Pouch Quotes

If Peeta and I were both to die, or they thought we were....My fingers fumble with the pouch on my belt, freeing it. Peeta sees it and his hand clamps on my wrist. "No, I won't let you." "Trust me," I whisper. He holds my gaze for a long moment then lets go. I loosen the top of the pouch and pour a few spoonfuls of berries into his palm. Then I fill my own. "On the count of three?" Peeta leans down and kisses me once, very gently. "The count of three," he says. We stand, our backs pressed together, our empty hands locked tight. "Hold them out. I want everyone to see," he says. I spread out my fingers, and the dark berries glisten in the sun. I give Peeta's hand one last squeeze as a signal, as a good-bye, and we begin counting. "One." Maybe I'm wrong. "Two." Maybe they don't care if we both die. "Three!" It's too late to change my mind. I lift my hand to my mouth taking one last look at the world. The berries have just passed my lips when the trumpets begin to blare. The frantic voice of Claudius Templesmith shouts above them. "Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to present the victors of the 74th Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark! I give you - the tributes of District 12!

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

By the way, when you finish the bottle of Crown Royal, you can still use the pouch to hold your broken dreams.

How true, how true" said the Sour Kangaroo, "And from now on, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to protect them with you!" And the Young Kangaroo in her pouch said "Me too!

I should've known Gideon would spill. He's like a surrogate parent. Not like a stepfather, exactly - more like a godfather, or a sea horse who wants to stuff me into his pouch.

How small the cosmos (a kangaroo's pouch would hold it), how paltry and puny in comparison to human consciousness, to a single individual recollection, and its expression in words!

After some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completely.

If it is a human thing to do to put something you want, because it's useful, edible, or beautiful, into a bag, or a basket, or a bit of rolled bark or leaf, or a net woven of your own hair, or what have you, and then take it home with you, home being another, larger kind of pouch or bag, a container for people, and then later on you take it out and eat it or share it or store it up for winter in a solider container or put it in the medicine bundle or the shrine or the museum, the holy place, the area that contains what is sacred, and then the next day you probably do much the same again—if to do that is human, if that's what it takes, then I am a human being after all. Fully, freely, gladly, for the first time.... [T]he proper, fitting shape of the novel might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings. A novel is a medicine bundle, holding things in a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us." —"The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

Durzo pulled out a gold Gunder from his pouch. Crowns Roth wins, Castles I lose. He flipped the coin. It bounced on the table and, impossibly, landed on edge. There´s always another choice, Kylar said.

I can offer you water or, um, water. Some of the pouches have a slightly different font, so you can choose serif hydration or sans serif hydration.

And he will have a great aunt called Elinor who tells him there's a world not like this one. A world with neither fairies nor glass men, but with animals who carry their young in a pouch in front of their bellies, and birds with wings that beat so fast it sounds like the humming of a bumblebee, with carriages that drive along without any horses and pictures that move on their own accord... She will tell him that even the most powerful men don't carry swords in the other world, but there are much, much more terrible weapons there...She will even claim that the people there have built coaches that can fly...So the boy will think that perhaps he'll have to go alone one day, if he wants to see that world...Because it must be exciting in that other world, much more exciting than in his own...

Aida watches Dennis open his tobacco pouch and stuff his pipe. As a child she was entranced by the process, and the glamorous stink of it, the special words: flake, shag, shank, dottle. He told her that each pipe had its own ghost, which is the taste when you suck it, empty and cold. Sometimes he let her taste the ghost.

A male frigate bird blows up a wild red pouch on his neck. He can keep it puffed up for hours. It is his way of impressing the girls.

You know what I wisht I had, Ma? A pouch like a 'possum, to tote things. --The Yearling

Sicarius, are you ready for a hike?” She faced him only to find he had armed himself—more so than usual. In addition to his daggers and throwing knives, he held two rifles, two pistols, two cargo belts laden with ammo pouches, and a bag of his smoke grenades. “Or a single-handed all-out assault on the forest?

I'm something of a bastard on the best of days. And that day was hardly my best.' Jean-François's gaze roamed Gabriel, toe to crown. 'Nor this one, I fear?' Gabriel tapped an empty leather pouch at his belt. 'Behold the purse in which I keep my fucks for what you think of me.

It calms me to think of blue as the color of death. I have long imagined death's approach as the swell of a wave - a towering wall of blue. You will drown, the world tells me, has always told me. You will descend into a blue underworld, blue with hungry ghosts, Krishna blue, the blue faces of the ones you loved. They all drowned, too. To take a breath of water: does the thought panic or excite you? If you are in love with red then you slit or shoot. If you are in love with blue you fill your pouch with stones good for sucking and head down to the river. Any river will do.

The disorientation of meeting one’s sagging contemporaries, memories of a younger face crashing into the reality of jowls, under-eye pouches, unexpected lines, and then the terrible realization that one probably looks just as old as they do. Do you remember when we were young and gorgeous? Clark wanted to ask. Do you remember when everything seemed limitless? Do you remember when it seemed impossible that you’d get famous and I’d get a PhD? But instead of saying any of this he wished his friend a happy birthday.

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of “Yellow Submarine,” which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d’être, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I’d train it to say, “Wasn’t me!” every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, “Ce n’étais pas moi!” What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboard down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

The pouches under his eyes were like purses that contained the smuggled memories of a disappointing life.

During those nine pouched-up months, what do babies imagine? Gills, swamps, battlefields? To people in wombs, what is imagined and what is real must be one and the same.

Place unopened pouch in warm water for 5-10 minutes. Unopened pouch may be laid on a warm surface. Lay unopened pouch in direct sunlight. Not much chance of that down here. Place unopened pouch inside you shirt, allow you body temperature to warm your MRE. I was surprised they left out: Place unopened pouch on ground and pee on it.

The joey, large-eyed and gangly in the way of almost all young animals, frisked about. He – she – it (Saskia couldn’t tell what sex) batted its front paws at its mother – who straightened from her feeding with a look of resigned patience to fend off the tiny fists before reaching out and enfolding the youngster in her arms. The joey melted into her embrace, touching its nose against her mouth. Saskia took several photos, letting out a small “oooh!” at the cuteness of the interaction. The youngster hopped away and leapt into the air with twists that could be for no other reason than the joy of doing them. Suddenly, it returned to the doe and, once again, interrupted her grazing by thrusting its head into her pouch.

If God meant for us to carry baggage around, he would have made our skin have little pouches like kangaroos. Or maybe he would have just made it so that each and every one of us were born with huge- ass shoulders to carry the load. Clearly, we weren’t made to carry the weight of the world, kinda makes you wonder why we do it anyway, huh?

We were small and thought we knew nothing Worth knowing. We thought words travelled the wires In the shiny pouches of raindrops, Each one seeded full with the light Of the sky, the gleam of the lines, and ourselves So infinitesimally scaled We could stream through the eye of a needle.

On the outside, Oscar simply looked tired, no taller, no fatter, only the skin under his eyes, pouched from years of quiet desperation, had changed. Inside, he was in a world of hurt. He saw black flashes before his eyes. He saw himself falling through the air. He knew what he was turning into. He was turning into the worst kind of human on the planet: an old bitter dork. Saw himself at the Game Room, picking through the miniatures for the rest of his life. He didn't want this future but he couldn't see how it could be avoided, couldn't figure his way out of it. Fukú.

Sea horses have complicated routines for courtship, and tend to mate under full moons, making musical sounds while doing so. They live in long-term monogamous partnerships. What is perhaps most unusual, though, is that it is the male sea horse that carries the young for up to six weeks. Males become properly "pregnant," not only carrying, but fertilizing and nourishing the developing eggs with fluid secretions. The image of males giving birth is perpetually mind-blowing: a turbid liquid bursts forth from the brood pouch, and like magic, minuscule but fully formed sea horses appear out of the cloud.

By ten o'clock she thought he might soon be ready to talk. He'd threatened, blustered, even tried to sweet-talk her. Then the bribery had begun. He'd let her live if she let him out immediately. He'd give her three horses, two sheep, and a cow. He'd give her a pouch of coin, three horses, two sheep, not just a cow but a milking cow, and set her up anywhere in England, if she would just leave his castle and not bother him again for the rest of his life. The only offer/threat that had perked her momentary interest was when he'd shouted that he was going to "toop her 'til her bonny legs fell off." She should be so lucky.

Hearthstone bowed his head in gratitude. He stepped away from the dais, cradling his new pouch o’ power like it was a swaddled baby.

The disorientation of meeting one’s sagging contemporaries, memories of a younger face crashing into the reality of jowls, under-eye pouches, unexpected lines, and then the terrible realization that one probably looks just as old as they do.

Whoever had said in the guidebooks that the bum bag was a sensible device against theft had lied; no single item of dressware ever invented cried out "mug me" more than a pouch of zip-up plastic suspended by your groin.

In a seperate cloth pouch I found little bottles of shampoo and soap and a toothbrush and the like,as well as a tiny brown glass vial of perfumed oil. It smelled of violets and chocolate. Yeah,like I needed the zombies to find me any more delicious.That'd be like a cow wearing eau de gravy.

Ask any Ferrari, Porsche or Ray-Ban salesperson about their average customer and you will very likely hear that he is not, as the adverts would have us believe, a virile young footballer with shiny hair, a rippling six pack and a trouser pouch like a new punch bag. He is, in fact, a middle-aged bloke wearing more chins than he started life with and carrying the clear evidence of forty years of beer and pies slung across his midriff.

That evening, as I watched the sunset’s pinwheels of apricot and mauve slowly explode into red ribbons, I thought: The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on. When you consider something like death, after which (there being no news flash to the contrary) we may well go out like a candle flame, then it probably doesn’t matter if we try too hard, are awkward sometimes, care for one another too deeply, are excessively curious about nature, are too open to experience, enjoy a nonstop expense of the senses in an effort to know life intimately and lovingly. It probably doesn’t matter if, while trying to be modest and eager watchers of life’s many spectacles, we sometimes look clumsy or get dirty or ask stupid questions or reveal our ignorance or say the wrong thing or light up with wonder like the children we all are. It probably doesn’t matter if a passerby sees us dipping a finger into the moist pouches of dozens of lady’s slippers to find out what bugs tend to fall into them, and thinks us a bit eccentric. Or a neighbor, fetching her mail, sees us standing in the cold with our own letters in one hand and a seismically red autumn leaf in the other its color hitting our sense like a blow from a stun gun, as we stand with a huge grin, too paralyzed by the intricately veined gaudiness of the leaf to move.

I'm so in love with her that if we were marsupials, I'd be stuffing her grown self back into my pouch.

His face looked almost as gray as his suit, and the pouches beneath his eyes looked like little bags for holding all the sadness that his head couldn't hold.

For the last time, it is a pouch, not a fanny pack. How come no one sees the difference?” “There is no difference. That’s why no one can see it.

He has a superb groin. A silky pouch. A secret garden. The groin of a sire. I once saw just such a creamy, velvet groin on a male antelope.

The more specific you are about your resolution, the better your chance of sticking with it. Don’t just say, “I want to lose weight.” Say, “When my arm jiggles, I want it to look less like a pelican’s throat-pouch choking down a bass.

On days like today, even if I see something that would make a good picture, I don't take it out of my pouch. I take my time as I walk... here, between the sky above and the earth below... Its rhythm follows the pace of my steps. A song emerges from my parted lips. As I look around at the world, out from myself, I continue walking. But I carried on my strange song and dance all the way home. I never took out my camera.

Be the best of anything you get into. If you want to be a whore, it's your life. Be a damn good one. Don't chippy at anything. Anything worth having is worth working for.' It was her version of Polonius' speech to Laertes. With that wisdom in my pouch, I was to go out and buy my future.

Kolya kissed her wide eyebrows, her neck, every square centimeter of her nose. The parts she mentally amputated were the ones he most adored. Beneath the sheets they were pale and naked and they pouched their hands in the warmth between their stomachs. They pressed together with a need that is never satisfied because we can't trade atoms how hard we thrust. Our hearts may skip but our substance remains fixed. We're not gaseous no matter how we sit to cloud together inseparably. Nothing less would have satisfied Kolya, nothing less than obliterating himself in her was sufficient.

What every girl should know: Your vagina is disgusting. It smells like the underside of a kangaroo pouch and he doesn't want to touch you because of the grossness. But thankfully, NEW brand douche, perfected by a leading gynecologist, gently cleanses and refreshes, making you feel feminine and special. Because what's more special than a vage filled with vinegar and chemical daisies? Also available in SPICY CINNAMON TACO, for the girl adventurer.

The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys. I was not joking when I told them to dig into their own pouches. It may not be possible to do away with government – sometimes I think that government is an inescapable disease of human beings. But it may be possible to keep it small and starved and inoffensive – and can you think of a better way than by requiring the governors themselves to pay the costs of their antisocial hobby?

That twat is a few syrup pouches shy of a waffle. You shouldn't trust anything she says.

Sturdy swimmers afloat on water-couch Beneath the heavy bill their treasured pouch Fishes pray for them to fly far away Inland lakes toast to the Pelican’s day

If I could, I'd dave whiffs of beautiful nights in a little pouch on my chest, the way the indians keep the scents of the prairie.

Oh, yes,” Samantha purred. “I got a coin pouch in my nussy. You make that drink right, and I’ll let you use those sexy claws of yours to... dig it out.” “In your what?

Do not make the mistake of assuming that because we’re women we’ll eventually want children. We aren’t kangaroos—this internal pouch isn’t one we all feel instinctively compelled to fill.

Drualt cleared his throat and began the traditional stanzas from Drualt. They hadn’t been said at weddings in his day, naturally, but they’d been said in Bamarre for centuries now. “Drualt took Freya’s warm hand, Her strong hand, Her sword hand, And pressed it to his lips, Pressed it . . .” Drualt’s voice wavered. He pulled a handkerchief from the pouch at his waist and blew his nose. Then he began again.

What if she remembered the fortress wrong? What if she climbed up and the sun did not come out? What if it did, but it felt the same as any other sunrise? She could not risk tainting that precious memory. She clutched the locket around her neck, the one Radu had given her to replace her old leather pouch. Inside were the dusty remains of an evergreen sprig and a flower from these same mountains. She had carried them with her as talismans through the lands of her enemies. Now she was home, and still in the land of her enemies. She would climb that peak one day, soon. When it was all hers. She would come back, and she would rebuild the fortress to honor Wallachia.

