Rope Hold Quotes

When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.

Your daughter is ugly. She knows loss intimately, carries whole cities in her belly. As a child, relatives wouldn’t hold her. She was splintered wood and sea water. They said she reminded them of the war. On her fifteenth birthday you taught her how to tie her hair like rope and smoke it over burning frankincense. You made her gargle rosewater and while she coughed, said macaanto girls like you shouldn’t smell of lonely or empty. You are her mother. Why did you not warn her, hold her like a rotting boat and tell her that men will not love her if she is covered in continents, if her teeth are small colonies, if her stomach is an island if her thighs are borders? What man wants to lay down and watch the world burn in his bedroom? Your daughter’s face is a small riot, her hands are a civil war, a refugee camp behind each ear, a body littered with ugly things but God, doesn’t she wear the world well.

Introduction to Poetry I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide or press an ear against its hive. I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out, or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch. I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore. But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it. They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

Of course I would fall for Captain Emotionally Constipated. I could train a rock to hold more affection for me.

It takes 3 girls to tow always; two to hold the rope, and the other one runs round and round, and giggles.

Hold this rope while I dive into my soul; don't even bother pulling it if I didn't come up on my own.

Or maybe it’s about the wonderful things that may happen if you break the ropes that are holding you.

He would not let her go. Even though, staring into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled water, with sun flashing though each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl who had once jumped rope like a queen, now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean—oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on.

You don't need to hold them, Just let them choose if they want to stay or be free. You're not a rope, You're a magnet.

My rotting brain had lied to me; of course talking would help. Of course my loving, caring friends telling me it would get better would help. They fed ropes down the hold I'd been digging, and even if they couldn't pull me up, they at least reminded me that there was a world beyond this, where I'd been before.

even the most well-adjusted person is holding on to his or her sanity by a greased rope.

There are moments when a rope's end, a pole, the branch of the tree, is life itself, and it is a frightful thing to see a living being lose his hold upon it, and fall like a ripe fruit.

Any tightrope walker can walk in a straight line and hold a cane at the same time. It's the balancing on the rope at those dizzying heights that they have to practise

Non-attachment is not complacency. It doesn't imply a lack of caring and commitment. The philosophy of non-attachment is based in the understanding that holding on too tightly to those things, which in any case are always going to be slipping through our fingers, hurts and gives us rope burn.

No connection can ever be broken if love holds tight at both ends.

Words are what sticks to the real. We use them to push the real, to drag the real into the poem. They are what we hold on with, nothing else. They are as valuable in themselves as rope with nothing to be tied to.

Our memories and the events of our lives are untidy things. We wish that we could file them away and shut the door, or we wish the opposite - that they would stay with us forever. You want to banish the remembrance of a tight hold on your ankle, a rope under a bed, the amber-colored medicine bottles of your father, the door your mother slams after a night of too much wine and jealousy. You want to keep close to you always that first sweet kiss, a maple leaf, that growing sense of yourself; you want to hold the sight of your dying father on that last boat trip, the calm you remember as your mother held you. Her voice.

I'm waging a tug of war, but no one else is holding the other end of the rope

... for miracles to happen, God, need our cooperation. As Pastor Charles once told me, God can throw us a rope to save us, but we have to hold to it.

Ah!" I cried, springing up. "But no! no! My uncle shall never know it. He would insist upon doing it too. He would want to know all about it. Ropes could not hold him, such a determined geologist as he is! He would start, he would, in spite of everything and everybody, and he would take me with him, and we should never get back. No, never! never!" My over-excitement was beyond all description.

When you get the end of your rope, tie a knot & hold on!

Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day Till then we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear, Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, Refusing to make haste! Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, Each rope distinct, Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits Arching our way, it never anchors; it's No sooner present than it turns to past. Right to the last We think each one will heave to and unload All good into our lives, all we are owed For waiting so devoutly and so long. But we are wrong: Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break. - Next, Please

Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads. Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place. Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows? ...No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right. How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads.... Why did they kill little Bobby Franks? Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood. . . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain

[Stephanie] "This won't be so bad," I said to her, making an effort at convincing myself. "How about your blanket? We could wrap him up in the blanket. Then we could pick him up without actually touching him." "I suppose that'd be all right," Lula said. "We could give it a try" I spread the blanket on the ground beside Elliot Harp, took a deep breath, hooked my fingers around his belt and rolled him onto the blanket. I jumped back, squeezed my eyes closed tight and exhaled. No matter how much violent death I saw, I would never get used to it. "I'm gonna definitely have the runs," Lula said. "I can feel it coming on." "Forget about the runs and help me with this body!" Lula grabbed hold of the head end of the blanket, and I grabbed hold of the foot end. Harp had full rigor and wouldn't bend, so we put him in the trunk headfirst with his legs sticking out. We carefully closed the lid on Harp's knees and secured the lid with a piece of rope Lula had in her trunk. "Hold on," Lula said, pulling a red flowered scarf from her coat pocket, tying the scarf on Harp's foot like a flag. "Don't want to get a ticket. I hear the police are real picky about having things sticking out of your trunk." Especially dead guys.

Or maybe it's about the wonderful things that may happen if you break the ropes that are holding you.

Because any Dom knows that the submissive is the one in control. He might wield the crop or the candle wax or the rope, but she holds the reins. Nothing happens without her consent.

The weather had freshened almost to coldness, for the wind was coming more easterly, from the chilly currents between Tristan and the Cape; the sloth was amazed by the change; it shunned the deck and spent its time below. Jack was in his cabin, pricking the chart with less satisfaction than he could have wished: progress, slow, serious trouble with the mainmast-- unaccountable headwinds by night-- and sipping a glass of grog; Stephen was in the mizentop, teaching Bonden to write and scanning the sea for his first albatross. The sloth sneezed, and looking up, Jack caught its gaze fixed upon him; its inverted face had an expression of anxiety and concern. 'Try a piece of this, old cock,' he said, dipping his cake in the grog and proffering the sop. 'It might put a little heart into you.' The sloth sighed, closed its eyes, but gently absorbed the piece, and sighed again. Some minutes later he felt a touch upon his knee: the sloth had silently climbed down and it was standing there, its beady eyes looking up into his face, bright with expectation. More cake, more grog: growing confidence and esteem. After this, as soon as the drum had beat the retreat, the sloth would meet him, hurrying toward the door on its uneven legs: it was given its own bowl, and it would grip it with its claws, lowering its round face into it and pursing its lips to drink (its tongue was too short to lap). Sometimes it went to sleep in this position, bowed over the emptiness. 'In this bucket,' said Stephen, walking into the cabin, 'in this small half-bucket, now, I have the population of Dublin, London, and Paris combined: these animalculae-- what is the matter with the sloth?' It was curled on Jack's knee, breathing heavily: its bowl and Jack's glass stood empty on the table. Stephen picked it up, peered into its affable bleary face, shook it, and hung it upon its rope. It seized hold with one fore and one hind foot, letting the others dangle limp, and went to sleep. Stephen looked sharply round, saw the decanter, smelt to the sloth, and cried, 'Jack, you have debauched my sloth.

Once released from life, having lost it in such violence, I couldn’t calculate my steps. I didn’t have time for contemplation. In violence it is the getting out that you concentrate on. When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from the shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping to land away from where you are.

Matthias nooded, and the bronze girl took a knife to the ropes binding him. “I belive you know Nina,” Brekker continued. “The lovely girl freeing you is Inej, our thief of secrets and the best in the trade. Jesper Fahey is our sharpshooter, Zemeni-born but try not to hold it against him, and this is Wylan, best demolition expert in the Barrel.

