slanted column of white; two children play on the ground far below, in between stubby crystals the size of houses. Actually, some of the crystals are houses. They have holes cut in them—doors and windows. You can see people moving around inside some of them. Smoke curls from chimney holes cut in pointed crystal tips.

Sergei extinguished the lantern, whereupon it turned out that it was not so dark after all, and they could see everything. The waves were pitch-black and kept pounding into the shore like artillery fire. Then everything exploded in white foam and went climbing up to an astonishing height. The sky was invisible. To Pavel it seemed that at any moment he would find that he was flying, that in fact he already was flying - into this bliss, and terror and roar. Uncle Sergei burst out laughing and yelled something, but Pavel was deafened and he neither understood not wanted to understand. He and the sea now belonged to each other, and nobody - not even Sergei - could come between them. And later, when they had returned to the city, Pavel still continued to feel this new bond: between the sea and himself. Had he been told this was love, he would have been very surprised. It was more like a taut length of rubber that allowed him to go on with his life and move about, yet constantly kept tugging him back to the same spot. To that cliff. To that flight. He did not yet know that this was to be for ever.

Whitsun saw cats with metal legs and dogs with blanks where their eyes ought to have been. Once he passed a flock of sheep, each of which (a corner of his mind coldly noted) possessed an extra digit in its toes (toes? Toes on a sheep? A sheep in a city? Sheep with toes in a city?). Once he had been nearly run down by a panicked rat the size of a go-cart. The fleas on its back could each have covered a dime, their eyes like little lanterns, and they had chirped at him winsomely, like baby chicks, as their transport passed.

Thirty-Three If the martyr is made when the breaking heart breaks open, and one holds in the crib of her palm the ghost of something as singular as last night's argument, then what was mystery is worse—the advent of the end. They sleep in the sea of a bed, blue as breath, the tangle of needle-net holding them close. And if they dance, it is like lanterns on a lake, as nothing lasts for very long, so frail, those passive vessels. Imagine the elemental glow and a city of stars still forming, the work in progress of heaven like the swirl of color in a vanity rose: where one shade ends the other may begin, or not, its own red. She scowls her lover's scowl. When Christ comes down from the mountain, he marches to Jerusalem unaware. This is how the dead get by, and the dying make due: like anyone, they are preserved with such affection as to disenchant their grief.

On 14 September 1869, one hundred years after his birth, Alexander von Humboldt’s centennial was celebrated across the world. There were parties in Europe, Africa and Australia as well as the Americas. In Melbourne and Adelaide people came together to listen to speeches in honour of Humboldt, as did groups in Buenos Aires and Mexico City. There were festivities in Moscow where Humboldt was called the ‘Shakespeare of sciences’, and in Alexandria in Egypt where guests partied under a sky illuminated with fireworks. The greatest commemorations were in the United States, where from San Francisco to Philadelphia, and from Chicago to Charleston, the nation saw street parades, sumptuous dinners and concerts. In Cleveland some 8,000 people took to the streets and in Syracuse another 15,000 joined a march that was more than a mile long. President Ulysses Grant attended the Humboldt celebrations in Pittsburgh together with 10,000 revellers who brought the city to a standstill. In New York City the cobbled streets were lined with flags. City Hall was veiled in banners, and entire houses had vanished behind huge posters bearing Humboldt’s face. Even the ships sailing by, out on the Hudson River, were garlanded in colourful bunting. In the morning thousands of people followed ten music bands, marching from the Bowery and along Broadway to Central Park to honour a man ‘whose fame no nation can claim’ as the New York Times’s front page reported. By early afternoon, 25,000 onlookers had assembled in Central Park to listen to the speeches as a large bronze bust of Humboldt was unveiled. In the evening as darkness settled, a torchlight procession of 15,000 people set out along the streets, walking beneath colourful Chinese lanterns. Let us imagine him, one speaker said, ‘as standing on the Andes’ with his mind soaring above all. Every speech across the world emphasized that Humboldt had seen an ‘inner correlation’ between all aspects of nature. In Boston, Emerson told the city’s grandees that Humboldt was ‘one of those wonders of the world’. His fame, the Daily News in London reported, was ‘in some sort bound up with the universe itself’. In Germany there were festivities in Cologne, Hamburg, Dresden, Frankfurt and many other cities. The greatest German celebrations were in Berlin, Humboldt’s hometown, where despite torrential rain 80,000 people assembled. The authorities had ordered offices and all government agencies to close for the day. As the rain poured down and gusts chilled the air, the speeches and singing nonetheless continued for hours.

From the moment our ancestors first danced around a fire, cinders flickering in the darkened sky, celebrations have inspired us to light up the night. With fireworks and lanterns, birthday candles and bonfires, festive occasions chase away the shadows and carve out a space for joy within the darkness. It’s hard to imagine now, in a world that glows with electric light, how rare and special it once was to see the world lit up at night. But until the advent of gas-lit streetlamps in the early nineteenth century, most cities were completely dark after sunset.