I withdrew a small card from the pouch. The front of it was filled with lines of elegant, hand-lettered script. "What does it say?" Dad asked, leaning forward. "The Four Remembers of Life," I read. "Number one: Remember, you are unique. Number two: Remember, there is purpose to your life. Number three: Remember you are free to choose what you are and what you become. And number four: Remember, you are not alone.

Every morning Mrs Eglantine sat at the round bamboo bar of the New Pacific Hotel and drank her breakfast. This consisted of two quick large brandies, followed by several slower ones. By noon breakfast had become lunch and by two o'clock the pouches under and above Mrs Eglantine's bleared blue eyes began to look like large puffed pink prawns.

And even childhood was no good any more—not the way it was. No worry then but how to find a good stone, not round exactly but flattened and water-shaped, to use in a sling pouch cut from a discarded shoe. Where did all the good stones go, and all simplicity?

Raimon was amused to see that the countess Carenza grew more beautiful by the day: her expression has softened and the pouches under her eyes had disappeared. She carried herself confidently, secure in the knowledge that she was fascinating to one pair of eyes at least.

This quote is not original to me but is a hard sure way to peace and forgiveness: Stones in a pouch rub each other smooth.

I seek for myself the immunity of the diplomatic pouch.

Had to pee his pants for a role, and when they tried to attach the pouch to him so that it would look real,, he shouted, 'No, I do all my own stunts. I got this.

At sunrise of the third day, I saw the corpse’s chest begin to rise and fall and I heard the first intake of breath—a rasp like water being poured into a leather pouch.

I am the kangaroo of love. Do you question it? You can take your skepticism and stuff it straight down my pouch.

An airplane crossed the sky, and she imagined its interior-people packed in rows like eggs in a carton, the chemical smell of the toilets, pretzels in foil pouches, cans hiss-popping open, black oval of night sky embedded in the rattling walls. How strange that something so drab, so confined, so stifling with sour exhalations and the fumes of indifferent machinery might be mistaken for a star.

The arms dutifully hand me a cup of coffee. It’s kind of cool that the arms will hand me a cup when there’s gravity, but a pouch when there isn’t. I’ll remember this when writing up the Hail Mary’s Yelp review.

She didn’t need to see more people, she took money from hundreds of people at the bakery, men who stared at her indecently, old women who tweezed coins from cloth pouches as if picking a nose with thumb and finger.

You are wearing a leather outfit with a sword, gun, and fanny pack strapped to your person. What about that look says nice girl?” I ignored the dig on my pouch. “Yes, fine. But I fit in. And you are still not liked. I win.

It was like hundreds of roads he'd driven over - no different - a stretch of tar, lusterless, scaley, humping toward the center. On both sides were telephone poles, tilted this way and that, up a little, down... Billboards - down farther an increasing clutter of them. Some road signs. A tottering barn in a waste field, the Mail Pouch ad half weathered away. Other fields. A large wood - almost leafless now - the bare branches netting darkly against the sky. Then down, where the road curved away, a big white farmhouse, trees on the lawn, neat fences - and above it all, way up, a television aerial, struck by the sun, shooting out bars of glare like neon. ("Thompson")

I seen but little of this world, Except my corner of it; The city never drew me, For I knew I could not love it. What I loved best was watching The garden getting ripe And a pouch of sweet tobacco And my old cob pipe. What I loved best was a harvest moon Before a frosty morn And lamplight in the barn lot And them long, straight rows of corn. I was plain and country; That's where it starts and ends, But nobody loved her family more, Or treasured more her friends. I loved the changing seasons, And looking for life's reasons, And honey in the comb, and home.

Our stomach sits much higher in our abdomen than we think. It begins just below the left nipple and ends below the bottom of the ribcage on the right. Any pain felt farther down than this lopsided little pouch cannot be stomachache. Often, when people say they have stomach problems, the trouble is actually in the gut. The heart and the lungs sit on top of the stomach. This explains why we find it more difficult to breathe deeply after eating a lot.

I wanted you to love me." "And do you think that love is a gift? Like a bauble, or a trinket? Something I can reach into a pouch and present to you?" "I gave all my love to you, years ago." "Did you? I did not realize... On reflection, while I cannot give you the thing itself, I could give you a dream of my love." "I already have that, my lord.

She fumbled in her apron pocket for her tobacco pouch. “Has anyone got a light?” she inquired. A couple of actors produced bundles of matches. Nanny nodded, and put the pouch away. “Good,” she said. “Now, has anyone got any tobacco?

(One bag contained the Confederate flag and a pouch filled with Virginia soil. Georgiana intended to give birth with the flag draped symbolically above the bed and the soil placed underneath to ensure that the baby was a true Virginian.)

The disorientation of meeting one’s sagging contemporaries, memories of a younger face crashing into the reality of jowls, under-eye pouches, unexpected lines, and then the terrible realization that one probably looks just as old as they do. Do you remember when we were young and gorgeous? Clark wanted to ask. Do you remember when everything seemed limitless?

Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion. I

Life before death,” Teft said, wagging a finger at Kaladin. “The Radiant seeks to defend life, always. He never kills unnecessarily, and never risks his own life for frivolous reasons. Living is harder than dying. The Radiant’s duty is to live. “Strength before weakness. All men are weak at some time in their lives. The Radiant protects those who are weak, and uses his strength for others. Strength does not make one capable of rule; it makes one capable of service.” Teft picked up spheres, putting them in his pouch. He held the last one for a second, then tucked it away too. “Journey before destination. There are always several ways to achieve a goal. Failure is preferable to winning through unjust means. Protecting ten innocents is not worth killing one. In the end, all men die. How you lived will be far more important to the Almighty than what you accomplished.

The dead man's companions at the counter started to their feet, but halted as Voynod with great aplomb turned to face them. "Take care, you dunghill cocks! Notice the fate of your fellow! He died by the power of my magic blade, which is of inexorable metal and cuts rock and steel like butter. Behold!" And Voynod struck out at a pillar. The blade, striking an iron bracket, broke into a dozen pieces. Voynod stood non-plussed, but the bravo's companions surged forward. "What then of your magic blade? Our blades are ordinary steel but bite deep!" And in a moment Voynod was cut to bits. The bravos now turned upon Cugel. "What of you? Do you wish to share the fate of your comrade?" "By no means!" stated Cugel. "This man was but my servant, carrying my pouch. I am a magician; observe this tube! I will project blue concentrate at the first man to threaten me!" The bravos shrugged and turned away. Cugel secured Voynod's pouch, then gestured to the landlord. "Be so good as to remove these corpses; then bring a further mug of spiced wine.

The silver-haired elf woman Yaela had knelt by the side of the grave, taken an acorn from the pouch on her belt, and planted it directly above Wyrden’s chest. And then the twelve elves, Arya included, sang to the acorn, which took root and sprouted and grew twining upward, reaching and grasping toward the sky like a clutch of hands. When the elves had finished, the leafy oak stood twenty feet high, with long strings of green flowers at the end of every branch. Eragon had thought it was the nicest burial he had ever attended.

She say Fon people keep a spirit tree and it always be a Baybob. Your granny-mauma wrapped the trunk with thread she begged and stole. She took me out there and say, 'We gon put our spirits in the tree so they safe from harm.' We kneel on her quilt from Africa, nothing but a shred now, and we give our spirits to the tree. She say our spirits live in the tree with the birds, learning to fly. She told me, 'If you leave this place, go get your spirit and take it with you.' We used to gather up leaves and twigs from round the tree and stick 'me in pouches to wear at our necks.

There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half restored. For the white hair and moustache were changed to dark irongrey. The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath. The mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran down over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.

JOHNNA: When a Cheyenne baby is born, their umbilical cord is dried and sewn into this pouch. Turtles for girls, lizards for boys. And we wear it for the rest of our lives. JEAN: Wow. JOHNNA: Because if we lose it, our souls belong nowhere and after we die our souls will walk the Earth looking for where we belong.

So we climb," Meg announced. "Hello?" I said miserably. "Paralysed former god here." Grover grimaced at Meg. "Duct tape?" "Duct tape," she agreed. May the gods defend me from heroes with duct tape. And heroes always seem to have duct tape. Meg produced a roll from a pouch on her gardening belt. She propped me into a sitting position, back-to-back with Grover, then proceeded to loop tape under our armpits, binding me to the satyr as if I were a hiking pack. With Meg's help, Grover staggered to his feet, jostling me around so I got random views of the walls, the floor, Meg's face and my own paralysed legs manspreading beneath me.

Germany no longer feels bound by the Locarno Treaty. In the interest of the primitive rights of its people to the security of their frontier and the safeguarding of their defence, the German Government has re-established, as from today, the absolute and unrestricted sovereignty of the Reich in the demilitarized zone!” Now the six hundred deputies, personal appointees all of Hitler, little men with big bodies and bulging necks and cropped hair and pouched bellies and brown uniforms and heavy boots, little men of clay in his fine hands, leap to their feet like automatons, their right arms upstretched in the Nazi salute, and scream Heils, the first two or three wildly, the next twenty-five in unison, like a college yell. Hitler raises his hand for silence. It comes slowly. Slowly the automatons sit down. Hitler now has them in his claws. He appears to sense it. He says in a deep, resonant voice: “Men of the German Reichstag!” The silence is utter.

He unwrapped his pack and the first thing he did was to count his matches.  There were sixty-seven.  He counted them three times to make sure.  He divided them into several portions, wrapping them in oil paper, disposing of one bunch in his empty tobacco pouch, of another bunch in the inside band of his battered hat, of a third bunch under his shirt on the chest.  This accomplished, a panic came upon him, and he unwrapped them all and counted them again.  There were still sixty-seven. He

His hand reached for his throat, fumbling for the small leather pouch he always wore about his neck. Inside he kept the bones of the four fingers his king had shortened for him, on the day he made Davos a knight. My luck. His shortened fingers patted at his chest, groping, finding nothing. The pouch was gone, and the fingerbones with them. Stannis could never understand why he’d kept the bones. “To remind me of my king’s justice,” he whispered through cracked lips. But now they were gone.

And then I saw something which filled my very soul with horror. There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half restored. For the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey. The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath. The mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran down over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.

On a regular basis. we're forced to explore with clinical detachment our most private pouch and, pressing it, to impress ourselves with its anatomical reality.

I was a big believer in bags-within-bags. So, I had a blue pouch for pens, a pink pouch for emergency meds and band-aids, an orange polka dot pouch for cereal bars and chewing gum…

It seemed extravagantly cruel that there was no biological system for keeping Molly with me always, no way of carrying her around in a pouch above my pelvis like a joey.

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls?

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

Jess liked all of her liquor to taste like aluminum pouches of Capri Sun.

it contains a zippered pouch holding forty thousand dollars in hundreds and twenties.

He puts the pouch with forty thousand dollars in the trunk,

The pouch was bulging with the curiosity of anything.

Hasu dug up his kritter pouch from the sand, and Edwyn played tug of war with an anemone for Barclay’s spare trousers.

I am a withered pouch of low blood pressure in a deteriorating caul of papery skin covered in thick black arm hair.

Gabriel tapped an empty leather pouch at his belt. “Behold the purse in which I keep my fucks for what you think of me.

I raised the lid, and laid it back against the wall. And then I saw something which filled my very soul with horror. There lay the Count, but looking as if his youth had been half restored. For the white hair and moustache were changed to dark iron-grey. The cheeks were fuller, and the white skin seemed ruby-red underneath. The mouth was redder than ever, for on the lips were gouts of fresh blood, which trickled from the corners of the mouth and ran down over the chin and neck. Even the deep, burning eyes seemed set amongst swollen flesh, for the lids and pouches underneath were bloated. It seemed as if the whole awful creature were simply gorged with blood. He lay like a filthy leech, exhausted with his repletion.

No, thank you, I had some supper at Waterloo, but I'll smoke a pipe with you with pleasure." I handed him my pouch, and he seated himself opposite to me and smoked for some time in silence.

He polished the mud off the coin—little enough even if gold—and pulled out his own purse. Now there was an empty bladder. He dropped the thin disk of metal into the leather mouth and stared down at its lonely glint. He sighed and tucked the pouch away. Now he had a hope for bandits to steal again. Now he had a reason to fear. He reflected on his new burden, so great for its weight,

I took the thin magazine from the pouch in front of me and began to thumb through it. I felt self-conscious, as if I shouldn't be there. My mind began to wander, as I knew it would, back to the boonies. I was on patrol again. Monaco was on point. Peewee and Walowick followed him. Lobel and Brunner were next, then Johnson, the sixty cradled in his arm as if it were a child. We were walking the boonies, past rice paddies, toward yet another hill. I was in the rear, and for some reason I turned back. Behind me, trailing the platoon, were the others. Brew, Jenkins, Sergeant Dongan, Turner, and Lewis, the new guys, and Lieutenant Carroll. I knew I was mixing my prayers, but it didn't matter. I just wanted God to care for them, to keep them whole. I knew they were thinking about me and Peewee.

Witcher,’ Three Jackdaws suddenly said, ‘I want to ask you a question.’ ‘Ask it.’ ‘Why don’t you turn back?’ The Witcher looked at him in silence for a moment. ‘Do you really want to know?’ ‘Yes, I do,’ Three Jackdaws said, turning his face towards Geralt. ‘I’m riding with them because I’m a servile golem. Because I’m a wisp of oakum blown by the wind along the highway. Tell me, where should I go? And for what? At least here some people have gathered with whom I have something to talk about. People who don’t break off their conversations when I approach. People who, though they may not like me, say it to my face, and don’t throw stones from behind a fence. I’m riding with them for the same reason I rode with you to the log drivers’ inn. Because it’s all the same to me. I don’t have a goal to head towards. I don’t have a destination at the end of the road.’ Three Jackdaws cleared his throat. ‘There’s a destination at the end of every road. Everybody has one. Even you, although you like to think you’re somehow different.’ ‘Now I’ll ask you a question.’ ‘Ask it.’ ‘Do you have a destination at the end of the road?’ ‘I do.’ ‘Lucky for you.’ ‘It is not a matter of luck, Geralt. It is a matter of what you believe in and what you serve. No one ought to know that better than… than a witcher.’ ‘I keep hearing about goals today,’ Geralt sighed. ‘Niedamir’s aim is to seize Malleore. Eyck of Denesle’s calling is to protect people from dragons. Dorregaray feels obligated to something quite the opposite. Yennefer, by virtue of certain changes which her body was subjected to, cannot fulfil her wishes and is terribly undecided. Dammit, only the Reavers and the dwarves don’t feel a calling, and simply want to line their pockets. Perhaps that’s why I’m so drawn to them?’ ‘You aren’t drawn to them, Geralt of Rivia. I’m neither blind nor deaf. It wasn’t at the sound of their name you pulled out that pouch. But I surmise…’ ‘There’s no need to surmise,’ the Witcher said, without anger. ‘I apologise.’ ‘There’s no need to apologise.