Are the Trials starting?” The girl claps her hands over her mouth. “I'm sorry,” she whispers. “I—” “It's all right.” I don't smile at her. It will only scare her. For a female slave, a smile from a Mask is not usually a good thing. “I'm actually wondering the same thing. What's your name?” “S-slave-Girl.” Of course. My mother would already have scourged her name out of existence. “Right. You work for the Commandant?” I want her to say no. I want her to say that my mother roped her into this. I want her to say she's assigned to the kitchens or infirmary, where slaves aren't scarred or missing body parts. But the girl nods in response to my question. Don't let my mother break you, I think. The girl meets my eyes, and there is that feeling again, low and hot and consuming. Don't be weak. Fight. Escape. A gust of wind whips a strand free from her bun and across her cheekbone. Defiance flashes across her face as she holds my gaze, and for a second, I see my own desire for freedom mirrored, intensified in her eyes. It's something I've never detected in the eyes of a fellow student, let alone a Scholar slave. For one strange moment, I feel less alone. But then she looks down, and I wonder at my own naiveté. She can't fight. She can't scape. Not from Blackcliff. I smile joylessly; in this, at least, the slave and I are more similar than she'll ever know.

Perhaps the rest of the world was gone. It was the most plausible answer. Heaven knows she couldn’t see or think of anyone else. That must be the answer, they were the only two people left, as the Earth spun into a timeless abyss. Claire once read time doesn’t pass at normal speeds within a black hole. If one were to travel into a black hole for only moments and return again, centuries would have passed. That explained the sensation she felt, once again peering into his dark gaze. She wouldn’t look away; she’d trained herself better than that. Then again, she reasoned, it wasn’t an option. She couldn’t divert her gaze if she wanted. The hold upon her stare was stronger than any ropes or chains made by man. Claire knew from experience, submitting to the hold was her best chance at survival. Fighting was a futile waste of energy.

[The] term ‘decide’ has always seemed to me to be quite wrong…A sinner does not ‘decide’ for Christ; the sinner ‘flies’ to Christ in utter helplessness and despair saying — Foul, I to the fountain fly, Wash me, Saviour, or I die. No man truly comes to Christ unless he flies to Him as his only refuge and hope, his only way of escape from the accusations of conscience and the condemnation of God’s holy law. Nothing else is satisfactory. If a man says that having thought about the matter and having considered all sides he has on the whole decided for Christ, and if he has done so without any emotion or feeling, I cannot regard him as a man who has been regenerated. The convicted sinner no more ‘decides’ for Christ than the poor drowning man ‘decides’ to take hold of that rope that is thrown to him and suddenly provides him with the only means of escape. The term is entirely inappropriate.

I wrap my wrist in the rope and swing myself so I face the beast. I unsheathe my dagger and hold it close as the ship tilts and the rigging hovers above the Lusca. This creature is extraordinary; something of legends. If I want to beat it, then I'm going to need to be extraordinary, too.

T.J. rushed past me, heading for the prow, and nearly impaled me with his bayonet. “Magnus, hold that line!” he yelled, waving at pretty much every rope on the ship. I grabbed the nearest bit of rigging and pulled as hard as I could, hoping I had the right line, or hoping I at least looked helpful while doing the wrong thing.

In Sri Lanka, when two strangers meet, they ask a series of questions that reveal family, ancestral village, and blood ties until they arrive at a common friend or relative. Then they say, "Those are our people, so you are our people." It's a small place. Everyone knows everyone. "But in America, there are no such namings; it is possible to slip and slide here. It is possible to get lost in the nameless multitudes. There are no ropes binding one, holding one to the earth. Unbound by place or name, one is aware that it is possible to drift out into the atmosphere and beyond that, into the solitary darkness where there is no oxygen.

Every time I thought I couldn’t do something, a task felt too big, an enemy too scary, I imagined they were nothing more than a thin, puny rope. And no rope can hold me. Every time you think you can’t do something, imagine a rope in your mind. And tear that rope apart

Everything has a breaking point. A string of guitar, a heart, when no longer loved; Ropes of anchors holding ships tied, shell of an egg when bringing new life. Breakage is always a path to freedom. Even when falling into stygian gloom.

Even the most well-adjusted person is holding on to his or her sanity by a greased rope. The rationality circuits are shoddily built into the human animal.

