Red Arrows Quotes

Your death has not been waiting for your arrival at the appointed hour: it has, for all the years of your life, been racing towards you with the fierce velocity of time's arrow. It cannot be evaded, it cannot be bargained with, deflected or placated. All that is given to you is the choice: meet it with open eyes and peace in your heart, go gentle to your reward. Or burn bright, take up arms, and fight the bitch.

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror.

It is easy to blur the truth with a simple linguistic trick: start your story from "Secondly." Yes, this is what Rabin did. He simply neglected to speak of what happened first. Start your story with "Secondly," and the world will be turned upside-down. Start your story with "Secondly," and the arrows of the Red Indians are the original criminals and the guns of the white men are entirely the victims. It is enough to start with "Secondly," for the anger of the black man against the white to be barbarous. Start with "Secondly," and Gandhi becomes responsible for the tragedies of the British.

Surely it wasn't possible that Vin diPietro was the first assignment. "Hello?" DiPietro waved. "You in there?" Nah, Jim thought. Can't be. That would be above and beyond any call of duty. Over the guy's shoulder, the commercial that was on the TV suddenly showed a price of $49.99-no, $29.99, with a little red arrow that ... considering where Vin was standing, poined right at his head. "Sh*t, no" Jim muttered. This was the guy? On the Tv screen, some woman in a pink bathrobe smiled up at the camera and mouthed, Yes, it is!

He now knew that war was not at all like culling deer, and the last one, with the man so close, had been the worst. The shock on the enemy’s face as the arrow halted his run would haunt him always. Robert Reid – White Light Red Fire

Got it. Look for a room with a sign with a big arrow that says, ‘Kidnapped Mancies Here,’ ” he said.

If the thing bites down much harder I might wig out and demand beer... stay away from the phone, watch the red arrow... this typewriter is keeping me on my rails, without it I'd be completely adrift and weird.

Let’s live suddenly without thinking. Let’s live like the light that kills. And let’s as silence, because Whirl’s after all: (after me) love, and after you. I occasionally feel vague how vague I don’t know tenuous Now - spears and The Then - arrows making do our mouths, something red, something tall.

September let go a long-held breath. She stared into the roiling black-violet soup, thinking furiously. The trouble was, September didn’t know what sort of story she was in. Was it a merry one or a serious one? How ought she to act? If it were merry, she might dash after a Spoon, and it would all be a marvelous adventure, with funny rhymes and somersaults and a grand party with red lanterns at the end. But if it were a serious tale, she might have to do something important, something involving, with snow and arrows and enemies. Of course, we would like to tell her which. But no one may know the shape of the tale in which they move. And, perhaps, we do not truly know which sort of beast it is, either. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.

The child's cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, The dew that flies Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning.

It felt like being shot with an arrow, and Will jerked back. His wineglass crashed to the floor and shattered. He lurched to his feet, leaning both hands on the table. He was vaguely aware of stares, and the landlords anxious voice in his ear, but the pain was too great to think through, almost too great to breathe through. The tightness in his chest, the one he had thought of as one end of a cord tying him to Jem, had pulled so taut that it was strangling his heart. He stumbled away from his table, pushing through a knot of customers near the bar, and passed to the front door of the inn. All he could think of was air, getting air into his lungs to breathe. He pushed the doors open and half-tumbled out into the night. For a moment the pain in his chest eased, and he fell back against the wall of the inn. Rain was sheeting down, soaking his hair and clothes. He gasped, his heart stuttering with a misture of terror and desperation. Was this just the distance from Jem affecting him? He had never felt anything like this, even when Jem was at his worst, even when he'd been injured and Will had ached with sympathetic pain. The cord snapped. For a moment everything went white, the courtyard bleeching through as if with acid. Will jackknifed to his knees, vomiting up his supper into the mud. When the spasms had passed , he staggard to his feet and blindly away from the inn, as if trying to outpace his own pain. He fetched up against the wall of the stables, beside the horse trough. He dropped to his knees to plunge his hands into the icy water-and saw his own reflection. There was his face, as white as death, and his shirt, and a spreading stain of red across the front. With wet hands he siezed at his lapels and jerked the shirt open. In the dim light that spilled from the inn, he could see that his parabati rune, just over his heart, was bleeding. His hands were covered in blood, blood mixed with rain, the same ran that was washing the blood away from his chest, showing the rune as it began to fade from black to silver, changing all that had been sense in Will's life into nonsense. Jem was dead.

Mor opened her mouth, laughter dancing on her face, but Elain asked, “Could you have done it? Decided to take a male form?” The question cut through the laughter, an arrow fired between us. Amren studied my sister, Elain’s cheeks red from our unfiltered talk at the table. “Yes,” she said simply. “Before, in my other form, I was neither. I simply was.” “Then why did you pick this body?” Elain asked, the faelight of the chandelier catching in the ripples of her golden-brown braid. “I was more drawn to the female form,” Amren answered simply. “I thought it was more symmetrical. It pleased me.” Mor frowned down at her own form, ogling her considerable assets. “True.” Cassian snickered.

let’s live suddenly without thinking under honest trees, a stream does.the brain of cleverly-crinkling -water pursues the angry dream of the shore. By midnight, a moon scratches the skin of the organised hills an edged nothing begins to prune let’s live like the light that kills and let’s as silence, because Whirl’s after all: (after me)love,and after you. I occasionally feel vague how vague idon’t know tenuous Now- spears and The Then-arrows making do our mouths something red,something tall

Achilles died well" "No. Achilles let his pride and rage consume him, and in the end, an arrow shot by a Pixie took him in the foot. There's much to live for besides this. Hopefully you'll grow old enough to realize that Achilles was a gorydamn fool. And we're fools all the more for not realizing he wasn't Homer's hero. He was warning. I feel men once knew that

The next morning, when I went in to the bathroom to brush my teeth, I noticed the index card over the sink. RIGHT FAUCET DRIPS EASILY, it said. TIGHTEN WITH WRENCH AFTER USING. And then there was an arrow, pointing down to where a small wrench was tied with bright red yarn to one of the pipes. This is crazy, I thought. But that wasn't all. In the shower, HOT WATER IS VERY HOT! USE WITH CARE was posted over the soap dish. And on the toilet: HANDLE LOOSE. DON'T YANK. (As if I had some desire to do that.) The overhead fan was clearly BROKEN, the tiles by the door were LOOSE so I had to WALK CAREFULLY. And I was informed, cryptically, that the light over the medicine cabinet works, BUT ONLY SOMETIMES.

Time goes forward because energy itself is always moving from an available to an unavailable state. Our consciousness is continually recording the entropy change in the world around us. We watch our friends get old and die. We sit next to a fire and watch it's red-hot embers turn slowly into cold white ashes. We experience the world always changing around us, and that experience is the unfolding of the second law. It is the irreversible process of dissipation of energy in the world. What does it mean to say, 'The world is running out of time'? Simply this: we experience the passage of time by the succession of one event after another. And every time an event occurs anywhere in this world energy is expended and the overall entropy is increased. To say the world is running out of time then, to say the world is running out of usable energy. In the words of Sir Arthur Eddington, 'Entropy is time's arrow'.

There is a famous black-and-white photograph from the era of the Third Reich. It is a picture taken in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936, of shipyard workers, a hundred or more, facing the same direction in the light of the sun. They are heiling in unison, their right arms rigid in outstretched allegiance to the Führer. If you look closely, you can see a man in the upper right who is different from the others. His face is gentle but unyielding. Modern-day displays of the photograph will often add a helpful red circle around the man or an arrow pointing to him. He is surrounded by fellow citizens caught under the spell of the Nazis. He keeps his arms folded to his chest, as the stiff palms of the others hover just inches from him. He alone is refusing to salute. He is the one man standing against the tide. Looking back from our vantage point, he is the only person in the entire scene who is on the right side of history. Everyone around him is tragically, fatefully, categorically wrong. In that moment, only he could see it. His name is believed to have been August Landmesser. At the time, he could not have known the murderous path the hysteria around him would lead to. But he had already seen enough to reject it.

In a sudden inspiration, Florentino Ariza opened a can of red paint that was within reach of the bunk, wet his index finger, and painted the pubis of the beautiful pigeon fancier with an arrow of blood pointing south, and on her belly the words: This pussy is mine.

Your death has not been waiting for your arrival at the appointed hour; it has, for all the years of your life, been racing towards you with the fierce velocity of time’s arrow. It cannot be evaded; it cannot be bargained with, deflected or placated. All that is given to you is the choice: Meet it with open eyes and peace in your heart, go gentle to your reward. Or burn bright, take up arms, and fight the bitch.