There where it smells of shit it smells of being. Man could just as well not have shat, not have opened the anal pouch, but he chose to shit as he would have chosen to live instead of consenting to live dead.

Sevro does not want to go without me. He does not understand why Cassius needs his help to mop up the remainders of Diana. I tell him the truth. “Cassius has a pouch in his boot, the one Lilath gave him. I need you to steal it.” His eyes do not judge. Not even now. There are times when I wonder what I did to earn such loyalty, then others when I try not to press my luck by looking the gift horse in the mouth. That

And there's my poor endeavoring human desk at which I sit so often during the day, facing south, the papers and pencils and the coffee cup with sprigs of alpine fir and a weird orchid of the heights wiltable in one day– My Beechnut gum, my tobacco pouch, dusts, pitiful pulp magazines I have to read, view south to all those snowy majesties– The waiting is long. On Starvation Ridge little sticks Are trying to grow.

Also, I have a pouch below my belly, whereas I’d always had a thin waist before. Now there’s this situation down there, low and grabbable. If it had a zipper, you could store stuff in there, like a fanny pack.

It’s my earliest memory: arranging my brother’s marbles into words. It is summer, and I am beneath the oak that stands in the back corner of the work yard. Thomas, ten, whom I love above all the others, has taught me nine words: SARAH, GIRL, BOY, GO, STOP, JUMP, RUN, UP, DOWN. He has written them on a parchment and given me a pouch of forty-eight glass marbles with which to spell them out, enough to shape two words at a time.

Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport. Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle: Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped, Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words; Has peeled a wand and called it by a name; Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe The eyed skin of a supple oncelot; And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole, A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch, Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye, And saith she is Miranda and my wife: 'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge; Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared, Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame, And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge In a hole o' the rock and calls him Caliban; A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.

That trip was like all my life, distilled: a compulsion to thrust myself toward adventure, offset by a longing to crawl into the pouch of some benevolent kangaroo who would take me bounding, protected, through life.

As he talked, Aphros drew some wicked-looking metal spikes from his belt. Leo was afraid he had said something wrong, but Aphros pulled some seaweed yarn from his pouch and started knitting. “Go on,” he urged. “Don’t stop.

Mister Lenk,’ he forced through his teeth, ‘you are by far the most disgusting. ’ Lenk weighed the pouch in his hand, hearing the jingle of coins within. Nodding, he tucked it into his own belt. ‘That’s why I’m the leader.

You would think that I'd be a bit more comfortable talking about sex, now that I'd had it and all. You would also think that at my age I would be able to successfully insert the straw into a Capri sun juice pouch. I was 0-2 there.

The streets were full of hurrying people who walked as though they had been wound up and were directed by some unseen control. Many of the men carried dispatch cases and brief cases and I gripped mine with a sense of importance. And here and there I saw Negroes who hurried along with leather pouches strapped to their wrists. They reminded me fleetingly of prisoners carrying their leg irons as they escaped from a chain gang. Yet they seemed aware of some self-importance, and I wished to stop one and ask him why he was chained to his pouch. Maybe they got paid well for this, maybe they were chained to money. Perhaps the man with rundown heels ahead of me was chained to a million dollars!

Turn back time to half-past innocence. But that clock’s lying on its side, hour hand spinning wildly, in a dirty Dublin alley near a gold makeup pouch half concealed by trash, and an address carved in stone by a dying woman. Broken.

I rubbed my head against his chest like a cat soliciting attention and marking her territory. I couldn't get close enough. I wished humans had a pouch like kangaroos.. I would happily climb in and let Griff tote me around everywhere.

Jean Valjean had this peculiarity, that he carried, as one might say, two beggar's pouches: in one he kept his saintly thoughts; in the other the redoubtable talents of a convict. He rummaged in the one or the other, according to circumstances.

Hands-Off Parenting Envy the kangaroo. That pouch setup is extraordinary: The baby crawls out of the womb when it is about two inches long, gets into the pouch, and proceeds to mature. I’d have a baby if it would develop in my handbag. RITA RUDNER

An idea once seized, I fell to work. "Human Justice" rushed before me in novel guise, a red, random beldame, with a rms akimbo. I saw her in her house, the den of confusion: servants called to her for orders or help which she did not give; beggars stood at her door waiting and starving unnoticed; a swarm of children, sick and quarrelsome, crawled round her feet, and yelled in her ears appeals for notice, sympathy, cure, redress. The honest woman cared for none of these things. She had a warm seat of her own by the fire, she had her own solace in a short black pipe, and a bottle of Mrs. Sweeny's soothing syrup; she smoked and she sipped, and she enjoyed her paradise; and whenever a cry of the suffering souls about her 'pierced her ears too keenly--my jolly dame seized the poker or the hearth-brush: if the offender was weak, wronged, and sickly, she effectually settled him: if he was strong, lively, and violent, she only menaced, then plunged her hand in her deep pouch, and flung a liberal shower of sugar-plums.

Leader blinked, they went into huddle. Shortly he turned and said, “We don’t have much. Will you do it for five Kong dollars apiece?” Six of them—“No. Ought not to ask a court to judge elimination at that price.” They huddled again. “Fifty dollars, Judge?” “Sixty. Ten each. And another ten from you, Tish,” I said to girl. She looked surprised, indignant. “Come, come!” I said. “Tanstaafl.” She blinked and reached into pouch. She had money; types like that always have. I collected seventy dollars, laid it on desk, and said to tourist, “Can match it?

SIR DANIEL was a large man, broad of shoulder...his eyes were rather small above the double pouches and the look they fixed on Dalgliesh gave nothing away. Looking at his bland, unrevealing face sparked off for Dalgliesh a childhood memory. A multi-millionaire, in an age when a million meant something, had been brought to dinner at the rectory by a local landowner who was one of his father's churchwardens. He too had been a big man, affable an easy guest. The fourteen-year-old Adam [Dalgliesh] had been disconcerted to discover during the dinner conversation that he was rather stupid. He had then learned that the ability to make a great deal of money in a particular way is a talent highly advantageous to it possessor and possibly beneficial to others, but implies no virtue, wisdom or intelligence beyond expertise in a lucrative field.

Anastasia...' The name seemed strange to me now, and her hair's rich smell. What was it I held, and called Anastasia? A slender bagful of meaty pipes and pouches, grown upon with hairs, soaked through with juices, strung up on jointed sticks, the whole thing pushing, squirting, bubbling, flexing, combusting, and respiring in my arms; doomed soon enough to decompose into its elements, yet afflicted in the brief meanwhile with mad imaginings, so that, not content to jelly through the night and meld, ingest, divide, it troubled its sleep with dreams of passedness, of love.

The disorientation of meeting one’s sagging contemporaries, memories of a younger face crashing into the reality of jowls, under-eye pouches, unexpected lines, and then the terrible realization that one probably looks just as old as they do. Do you remember when we were young and gorgeous?

[According to 1348 theorists, poisoning of Christian water by Jews was the cause of Black Death.] Even the poison used to contaminate the Christian water supply was described in meticulous detail. It was "about the size of an egg," except when it was the "size of a nut" or a "large nut," "a fist" or "two fists"- and it came packaged in "a leather pouch," except when it was packaged in "linen cloth," "a rag," or a "paper coronet"; and the poison was variously made from lizards, frogs, and spiders- when it was not made from the hearts of Christians and from Holy Communion wafers.

Aye. One coin that I can best you one time.” “You doona have any coins.” “I do. You just havnae given them to me yet.” Darach puffed out a laugh as Lachlan took a coin from his pouch and tossed it to her with a cocky grin. “Here’s a free one, sweetling. Keep it out, though. I’ll be winning it back shortly.

It looks as though your shop is doing well,” Luka said, gazing around. “Could you help me find a gift for a lady friend of mine?” My heart plunged to my green satin slippers, and I had to stare down at Azarte for a minute, petting him hard. Naturally Luka had a “lady friend.” She was probably nobly born: the daughter of a count or a duke. I imagined her having thick dark hair and clear skin, and was bitterly jealous. “Of c-course,” I stammered after a time. “What would she like? A gown? A sash?” If she came in for a fitting, I decided to “accidentally” poke her with every pin. “Hmm, well, she is wearing a lovely gown today,” he said. “Although no sash.” So. He’d already seen her today, and it was not yet noon. I rubbed Azarte’s ears furiously. “What color is her gown?” “It’s sort of green, with more green, and the design looks like stained glass windows,” he said. “It’s very beautiful, like her.” I stopped petting the dog and looked up at him, not sure what I was hearing. “Oh?” My heart thumped painfully. “Yes, so perhaps she doesn’t need a sash after all. No sense gilding the lily.” He gave a melancholy sigh. “But I really would love to give her a very special gift. I was hoping if I did, she might give me a kiss in return, instead of the brotherly hugs I always get instead.” I raised my eyebrows, trying for casual interest even though I could feel my pulse beating in the blood rushing to my cheeks. “I know!” Luka snapped his fingers. “Forget a sash. I’ll give her this!” And with a flourish, he pulled a roll of parchment from his belt pouch. More confused than ever, I unrolled the paper and read. It was a letter from a priest in the Southern Counties, addressed to King Caxel. In it the priest begged for a grant of money. They had recently built a large chapel, the finest that had ever been dedicated to the Triune Gods in that region, and it had only been completed the year before. “But we do need another grant from the crown,” the priest wrote. “For a most heinous act of vandalism has taken place. Our rose-glass window, which illuminates the Triple Altar in glorious colors pleasing to the gods, has been stolen. It was removed from its frame the night before last, and not a pane of it can be found.” “Shardas?” I looked up at Luka with my eyes brimming. “Shardas!” “I have a pair of horses waiting outside,” Luka said. “We can be at Feniul’s cave by nightfall.” I threw my arms around him again, and this time I gave him the kiss he’d been waiting for.

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time...the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war

Now Flush knew what men can never know—love pure, love simple, love entire; love that brings no train of care in its wake; that has no shame; no remorse; that is here, that is gone, as the bee on the flower is here and is gone. Today the flower is a rose, tomorrow a lily; now it is the wild thistle on the moor, now the pouched and portentous orchid of the conservatory. So variously, so carelessly Flush embraced the spotted spaniel down the alley, and the brindled dog and the yellow dog—it did not matter which. To Flush it was all the same. He followed the horn wherever the horn blew and the wind wafted it. Love was all; love was enough. No one blamed him for his escapades.

Tomino’s Hell Elder sister vomits blood, younger sister’s breathing fire while sweet little Tomino just spits up the jewels. All alone does Tomino go falling into that hell, a hell of utter darkness, without even flowers. Is Tomino’s big sister the one who whips him? The purpose of the scourging hangs dark in his mind. Lashing and thrashing him, ah! But never quite shattering. One sure path to Avici, the eternal hell. Into that blackest of hells guide him now, I pray— to the golden sheep, to the nightingale. How much did he put in that leather pouch to prepare for his trek to the eternal hell? Spring is coming to the valley, to the wood, to the spiraling chasms of the blackest hell. The nightingale in her cage, the sheep aboard the wagon, and tears well up in the eyes of sweet little Tomino. Sing, o nightingale, in the vast, misty forest— he screams he only misses his little sister. His wailing desperation echoes throughout hell— a fox peony opens its golden petals. Down past the seven mountains and seven rivers of hell— the solitary journey of sweet little Tomino. If in this hell they be found, may they then come to me, please, those sharp spikes of punishment from Needle Mountain. Not just on some empty whim Is flesh pierced with blood-red pins: they serve as hellish signposts for sweet little Tomino. —translated by David Bowles June 29, 2014

would be funny if Mr. Piccolo resembled a piccolo, but he doesn’t. Actually, he’s quite round. More like a bass fiddle. He has a big pouch of a belly that stretches the oversized turtleneck sweaters he always wears. He has a round face, too. He’s mostly bald and his scalp shines like a bowling ball. He wears square eyeglasses, which are always sliding down

While sculpting me nude completes your Fuck-It List for now, I happened to add a very important item to mine today, one that my life would not be complete without.” I got down on one knee and opened the pouch, taking out the two-carat, pear-shaped halo diamond engagement ring. “Charlotte Darling, will you help me make my ultimate bucket-list wish come true? Will you be my wife?

If, when he disappeared through his portal, he went to Faery, time moves differently there.” “That’s what V’lane said.” I emptied the cash drawer, counted the bills into stacks, then began punching in numbers on an adding machine. The store wasn’t computerized, which made bookkeeping a real pain in the neck. He gave me a look. “The two of you are getting downright chatty, aren’t you, Miss Lane? When did you last see him? What else did he tell you?” “I’m asking the questions tonight.” One day I was going to write a book: How to Dictate to a Dictator and Evade an Evader, subtitled How to Handle Jericho Barrons. He snorted. “If an illusion of control comforts you, Ms. Lane, by all means, cling to it.” “Jackass.” I gave him a look modeled on his own. He laughed, and I stared, then blinked and looked away. I finished rubber-banding the cash, put it in a leather pouch, and punched the final numbers in, running the day’s total. For a moment there he hadn’t looked dark, forbidding, and cold, but dark, forbidding, and . . . warm. In fact, when he’d laughed he’d looked . . . well . . . kind of hot. I grimaced. Obviously I’d eaten something bad for lunch.

But for now, it even has a Gandhian approach to sabotage; before a police vehicle is burnt for example, it is stripped down and every part is cannibalized. The steering wheel is straightened out and made into a bharmaar barrel, the rexine upholstery stripped and used for ammunition pouches, the battery for solar charging. Should I write a play I wonder- Gandhi Get Your Gun. Or will I be lynched?