Her needs, desires, and fears run deep. So deep she could easily lose her way in the darkness. She needs a rope, not one that tethers her to her horrific past, but a strong, unbreakable line to guide her forward. The bindings might hold her down, but I’m pulling the other end. I’ll never let go. With

A sword by itself is not evil. A sword can be used to slay an enemy, or release a suffering friend into the darkness. A sword can cut ropes that bind the helpless. A raised sword can be a threat or it can be a symbol of leadership...A weapon, my children, is good or evil depending on the intention of whoever holds it.

My default answer to everything is no. As soon as I hear the inflection of inquiry in your voice, the word no forms in my mind, sometimes accompanies by a reason, often not. Can I open the mail? No. Can I wear your necklace? No. When is dinner? No. What you probably wouldn't believe is how much I want to say yes. Yes, you can take two dozen books home from the library. Yes, you can eat the whole roll of SweeTarts. Yes, you can camp out on the deck. But the books will get lost, and SweeTarts will eventually make your tongue bleed, and if you sleep on the deck, the neighborhood racoons will nibble on you. I often wish I could come back to life as your uncle, so I could give you more. But, when you're the mom, your whole life is holding the rope against those wily secret agents who never, ever stop trying to get you to drop your end.

In the front was a man he knew only as “Samson,” a big man that from all appearances was a former juice head gym rat with exquisitely defined muscles, stripped to the waist and carrying a huge nine foot cross hewn from raw timber and held together with nails and twine. Behind him in a rough line were the flagellates: five men also stripped to the waist, holding various chains, heavy corded ropes, and one with what looked like a leather whip from the S&M sex shop. They beat their backs as they slowly walked down the center of the street.

When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping only to land away from where you are.

He didn't want to think about this, didn't want to feel this, so he thought about the Foxes instead. He clung tight to the memory of their unhesitating friendship and their smiles. He pretended the heartbeat pounding a sick pace in his temples was an Exy ball ricocheting off the court walls. He thought of Wymack holding him up in December and Andrew pushing him down against the bedroom floor. The memories made him weak with grief and loss, but they made him stronger, too. He'd come to the Foxhole Court every inch a lie, but his friends made him into someone real. He'd hit the end of his rope before he wanted to and he hadn't accomplished everything he'd hoped to this year, but he'd done more with his life than he'd ever thought possible. That had to be enough. He traced the outline of a key into his bloody, burnt palm with a shaky finger, closed his eyes, and wished Neil Josten goodbye.

I will take you home, his lord had said. Home. He held to that word, as a man holds to a rope in a raging sea.

...he holds the boy, feeling the jump of his pulses, his stiff sinews, the ropes of his muscles, and makes sounds of comfort, as he did to his children when they were small, or as he does to a spaniel whose tail has been trodden on. Comfort is often, he finds, imparted at the cost of a flea or two." 523

I’m not sure if it’s Kyle Davenport I see hanging, considering there’s not a piece of flesh to make him identifiable, but everyone here has the same conclusion. Even if we can’t identify him, we all know it’s him. The rope holds his neck, and his naked, fleshless body dangles from the tower as the bells chime on. If she wanted to make a statement that would incite a full-blown panic, she just won that war.

Bright wouldn’t have another shot at the Olympics, but he would run for the rest of his life, setting masters records in his old age. Eventually he went blind, but he kept right on running, holding the end of a rope while a guide held the other. “The only problem was that most guides couldn’t run as fast as my brother, even when he was in his late seventies,” wrote his sister Georgie Bright Kunkel. “In his eighties his grandnephews would walk with him around his care center as he timed the walk on his stopwatch.

There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven nights he was on the sea, and what kept him alive while others drowned was telling himself stories like a madman, so that as one ended another began. On the seventh day he had told all the stories he knew and that was when he began to tell himself as if he were a story, from the earliest beginnings to his green and deep misfortune. The story he told was of a man lost and found, not once, but many times, as he choked his way out of the waves. And the night fell, he saw the Cape Wrath light, only lit a week it was, but it was, and he knew that if he became the story of the light, he might be saved. With his last strength he began to paddle towards it, arms on either side of the spar, and in his mind the light became a shining rope, pulling him in. He took hold of it, tied it round his waist, and at that moment, the keeper saw him, and ran for the rescue boat.