Whole heap o’ folks, ’cludin’ me till I got grown, ain’t knowed at firs’ weren’t nobody in dis country but Indians, fishin’ an’ huntin’ an’ fightin’ one ’nother, jes’ mindin’ dey own business. Den here come l’il ol’ boat o’ white folks a-wavin’ an’ grinnin’. ‘Hey, y’all red mens! How ’bout let us come catch a bite an’ a nap ’mongst y’all an’ le’s be friends!’ Huh! I betcha nowdays dem Indians wish dey’s made dat boat look like a porcupine wid dey arrows!

My uniform felt like a costume. I put on a fresh coat of black nail polish. I twisted up a tube of Revlon Red and put my war paint on. I sharpened the tips of my Fierce Words so they were like a row of shiny arrows.

Just enough of a sound to slit through the red fog like an arrow—but instead of letting in sunlight, that sound let in the dark clouds of shame and remorse, the terror, the agonizing convulsion of the spirit. A clean sound with the past on one side of it and all the future on the other, a sound like a breaking pencil lead or a small piece of kindling when you brought it down over your knee. A moment of utter silence on the other side, in respect to the beginning future maybe, all the rest of his life.

I had no desire to have either dreams or adventures like Alice, and the amount of them merely amused me. I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and, above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable.

[I] threw open the door to find Rob sit­ting on the low stool in front of my book­case, sur­round­ed by card­board box­es. He was seal­ing the last one up with tape and string. There were eight box­es - eight box­es of my books bound up and ready for the base­ment! "He looked up and said, 'Hel­lo, dar­ling. Don't mind the mess, the care­tak­er said he'd help me car­ry these down to the base­ment.' He nod­ded to­wards my book­shelves and said, 'Don't they look won­der­ful?' "Well, there were no words! I was too ap­palled to speak. Sid­ney, ev­ery sin­gle shelf - where my books had stood - was filled with ath­let­ic tro­phies: sil­ver cups, gold cups, blue rosettes, red rib­bons. There were awards for ev­ery game that could pos­si­bly be played with a wood­en ob­ject: crick­et bats, squash rac­quets, ten­nis rac­quets, oars, golf clubs, ping-​pong bats, bows and ar­rows, snook­er cues, lacrosse sticks, hock­ey sticks and po­lo mal­lets. There were stat­ues for ev­ery­thing a man could jump over, ei­ther by him­self or on a horse. Next came the framed cer­tificates - for shoot­ing the most birds on such and such a date, for First Place in run­ning races, for Last Man Stand­ing in some filthy tug of war against Scot­land. "All I could do was scream, 'How dare you! What have you DONE?! Put my books back!' "Well, that's how it start­ed. Even­tu­al­ly, I said some­thing to the ef­fect that I could nev­er mar­ry a man whose idea of bliss was to strike out at lit­tle balls and lit­tle birds. Rob coun­tered with re­marks about damned blue­stock­ings and shrews. And it all de­gen­er­at­ed from there - the on­ly thought we prob­ably had in com­mon was, What the hell have we talked about for the last four months? What, in­deed? He huffed and puffed and snort­ed and left. And I un­packed my books.

I envisioned him tied in a chair, an iron arrow pointed at his brow. Ah, the power of positive thinking.

It’s amazing how quiet the world is as the arrows sail, carrying death.

The trouble was, September didn’t know what sort of story she was in. Was it a merry one or a serious one? How ought she to act? If it was merry, she might dash after a Spoon and it would all be a grand adventure, with funny rhymes and somersaults and a grand party at the end with red lanterns. But if it was a serious tale, she might have to do something important, something involving with snow and arrows and enemies.

... Anyway, you put too much stock in hierarchy and fear.” “Me?” “Who else? I could spot it a mile away. All you cared about was your mission, whatever it is. You’re like a driven arrow with a very depressing shadow. First time I met you, I knew you’d cut my throat to get whatever it is you want.” She waits for a moment. “What is it that you want, by the way?” “To win,” I say. “Oh, please. You’re not that simple.” “You think you know me?” The rabbit hisses out fat over the fire. “I know you cry in your sleep for a girl named Eo. Sister? Or a girl you loved? It is a very offColor name. Like yours.” “I’m a farplanet hayseed. Didn’t they tell you?” “They wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t get out much.” She waves a hand. “Anyway, doesn’t matter. All that matters is that no one trusts you because it’s obvious you care more about your goal than you do about them.” “And you’re something different?” “Oh, very much so, Sir Reaper. I like people more than you do. You are the wolf that howls and bites. I am the mustang that nuzzles the hand. People know they can work with me. With you? Hell, kill or be killed.

The M16 has a scope with a small red arrow in the center of the sight. You align the arrow with what or (jeez) whom you wish to shoot and squeeze the trigger. Both “squeeze” and “pull” are exaggerations of the motion applied to this trigger. It’s a trivial, tiny movement, the twitch of a dreaming child. So quick and so effortless is it that it’s hard for me to associate it with any but the most inconsequential of acts. Flipping a page. Typing an M. Scratching an itch. Ending a life wants a little more muscle.

There’s more ways to stop a man then with an arrow in the heart!” the first shaft struck Drale in the shoulder and the moon blossomed red through the dust suddenly swirling in murky streams. Drale cleared his head and charged into his enemies sword raised high above his head, then a cloud covered the moon and the forest went black.

Great and terrible was the year of Our Lord 1918, of the Revolution the second. Its summer abundant with warmth and sun, its winter and snow, highest in its heaven stood two stars: the shepherds' star, eventide Venus; and Mars- quivering, red. But in days of blood and of peace the years fly like an arrow and the thick frost of a hoary white December, season of Christmas trees, Santa Claus, joy and glittering snow, overtook the young Turbins unawares. For the reigning head of the family, their adored mother, was no longer with them.

Between the roof of the shed and the big plant that hangs over the fence from the house next door I could see the constellation Orion. People say that Orion is called Orion because Orion was a hunter and the constellation looks like a hunter with a club and a bow and arrow, like this: But this is really silly because it is just stars, and you could join up the dots in any way you wanted, and you could make it look like a lady with an umbrella who is waving, or the coffeemaker which Mrs. Shears has, which is from Italy, with a handle and steam coming out, or like a dinosaur. And there aren't any lines in space, so you could join bits of Orion to bits of Lepus or Taurus or Gemini and say that they were a constellation called the Bunch of Grapes or Jesus or the Bicycle (except that they didn't have bicycles in Roman and Greek times, which was when they called Orion Orion). And anyway, Orion is not a hunter or a coffeemaker or a dinosaur. It is just Betelgeuse and Bellatrix and Alnilam and Rigel and 17 other stars I don't know the names of. And they are nuclear explosions billions of miles away. And that is the truth. I stayed awake until 5:47. That was the last time I looked at my watch before I fell asleep. It has a luminous face and lights up if you press a button, so I could read it in the dark. I was cold and I was frightened Father might come out and find me. But I felt safer in the garden because I was hidden. I looked at the sky a lot. I like looking up at the sky in the garden at night. In summer I sometimes come outside at night with my torch and my planisphere, which is two circles of plastic with a pin through the middle. And on the bottom is a map of the sky and on top is an aperture which is an opening shaped in a parabola and you turn it round to see a map of the sky that you can see on that day of the year from the latitude 51.5° north, which is the latitude that Swindon is on, because the largest bit of the sky is always on the other side of the earth. And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don't even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in your life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means that they are so small you don't have to take them into account when you are calculating something. I didn't sleep very well because of the cold and because the ground was very bumpy and pointy underneath me and because Toby was scratching in his cage a lot. But when I woke up properly it was dawn and the sky was all orange and blue and purple and I could hear birds singing, which is called the Dawn Chorus. And I stayed where I was for another 2 hours and 32 minutes, and then I heard Father come into the garden and call out, "Christopher...? Christopher...?

Fling arrows at all the strange things you see out here, and all you do is run out of arrows.

the first archer lets his arrow fly, soaring over the crowd and hitting it's mark in a shower of sparks. The bonfire ignites in an eruption of yellow flame. Then second chime follows. the second archer sends his arrow into the yellow flames, and they become a clear sky-blue. A third chime with a third arrow. and the flames are a warm bright pink. Flames the color of a ripe pumpkin follow the fourth arrow. A fifth, and the flames are scarlet-red. A sixth brings a deeper, sparkling crimson. Seven, and the fire is soaked in a color like an incandescent wine. Eight, and the flames are shimmering violet. Nine, and violet shift to indigo. A tenth chime, a tenth arrow, and the bonfire turns deepest midnight blue.