Always, during both the low points and high points in our lives, if we needed to escape, we went bush. We were so lucky to share a passion for wildlife experiences. Tasmania, the beautiful island state off the southern coast of Australia, became one of our favorite wildlife hot spots. We so loved Tassie’s unique wildlife and spectacular wilderness areas that we resolved to establish a conservation property there. Wes and Steve scouted the whole island (in between checking out the top secret Tasmanian surf spots), looking for just the right land for us to purchse. Part of our motivation was that we did not want to see the Tasmanian devil go the way of the thylacine, the extinct Tasmanian tiger. A bizarre-looking animal, it was shaped like a large log, with a tail and a pouch like a kangaroo. It had been pushed off of the Australian mainland (probably by the dingo) thousands of years ago, but it was still surviving in Tasmania into the 1930s. There exists some heartbreaking black-and-white film footage of the only remaining known Tassie tiger in 1936, as the last of the thylacines paces its enclosure. Watching the film is enough to make you rededicate your life to saving wildlife.

When Pa went into the Big Woods, he always made sure that the bullet pouch was full of bullets, and that the tin patch box and the box of caps were with it in his pockets. The powder horn and a small sharp hatchet hung at his belt and he carried the gun ready loaded on his shoulder. He always reloaded the gun as soon as he had fired it, for, he said, he did not want to meet trouble with an empty gun.

The red light throbbed in time to her own pulse; she panted in a rhythm begun by its fluctuations; the sweat that ran into her eyes was red, and it burned. And now she had something else to worry about, for she had touched the tender skin of her throat with her surka-sticky fingers when she pulled at the thong that held the dragon stone’s pouch, it burned too. But it’s throb had nothing to do with the tower. It throbbed angrily and self-consciously, and her mind was distracted enough to think, This is typical. On my way to gods know what unspeakable doom, and I break out in a rash. But it lightened the evil a little; she did not notice this as such, only that she toiled on in a slightly better spirit. Idly she pulled one end of her collar loose and pressed it against the surka rash, which didn’t help at all.

He stuck his left arm through the loop of a bungee sling and stretched it across his back. At one end there was a magazine pouch; on the other hung a Brügger & Thomet MP9. The machine pistol weighed less than three pounds and even with the built-in suppressor was only ten inches in length. It fit perfectly beneath his arm, but Steele knew that it wouldn’t slip the notice of the security guards at the door

Quiet! Go over there, fifty paces away from the wood, and you’ll find one of those poor soldiers from our regiment who’ve just been sabred; take his musket and cartridge-pouch. Be sure not to take ‘em from one of the wounded, take the musket and cartridge-pouch of someone who’s good and dead, and hurry, so you don’t get shot by our men.’ Fabrice ran off, returning very quickly with a musket and cartridge-pouch.

Well, I can talk that way if you like,” Dar Oakley said. “But talking can’t change that. Can’t change she into he.” She slid down the muddy lake-edge to a pool where she’d seen a thing growing whose leaves or root she wanted. When she had it and broke a leaf and sniffed it, she put a handful into a skin pouch slung over her bare chest. “It’s because I can’t be called ‘neither,’ ” she said. “But that’s what I am.

For to conceive the sum of Joseph’s efforts for master and steward one must add that he had every evening to say good-night to Mont-kaw, and every night in different phrases. For that service he had originally been bought; and Mont-kaw had been too favourably impressed with the first instance to forgo the pleasure in the sequel. He was a poor sleeper, as the pouches under his eyes betrayed. Only hardly did the overburdened brain relax from the occupations of the day and find the good highway to slumber. The kidneys too were bad and helped to make the transit difficult. So that he could well use a few sweet words and mellifluous murmurings at the end of the day. Thus Joseph might never neglect to come before him at night and drop soothing speech in his ears—which, besides everything else, had to be prepared during the day, for it must have comeliness of form.

If one has not a head of steel it will burst; if he has not within it a brain of liquid quicksilver, he will not obtain in it a looking-glass; if he has not a skin of tin he will not be able to endure the toil of education; if he has not leaden posteriors he will not be able to endure the sedentary life of the student, and will indeed lose everything; and without a golden pouch whence could a man obtain leisure, whence masters living and dead?

Beatniks are a youth cult that fight against society by wearing sunglasses even in inclement weather. This signifies their dislike of 'the sun', their sworn enemy. In the Beatniks' Manifesto they declare they will, one day, destroy the sun by using enormous pelicans that will trap it in their under-chin beak pouches and fly off to some distant place like the Hebrides and bury it beneath a pile of farmyard manure, and then the beatniks shall inherit the earth.

Whale bones were honed into chisels and barbed tips for harpoons and spears; dolphins’ jawbones made fine combs. The skin and sinewy tendons from seals and whales offered string for bows, slingshots, and fishing nets. Seal bladders served as pouches. Plants were woven into baskets. Bark was carved into containers—and used as torches. Shells became everything from scoops to knives sharp enough to cut through bone. And the hides from seals and sea lions provided

HA,” Snowfall snorted. “I only have, like, seven non-magical weapons on me. We need THOUSANDS of weapons to drive these dragons away!” Lynx glanced down at her claws, as if she’d only just noticed that those were the only weapons she’d brought. “Really? Seven weapons?” “Yes, of course!” Snowfall said. She pointed to the spear on her back. “Spear.” Then to the knives in the sheaths at her wrists. “Knife, knife.” Then to the sheaths under her wings, the concealed pockets of her chain mail armor, and the pouch around her neck. “Knife, knife, throwing stars, poison.” She didn’t mention the other three hidden weapons, just in case Lynx was actually working for Crystal or the NightWings or had her own ulterior motives and was maybe planning to attack Snowfall as soon as she had her away from the castle unprotected. Well, ha ha, Snowfall had foiled her with those five guards! And the extra secret weaponry. And the totally being onto her!

Courage is not something you have, like a sum of money, more or less in a pouch—it cannot be lost, like money spilling out. Courage is inherent in all creatures; it is the quality that keeps them alive, because they endure. It is courage, Paksenarrion, that splits the acorn and sends the rootlet down into soil to search for sustenance. You can damage the creature, yes, and it may die of it, but as long as it lives and endures, each living part has as much courage as it can hold.

Hey, Hailey, want a bracelet?” Pearl asked. Everyone turned to look at her. Stilted conversation was one thing. Gifts were quite another. “Uh…sure,” Hailey said. She turned and unzipped the small pouch on her backpack. As she dug through it, Ria whacked Pearl on the arm. “You’re gonna make her jewelry?” Ria whispered. “Ow! What’s the big deal?” Pearl whispered back. “That girl does not deserve presents,” Ria replied. “Well, I can’t take it back now,” Pearl said, looking miserable.

I checked the position the car was facing. Grover had pulled off the road directly into the brunt of the storm, facing west. I felt the dampness on my right shoulder where the rain had forced its way through the cracked weather stripping around the car windows. “Yes.” “Hnnh,” Dan said. “Waziya. There is a message.” “What do you mean?” I said, slightly disconcerted. “Waziya is not good. He is cold and cruel.” “Waziya?” “The wind from the north.” Dan was pulling a small pouch from inside his shirt. It

The room was small, lit by two naked bulbs in wall recesses, and bare of anything except for two solid wooden posts the height of a man and four feet apart. In each post, at just below shoulder height, was set a large iron ring. There were two other men already waiting, both leathermen. Len indicated each in turn. 'Rick and Sam.' The two men regarded Mike with arms folded. Rick was in his late twenties, a tall, blond biker, his hair hanging down well past his shoulders. Under his leather waistcoat he was bare-chested, his spare, pale flesh covered with tattoos of skulls, burning angels and other biker motifs, the twining reds, blues and blacks extending along both arms as well. He was wearing black leather gloves and impenetrable black shades. Shaven-headed Sam was older, shorter and stockier, built like a rugby player. A leather harness stretched across the barrel of his chest, its steel circlet buried in wiry hair. Through his leather chaps Mike could see a sizeable pouch, heavy with its contents.

So, yes, I should have just surrendered, cinched the entitled scion her little pouch of entitlements, put in my calls to the name shufflers, done my duty. I thought about that moment later on. Maybe I got extratuned to the concept of bitchhood once I became Purdy’s, though I must confess I’ve always found such usage of the term for female dogs distasteful. My mother was a second-wave feminist. I wasn’t comfortable saying “cunt” until I was twenty-three, at which point, admittedly, I couldn’t hold back for a time.

The dark, uncontrolled, primordial part of a person informs them that they are alive. Living free entails accepting a slew of wildness. All wild animals act by instinct. Human instinct and intuitive thought allow us to gain insights and new beliefs, which human rationalization confirms. Logic and intuition work well together, if both sources of mental visualization are drawn from when most apropos. Planning carefully should never replace the spirit for improvisation. Acting recklessly is no substitute for measured evaluation. Nonetheless, a dash of craziness makes most people more endearing than the calculating banker whose ledger driven life causes them to see life in terms of money pouches. Letting go of all conceptions of what is, and dreaming what could be, is a form of delusion. Knowing the difference between fantasy and reality does not mean that a person should disdain imaginative acts. I need to recognize when it is time to stop woolgathering and come back down to reality and work in the pebbly bedrock of the here and now.

We sat on the floor, newspaper- wrapped presents in our laps, imagining all the wonderful things inside. We opened them carefully, peeling back layers of newsprint until we reached the boxes, sliced the Scotch tape with our fingernails, lifted the flaps, and each of us found . . . One MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat— turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce, in foil pouches); one Hershey bar; and a handful of bullet casings, because this is what my men are getting today. And one more thing: a scrap of paper with a hand-scrawled I love you, Dad.

A Zentangle® Art Kit To make your own little art kit you will need: Zentangle squares cut from black and white paper A Micron 01 and 05 Pen A Sakura White Gel Pen A White Pencil A Soft Lead Pencil A Box to house all your treasures. All you have to do is gather your materials and put them in a box. You can decorate the box as you like. Maybe you would like to draw Zentangles all over it. I like to carry my kit in my purse and so a box is quite cumbersome. I use a small plastic pouch. It very easily houses all my Zentangle squares, pencils and pens.

It didn’t get sick. Someone”—Iran cleared her throat and went on huskily—“someone came here, got the goat out of its cage, and dragged it to the edge of the roof.” “And pushed it off?” he said. “Yes.” She nodded. “Did you see who did it?” “I saw her very clearly,” Iran said. “Barbour was still up here fooling around; he came down to get me and we called the police, but by then the animal was dead and she had left. A small young-looking girl with dark hair and large black eyes, very thin. Wearing a long fish-scale coat. She had a mail-pouch purse. And she made no effort to keep us from seeing her. As if she didn’t care.” “No, she didn’t care,” he said. “Rachael wouldn’t give a damn if you saw her; she probably wanted you to, so I’d know who had done it.” He kissed her. “You’ve been waiting up here all this time?” “Only for half an hour. That’s when it happened; half an hour ago.” Iran, gently, kissed him back. “It’s so awful. So needless.” He turned toward his parked car, opened the door, and got in behind the wheel. “Not needless,” he said. “She had what seemed to her a reason.” An android reason, he thought.

Della sank down beside the creek, waiting for the flash of white fur that would herald Tidda's arrival. The first time she'd come across Tidda she'd been no more than a joey hardly big enough to be out of her mother's pouch. Perhaps because she was different, with her strange lack of color and red eyes, the mob had rejected her. Charity reckoned it was the sign of the devil, a punishment or a curse from the Darkinjung ancestral spirits. That was nothing but a load of rubbish. Tidda was more beautiful than most because of the strange trick natures had played upon her.

Hagrid!” said Harry loudly. “There’s an owl —” “Pay him,” Hagrid grunted into the sofa. “What?” “He wants payin’ fer deliverin’ the paper. Look in the pockets.” Hagrid’s coat seemed to be made of nothing but pockets — bunches of keys, slug pellets, balls of string, peppermint humbugs, teabags . . . finally, Harry pulled out a handful of strange-looking coins. “Give him five Knuts,” said Hagrid sleepily. “Knuts?” “The little bronze ones.” Harry counted out five little bronze coins, and the owl held out his leg so Harry could put the money into a small leather pouch tied to it. Then he flew off through

The train company does not have that much to carry, but the rest of us are loaded down like pack animals—we carry the full kit with blanket and ground sheet, steel helmet and heavy winter coat thrown over it. We have a full ammunition pouch on the belt, on our backs the kitbag with the field canteen, and on the other side the folded entrenching tool. A gas mask is slung around our necks, resting on the chest, and the heavy rifle swings back and forth from its strap round the neck. Lastly, a ditty bag is carried in one hand, filled with clean socks, underwear and similar items. The whole lot weighs about 40lb.

The evolution of the gluten-free diet illustrates how attempts to control consumption are swiftly countered by modern market forces, just one more example of the challenges inherent in our dopamine economy. There are many other modern examples of previously taboo drugs being transformed into socially acceptable commodities, often in the guise of medicines. Cigarettes became vape pens and ZYN pouches. Heroin became OxyContin. Cannabis became “medical marijuana.” No sooner have we committed to abstinence than our old drug reappears as a nicely packaged, affordable new product saying, Hey! This is okay. I’m good for you now.

There exists a sac of skin that distends when I'm tired, beneath my eye. Irreversible tissue damage. Something stretched too far, which has come back changed. I've thought of having it surgically corrected. Michael swears it's unnoticeable, the tiny pouch of loose skin. Yet not long ago, seeing me stare critically into a mirror one morning after a late night, he offered to pay to have it removed with lasers. I declined. I didn't tell him that I need it, in some perverse way. A reminder that you can never, for any reason or length of time, no matter how much you love or believe you love, change someone. That believing you can might end you.

Hermione," Harry said seriously, as he started to dig down into the red-velvet pouch again, "don't punish yourself when a bright idea doesn't work out. You've got to go through a lot of flawed ideas to find one that might work. And if you send your brain negative feedback by frowning when you think of a flawed idea, instead of realizing that idea-suggesting is good behavior by your brain to be encouraged, pretty soon you won't think of any ideas at all." Harry put down two heart-shaped chocolates beside the book. "Here, have another chocolate. Besides the one from earlier, I mean. This one is to reinforce your brain for generating a good candidate strategy.

Kennedy paused, fork between plate and mouth, and told Sidey, “You know, they have an atom bomb on the third floor of the embassy.” Sidey brushed off the remark, “Sure, why not?” No, really, Kennedy replied. The president told Sidey that U.S. intelligence believed the Soviets had smuggled atomic bomb components into Washington using diplomatic pouches and assembled it in the embassy’s attic. “If things get too bad and war is inevitable,” he said, “they will set it off and that’s the end of the White House and the rest of the city.” Sidey laughed, still not believing such a fantastic rumor. Kennedy replied, “That’s what I’m told. Do you know something that I don’t?” •

Eleven finally allowed to dye his own eggs, and then only in one color: red. All over the house red eggs gleam in lengthening, solstice rays. Red eggs fill bowls on the dining room table. They hang from string pouches over doorways. They crowd the mantel and are baked into loaves of cruciform tsoureki. But now it is late afternoon; dinner is over. And my brother is smiling. Because now comes the one part of Greek Easter he prefers to egg hunts and jelly beans: the egg-cracking game. Everyone gathers around the dining table. Biting his lip, Chapter Eleven selects an egg from the bowl, studies it, returns it. He selects another. “This looks like a good one,” Milton says, choosing his own egg. “Built like a Brinks truck.” Milton holds his egg up. Chapter Eleven prepares to attack. When suddenly my mother taps my father on the back. “Just a minute, Tessie. We’re cracking eggs here.” She taps him harder. “What?” “My temperature.” She pauses. “It’s up six tenths.” She has been using the thermometer. This is the first my father has heard of it. “Now?” my father whispers. “Jesus, Tessie, are you sure?” “No, I’m not sure. You told me to watch for any rise in my temperature and I’m telling you I’m up six tenths of a degree.” And, lowering her voice, “Plus it’s been thirteen days since my last you know what.” “Come on, Dad,” Chapter Eleven pleads.

The Drunken Fisherman" Wallowing in this bloody sty, I cast for fish that pleased my eye (Truly Jehovah's bow suspends No pots of gold to weight its ends); Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout Rose to my bait. They flopped about My canvas creel until the moth Corrupted its unstable cloth. A calendar to tell the day; A handkerchief to wave away The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm Pouching a bottle in one arm; A whiskey bottle full of worms; And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms To mete the worm whose molten rage Boils in the belly of old age? Once fishing was a rabbit's foot-- O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot, Let suns stay in or suns step out: Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout-- The fisher's fluent and obscene Catches kept his conscience clean. Children, the raging memory drools Over the glory of past pools. Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls Its bloody waters into holes; A grain of sand inside my shoe Mimics the moon that might undo Man and Creation too; remorse, Stinking, has puddled up its source; Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage. This is the pot-hole of old age. Is there no way to cast my hook Out of this dynamited brook? The Fisher's sons must cast about When shallow waters peter out. I will catch Christ with a greased worm, And when the Prince of Darkness stalks My bloodstream to its Stygian term . . . On water the Man-Fisher walks.

They are wearing new uniforms and greatcoats; their boots are water-tight and fit well; their rifles are good and their pouches full of ammunition. They are all fresh and unused. Compared to these fellows we are a perfect band of robbers. Our uniforms are bleached with the mud of years, with the rains of the Argonne, the chalk of Champagne, the bog waters of Flanders; our greatcoats ragged and torn by barbed wire, shell splinters and shrapnel, cobbled with crude stitches, stiff with clay and in some instances even with blood; our boots broken, our rifles worn out, our ammunition almost at an end; we are all of us dirty, all alike gone to wrack, all weary. The war has passed over us like a steam roller.

He stroked the filly's neck, and she sniffed at the pouch on his belt, then turned her head away. "She wants to let me know she doesn't care that I've apples in here.No, doesn't matter a bit to her." He looped the line around the fence and took an apple and his knife from his pocket. Idly he cut it in half. "Maybe I'll just offer this token to this other pretty lady here." He held out the apple to Keeley, and Betty gave him a solid rap with her head that rammed him into the fence. "Now she wants my attention. Would you like some of this then?" He shifted, held the apple out. Betty nipped it from his palm with dignified delicacy. "She loves me." "She loves your apples," Keeley commented. "Oh,it's not just that. See here." Before Keeley could evade-could think to-he cupped a hand at the back of her neck, pulled her close and rubbed his lips provocatively over hers. Betty huffed out a breath and butted him. "You see?" Brian let his teeth graze lightly before he released Keeley. "Jealous.She doesn't care to have me give affection to another woman." "Next time kiss her and save yourself a bruise." "It was worth it.On both counts." "Horses are more easily charmed than women, Donnelly." She plucked the apple out of his hand, bit in. "I just like your apples," she told him, and strolled away. "That one's as contrary as you are." He nuzzled Betty's cheek as he watched Keeley walk to her stables. "What is it that makes me find contrary females so appealing?

Drizzt revealed a small pouch hanging on a fine silver chain around his neck. “A few baubles,” he explained. “I need no riches and doubt that I would be able to carry much out of here, anyway! A few baubles will suffice.” He sifted through the portion of the pile he had just freed from the ice, uncovering a gem-encrusted sword pommel, its black adamantite hilt masterfully sculpted into the likeness of the toothed maw of a hunting cat. The lure of the intricate workmanship pulled at Drizzt, and with trembling fingers he slid the rest of the weapon out from under the gold. A scimitar. Its curving blade was of silver, and diamond-edged. Drizzt raised it before him, marveling at its lightness and perfect balance. “A few baubles…and this,” he corrected.

I go to one of my favorite Instagram profiles, the.korean.vegan, and I watch her last video, in which she makes peach-topped tteok. The Korean vegan, Joanne, cooks while talking about various things in her life. As she splits open a peach, she explains why she gave up meat. As she adds lemon juice, brown sugar, nutmeg, a pinch of salt, cinnamon, almond extract, maple syrup, then vegan butter and vegan milk and sifted almond and rice flour, she talks about how she worried about whitewashing her diet, about denying herself a fundamental part of her culture, and then about how others don't see her as authentically Korean since she is a vegan. I watch other videos by Joanne, soothed by her voice into feeling human myself, and into craving the experiences of love she talks of and the food she cooks as she does. I go to another profile, and watch a person's hands delicately handle little knots of shirataki noodles and wash them in cold water, before placing them in a clear oden soup that is already filled with stock-boiled eggs, daikon, and pure white triangles of hanpen. Next, they place a cube of rice cake in a little deep-fried tofu pouch, and seal the pouch with a toothpick so it looks like a tiny drawstring bag; they place the bag in with the other ingredients. "Every winter my mum made this dish for me," a voice says over the video, "just like how every winter my grandma made it for my mum when she was a child." The person in the video is half Japanese like me, and her name is Mei; she appears on the screen, rosy cheeked, chopsticks in her hand, and sits down with her dish and eats it, facing the camera. Food means so much in Japan. Soya beans thrown out of temples in February to tempt out demons before the coming of spring bring the eater prosperity and luck; sushi rolls eaten facing a specific direction decided each year bring luck and fortune to the eater; soba noodles consumed at New Year help time progress, connecting one year to the next; when the noodles snap, the eater can move on from bad events from the last year. In China too, long noodles consumed at New Year grant the eater a long life. In Korea, when rice-cake soup is eaten at New Year, every Korean ages a year, together, in unison. All these things feel crucial to East Asian identity, no matter which country you are from.

Look, Ella..." He stared down at his hands, opening and closing his fists. I waited. I think we might have a little bit of a misunderstanding here... You're a nice girl and all,but... I really like you,but I don't really like you... The unmistakable notes of "Don't Stop Believin'," electronic version, suddenly filled my room, followed by the audible and visual treat of my phone vibrating its way across my desk toward Alex's hip. I flung myself on it. In a clear-headed moment, I would have just turned it off. As it was, I did manage a "Sorry!" to Alex before flipping it open/ "Are you dead?" Frankie demanded from the other end. "No." I edged away from Alex, who was very politely pretending to be interested in the biscotti. "Are you even sick?" "No," I admitted. "Of course not. Okay, I'm coming over." "No!" I cringed as Alex jumped a little. I took a breath. "God, no. Don't. It's wedding central here. Sienna will have you trying up birdseed in little purple pouches." There was a long pause. "You okay, Marino?" "Yeah," I managed. "Truth time.Where were you today?" Could I do it? Could I actually use the word cramps with Alex Bainbridge standing three feet away? I could only imagine how the actual truth would sound. Here, in bed, hiding because I thought I'd made the queen of all fools out of myself e-mailing Alex Bainbridge over the break, and I can't even tell you about it because I promised...But it's okay-or maybe not-because he's here now, in my bedroom. ust about to tell me I made the queen of all fools out of myself. Sure. Come on over.The two of you can bond over my idiocy.

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone’s heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone’s hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don’t really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn’t have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

It was the very fact of the note, stuck on my windshield on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota, hundreds of miles from where Fatback had lived and, apparently, died. That, and the small deerskin pouch of tobacco that was tied to it. Fatback was a black Lab — a good dog — who had belonged to Dan, an elderly Lakota man who lived far out on the Dakota plains. Years before, as a result of a book of elders’ memories I had done with students at Red Lake, Dan had contacted me to come out to his home to speak with him. His request was vague, and I had been both skeptical and apprehensive. But, reluctantly, I had gone, and it had changed my life. We had worked together, traveled together, and created a book together in which the old man told his stories and memories and thoughts about Indian people and our American land.

Swift came to the table and bowed politely. “My lady,” he said to Lillian, “what a pleasure it is to see you again. May I offer my renewed congratulations on your marriage to Lord Westcliff, and…” He hesitated, for although Lillian was obviously pregnant, it would be impolite to refer to her condition. “…you are looking quite well,” he finished. “I’m the size of a barn,” Lillian said flatly, puncturing his attempt at diplomacy. Swift’s mouth firmed as if he was fighting to suppress a grin. “Not at all,” he said mildly, and glanced at Annabelle and Evie. They all waited for Lillian to make the introductions. Lillian complied grudgingly. “This is Mr. Swift,” she muttered, waving her hand in his direction. “Mrs. Simon Hunt and Lady St. Vincent.” Swift bent deftly over Annabelle’s hand. He would have done the same for Evie except she was holding the baby. Isabelle’s grunts and whimpers were escalating and would soon become a full-out wail unless something was done about it. “That is my daughter Isabelle,” Annabelle said apologetically. “She’s teething.” That should get rid of him quickly, Daisy thought. Men were terrified of crying babies. “Ah.” Swift reached into his coat and rummaged through a rattling collection of articles. What on earth did he have in there? She watched as he pulled out his pen-knife, a bit of fishing line and a clean white handkerchief. “Mr. Swift, what are you doing?” Evie asked with a quizzical smile. “Improvising something.” He spooned some crushed ice into the center of the handkerchief, gathered the fabric tightly around it, and tied it off with fishing line. After replacing the knife in his pocket, he reached for the baby without one trace of self-consciusness. Wide-eyed, Evie surrendered the infant. The four women watched in astonishment as Swift took Isabelle against his shoulder with practiced ease. He gave the baby the ice-filled handkerchief, which she proceeded to gnaw madly even as she continued to cry. Seeming oblivious to the fascinated stares of everyone in the room, Swift wandered to the window and murmured softly to the baby. It appeared he was telling her a story of some kind. After a minute or two the child quieted. When Swift returned to the table Isabelle was half-drowsing and sighing, her mouth clamped firmly on the makeshift ice pouch. “Oh, Mr. Swift,” Annabelle said gratefully, taking the baby back in her arms, “how clever of you! Thank you.” “What were you saying to her?” Lillian demanded. He glanced at her and replied blandly, “I thought I would distract her long enough for the ice to numb her gums. So I gave her a detailed explanation of the Buttonwood agreement of 1792.” Daisy spoke to him for the first time. “What was that?” Swift glanced at her then, his face smooth and polite, and for a second Daisy half-believed that she had dreamed the events of that morning. But her skin and nerves still retained the sensation of him, the hard imprint of his body. “The Buttonwood agreement led to the formation of the New York Stock and Exchange Board,” Swift said. “I thought I was quite informative, but it seemed Miss Isabelle lost interest when I started on the fee-structuring compromise.” “I see,” Daisy said. “You bored the poor baby to sleep.” “You should hear my account of the imbalance of market forces leading to the crash of ’37,” Swift said. “I’ve been told it’s better than laudanum.

Fafhrd said, “Our motives for being here seem identical.” “Seem? Surely must be!” the Mouser answered curtly, fiercely eyeing this potential new foe, who was taller by a head than the tall thief. “You said?” “I said, ‘Seem? Surely must be!’ ” “How civilized of you!” Fafhrd commented in pleased tones. “Civilized?” the Mouser demanded suspiciously, gripping his dirk tighter. “To care, in the eye of action, exactly what’s said,” Fafhrd explained. Without letting the Mouser out of his vision, he glanced down. His gaze traveled from the belt and pouch of one fallen thief to those of the other. Then he looked up at the Mouser with a broad, ingenuous smile. “Sixty-sixty?” he suggested. The Mouser hesitated, sheathed his dirk, and rapped out, “A deal!” He knelt abruptly, his fingers on the drawstrings of Fissif’s pouch. “Loot you Slivikin,” he directed.

breath, opened the pouch, and pulled out the parchment. Dearest Sister, I trust you received my earlier letter explaining why it was not safe for you to return. My mouth parted. Judas had written before—why had I not received it? The danger to you in Galilee has not fully passed, though it has lessened. Antipas is fully consumed by his lust to be named King of the Jews by Rome. Last week we came into Judea on our way to Jerusalem where we will remain through Passover. Antipas has no rule here. Come to us with all haste. Sail with Lavi to Joppa and make your way to Bethany where we lodge at the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. The kingdom is close at hand. Vast throngs of people in Galilee and Judea now hail Jesus as the Messiah. He believes the fullness of time is upon us and he wishes you by his side. He compelled me to tell you that he is safe. I, though, must

They are encumbered with secret pregnancies that never come to term. There are no terms, you don’t see. They drag their swollen brains about with them everywhere; hidden in pleats and drapes and cunning pouches; and the unbearable keep kicking, kicking under the dura mater. It is no bloody wonder they have headaches. Hold them to your ear, lumpy as they are, and pale; that roar you hear is the surge of the damned unspeakable being kept back. Stone will not dilate will not stretch will not tear— it shivers. Cleaves. Moves uneasily. At its core the burgundy lava simmers, making room. There are volcanoes at the bottom of the sea. Those pretty green things swaying are their false hair. Deliver us? Ram inward the forceps of the patriarchal paradigm and your infernal medicine and bring forth the ancient offspring with their missing mouths? I think not. Not bloody likely. (20th

THE Andersons lived in a lovely clapboard house at the corner of Washington and Main, a few blocks past the hubbub of stores and businesses, where the town settled into private residences for the well-to-do. Beyond the wide front porch, where Mr. and Mrs. Anderson liked to sit in the evenings, the man scooping into his silk tobacco pouch and the woman squinting at her needlework, were the parlor, dining room, and kitchen. Bessie spent most of her time on that first floor, chasing after the children, preparing meals, and tidying up. At the top of the staircase were the bedrooms—Maisie and little Raymond shared theirs—and the second washroom. Raymond took a long nap in the afternoon and Bessie liked to sit in the window seat as he settled into his dreams. She could just make out the top two floors of the Griffin Building, with its white cornices that blazed in the sunlight.