And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, That dew that flies Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning.

At ten seconds before the hour, they raise their bows and aim the flaming arrows at the waiting well of curling iron. As the clock begins to chime near the gates, the first archer lets his arrow fly, soaring over the crowd and hitting its mark in a shower of sparks. The bonfire ignites in an eruption of yellow flame. Then the second chime follows, the second archer sends his arrow into the yellow flames, and they become a clear sky-blue. A third chime with a third arrow, and the flames are a warm bright pink. Flames the color of a ripe pumpkin follow the fourth arrow. A fifth, and the flames are scarlet-red. A sixth brings a deeper, sparkling crimson. Seven, and the fire is soaked in a color like incandescent wine. Eight, and the flames are shimmering violet. Nine, and the violet shifts to indigo. A tenth chime, a tenth arrow, and the bonfire turns deepest midnight blue. On the penultimate chime, the dancing flames change from blue to black, and for a moment, it is difficult to discount the fire from its cauldron. And on the final strike, the dark flames are replaced with a blinding white, a shower of sparks falling like snowflakes around it. Huge curls of dense white smoke swirl up into the night sky.

Death stood on the other side of the chamber doors. Today I would not meet it in my usual armor of leather and chain-mail, but in the armor of silk and cosmetics. One might think one armor was stronger than the other, but a red lip was its own scimitar and a kohl darkened eye could aim true as a steel-tipped arrow. Death might be waiting, but I was going to be a queen. I would have my throne if I would have to carve a path of blood and bone to get it back. Death could wait.

He now thought that he wished he was dead. He believed that he envied those men whose bodies lay strewn over the grass of the fields and on the fallen leaves of the forest. The simple questions of the tattered man had been knife thrusts to him. They asserted a society that probes pitilessly at secrets until all is apparent. His late companion’s chance persistency made him feel that he could not keep his crime concealed in his bosom. It was sure to be brought plain by one of those arrows which cloud the air and are constantly pricking, discovering, proclaiming those things which are willed to be forever hidden.

But I could still see that High Fae male facedown in the snow, my arrow through his eye, red and bloody all over from where I’d cut and peeled off his skin. Bile stung my throat. Not real. Just a dream. Even if what I’d done to Andras, even as a wolf, was … was

For a moment, Meg couldn’t think, could barely breathe as a drawing of a cow with arrows pointing to the various cuts of meat popped into her head. Then she imagined a drawing of a human with the same kinds of arrows. Could there be a sign like that in the butcher shop?

The influenza has busted me a good deal; I have no spring; and am headachy. So as my good Red Lion Counter begged me for another Butcher's Boy--I turned me to- what thinkest 'ou--to Tushery, by the mass! Ay, friend, a whole tale of tushery. And every tusher tushes me so free, that may I be tushed if the whole thing is worth a tush. The Black Arrow: A Tale of Tunstall Forest is his name: tush! a poor thing!

Imagination is haunted by the swiftness of the creatures that live on the mountain - eagle and peregrine falcon, red deer and mountain hare. The reason for their swiftness is severely practical: food is so scarce up there that only those who can move swiftly over vast stretches of ground may hope to survive. The speed, the whorls and torrents of movement, are in plain fact the mountain's own necessity. But their grace is not necessity. Or if it is - if the swoop, the parabola, the arrow-flight of hooves and wings achieve their beauty by strict adherence to the needs of function - so much the more is the mountain's integrity vindicated. Beauty is not adventitious but essential.

Whose voice was first sounded on this land? The voice of the red people who had but bows and arrows. [...] What has been done in my country I did not want, did not ask for it; white people going through my country. [...] When the white man comes in my country he leaves a trail of blood behind him. [...] I have two mountains in that country--the Black Hills and the Big Horn Mountain. I want the Great Father to make no roads through them.

She thought about the men with bows and arrows. They were really here, weren’t they, once upon a time. And mammoths and ladies in crinolines and Spitfires overhead. Places remained and time flowed through them like wind through the grass. Right now. This was the future turning into the past. One thing becoming another thing. Like a flame on the end of a match. Wood turning into smoke. If only we could burn brighter. A barn roaring in the night.

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

Just beyond the ticket booth Father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? An arrow pointed to a small curtain. There were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at the curtain that we had to replace it regularly. Behind it was a mirror. (1.8.4)

Peter, Adam's Son," said Father Christmas. "Here, sir," said Peter. "These are your presents," was the answer, "and they are tools, not toys. The time to use them is perhaps near at hand. Bear them well." With these words he handed to Peter a shield and a sword. The shield was the color of silver and across it there ramped a red lion, as bright as a ripe strawberry at the moment when you pick it. The hilt of the sword was of gold and it had a sheath and a sword belt and everything it needed, and it was just the right size and weight for Peter to use. Peter was silent and solemn as he received these gifts, for he felt they were a very serious kind of present. "Susan, Eve's Daughter," said Father Christmas. "These are for you," and he handed her a bow and a quiver full of arrows and a little ivory horn. "You must use the bow only in great need," he said, "for I do not mean you to fight in the battle. It does not easily miss. And when you put this horn to your lips and blow it, then, wherever you are, I think help of some kind will come to you." Last of all he said, "Lucy, Eve's Daughter," and Lucy came forward. He gave her a little bottle of what looked like glass (but people said afterwards that it was made of diamond) and a small dagger. "In this bottle," he said, "there is a cordial made of the juice of one of the fire-flowers that grow on the mountains of the sun. If you or any of your friends is hurt, a few drops of this will restore them. And the dagger is to defend yourself at great need. For you also are not to be in the battle." "Why, sir?" said Lucy. "I think- I don't know- but I think I could be brave enough." "That is not the point," he said. "But battles are ugly when women fight.

How many times have I photographed this glorious seascape? . . . The late-afternoon rusted tones of the Saudi Arabian mountains on the opposite side of the Red Sea; the view from the Devil’s Head, which is eternally splashed by crashing waves. Like an arrow pointed toward Saudi Arabia’s unexplored secrets, the cliff stands erect just before me.

She was tired, her nerves stripped like wires, the red and white. She felt like a saint with the arrows shit through, she was bleeding to death.

Your death has not been waiting for your arrival at the appointed hour: it has, for all the years of your life, been racing towards you with the fierce velocity of time’s arrow.

You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, Nor of the arrow that flies by day, Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness.

She stood in profile across the green, her back straight, her stance that of some long ago warrior maiden. As he walked toward her, Miss Greaves drew back her bow briskly, aiming a tad high to account for the wind, and let her arrow fly. Before it had hit the target, she’d notched another and shot it. A third followed just as rapidly. He glanced to the target. All three of her arrows were clustered together at the center of the red circle. Miss Greaves, who “did not shoot,” was a better shot than all the other ladies—and probably the men as well. He glanced from the target to her and saw that she stared back, proud and unsmiling. Artemis. She was named for the goddess of the hunt—a goddess who had slain without remorse her only admirer.

Ever driven stick before?" Alec hesitated. "can't be harder than shooting a bow and arrow while riding a horse at a full gallop." "It's definitely not," said Magnus. "Besides, you have superhuman reflexes. What's the worst that could happen?" He threw Alec the keys and slid into the passenger's seat with a smile. Alec grinned and jogged over to the driver's seat. Magnus suggested some practice loops in the parking lot. "You have to lift your left foot as you're applying gas with the right foot," he said. Alec looked at him. "Oh no," he said dryly. "I have to move both feet at the same time. How can I possibly handle such demands on my agility." He turned back, applied the gas, and was rewarded with a high-pitched screech, like a banshee in a trap. Magnus smiled but did not say anything.

Perhaps he should have fallen to his knees and given thanks to the gods for their unlikely victory but the red harvest sword-hacked and arrow-stuck about the ruin did not look like a thing to give thanks for.

Heuristics also have a measurement or value associated with them—the duration for an animation or the red-green-blue values for an onscreen color, but there isn’t a similar “arrow of improvement” that always points the same way. Unlike evaluating algorithms, heuristics are harder to nail down. For instance, how quickly should a scrolling list glide to a stop after you’ve flicked it? We always made demos to evaluate the possibilities.

Glanton was first to reach the dying man and he knelt with that alien and barbarous head cradled between his thighs like some reeking outland nurse and dared off the savages with his revolver. They circled on the plain and shook their bows and lofted a few arrows at him and then turned and rode on. Blood bubbled from the man’s chest and he turned his lost eyes upward, already glazed, the capillaries breaking up. In those dark pools there sat each a small and perfect sun.

Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine, Marching below, and we still gulping wine?” From the sad magic of his fragrant cup The red-faced old centurion started up, Cursed, battered on the table. “No,” he said, “Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion’s dead, Dead in the first year of this damned campaign— The Legion’s dead, dead, and won’t rise again. Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die, But we need pity also, you and I, Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss, Who live to see the Legion come to this, Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot, Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot. O, brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy thigh! Where are they now? God! watch it struggle by, The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine. Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the wine!” “Strabo,” said Gracchus, “you are strange tonight. The Legion is the Legion; it’s all right. If these new men are slovenly, in your thinking, God damn it! you’ll not better them by drinking. They all try, Strabo; trust their hearts and hands. The Legion is the Legion while Rome stands, And these same men before the autumn’s fall Shall bang old Vercingetorix out of Gaul.

He felt that he had unwittingly stuck his hand into The Great Wasps' Nest of Life. As an image it stank. As a cameo of reality, he felt it was serviceable. He had stuck his hand through some rotted flashing in high summer and that hand and his whole arm had been consumed in holy, righteous fire, destroying conscious thought, making the concept of civilized behaviour obsolete. Could you be expected to behave as a thinking human being when your hand was being impaled on red-hot darning needles? Could you be expected to live in the love of your nearest and dearest when the brown, furious cloud rose out of the hole in the fabric of things (the fabric you thought was so innocent) and arrowed straight at you? Could you be held responsible for your own actions as you ran crazily about on the sloping roof seventy feet above he ground, not knowing where you were going, not remembering that your panicky, stumbling feet could lead you crashing and blundering right over the rain gutter and down to your death on the concrete seventy feet below? Jack didn't think you could. When you unwittingly stuck your hand into the wasps' nest, you hadn't made a covenant with the devil to give up your civilized self with its trappings of love and respect and honour. It just happened to you. Passively, with no say, you ceased to be a creature of the mind and became a creature of the nerve endings; from college-educated man to wailing ape in five seconds.

All you cared about was your mission, whatever it is. You’re like a driven arrow with a very depressing shadow. First time I met you, I knew you’d cut my throat to get whatever it is you want.” She waits for a moment. “What is it that you want, by the way?

Now that bastard of a groundhog was running around like a squirrel with a snootful of cocaine and belting back Red Bull shots. All she needed was for that little fucker to pull out a couple of pistols and start shooting up the joint to have herself a raging telenovela in her pants.   *

I say is someone in there?’ The voice is the young post-New formalist from Pittsburgh who affects Continental and wears an ascot that won’t stay tight, with that hesitant knocking of when you know perfectly well someone’s in there, the bathroom door composed of thirty-six that’s three times a lengthwise twelve recessed two-bevelled squares in a warped rectangle of steam-softened wood, not quite white, the bottom outside corner right here raw wood and mangled from hitting the cabinets’ bottom drawer’s wicked metal knob, through the door and offset ‘Red’ and glowering actors and calendar and very crowded scene and pubic spirals of pale blue smoke from the elephant-colored rubble of ash and little blackened chunks in the foil funnel’s cone, the smoke’s baby-blanket blue that’s sent her sliding down along the wall past knotted washcloth, towel rack, blood-flower wallpaper and intricately grimed electrical outlet, the light sharp bitter tint of a heated sky’s blue that’s left her uprightly fetal with chin on knees in yet another North American bathroom, deveiled, too pretty for words, maybe the Prettiest Girl Of All Time (Prettiest G.O.A.T.), knees to chest, slew-footed by the radiant chill of the claw-footed tub’s porcelain, Molly’s had somebody lacquer the tub in blue, lacquer, she’s holding the bottle, recalling vividly its slogan for the past generation was The Choice of a Nude Generation, when she was of back-pocket height and prettier by far than any of the peach-colored titans they’d gazed up at, his hand in her lap her hand in the box and rooting down past candy for the Prize, more fun way too much fun inside her veil on the counter above her, the stuff in the funnel exhausted though it’s still smoking thinly, its graph reaching its highest spiked prick, peak, the arrow’s best descent, so good she can’t stand it and reaches out for the cold tub’s rim’s cold edge to pull herself up as the white- party-noise reaches, for her, the sort of stereophonic precipice of volume to teeter on just before the speaker’s blow, people barely twitching and conversations strettoing against a ghastly old pre-Carter thing saying ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ Joelle’s limbs have been removed to a distance where their acknowledgement of her commands seems like magic, both clogs simply gone, nowhere in sight, and socks oddly wet, pulls her face up to face the unclean medicine-cabinet mirror, twin roses of flame still hanging in the glass’s corner, hair of the flame she’s eaten now trailing like the legs of wasps through the air of the glass she uses to locate the de-faced veil and what’s inside it, loading up the cone again, the ashes from the last load make the world's best filter: this is a fact. Breathes in and out like a savvy diver… –and is knelt vomiting over the lip of the cool blue tub, gouges on the tub’s lip revealing sandy white gritty stuff below the lacquer and porcelain, vomiting muddy juice and blue smoke and dots of mercuric red into the claw-footed trough, and can hear again and seems to see, against the fire of her closed lids’ blood, bladed vessels aloft in the night to monitor flow, searchlit helicopters, fat fingers of blue light from one sky, searching.

Now we are beginning to ask the crucial question. If it is natural to be black and red or brown or yellow and if it is beautiful to resist oppression and if it is gorgeous to be of color and walking around free, then where does the problem lie? Who are these people that kill our children in the night?

just beyond the ticket booth father had painted on a wall in bright red letters the question: DO YOU KNOW WHICH IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN THE ZOO? an arrow pointed to a small curtain. there were so many eager, curious hands that pulled at that curtain that we had to replace it regularly. behind it was a mirror

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

The youth had resolved not to budge whatever should happen. Some arrows of scorn that had buried themselves in his heart had generated strange and unspeakable hatred. It was clear to him that his final and absolute revenge was to be achieved by his dead body lying, torn and gluttering, upon the field. This was to be a poignant retaliation upon the officer who had said "mule drivers," and later "mud diggers," for in all the wild graspings of his mind for a unit responsible for his sufferings and commotions he always seized upon the man who had dubbed him wrongly. And it was his idea, vaguely formulated, that his corpse would be for those eyes a great and salt reproach.

The clack of fangs and the soft swift pad of stealthy feet tell you that the Warhounds are closing in. You look up to see a man running towards you from the barricade. He has a shield in one hand and a longbow in the other; it is Guard Captain D’Val. He reaches you, breathless from his run, and draws an arrow from his quiver. D’Val aims and fires, drawing another arrow from his quiver as soon as the first is loosed. The Warhounds tumble and crash to the ground around you, felled by D’Val’s deadly shafts. Eight lie dead before his quiver is empty. The captain grabs you by the arm and, swinging you over his shoulder in one swift motion, carries you back towards the barricade. Others run forward to help you, but the bandit archers are now in range and your men are forced back by a hail of arrows. The red shafts of the enemy whistle past on all sides. You reach the barricade, a wagon is pulled aside, and you are carried in through the gap. Captain D’Val is close to exhaustion; he staggers, and his men rush to catch him before he drops to the ground.

It wasn't that Elain was cruel. She wasn't like Nesta, who had been born with a sneer on her face. Elain sometimes just... didn't grasp things. It wasn't meanness that kept her from offering to help; it simply never occurred to her that she might be capable of getting her hands dirty. I'd never been able to decide whether she actually didn't understand that we were truly poor or if she just refused to accept it. It still hadn't stopped me buying her seeds for the flower garden she tended in the milder months, whenever I could afford it. And it hadn't stopped her from buying me three small tins of paint- red, yellow, and blue- during that same summer I'd had enough to buy the ash arrow. It was the only gift she'd ever given me, and out house still bore the marks of it, even if the paint was now fading and chipped: little vines and flowers along the windows and thresholds and edges of things, tiny curls of flame on the stones bordering the hearth. And spare minute I'd had that bountiful summer, I used to bedeck out house in colour, sometimes hiding clever decorations inside drawers, behind the threadbare curtains, underneath the chairs and table. We hadn't had a summer that easy since.

Twas the night before Valentine’s Day, and all through the town, children were busy, not making a sound. They gathered their scissors, their glitter and glue, pink and red paper, and paintbrushes, too. They made cards that read, “Will you be mine?” and others that said, “My true valentine.” They trimmed giant hearts with stickers and lace, and added an arrow in just the right place. Then marking the envelopes with each friend’s name, they hoped that their friends were doing the same. And when they were done, they slept snug in their beds while visions of candy hearts danced in their heads.