Eleven finally allowed to dye his own eggs, and then only in one color: red. All over the house red eggs gleam in lengthening, solstice rays. Red eggs fill bowls on the dining room table. They hang from string pouches over doorways. They crowd the mantel and are baked into loaves of cruciform tsoureki. But now it is late afternoon; dinner is over. And my brother is smiling. Because now comes the one part of Greek Easter he prefers to egg hunts and jelly beans: the egg-cracking game. Everyone gathers around the dining table. Biting his lip, Chapter Eleven selects an egg from the bowl, studies it, returns it. He selects another. “This looks like a good one,” Milton says, choosing his own egg. “Built like a Brinks truck.” Milton holds his egg up. Chapter Eleven prepares to attack. When suddenly my mother taps my father on the back. “Just a minute, Tessie. We’re cracking eggs here.” She taps him harder. “What?” “My temperature.” She pauses. “It’s up six tenths.” She has been using the thermometer. This is the first my father has heard of it. “Now?” my father whispers. “Jesus, Tessie, are you sure?” “No, I’m not sure. You told me to watch for any rise in my temperature and I’m telling you I’m up six tenths of a degree.” And, lowering her voice, “Plus it’s been thirteen days since my last you know what.” “Come on, Dad,” Chapter Eleven pleads. “Time out,” Milton says. He puts his egg in the ashtray. “That’s my egg. Nobody touch it until I come back.” Upstairs, in the master bedroom, my parents accomplish the act. A child’s natural decorum makes me refrain from imagining the scene in much detail. Only this: when they’re done, as if topping off the tank, my father says, “That should do it.” It turns out he’s right. In May, Tessie learns she’s pregnant, and the waiting begins.

Returning from that task and a visit to a nearby tepee,his eyes twinkled with pride as he offered a tiny rawhide pouch full of elk's teeth to Jesse. She caught her breath.Only two teeth were saved from each elk,and to be able to decorate an entire dress with teeth would put her in a position of envy in the tribe. "How long have you been saving these?" she asked. "I am a skillful hunter...it is nothing," came the proud reply. "I only had to get them back from Running Bear. He has been keeping them for me." Jesse worked all afternoon to add the elks' teeth to her new dress.She scolded herself for her pridefulness, but when she and Rides the Wind attended the celebration,she could not contain her happiness at the admiring glances that came her way.Rides the Wind could not have said what made him prouder-the wife he believed to be beautiful or the brave son who had earned the name Soaring Eagle.

The sagas, however, do not mention any entheogens in any context that I can discover: the special meal prepared for the seeress in Eiriks saga rauöa is of the hearts of animals and is eaten the night before her seiör is to occur. References to drinking in the Eddas (e.g. Mimir's well, the mead of poetry) are ambiguously metaphorical at best (though in a highly speculative mode, Steven Leto (2000) suggests that the use of both A. muscaria and R semilanceata may be represented metaphorically in various poems or sagas). Archaeology, however, gives some evidence, from several hundred henbane seeds found in the pouch of a burial considered to be that of a seeress (Price, pers. com.) and a very small number of cannabis seeds present in the Oseberg burial (often considered to be that of a seeress or a priestess), carefully Placed, Neil Price tells me, between the cushions and feathers piled by the bed.

No smartphones before high school. Parents should delay children’s entry into round-the-clock internet access by giving only basic phones (phones with limited apps and no internet browser) before ninth grade (roughly age 14). No social media before 16. Let kids get through the most vulnerable period of brain development before connecting them to a firehose of social comparison and algorithmically chosen influencers. Phone-free schools. In all schools from elementary through high school, students should store their phones, smartwatches, and any other personal devices that can send or receive texts in phone lockers or locked pouches during the school day. That is the only way to free up their attention for each other and for their teachers. Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. That’s the way children naturally develop social skills, overcome anxiety, and become self-governing young adults.

Chandler runs up the steps two at a time, and when he’s out of sight, I put the pipe to my own lips and draw. Chandler’s tobacco smells of cherries and chocolate. It is cased with molasses and topped with vanilla but tastes—as all smoke does—like smoke. Only a nicer, classier kind of smoke. The kind you pay for. The kind that comes in little pouches and smells of gentlemen and scholars. Tobacco. There is no soot or ash, and I don’t bother trying to blow a ring. I simply stand at the bottom of the stairs and let the cloud rise around my head as I ponder what Chandler has told me. “Give me that,” Mrs. Ney says from behind me. For one moment I think the housekeeper is going to scold me. But instead she adds, “You’re doing it wrong.” Then the wiry old silver-haired woman puts the pipe to her lips, hollows her cheeks, pulls, puffs, and blows out a perfect smoke ring that grows and grows as it rises until—a foot wide—it dissipates altogether.

But Harry had eyes only for the man who stood in the largest portrait directly behind the headmaster’s chair. Tears were sliding down from behind the half-moon spectacles into the long silver beard, and the pride and the gratitude emanating from him filled Harry with the same balm as phoenix song. At last, Harry held up his hands, and the portraits fell respectfully silent, beaming and mopping their eyes and waiting eagerly for him to speak. He directed his words at Dumbledore, however, and chose them with enormous care. Exhausted and bleary-eyed though he was, he must make one last effort, seeking one last piece of advice. “The thing that was hidden in the Snitch,” he began, “I dropped it in the forest. I don’t know exactly where, but I’m not going to go looking for it again. Do you agree?” “My dear boy, I do,” said Dumbledore, while his fellow pictures looked confused and curious. “A wise and courageous decision, but no less than I would have expected of you. Does anyone else know where it fell?” “No one,” said Harry, and Dumbledore nodded his satisfaction. “I’m going to keep Ignotus’s present, though,” said Harry, and Dumbledore beamed. “But of course, Harry, it is yours forever, until you pass it on!” “And then there’s this.” Harry held up the Elder Wand, and Ron and Hermione looked at it with a reverence that, even in his befuddled and sleep-deprived state, Harry did not like to see. “I don’t want it,” said Harry. “What?” said Ron loudly. “Are you mental?” “I know it’s powerful,” said Harry wearily. “But I was happier with mine. So…” He rummaged in the pouch hung around his neck, and pulled out the two halves of holly still just connected by the finest thread of phoenix feather. Hermione had said that they could not be repaired, that the damage was too severe. All he knew was that if this did not work, nothing would. He laid the broken wand upon the headmaster’s desk, touched it with the very tip of the Elder Wand, and said, “Reparo.” As his wand resealed, red sparks flew out of its end. Harry knew that he had succeeded. He picked up the holly and phoenix wand and felt a sudden warmth in his fingers, as though wand and hand were rejoicing at their reunion. “I’m putting the Elder Wand,” he told Dumbledore, who was watching him with enormous affection and admiration, “back where it came from. It can stay there. If I die a natural death like Ignotus, its power will be broken, won’t it? The previous master will never have been defeated. That’ll be the end of it.” Dumbledore nodded. They smiled at each other. “Are you sure?” said Ron. There was the faintest trace of longing in his voice as he looked at the Elder Wand. “I think Harry’s right,” said Hermione quietly. “That wand’s more trouble than it’s worth,” said Harry. “And quite honestly,” he turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, “I’ve had enough trouble for a lifetime.

Columbus’s fateful voyage was inspired by his study of a map by Paolo Toscanelli. But there was also the 1854 cholera outbreak in London, which killed hundreds of people until a physician, John Snow, drew a map demonstrating that a single contaminated water pump was the source of the illness, thereby founding the science of epidemiology. There was the 1944 invasion at Normandy, which succeeded only because of the unheralded contribution of mapmakers who had stolen across the English Channel by night for months before D-Day and mapped the French beaches.* Even the moon landing was a product of mapping. In 1961, the United States Geological Survey founded a Branch of Astrogeology, which spent a decade painstakingly assembling moon maps to plan the Apollo missions. The Apollo 11 crew pored over pouches of those maps as their capsule approached the lunar surface, much as Columbus did during his voyage. It seems that the greatest achievements in human history have all been made possible by the science of cartography.

Tanis answered. “You’ll slow us up if you don’t.” “The men in my tribe can travel for many days without sleep,” Riverwind said. His eyes were dull and glazed, and he seemed to stare at nothing. Tanis started to argue, then sighed and kept quiet. He knew that he could never truly understand the agony the Plainsman was suffering. To have friends and family—an entire life—utterly destroyed, must be so devastating that the mind shrank from even imagining it. Tanis left him and walked over to where Flint was sitting carving at a piece of wood. “You might as well get some sleep,” Tanis told the dwarf. “I’ll watch for a while.” Flint nodded. “I heard you yelling over there.” He sheathed his dagger and thrust the piece of wood into a pouch. “Defending Que-shu?” Tanis frowned at the memory. Shivering in the chill night, he wrapped his cloak around him, drew up his hood. “Any idea where we are?” he asked Flint. “The Plainsman says we’re on a road known as Sageway East,” the dwarf answered. He stretched out on the cold ground, dragging a blanket up around his shoulders.

Concealing himself from his father's wrath, behind the barn with wick turned low and his face two inches from the rough sawtooth page, Young Crawford had read of these atrocities in Beadle's Dime Library and fantasized about "calling out" the brutal old man who had sired him, "throwing down" on him with the "hogleg" he wore high on his hip, and blasting him into hell; after which he would go "on the scout," separating high-interest banks and arrogant railroad barons from their soiled coin and distributing it among their victims, or failing that into his own pockets and saddle pouches and living the "high Life" in saloons and "dance halls" where beautiful women in brief costumes admired his straight legs and square jaw and told him of the men who had "ruined" them (he knew not just how, only that the act was disgraceful and its effects permanent), whereupon he sought the blackguards out and deprived them of their lives. There was usually profit involved; invariably the men were thieves who lived in close proximity to their "ill-gotten booty," and didn't it say somewhere in Scripture that robbing a thief was no sin? If it didn't, it should have.

Seven P.M. Half an hour to go until we started the laborious task of getting kitted up again. It would take us at least an hour. By the end no part of our bodies or faces would be visible. We would be transformed into cocooned figures, huddled, awaiting our fate. I reached into the top pouch of my backpack and pulled out a few crumpled pages wrapped in plastic. I had brought them just for this moment. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall. But those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:29-31. I felt that this was all I really had up here. There’s no one else with enough extra strength to keep you safe. It really is just you and your Maker. No pretense, no fluff--no plan B. Over the next twenty-four hours, there would be a one in six chance of dying. That focuses the mind. And the bigger picture becomes important. It was time to look death in the eye. Time to acknowledge that fear, hold the hand of the Almighty, and climb on. And those simple Bible verses would ring round my head for the next night and day, as we pushed on ever higher.

All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages. At first the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms. Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel (145) And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school. And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, (150) Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, (155) Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon With spectacles on nose and pouch on side, His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide (160) For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, (165) Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. All

To Harry James Potter,’” he read, and Harry’s insides contracted with a sudden excitement, “‘I leave the Snitch he caught in his first Quidditch match at Hogwarts, as a reminder of the rewards of perseverance and skill.’” As Scrimgeour pulled out the tiny, walnut-sized golden ball, its silver wings fluttered rather feebly, and Harry could not help feeling a definite sense of anticlimax. “Why did Dumbledore leave you this Snitch?” asked Scrimgeour. “No idea,” said Harry. “For the reasons you just read out, I supposed . . . to remind me what you can get if you . . . persevere and whatever it was.” “You think this a mere symbolic keepsake, then?” “I suppose so,” said Harry. “What else could it be?” “I’m asking the questions,” said Scrimgeour, shifting his chair a little closer to the sofa. Dusk was really falling outside now; the marquee beyond the windows towered ghostly white over the hedge. “I notice that your birthday cake is in the shape of a Snitch,” Scrimgeour said to Harry. “Why is that?” Hermione laughed derisively. “Oh, it can’t be a reference to the fact Harry’s a great Seeker, that’s way too obvious,” she said. “There must be a secret message from Dumbledore hidden in the icing!” “I don’t think there’s anything hidden in the icing,” said Scrimgeour, “but a Snitch would be a very good hiding place for a small object. You know why, I’m sure?” Harry shrugged. Hermione, however, answered: Harry thought that answering questions correctly was such a deeply ingrained habit she could not suppress the urge. “Because Snitches have flesh memories,” she said. “What?” said Harry and Ron together; both considered Hermione’s Quidditch knowledge negligible. “Correct,” said Scrimgeour. “A Snitch is not touched by bare skin before it is released, not even by the maker, who wears gloves. It carries an enchantment by which it can identify the first human to lay hands upon it, in case of a disputed capture. This Snitch”—he held up the tiny golden ball—“will remember your touch, Potter. It occurs to me that Dumbledore, who had prodigious magical skill, whatever his other faults, might have enchanted this Snitch so that it will open only for you.” Harry’s heart was beating rather fast. He was sure that Scrimgeour was right. How could he avoid taking the Snitch with his bare hand in front of the Minister? “You don’t say anything,” said Scrimgeour. “Perhaps you already know what the Snitch contains?” “No,” said Harry, still wondering how he could appear to touch the Snitch without really doing so. If only he knew Legilimency, really knew it, and could read Hermione’s mind; he could practically hear her brain whirring beside him. “Take it,” said Scrimgeour quietly. Harry met the Minister’s yellow eyes and knew he had no option but to obey. He held out his hand, and Scrimgeour leaned forward again and placed the Snitch, slowly and deliberately, into Harry’s palm. Nothing happened. As Harry’s fingers closed around the Snitch, its tired wings fluttered and were still. Scrimgeour, Ron, and Hermione continued to gaze avidly at the now partially concealed ball, as if still hoping it might transform in some way. “That was dramatic,” said Harry coolly. Both Ron and Hermione laughed. “That’s all, then, is it?” asked Hermione, making to prise herself off the sofa. “Not quite,” said Scrimgeour, who looked bad-tempered now. “Dumbledore left you a second bequest, Potter.” “What is it?” asked Harry, excitement rekindling. Scrimgeour did not bother to read from the will this time. “The sword of Godric Gryffindor,” he said. Hermione and Ron both stiffened. Harry looked around for a sign of the ruby-encrusted hilt, but Scrimgeour did not pull the sword from the leather pouch, which in any case looked much too small to contain it.

Jesus stood and placed his hand on his mother’s arm. “Mother, you are right to ask these questions. James, you are right, too. Sitting here, we cannot know.” I sensed what he was about to say. My heart quickened. “I’ve decided to travel to Judea and discover for myself,” he said. “I will leave tomorrow at dawn.” • • • FOLLOWING HIM TO OUR ROOM, I was shaking with anger, furious that he would leave—no, furious that he could leave, while I had no such glorious freedom. I would remain here forever tending to yarn, animal dung, and wheat kernels. I wanted to scream at the sky. Did he not see how it wounded me to be left behind, to have no freedom to go and do, to always long for one day? When I stomped through the doorway, he was already preparing his travel pouch. He said, “Fetch salt-fish, bread, dried figs, cheese, olives, whatever can be spared from the storeroom. Enough for both of us.” Both? “You wish to take me with you?” “I want you to come, but if you’d rather stay here and milk the goat . . .” I flung myself at him, covering his face with kisses. “I would always take you with me if I could,” he said. “Besides, I wish to hear what you think of John the Immerser.” I packed our pouches with food and waterskins, tying them with leather thongs.

In front of me girls were entering and exiting the showers. The flashes of nakedness were like shouts going off. A year or so earlier these same girls had been porcelain figurines, gingerly dipping their toes into the disinfectant basin at the public pool. Now they were magnificent creatures. Moving through the humid air, I felt like a snorkeler. On I came, kicking my heavy, padded legs and gaping through the goalie mask at the fantastic underwater life all around me. Sea anemones sprouted from between my classmates’ legs. They came in all colors, black, brown, electric yellow, vivid red. Higher up, their breasts bobbed like jellyfish, softly pulsing, tipped with stinging pink. Everything was waving in the current, feeding on microscopic plankton, growing bigger by the minute. The shy, plump girls were like sea lions, lurking in the depths. The surface of the sea is a mirror, reflecting divergent evolutionary paths. Up above, the creatures of air; down below, those of water. One planet, containing two worlds. My classmates were as unastonished by their extravagant traits as a blowfish is by its quills. They seemed to be a different species. It was as if they had scent glands or marsupial pouches, adaptations for fecundity, for procreating in the wild, which had nothing to do with skinny, hairless, domesticated me.

During the silence that followed, I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way. The president of the United States just demanded the FBI director’s loyalty. This was surreal. To those inclined to defend Trump, they might consider how it would have looked if President Obama had called the FBI director to a one-on-one dinner during an investigation of senior officials in his administration, then discussed his job security, and then said he expected loyalty. There would undoubtedly be people appearing on Fox News calling for Obama’s impeachment in an instant. This, of course, was not something I could ever conceive of Obama doing, or George W. Bush, for that matter. To my mind, the demand was like Sammy the Bull’s Cosa Nostra induction ceremony—with Trump, in the role of the family boss, asking me if I have what it takes to be a “made man.” I did not, and would never. I was determined not to give the president any hint of assent to this demand, so I gave silence instead. We looked at each other for what seemed an eternity, but was maybe two seconds or so. I stared again at the soft white pouches under his expressionless blue eyes. I remember thinking in that moment that the president doesn’t understand the FBI’s role in American life or care about what the people there spent forty years building. Not at all.

Carolina removed an old and creased single sheet of paper, yellowed with age, that was now carefully protected in clear, acid-free paper. She handed it to Dara. "This was folded up in a parik-til, in the box with my birth certificate." "A parik-til?" asked Jennifer. "It is a small pouch that is filled with things to bring good luck or blessings." She held up the cloth bag and opened it for the girls to see. "Gypsies use them, but so do Native Americans as well as people from Central and South America and other parts of the world. When I got it, I had no idea what it was or what it meant. I knew the folded piece of paper was old and somehow had to be important to me since my birth parents had included it with the other things they wanted me to have." Carolina stood up and walked over to the window. How well she remembered the overwhelming emotions she felt when she first saw those pages of the Voynich Manuscript in the book she was reading, and then realizing that the ancient script was the same as what was on the piece of paper that had been preserved in the parik-til--her parik-til. "Anyway, as soon as I saw the photographs of some of the manuscript pages in the book I was reading, I made the connection immediately. It was the same script as what was on this sheet of paper that I had been given." All three FIGS crowded closely together to look at Carolina's treasure.

Socrates: So now you won't acknowledge any gods except the ones we do--Chaos, the Clouds, the Tongue--just these three? Strepsiades: Absolutely-- I'd refuse to talk to any other gods, if I ran into them--and I decline to sacrifice or pour libations to them. I'll not provide them any incense... I want to twist all legal verdicts in my favor, to evade my creditors. Chorus Leader: You'll get that, just what you desire. For what you want is nothing special. So be confident--give yourself over to our agents here. Strepsiades: I'll do that--I'll place my trust in you. Necessity is weighing me down--the horses, those thoroughbreds, my marriage--all that has worn me out. So now, this body of mine I'll give to them, with no strings attached, to do with as they like--to suffer blows, go without food and drink, live like a pig, to freeze or have my skin flayed for a pouch-- if I can just get out of all my debt and make men think of me as bold and glib, as fearless, impudent, detestable, one who cobbles lies together, makes up words, a practiced legal rogue, a statute book, a chattering fox, sly and needle sharp, a slippery fraud, a sticky rascal, foul whipping boy or twisted villain, troublemaker, or idly prattling fool. If they can make those who run into me call me these names, they can do what they want--no questions asked. If, by Demeter, they're keen, they can convert me into sausages and serve me up to men who think deep thoughts. Chorus: Here's a man whose mind's now smart, no holding back--prepared to start. When you have learned all this from me you know your glory will arise among all men to heaven's skies. Strepsiades: And what will I get out of this? Chorus: For all time, you'll live with me a life most people truly envy. Strepsiades: You mean one day I'll really see that? Chorus: Hordes will sit outside your door wanting your advice and more-- to talk, to place their trust in you for their affairs and lawsuits, too, things which merit your great mind. They'll leave you lots of cash behind. Chorus Leader: [to Socrates] So get started with this old man's lessons, what you intend to teach him first of all--rouse his mind, test his intellectual powers. Socrates: Come on then, tell me the sort of man you are--once I know that, I can bring to bear on you my latest batteries with full effect. Strepsiades: What's that? By god, are you assaulting me? Socrates: No--I want to learn some things from you. What about your memory? Strepsiades: To tell the truth, it works two ways. If someone owes me something, I remember really well. But if it's poor me that owes the money, I forget a lot. Socrates: Do you have a natural gift for speech? Strepsiades: Not for speaking--only for evading debt. Socrates: ... Now, what do you do if someone hits you? Strepsiades: If I get hit, I wait around a while, then find witnesses, hang around some more, then go to court.

The first human footprint on a sandy Australian beach was immediately washed away by the waves. Yet when the invaders advanced inland, they left behind a different footprint, one that would never be expunged. As they pushed on, they encountered a strange universe of unknown creatures that included a 200-kilogram, two-metre kangaroo, and a marsupial lion, as massive as a modern tiger, that was the continent’s largest predator. Koalas far too big to be cuddly and cute rustled in the trees and flightless birds twice the size of ostriches sprinted on the plains. Dragon-like lizards and snakes five metres long slithered through the undergrowth. The giant diprotodon, a two-and-a-half-ton wombat, roamed the forests. Except for the birds and reptiles, all these animals were marsupials – like kangaroos, they gave birth to tiny, helpless, fetus-like young which they then nurtured with milk in abdominal pouches. Marsupial mammals were almost unknown in Africa and Asia, but in Australia they reigned supreme. Within a few thousand years, virtually all of these giants vanished. Of the twenty-four Australian animal species weighing fifty kilograms or more, twenty-three became extinct.2 A large number of smaller species also disappeared. Food chains throughout the entire Australian ecosystem were broken and rearranged. It was the most important transformation of the Australian ecosystem for millions of years. Was it all the fault of Homo sapiens? Guilty

I saw five squaws under a bank for shelter. When the troops came up to them they ran out and showed their persons to let the soldiers know they were squaws and begged for mercy, but the soldiers shot them all. I saw one squaw lying on the bank whose leg had been broken by a shell; a soldier came up to her with a drawn saber; she raised her arm to protect herself, when he struck, breaking her arm; she rolled over and raised her other arm, when he struck, breaking it, and then left her without killing her. There seemed to be indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children. There were some thirty or forty squaws collected in a hole for protection; they sent out a little girl about six years old with a white flag on a stick; she had not proceeded but a few steps when she was shot and killed. All the squaws in that hole were afterwards killed, and four or five bucks outside. The squaws offered no resistance. Every one I saw dead was scalped. I saw one squaw cut open with an unborn child, as I thought, lying by her side. Captain Soule afterwards told me that such was the fact. I saw the body of White Antelope with the privates cut off, and I heard a soldier say he was going to make a tobacco pouch out of them. I saw one squaw whose privates had been cut out. … I saw a little girl about five years of age who had been hid in the sand; two soldiers discovered her, drew their pistols and shot her, and then pulled her out of the sand by the arm. I saw quite a number of infants in arms killed with their mothers.

Her hands found his buttocks, squeezing the densely textured flesh like a cat kneading with its paws, and Jack gasped against her hair. Emboldened, she slid one hand to his sex and touched him, her fingers closing tightly around the pulsing shape. He moved to his side to give her more access to his body, letting her touch him in any manner she wished. Gently she cupped the fuzz-covered pouch at the base of his sex, which felt cool and soft in comparison to the turgid shaft. Her fingertips traced over the ridges of veins that led all the way up to a broad tip. Experimentally she drew the pad of her thumb over the satiny bulb, and he clenched his hands in her hair and groaned. "Does that please you?" she whispered. It appeared that he found it difficult to speak. "Yes," he finally managed with a smothered laugh. "God, yes... if you please me any more, I will probably explode." He tilted her head back and brought their faces together, his features shimmering with a mist of sweat, his eyes ablaze with blue light. His large hand covered hers, helping to guide the head of his shaft to the thatch of soft, wiry curls between her legs. His palm moved to her thigh, hitching it over his hip so that she was spread open for him. "Rub it against yourself," he murmured. Amanda's entire body turned crimson. Slowly she took the head of his shaft in her fingers and brought it to the damp furrow between her thighs. Her breath rushed in harsh surges as she rubbed the tip of his organ over her intimate flesh, until the moisture from her own body made him slippery.

Swan had used them to send Sophie messages. He fished out the tiny velvet pouch and Sophie caught herself clutching her allergy remedy necklace. She still kept the silver moonlark pin that Calla had given her attached to the cord—a reminder of the friend she’d lost, and a symbol of the role she needed to figure out how to play. “Looks like we’re good,” Sandor said, handing her the small boobrie pin—a strange black bird with bright yellow tail feathers. “Can’t imagine that means anything important.” Sophie couldn’t either. Especially since the Black Swan had been annoyingly silent. No notes. No clues. No answers during their brief meetings. Apparently they were “regrouping.” And it was taking forever. At least the Council was doing something—setting up goblin patrols and trying to arrange an ogre Peace Summit. The Black Swan should at least be . . . Actually, Sophie didn’t know what they should be doing. That was the problem with having her friend join the enemy. “There you are!” a familiar voice said behind her. “I was starting to think you’d ditched us.” The deep, crisp accent was instantly recognizable. And yet, the teasing words made Sophie wish she’d turn and find a different boy. Fitz looked as cute as ever in his red Level Five uniform, but his perfect smile didn’t reach his trademark teal eyes. The recent revelations had been a huge blow for all of her friends, but Fitz had taken it the hardest. Both his brother and his best friend had run off with the Neverseen. Alvar’s betrayal had made Fitz wary—made him doubt every memory. But Keefe’s?

The hot case at a kombini features tonkatsu, fried chicken, menchikatsu (a breaded hamburger patty), Chinese pork buns, potato croquettes, and seafood items such as breaded squid legs or oysters. In a bit of international solidarity, you'll see corn dogs, often labeled "Amerikandoggu." One day for lunch I stopped at 7-Eleven and brought home a pouch of "Gold Label" beef curry, steamed rice, inarizushi (sushi rice in a pouch of sweetened fried tofu), cold noodle salad, and a banana. Putting together lunch for the whole family from an American 7-Eleven would be as appetizing as scavenging among seaside medical waste, but this fun to shop for and fun to eat. Instant ramen is as popular in Japan as it is in college dorms worldwide, and while the selection of flavors is wider than at an American grocery, it serves a predictable ecological niche as the food of last resort for those with no money or no time. (Frozen ramen, on the other hand, can be very good; if you have access to a Japanese supermarket, look for Myojo Chukazanmai brand.) That's how I saw it, at least, until stumbling on the ramen topping section in the 7-Eleven refrigerator case, where you can buy shrink-wrapped packets of popular fresh ramen toppings such as braised pork belly and fermented bamboo shoots. With a quick stop at a convenience store, you can turn instant ramen into a serious meal. The pork belly is rolled and tied, braised, chilled, and then sliced into thick circular slices like Italian pancetta. This is one of the best things you can do with pork, and I don't say that lightly.