He smelled like black coffee and menthols; the leather of his jacket was worn, much like his eyes. His hands were cracked glass, full of red riverbeds, and his pupils were like bullseyes anticipating arrows – as though he’d been battling sleep and himself for some time, but couldn’t make a conscious effort to win the war. There was a break in conversation, and he stared at me like I could solve the terror and turmoil he felt on the inside – but that wasn’t my job and I sure as hell wasn’t qualified. “The world is a scary place,” I told him. “You can’t run forever.” He bit his peeling bottom lip and spat out a gruff “I can try.” I will not chase after someone who ran of his own accord.

It’s dark as a tomb in here,” she said, unable to see more than shadows. “Will you light the candles, please,” she asked, “assuming there are candles in here?” “Aye, milady, right there, next to the bed.” His shadow crossed before her, and Elizabeth focused on a large, oddly shaped object that she supposed could be a bed, given its size. “Will you light them, please?” she urged. “I-I can’t see a thing in here.” “His lordship don’t like more’n one candle lit in the bedchambers,” the footman said. “He says it’s a waste of beeswax.” Elizabeth blinked in the darkness, torn somewhere between laughter and tears at her plight. “Oh,” she said, nonplussed. The footman lit a small candle at the far end of the room and left, closing the door behind him. “Milady?” Berta whispered, peering through the dark, impenetrable gloom. “Where are you?” “I’m over here,” Elizabeth replied, walking cautiously forward, her arms outstretched, her hands groping about for possible obstructions in her path as she headed for what she hoped was the outside wall of the bedchamber, where there was bound to be a window with draperies hiding its light. “Where?” Berta asked in a frightened whisper, and Elizabeth could hear the maid’s teeth chattering halfway across the room. “Here-on your left.” Berta followed the sound of her mistress’s voice and let out a terrified gasp at the sight of the ghostlike figure moving eerily through the darkness, arms outstretched. “Raise your arm,” she said urgently, “so I’ll know ‘tis you.” Elizabeth, knowing Berta’s timid nature, complied immediately. She raised her arm, which, while calming poor Berta, unfortunately caused Elizabeth to walk straight into a slender, fluted pillar with a marble bust upon it, and they both began to topple. “Good God!” Elizabeth burst out, wrapping her arms protectively around the pillar and the marble object upon it. “Berta!” she said urgently. “This is no time to be afraid of the dark. Help me, please. I’ve bumped into something-a bust and its stand, I think-and I daren’t let go of them until I can see how to set them upright. There are draperies over here, right in front of me. All you have to do is follow my voice and open them. Once we do, ‘twill be bright as day in here.” “I’m coming, milady,” Berta said bravely, and Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ve found them!” Berta cried softly a few minutes later. “They’re heavy-velvet they are, with another panel behind them.” Berta pulled one heavy panel back across the wall, and then, with renewed urgency and vigor, she yanked back the other and turned around to survey the room. “Light as last!” Elizabeth said with relief. Dazzling late-afternoon sunlight poured into the windows directly in front of her, blinding her momentarily. “That’s much better,” she said, blinking. Satisfied that the pillar was quite sturdy enough to stand without her aid, Elizabeth was about to place the bust back upon it, but Berta’s cry stopped her. “Saints preserve us!” With the fragile bust clutched protectively to her chest Elizabeth swung sharply around. There, spread out before her, furnished entirely in red and gold, was the most shocking room Elizabeth had ever beheld: Six enormous gold cupids seemed to hover in thin air above a gigantic bed clutching crimson velvet bed draperies in one pudgy fist and holding bows and arrows in the other; more cupids adorned the headboard. Elizabeth’s eyes widened, first in disbelief, and a moment later in mirth. “Berta,” she breathed on a smothered giggle, “will you look at this place!

Since the arrows of criticism aimed at these legendary masters, who directed the workshops of their day now frequently strike me in the back, I want you to know that the hackneyed accusations leveled at us are entirely unfounded. These are the facts: 1. The reason we don’t like anything innovative is that there is truly nothing new worth liking. 2. We treat most men like morons because, indeed, most men are morons, not because we’re poisoned by anger, unhappiness or some other flaw in character. (Granted, treating these people better would be more refined and sensible.) 3. The reason I forget and confuse so many names and faces—except those of the miniaturists I’ve loved and trained since their apprenticeships—is not senility, but because these names and faces are so lackluster and colorless as to be hardly worth remembering.

My eye keeps escaping towards the big blue lacquered door that I've had painted in a trompe-l'oeil on the back wall. I would like to call Mrs. Cohen back and tell her there's no problem for her son's bar mitzvah, everything's ready: I would like to go through that door and disappear into the garden my mind's eye has painted behind it. The grass there is soft and sweet, there are bulrushes bowing along the banks of a river. I put lime trees in it, hornbeams, weeping elms, blossoming cherries and liquidambars. I plant it with ancient roses, daffodils, dahlias with their melancholy heavy heads, and flowerbeds of forget-me-nots. Pimpernels, armed with all the courage peculiar to such tiny entities, follow the twists and turns between the stones of a rockery. Triumphant artichokes raise their astonished arrows towards the sky. Apple trees and lilacs blossom at the same time as hellebores and winter magnolias. My garden knows no seasons. It is both hot and cool. Frost goes hand in hand with a shimmering heat haze. The leaves fall and grow again. row and fall again. Wisteria climbs voraciously over tumbledown walls and ancient porches leading to a boxwood alley with a poignant fragrance. The heady smell of fruit hangs in the air. Huge peaches, chubby-cheeked apricots, jewel-like cherries, redcurrants, raspberries, spanking red tomatoes and bristly cardoons feast on sunlight and water, because between the sunbeams it rains in rainbow-colored droplets. At the very end, beyond a painted wooden fence, is a woodland path strewn with brown leaves, protected from the heat of the skies by a wide parasol of foliage fluttering in the breeze. You can't see the end of it, just keep walking, and breathe.

Did you know,' I said over the sound of my sawing, 'that one summer, when I was seventeen, Elain bought me some paint? We'd had just enough to spend on extra things, and she bought me and Nesta presents. She didn't have enough for a full set, but bought me red and blue and yellow. I used them to the last drop, stretching them as much as I could, and painted little decorations in our cottage.' ... 'I painted the table, the cabinets, the doorway... And we had this old, black dresser in our room- one drawer for each of us. We didn't have much clothing to put in there, anyway.' I got through the second arrow faster, and he braced himself as I tugged it out. Blood flowed, then clotted. I started on the third. 'I painted flowers for Elain on her drawer,' I said, sawing and sawing. 'Little roses and begonias and irises. And for Nesta...' The arrow clanged to the ground and I ripped out the other end. I watched the blood flow and stop- watched him slowly lower the wing to the ground, his body trembling. 'Nesta,' I said, starting on the other wing, 'I painted flames for her. She was always angry, always burning. I think she and Amren would be fast friends. I think she would like Velaris, despite herself. And I think Elain- Elain would like it, too. Though she'd probably cling to Azriel, just to have some peace and quiet.' I smiled at the thought- at how handsome they would be together. If the warrior ever stopped quietly loving Mor. I doubted it. Azriel would likely love Mor until he was a whisper of darkness between the stars. ... 'Rhys's voice was raw as he said to the floor, 'What did you paint for yourself?' ... 'I painted the night sky.' He stilled. I went on, 'I painted stars and the moon and clouds and just endless, dark sky.' I finished the sixth, and was well on my way sawing through the seventh before I said, 'I never knew why. I rarely went outside at night- usually, I was so tired from hunting that I just wanted to sleep. But I wonder...' I pulled out the seventh and final arrow. 'I wonder if some part of me knew what was waiting for me. That I would never be a gentle grower of things, or someone who burned like fire- but that I would be quiet and enduring and as faceted as the night. That I would have beauty, for those who knew where to look, and if people didn't bother to look, but to only fear it... Then I didn't particularly care for them, anyway. I wonder if, even in my despair and hopelessness, I was never truly alone. I wonder if I was looking for this place- looking for you all.' ... 'I was looking for you, too,' Rhys murmured. And passed out.

He had stuck his hand through some rotted flashing in high summer and that hand and his whole arm had been consumed in holy, righteous fire, destroying conscious thought, making the concept of civilized behavior obsolete. Could you be expected to behave as a thinking human being when your hand was being impaled on red-hot darning needles? Could you be expected to live in the love of your nearest and dearest when the brown, furious cloud rose out of the hole in the fabric of things (the fabric you thought was so innocent) and arrowed straight at you? Could you be held responsible for your own actions as you ran crazily about on the sloping roof seventy feet above the ground, not knowing where you were going, not remembering that your panicky, stumbling feet could lead you crashing and blundering right over the rain gutter and down to your death on the concrete seventy feet below? Jack didn’t think you could.