When children are old enough to begin grasping the concepts of faith, they should make a habit of bringing home verses of Scripture from church. They should recite these verses to their parents at mealtime. Then they should write the verses down and put them in little pouches or pockets, just as they put pennies and other coins in a purse. Let the pouch of faith be a golden one. Verses about coming to faith, such as Psalm 51:5; John 1:29; Romans 4:25; and Romans 5:12, are like gold coins for that little pouch. Let the pouch of love be a silver one. The verses about doing good, such as Matthew 5:11; Matthew 25:40; Galatians 5:13; and Hebrews 12:6, are like silver coins for this pouch. No one should think they are too smart for this game and look down on this kind of child’s play. Christ had to become a man in order to train us. If we want to train children, then we must become children with them. I wish this kind of child’s play was more widespread. In a short time, we would see an abundance of Christian people rich in Scripture and in the knowledge of God. They would make more of these pouches, and by using them, they would learn all of Scripture. As it is now, people go to hear a sermon and leave again unchanged. They act like a sermon is only worth the time it takes to hear it. No one thinks about learning anything from it or remembering it. Some people listen to sermons for three or four years and still don’t learn enough to respond to a single question about faith. More than enough has been written in books, but not nearly enough has been driven into our hearts.

pouch, and pulled out the parchment. Dearest Sister, I trust you received my earlier letter explaining why it was not safe for you to return. My mouth parted. Judas had written before—why had I not received it? The danger to you in Galilee has not fully passed, though it has lessened. Antipas is fully consumed by his lust to be named King of the Jews by Rome. Last week we came into Judea on our way to Jerusalem where we will remain through Passover. Antipas has no rule here. Come to us with all haste. Sail with Lavi to Joppa and make your way to Bethany where we lodge at the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. The kingdom is close at hand. Vast throngs of people in Galilee and Judea now hail Jesus as the Messiah. He believes the fullness of time is upon us and he wishes you by his side. He compelled me to tell you that he is safe. I, though, must warn of dangers. The people are emboldened by the appearance of a Messiah and there is much talk of revolution. Jesus teaches each day in the Temple and the Jewish authorities set spies upon us the moment we enter the gates. If there is unrest, the Temple guard will most certainly arrest him. Jesus continues to believe God’s kingdom can come without swords. But I am both a Cynic and a Zealot. I only know we cannot let this moment pass. If it is necessary, I will do what I must this Passover to ensure the masses rise up and overthrow the Romans at last. The sacrifice of one for many. As I write, I sit in Lazarus’s courtyard where your friend Tabitha is playing the lyre, filling the air with the sweetest of music. Jesus has gone to the Mount of Olives to pray. He has missed you, Ana. He bids me give you his love. We await you. Your brother, Judas 10th day of Shebat Judas’s words slammed into me. I will do what I must this Passover . . . The sacrifice of one for many. What did he mean? What was he trying to tell me? I

It is a well known fact that warriors and wizards do not get along, because one side considers the other side to be a collection of bloodthirsty idiots who can't walk and think at the same time, while the other side is naturally suspicious of a body of men who mumble a lot and wear long dresses. Oh, say the wizards, if we're going to be like that, then, what about all those studded collars and oiled muscles down at the Young Men's Pagan Association? To which the heroes reply, that's a pretty good allegation coming from a bunch of wimpsoes who won't go near a woman on account, can you believe it, of their mystical power being sort of drained out. Right, say the wizards, that just about does it, you and your leather posing pouches. Oh yeah, say the heroes, why don't you... And so on. This sort of thing has been going on for centuries, and caused a number of major battles which have left large tracts of land uninhabitable because of magical harmonics. In fact, the hero even at this moment galloping towards the Vortex Plains didn't get involved in this kind of argument, because they didn't take it seriously, mainly because this particular hero was a heroine. A redheaded one. Now, there is a tendency at a point like this to look over one's shoulder at the cover artist and start going on at length about leather, thigh-boots and naked blades. Words like "full", "round" and even "pert" creep into the narrative, until the writer has to go and have a cold shower and lie down. Which is all rather silly, because any woman setting out to make a living by the sword isn't about to go around looking like something off the cover of the more advanced kind of lingerie catalogue for the specialised buyer. Oh well, all right. The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hun Ling's Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword.

Outside Caracas patriots hardly fared better. The “Legions of Hell”—hordes of wild and truculent plainsmen—rode out of the barren llanos to punish anyone who dared call himself a rebel. Leading these colored troops was the fearsome José Tomás Boves. A Spanish sailor from Asturias, Boves had been arested at sea for smuggling, sent to the dungeons of Puerto Cabello, then exiled to the Venezuelan prairie, where he fell in with marauding cowboys. He was fair-haired, strong-shouldered, with an enormous head, piercing blue eyes, and a pronounced sadistic streak. Loved by his feral cohort with a passion verging on worship, he led them to unimaginable violence. As Bolívar’s aide Daniel O’Leary later wrote, “Of all the monsters produced by the revolution . . . Boves was the worst.” He was a barbarian of epic proportions, an Attila for the Americas. Recruited by Monteverde but beholden to no one, Boves raised a formidable army of black, pardo, and mestizo llaneros by promising them open plunder, rich booty, and a chance to exterminate the Creole class. The llaneros were accomplished horsemen, well trained in the art of warfare. They needed few worldly goods, rode bareback, covered their nakedness with loincloths. They consumed only meat, which they strapped to their horses’ flanks and cured by the sweat of the racing animals. They made tents from hides, slept on earth, reveled in hardship. They lived on the open prairie, which was parched by heat, impassable in the rains. Their weapon of choice was a long lance of alvarico palm, hardened to a sharp point in the campfire. They were accustomed to making rapid raids, swimming on horseback through rampant floods, the sum of their earthly possessions in leather pouches balanced on their heads or clenched between their teeth. They could ride at a gallop, like the armies of Genghis Khan, dangling from the side of a horse, so that their bodies were rendered invisible, untouchable, their killing lances straight and sure against a baffled enemy. In war, they had little to lose or gain, no allegiance to politics. They were rustlers and hated the ruling class, which to them meant the Creoles; they fought for the abolition of laws against their kind, which the Spaniards had promised; and they believed in the principles of harsh justice, in which a calculus of bloodshed prevailed.

It's basty!" "There's definitely a soup underneath the crust. I see carrots. Gingko nuts. Mushrooms. And... Shark fin! Simmered until it's falling apart!" Aah! It's all too much! I-I don't care if I burn my mouth... I want to dive in right now! Mm! Mmmm! UWAAAAH! "Incredible! The shark fin melts into a soft wave of warm umami goodness on the tongue... ...with the crispy piecrust providing a delectably crunchy contrast!" "Mmm... this piecrust shows all the signs of the swordsmanship he stole from Eishi Tsukasa too." Instead of melting warm butter to mix into the flour, he grated cold butter into granules and blended them... ... to form small lumps that then became airy layers during the baking, making the crust crispier and lighter. A light, airy crust like that soaks up the broth, making it the perfect complement to this dish! "Judge Ohizumi, what's that "basty" thing you were talking about?" "It's a dish in a certain style of cooking that's preserved for centuries in Nagasaki- Shippoku cuisine." "Shippoku cuisine?" Centuries ago, when Japan was still closed off from the rest of the world, only the island of Dejima in Nagasaki was permitted to trade with the West. There, a new style of cooking that fused Japanese, Chinese and Western foods was born- Shippoku cuisine! One of its signature dishes is Basty, which is a soup covered with a lattice piecrust. *It's widely assumed that Basty originated from the Portuguese word "Pasta."* "Shippoku cuisine is already a hybrid of many vastly different cooking styles, making it a perfect choice for this theme!" "The lattice piecrust is French. Under it is a wonderfully savory Chinese shark fin soup. And the soup's rich chicken broth and the vegetables in it have all been thoroughly infused with powerfully aromatic spices... ... using distinctively Indian spice blends and techniques!" "Hm? Wait a minute. There's more than just shark fin and vegetables in this soup. This looks just like an Italian ravioli! I wonder what's in it? ?!" "Holy crap, look at it stretch!" "What is that?! Mozzarella?! A mochi pouch?!" "Nope! Neither! That's Dondurma. Or as some people call it... ... Turkish ice cream. A major ingredient in Dondurma is salep, a flour made from the root of certain orchids. It gives the dish a thick, sticky texture. The moist chewiness of ravioli pasta melds together with the sticky gumminess of the Dondurma... ... making for an addictively thick and chewy texture!

Edgerton/Assassins of Dreamsongs 169 The thick, frosty rain had long since subsided. A thin, fur clad figure peered through the thick, rain soaked foliage, just outside the army's encampment. The old Wizard's raspy whisper suddenly broke the silence. He shivered against the cold and swore to himself, as no eyes peered back at him from the forest. "Damnable rabbits!" He shook both stiff, old legs from the bitter cold of the forest night and from the puddle he had been standing in. The half-asleep guard paid no attention or tribute to the thin, fur clad bearer of wood, as he trudged through the camp's outer perimeter with a load of firewood in his arms. Slumber played a barbaric tune to the rhythms of the wind through the trees, while the army slept. Arkin readjusted the stack of wood held precariously in his arms, as he walked through the center of camp. His steady, silent pace took him around large mud puddles and before a roaring fire built beneath a rocky shelf. The large bonfire spit colorful sparks into the blackness and the cold of the night. His thin arms let fall the wood he had gathered, while he surveyed the camp. A long, walking stick suddenly appeared in his hand, as if by magic, while his senses took in all around him. The small, white haired Wizard leaned lazily on his heavy staff for a thoughtful moment, while his calculating eye took in the figures huddled on the ground around the small campfires. Edgerton/Assassins of Dreamsongs 170 In the forest, two sets of eyes suddenly blinked their timidity at Arkin and then disappeared. "Dull witted rabbits to save a future King," he grumbled. "Will wonders never cease." From an ancient leather pouch, old weathered hands drew a sparkling dust that seemed to be alive in its’ every glimmer. The old man watched its’ mesmerizing glow for a moment. Then, as if youth possessed his body once again, Arkin began dancing like a misguided wood nymph through the camp, sprinkling the powder on the slumbering figures. The old Wizard's ritualistic dance took him the complete circumference of the camp. An old Wizard smiled broadly, as he danced by the giant, blond Nobleman chained helplessly to a tree. Their eyes met in an exchanged mischievous greeting. Garish beamed his roguish smile at him, hope renewed once more. The blond, captive Nobleman had to fight back the mounting laughter in his throat, from the comforting sight of his mentor and the queer fairy dance he was performing. His gaze followed the little man's every step with pure delight. The little Grand Master Wizard slowed his mischievous fairy dance only long enough to retrieve the glimmering Sword of Damen from the pile of weapons in the center of the camp. Edgerton/Assassins of Dreamsongs 171 The Old Man carefully concealed the sword under his cloak and continued his fairy dance, while sprinkling the sparkling powder over the sleeping figures. Stooping low, he picked up a shield and flung it over his shoulder. Once again the old, fur clad Wizard’s movements brought him to where he had first entered the camp, through the forest. The half-asleep guard awakened faintly, to watch the little man in his queer dance, as he moved towards him. He made no effort to detain the Old One but merely stared in disbelief, as Arkin vanished into the forest once again. The guard stood dazed in disbelief at the sight and then rubbed away the sleep from his eyes, uncertain if he had been daydreaming.

Kode’s older sister, Kira, was leaning over a display of jewelry, fisting a jade-green necklace in one hand. Her nose was two inches from the Braetic across the table, the two exchanging intimidating glares. Eena watched for a few seconds as Kira all but crawled over a pile of merchandise, her face scrunched up with resentment, yet enviably stunning as always. “Hey Kode,” the young queen whispered. “Hey, girl.” “What’s going on?” “Kira’s bartering.” Eena watched the fistful of necklace come within a whisker of smacking the merchant’s nose. “She isn’t going to hurt the guy, is she?” Kode snorted on a chuckle. “Not if the dude’s got any sense.” Validly concerned, Eena inched closer to the confrontation, straining to hear their growled dialogue. Kode and Niki crept closer too. Efren, however, stayed where he was, testing the flagpole’s ability to support his body weight. They watched the feisty Mishmorat hold up a small pouch and shake it in front of the Braetic’s eyes. Kira’s fingers curled like claws around the purse. She seemed to smirk for a second when the merchant flinched. In a blink he was back in her face again, shoving aside the purse. “What is she trying to trade?” Eena asked, her voice still hushed as though she might disturb the haggling taking place across the way. “Viidun coins,” Kode said. “Ef gave ‘em to her.” “Are they worth much?’ Kode grinned wryly, “He sure as hell don’t freakin’ think so.” Eena foresaw Niki’s disapproving smack to the back of Kode’s head before he even finished his sentence. He cursed at his girlfriend for the physical abuse, an unwise response that earned him an additional thump on the head. “Freakin’ tyrant,” Kode grumbled. “Vulgar grogfish,” Niki retorted. Still unable to hear well enough to satisfy her curiosity, Eena stole in closer to the scene of heated bartering. She stopped when Kira’s strong voice carried over the murmur of the crowd. Kode and his girlfriend were right on her heels. “This purse is worth ten of those gaudy necklaces. You oughta be payin’ me to take ‘em off your hands, Braetic!” “That alien money is worthless to me, Mishmorat. In all my life I’ve never left Moccobatran soil. And even if I were to take an interstellar trip someday, you’d never catch the likes of me on a barbarian planet like Rapador!” Kira jerked her head, causing her black, cascading hair to ripple over her shoulder. The action made the trader flinch again. His eyes tapered, appearing to fume over what he perceived as intentional bullying. “You ain’t gonna sell this crap to no one else,” the exotic Mishmorat said. “Be smart and take the money. Hell, you could make a dozen pieces of jewelry from these coins. Sell ’em all for ten times the worth of anything you got here.” The Braetic shoved his finger at Kira’s chest, breathing down her throat at the same time. “Why don’t you just take your pretty little backside away from my table and make your own Viidun jewelry. Sell it yourself and then come back with a reasonable offer for my necklace.” His palm opened flat, demanding she hand over the jade stones still in her fist. “You wanna make me?” Kira breathed. “What do you plan to do, steal it?” The merchant challenged her in a gesture, nostrils flaring. “I’m no thief, but I’m not above beating some sense into you ‘til you choose to barter like a respectable Braetic!” Caught up in the intense interaction, Kode supported his sister a little too loudly. “Teach the freakin’ crook a lesson, Sis!” Niki smacked her boyfriend upside the head without missing a beat.