You have to have approached a place from all four cardinal points if you want to take it in, and what’s more, you also have to have left it from all these points. Otherwise it will quite unexpectedly cross your path three or four times before you are prepared to discover it. One stage further, and you seek it out, you orient your-self by it. The same thing with houses. It is only after having crept along a series of them in search of a very specific one that you come to learn what they contain. From the arches of gates, on the frames of house doors, in letters of varying size, black, blue, yellow, red, in the shape of arrows or in the image of boots or freshly-ironed laundry or a word stoop or a stairway’s solid landing, the life leaps out at you, combative, determined, mute. You have to have traveled the streets by streetcar to realize how this running battle con-tinues up along the various stories and finally reaches its decisive pitch on the roofs.

Do you remember Zhitomir, Vasily? Do you remember the Teterev, Vasily, and that evening when the Sabbath, the young Sabbath tripped stealthily along the sunset, her little red heel treading on the stars? THe slender horn of the moon bathed its arrows in the black waters of the Teterev. Funny little Gedali, founder of the Fourth International, was taking us to Rabbi Motele Bratzlavsky’s for evening service. Funny little Gedali swayed the cock’s feathers on his high hat in the red haze of the evening. The candes in the Rabbi’s room blinked their predatory eyes. Bent over prayer books, brawny Jews were moaning in muffled voices, and the old buffoon of the zaddiks of Chernobyl jingled coppers in his torn pocket... ...Do you remember that night, Vasily? Beyond the windows horses were neighing and Cossacks were shouting. The wilderness of war was yawning beyong the windows, and Robbi Motele Bratzslavsky was praying at the eastern wall, his decayed fingers clinging to his tales. (...)

This story belongs to the Princess Merida. Merida was less like the mannered royal you're imagining and more like a struck match, although matches did not yet exist. Red hair, keen eyes, quick brain, built to start fires but not to put them out. She was an absolute wizard with a bow and arrow. For over a decade, before the wee devil triplet princes arrived, she'd been the only child, and where other children might have had friends, Merida had her bow. She practiced her archery breathlessly, automatically, in every moment her mother hadn't scheduled her for lessons in embroidery, music, and reading. There was a stillness to archery she couldn't get anywhere else. Whenever she had a problem she couldn't solve, she went out to practice. Whenever she had a feeling she didn't understand, she went out to practice. Hour upon hour, she collected calluses on fingertips and bruises on forearms. At night, when she dreamt, she still sighted between trees and adjusted for strong highland winds.

The deeply flushed midsummer sunlight, the strong, clear alcohol filling a dirty glass, a goat tethered with a rope, the enormous sides of a glitteringly white modern building, the solemn melody of the national orchestra, the slender-necked actress who was performing on the stage, the arc of a rainbow which, after a sudden shower, fell to the earth like an arrow from between the clouds, a sheepdog pressed flat under the wheel of a car, a herd of stubborn goats bobbing their heads with profound indifference, blue cloth fluttering in the wind, designating something sacred, a swarthy woman looking down on the street below from a first-floor window, her exposed chest leaning out over the wooden frame, cat-sized rats threading their way around the legs of market stalls, unlit signs and display windows, a sombrely lit butcher’s fridge, each dark red carcass still buttressed with the animal’s skeleton, Banchi’s printing shop, on the ground floor of a temple on the main street in the city centre, there Banchi makes picture postcards featuring his own translations of Indian sutras.

Behind the last door is oblivion. Standing before it, one can go forwards or backwards; but beside it are not the places of exquisite pleasure: the faces of pure ones confined to pavilions, reclining on green cushions and beautiful carpets amid thornless lote-trees and banana trees, one over another; for these have gone with the smoke of the opium. What remains, four years afterwards, are the haunted rooms of the departed: of a young, vigorous man with red hair and an old man left in his blood in a bothy; of a henchman dragged from his horse with an arrow in him, and another, darker of skin, dead of fighting in a Greek courtyard. Of a man returning from perilous seas to drown, seeking his son, near his homeland; of a girl dying blind behind yellow silk curtains, and another burning at night in an African pavilion. And a child, a son … an only son … playing with shells at the feet of the father who shortly would kill it. One does not, of set purpose, linger long on such a threshold. Sooner or later, the chains must give way; the accusing, querulous voices cease; and the insistent, imperious summons, saying over and over, ‘Aucassins, damoisiax, sire! Ja sui jou li vostre amie, Et vos ne me haés mie!

She sighed “Can’t you just think about sex like a normal guy?” He blinked. “Excuse me?” “How are you not thinking about sex right now?” “You don’t know what I’m thinking about.” “Yeah, but I know what you’re feeling. And you’re feeling…happy. Where’s all the desire and want?” He picked up another arrow. “Are you seriously mad at me right now because I’m not having lustful thoughts?” “No. I’m just confused. I mean, I’m thinking about sex. But you’re over there coating arrows in blood and thinking about God knows what—“ “Star Wars figurines.” “What?” “That’s what I was thinking about.” She blinked in confusion. “Star Wars figurines make you happy?” He smiled and went back to the arrows on the table. “No. You make me happy. My happy feelings are because of you. My desire and want feelings—which I have plenty of—are also because of you, but I have those contained right now because I’m trying not to overwhelm you with emotions.” “Oh.” “Trust me,” he grabbed another arrow. “You don’t want me to think about sex when you can feel my emotions. It’s very intense. I could barely handle it with you and I had five hundred years of practice.” She shot her eyes to him. “What are you trying to say? That I’m some kind of baby? I can handle it.” He shook his head and smiled. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” “Try me.” This was a dangerous game, but since only his life was at stake… “Okay.” He shrugged and started thinking about sex. With Scarlet. He watched as she stood frozen and the color drained from her face as everything he felt rolled into her. Then bright red color returned to her face and she looked like she might catch fire. He kept his eyes on her as his feelings stayed in the hottest parts of his being. She looked at him with hungry eyes and moved her mouth to speak but no sound came out. He watched her breathing grow heavier. She dropped the arrows she held and stared at him. He changed his pattern of thought and tried to calm his emotions so she wouldn’t do anything she regretted. Once his thoughts were back on happy non-sexual things, he glanced at Scarlet, who was still frozen in place with red cheeks and parted lips. “Scar?” He leaned to the side to look in her far away eyes. “You okay?” She mouthed something and nodded, then tried again. “Yeah.” Her voice cracked. She was staring at the wall with big eyes. “I’m, uh…I’m good. I’m great.” He went back to the arrows and smiled. “Told you.” Scarlet blinked a few times and looked at Tristan. “We definitely need a chaperone.

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

She is also the power behind spiritual awakening, the inner force that unleashes spiritual power within the human body in the form of kundalini. And she is a guardian: beautiful, queenly, and fierce. Paintings of Durga show her with flowing hair, a red sari, bangles, necklaces, a crown—and eight arms bristling with weapons. Durga carries a spear, a mace, a discus, a bow, and a sword—as well as a conch (representing creative sound), a lotus (symbolizing fertility), and a rosary (symbolizing prayer). In one version of her origin, she appears as a divine female warrior, brought into manifestation by the male gods to save them from the buffalo demon, Mahisha. The assembled gods, furious and powerless over a demon who couldn’t be conquered, sent forth their anger as a mass of light and power. Their combined strength coalesced into the form of a radiantly beautiful woman who filled every direction with her light. Her face was formed by Shiva; her hair came from Yama, the god of death; her arms were given by Vishnu. Shiva gave her his trident, Vishnu his discus, Vayu—the wind god—offered his bow and arrow. The mountain god, Himalaya, gave her the lion for her mount. Durga set forth to battle the demon for the sake of the world, armed and protected by all the powers of the divine masculine.1 As a world protector, Durga’s fierceness arises out of her uniquely potent compassion. She is the deity to call on when you’re

was dog-tired when, a little before dawn, the boatswain sounded his pipe and the crew began to man the capstan-bars. I might have been twice as weary, yet I would not have left the deck, all was so new and interesting to me—the brief commands, the shrill note of the whistle, the men bustling to their places in the glimmer of the ship's lanterns. "Now, Barbecue, tip us a stave," cried one voice. "The old one," cried another. "Aye, aye, mates," said Long John, who was standing by, with his crutch under his arm, and at once broke out in the air and words I knew so well: "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—" And then the whole crew bore chorus:— "Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" And at the third "Ho!" drove the bars before them with a will. Even at that exciting moment it carried me back to the old Admiral Benbow in a second, and I seemed to hear the voice of the captain piping in the chorus. But soon the anchor was short up; soon it was hanging dripping at the bows; soon the sails began to draw, and the land and shipping to flit by on either side; and before I could lie down to snatch an hour of slumber the HISPANIOLA had begun her voyage to the Isle of Treasure. I am not going to relate that voyage in detail. It was fairly prosperous. The ship proved to be a good ship, the crew were capable seamen, and the captain thoroughly understood his business. But before we came the length of Treasure Island, two or three things had happened which require to be known. Mr. Arrow, first of all, turned out even worse than the captain had feared. He had no command among the men, and people did what they pleased with him. But that was by no means the worst of it, for after a day or two at sea he began to appear on deck with hazy eye, red cheeks, stuttering tongue, and other marks of drunkenness. Time after time he was ordered below in disgrace. Sometimes he fell and cut himself; sometimes he lay all day long in his little bunk at one side of the companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost sober and attend to his work at least passably. In the meantime, we could never make out where he got the drink. That was the ship's mystery. Watch him as we pleased, we could do nothing to solve it; and when we asked him to his face, he would only laugh if he were drunk, and if he were sober deny solemnly that he ever tasted anything but water. He was not only useless as an officer and a bad influence amongst the men, but it was plain that at this rate he must soon kill himself outright, so nobody was much surprised, nor very sorry, when one dark night, with a head sea, he disappeared entirely and was seen no more. "Overboard!" said the captain. "Well, gentlemen, that saves the trouble of putting him in irons." But there we were, without a mate; and it was necessary, of course, to advance one of the men. The boatswain, Job Anderson, was the likeliest man aboard, and though he kept his old title,

To the Po'lice In case you are wondering the answer is yes: you have hurt us. Deeply. Just as you intended: you and those who sent you. You do know by now that you do not send yourself? I imagine your Designers sitting back in the shadows laughing as we weep. Though usually devoid of feeling, they are experiencing a sensation they almost enjoy: they get to witness, by twisted enchantment, dozens of strong black mothers weeping. They planned and nurtured your hatred and fear and focused the kill shot. Then watched you try to explain your innocence on TV. It is entertainment for them. They chuckle and drink Watching you squirm. They have tied you up in a bag of confusion from which you will never escape. It’s true you are white, but you are so fucking poor, and dumb, to boot, they say. A consideration that turns them pink with glee. (They have so many uses planned for the poor, white, and dumb: you would be amazed). You and the weeping mothers have more in common than you might think: the mothers know this. They have known you far longer than you have known them. After centuries, even those in the shadows, your masters, offer little mystery. If you could find your true courage you might risk everything to sit within a circle, surrounded by these women. Their eyes red from weeping, their throats raw. (They might strike you too, who could swear they wouldn’t?) Their sons are dead and it was you who did the deed. Scary enough. But within that enclosure Naked to their grief Is where you must center If you are ever To be freed.

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

I dreamed once that I had committed a terrible crime. Carried beyond myself by passion, I knew not at the moment HOW evil was the thing I did. But I knew it was evil. And suddenly I became aware, when it was too late, of the nature of that which I had done. The horror that came with the knowledge was of the things that belong only to the secret soul. I was the same man as before I did it, yet was I now a man of whom my former self could not have conceived the possibility as dwelling within it. The former self seemed now by contrast lovely in purity, yet out of that seeming purity this fearful, foul I of the present had just been born! The face of my fellow-man was an avenging law, the face of a just enemy. Where, how, should the frightful face be hidden? The conscious earth must take it into its wounded bosom, and that before the all-seeing daylight should come. But it would come, and I should stand therein pointed at by every ray that shot through the sunny atmosphere! "The agony was of its own kind, and I have no word to tell what it was like. An evil odour and a sickening pain combined, might be a symbol of the torture. As is in the nature of dreams, possibly I lay but a little second on the rack, yet an age seemed shot through and through with the burning meshes of that crime, while, cowering and terror-stricken, I tossed about the loathsome fact in my mind. I had DONE it, and from the done there was no escape: it was for evermore a thing done.—Came a sudden change: I awoke. The sun stained with glory the curtains of my room, and the light of light darted keen as an arrow into my very soul. Glory to God! I was innocent! The stone was rolled from my sepulchre. With the darkness whence it had sprung, the cloud of my crime went heaving lurid away. I was a creature of the light and not of the dark. For me the sun shone and the wind blew; for me the sea roared and the flowers sent up their odours. For me the earth had nothing to hide. My guilt was wiped away; there was no red worm gnawing at my heart; I could look my neighbour in the face, and the child of my friend might lay his hand in mine and not be defiled! All day long the joy of that deliverance kept surging on in my soul.

Eragon! Saphira! Rouse yourselves! Eragon’s eyes snapped open. He sat upright and grabbed Brisingr. All was dark, save for the dull red glow of the bed of coals to his right and a ragged patch of starry sky off to the east. Though the light was faint, Eragon was able to make out the general shape of the forest and the meadow…and the monstrously large snail that was sliding across the grass toward him. Eragon yelped and scrambled backward. The snail--whose shell was over five and a half feet tall--hesitated, then slimed toward him as fast as a man could run. A snakelike hiss came from the black slit of its mouth, and its waving eyeballs were each the size of his fist. Eragon realized that he would not have time to get to his feet, and on his back he did not have the space he needed to draw Brisingr. He prepared to cast a spell, but before he could, Saphira’s head arrowed past him and she caught the snail about the middle with her jaws. The snail’s shell cracked between her fangs with a sound like breaking slate, and the creature uttered a faint, quavering shriek. With a twist of her neck, Saphira tossed the snail into the air, opened her mouth as wide as it would go, and swallowed the creature whole, bobbing her head twice as she did, like a robin eating an earthworm. Lowering his gaze, Eragon saw four more giant snails farther down upon the rise. One of the creatures had retreated within its shell; the others were hurrying away upon their undulating, skirtlike bellies. “Over there!” shouted Eragon. Saphira leaped forward. Her entire body left the ground for a moment, and then she landed upon all fours and snapped up first one, then two, then three of the snails. She did not eat the last snail, the one hiding in its shell, but drew back her head and bathed it in a stream of blue and yellow flame that lit up the land for hundreds of feet in every direction. She maintained the flame for no more than a second or two; then she picked up the smoking, steaming snail between her jaws--as gently as a mother cat picking up a kitten--carried it over to Eragon, and dropped it at his feet. He eyed it with distrust, but it appeared well and truly dead. Now you can have a proper breakfeast, said Saphira.

Line of AuNor, dragon bold Flows to me from days of old, And through years lost in the mist My blood names a famous list. By Air, by Water, by Fire, by Earth In pride I claim a noble birth. From EmLar Gray, a deadly deed By his flame Urlant was freed, Of fearsome hosts of blighters dark And took his reward: a golden ark! My Mother’s sire knew battle well Before him nine-score villages fell. When AuRye Red coursed the sky Elven arrows in vain would fly, He broke the ranks of men at will In glittering mines dwarves he’d kill. Grandsire he is through Father’s blood A river of strength in fullest flood. My egg was one of Irelia’s Clutch Her wisdom passed in mental touch. Mother took up before ever I woke The parent dragon’s heavy yoke; For me, her son, she lost her life Murderous dwarves brought blackened knife. A father I had in the Bronze AuRel Hunter of renown upon wood and fell He gave his clutch through lessons hard A chance at life beyond his guard. Father taught me where, and when, and how To fight or flee, so I sing now. Wistala, sibling, brilliant green Escaped with me the axes keen We hunted as pair, made our kill From stormy raindrops drank our fill When elves and dwarves took after us I told her “Run,” and lost her thus. Bound by ropes; by Hazeleye freed And dolphin-rescued in time of need I hid among men with fishing boats On island thick with blown sea-oats I became a drake and breathed first fire When dolphin-slaughter aroused my ire. I ran with wolves of Blackhard’s pack Killed three hunters on my track The Dragonblade’s men sought my hide But I escaped through a fangèd tide Of canine friends, assembled Thing Then met young Djer, who cut collar-ring. I crossed the steppes with dwarves of trade On the banks of the Vhydic Ironriders slayed Then sought out NooMoahk, dragon black And took my Hieba daughter back To find her kind; then took first flight Saw NooMoahk buried in honor right. When war came to friends I long had known My path was set, my heart was stone I sought the source of dreadful hate And on this Isle I met my fate Found Natasatch in a cavern deep So I had one more promise to keep. To claim this day my life’s sole mate In future years to share my fate A dragon’s troth is this day pledged To she who’ll see me fully fledged. Through this dragon’s life, as dragon-dame shall add your blood to my family’s fame.

The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners—a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main—who had come ashore to see the humours of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf, gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed without fear or scruple, the rules of behaviour that were binding on all others: smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavourable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice. But the sea in those old times heaved, swelled, and foamed very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling and become at once if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic or casually associate. Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.

Why can’t we make her a visiting member, just for tonight?” “Technically speaking, the club’s charter dictates that no females are allowed in the club, visiting or otherwise,” Q told him. “Okay, okay. But it’s like Katie said, she’s not just a girl. She’s a relative. That should count for something,” Hooter pointed out. “None of you guys have a little sister, and believe me you don’t know what pains they can be,” Matt tried to explain. “I sort of know how she feels,” Tony said. “It’s not much fun always being the littlest and the one that always gets left out.” “Come on, Matt, just for tonight. She can’t be that bad.” Hooter laughed, opening the tent. “Okay.” Matt sighed. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” As Hooter held open the tent flap, the newest temporary member of the Adventure Club stumbled out. In the light of the campfire her head was a blaze of red curls. Over her shoulder was a toy bow, with the arrows in a pouch on her back. She held a water gun in one hand and a plastic Heroic Hero sword in the other. She took a step toward the group and shot Hooter in the nose with her squirt gun. “I’m ready for the adventure, Chief,” she said with a dimpled grin.

Each day I perform complex choreography around people, dogs, garbage bags, cyclists going the wrong way, traffic signs with arrows that say ONLY, creaking as they swing in the wind. Sometimes I walk for blocks, even miles, without paying much attention. But then my gait slows. Something tugs at my arm and whispers, Look! Look. There are limestone angels about the doors of the Parish of the Guardian Angel. There's a Banksy painted on Zabar's. There are toy cardinals tied like red ribbons to tree branches on Bank Street. And just like that, Manhattan has me again.

The second course would feature six butter statues, one of which was an elephant, and another Hercules fighting the legendary monster Cerebus. A monstrous pastry stag was the centerpiece of that course, with red wine gelatin bleeding from where an arrow had pierced its side. The final course included six monstrous statues made of pastry: Helen of Troy; a nude Venus; a camel with a king upon its back; a unicorn with its horn in the mouth of a serpent; Hercules holding open the mouth of a lion; and Poseidon and his mighty trident. There were 361 bowls and plates of candied fruits: coconuts, apricots, grapes, pears, and melons, as well as plates of almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, and a variety of cheeses.

The very next morning It was Valentine’s Day! They grabbed all their cards and went on their way. The classroom was decked out in red, pink, and white, with balloons and streamers, so festive and bright. Someone dropped by with a giant bouquet addressed to the teacher, who blushed right away. The card was signed “From a secret admirer,” but everyone knew it was Mr. O’Meyer! They played pin the heart and won goofy toys, and girls ran away from kissy-face boys. The art teacher came and painted kids’ faces. She put hearts on cheeks and sillier places! At last it was time to deliver the cards. Look! One for Lisa, Jim, and Bernard. They opened them up, read them and smiled, and laughed at the cards that were totally wild. Then they ate goodies, sweet cherries, and grapes, and drank punch with ice cubes in little heart shapes. And just when they thought the party was done, a knock on the door came at quarter past one. When what to their wondering eyes should appear, but the principal himself dressed in full Cupid gear! His arrows--how golden! His bow--curved and tight! The wig that he wore was a comical sight. He spoke not a word and was gone in a minute, leaving a present behind. Now what could be in it? They read Cupid’s note as he leapt down the hall: “Happy Valentine’s Day-- to one and to all!

her head against the roof. She slowed as she reached Red Arrow Highway and made a right onto the empty road. Breathe. She needed to get to the police. She glanced back, but there was no one following. She faced the road ahead. Which way

Mulan found it easier to face the morning by pretending that her clothes were armor. The stiff coronation robe Ting was smoothing down over her shoulders? She imagined it woven with threads of spun gold, the embroidered phoenixes stitched with blazing-red iron. Her sash, hanging loose down her back, was a shoulder guard of blue iron, and the phoenixes on her shoes were spikes and spurs. “Please keep your head forward, Empress.” A handmaiden gripped a handful of hair, pulling it taut enough to make Mulan’s eyes water. The hair, at least, was easy to imagine as a helmet. By the time the maid finished wrapping it around multiple combs and adorning the layered buns with everything from flowers to jade to tiny golden bells, Mulan’s coiffure would stop arrows far better than anything the imperial blacksmiths could craft. The maid inserted one last pin and stepped back. “All done.” She pulled the train of Mulan’s robe out as Mulan stepped in front of a full-length mirror. Mulan’s reflection was warped and metallic on the coppery finish, but she could see that she was made up as intricately as the finest ladies of court, her face powdered white, her eyes lined with charcoal, and her lips painted red as her sash. Her eyebrows had been shaved and drawn back in with blue-black pigment. Tiny silver beads adorned her yellow-tinted forehead, and three flowers had been painted on her right cheek. “Armor,” Mulan said under her breath. “Your Majesty?” “Nothing, just talking to myself.

Mulan found it easier to face the morning by pretending that her clothes were armor. The stiff coronation robe Ting was smoothing down over her shoulders. She imagined it woven with threads of spun gold, the embroidered phoenixes stitched with blazing-red iron. Her sash, hanging loose down her back, was a shoulder guard of blue iron, and the phoenixes on her shoes were spikes and spurs. “Please keep your head forward, Empress.” A handmaiden gripped a handful of hair, pulling it taut enough to make Mulan’s eyes water. The hair, at least, was easy to imagine as a helmet. By the time the maid finished wrapping it around multiple combs and adorning the layered buns with everything from flowers to jade to tiny golden bells, Mulan’s coiffure would stop arrows far better than anything the imperial blacksmiths could craft. The maid inserted one last pin and stepped back. “All done.” She pulled the train of Mulan’s robe out as Mulan stepped in front of a full-length mirror. Mulan’s reflection was warped and metallic on the coppery finish, but she could see that she was made up as intricately as the finest ladies of court, her face powdered white, her eyes lined with charcoal, and her lips painted red as her sash. Her eyebrows had been shaved and drawn back in with blue-black pigment. Tiny silver beads adorned her yellow-tinted forehead, and three flowers had been painted on her right cheek. “Armor,” Mulan said under her breath. “Your Majesty?” “Nothing, just talking to myself.

You're... you're nothing like I expected.' The way he said that sounded so genuine that some of my irritation eased. 'Was it my skill with an arrow or the blade? Or was it that fact that I took you to the ground?' 'Barely took me to the ground,' he corrected. His chin dipped, and his lashes lowered, shielding his odd eyes. 'All of those things. But you forgot to add in the Red Pearl. I never expected to find the Maiden there.' I snorted. 'I imagine not.

He was shirtless, with only the baldric across his muscled chest. The pommel of his sword glinted golden in the dying sunlight, and the feathered tops of arrows were stained red as they poked across his broad shoulder. I stared at him, and he watched me back. The warrior incarnate.

It happened one morning that Karlsefni and his men noticed up above the clearing a kind of speck as it were glittering back at them, and they shouted at it. It moved -- it was a uniped -- and hopped down to the river-bank off which they were lying. Thorvald Eirik the Red's son was sitting by the rudder, and the uniped shot an arrow into his guts. He drew out the arrow. "There is fat round my belly!" he said. "We have won a fine and fruitful country, but will hardly be allowed to enjoy it." Thorvald died of this wound a little later. The uniped skipped away and back north, and Karlsefni and his men gave chase, catching sight of him every now and again. The last glimpse they had of him, he was leaping for some creek or other.

Charis laughed. A venom laced breath of cruelty that chased the courage off the woman's face. "Oh I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to let you go." The woman barked a laugh. "Sure you are." " "I'm going to unshackle you, and personally escort you out of the palace." Charis set her teeth. The woman tried to draw back as Charis slowly dragged the tip of the dagger from the assassin's heart to the base of her neck. A thin, red welt rose in the weapon's wake. "Why would you do that?" Her voice was breathless. Charis cocked her head, keeping her eyes locked on the Montevallion scum who dared to shoot an arrow at her. "Because I am the nightmare you won't see coming. I am the last gasp of air in your lungs, the final beat of your treacherous heart. And once you've made an enemy of me, I won't stop coming for you until everything you love lies in pieces at your feet." "But, then why not just kill me now?" "Because you aren't begging for death yet.