I've heard the long sigh go up, from around me, the sigh like air coming out of an air mattress, I've seen Aunt Lydia place her hand over the mike, to stifle the other sounds coming from behind her, I've leaned forward to touch the rope in front of me, in time with the others, both hands on it, the rope hairy, sticky with tar in the hot sun, then placed my hand on my heart to show my unity with the Salvagers and my consent, and my complicity in the death of this woman. I have seen the kicking feet and the two in black who now seize hold of them and drag downward with all their weight. I don't want to see it anymore. I look at the grass instead. I describe the rope. 43 The

I’m going to have to start you off easy. Can’t pull out the big guns on the first night. I’d just set myself up for failure on the second date.” Putting her hands on her hips, she tilted her head. “Is that what you did last night in bed? I thought you were holding out on me.” “What the hell, Ash!” She burst out laughing. “That is not what you are supposed to tell a man! Repeat after me: I ruined you for all men, all the while fulfilling your every fantasy.

The perfect adventure shouldn’t be that much more hazardous in a real sense than ordinary life, for that invisible rope that holds us here can always break. We can live a life of bored caution and die of cancer. Better to take the adventure, minimize the risks, get the information, and then go forward in the knowledge that we’ve done everything we can. No,

There can be moments, when the rope we hold to, becomes a strand of thread, where we feel that we are barely hanging on but when the thread feels as though it's about to break; just know that God will never let us fall but rather, He will be there to catch us and when He does, He will carry us away, on wings of love, to a higher plateau, where evil cannot touch us.

One night he sits up. In cots around him are a few dozen sick or wounded. A warm September wind pours across the countryside and sets the walls of the tent rippling. Werner’s head swivels lightly on his neck. The wind is strong and gusting stronger, and the corners of the tent strain against their guy ropes, and where the flaps at the two ends come up, he can see trees buck and sway. Everything rustles. Werner zips his old notebook and the little house into his duffel and the man beside him murmurs questions to himself and the rest of the ruined company sleeps. Even Werner’s thirst has faded. He feels only the raw, impassive surge of the moonlight as it strikes the tent above him and scatters. Out there, through the open flaps of the tent, clouds hurtle above treetops. Toward Germany, toward home. Silver and blue, blue and silver. Sheets of paper tumble down the rows of cots, and in Werner’s chest comes a quickening. He sees Frau Elena kneel beside the coal stove and bank up the fire. Children in their beds. Baby Jutta sleeps in her cradle. His father lights a lamp, steps into an elevator, and disappears. The voice of Volkheimer: What you could be. Werner’s body seems to have gone weightless under his blanket, and beyond the flapping tent doors, the trees dance and the clouds keep up their huge billowing march, and he swings first one leg and then the other off the edge of the bed. “Ernst,” says the man beside him. “Ernst.” But there is no Ernst; the men in the cots do not reply; the American soldier at the door of the tent sleeps. Werner walks past him into the grass. The wind moves through his undershirt. He is a kite, a balloon. Once, he and Jutta built a little sailboat from scraps of wood and carried it to the river. Jutta painted the vessel in ecstatic purples and greens, and she set it on the water with great formality. But the boat sagged as soon as the current got hold of it. It floated downstream, out of reach, and the flat black water swallowed it. Jutta blinked at Werner with wet eyes, pulling at the battered loops of yarn in her sweater. “It’s all right,” he told her. “Things hardly ever work on the first try. We’ll make another, a better one.” Did they? He hopes they did. He seems to remember a little boat—a more seaworthy one—gliding down a river. It sailed around a bend and left them behind. Didn’t it? The moonlight shines and billows; the broken clouds scud above the trees. Leaves fly everywhere. But the moonlight stays unmoved by the wind, passing through clouds, through air, in what seems to Werner like impossibly slow, imperturbable rays. They hang across the buckling grass. Why doesn’t the wind move the light? Across the field, an American watches a boy leave the sick tent and move against the background of the trees. He sits up. He raises his hand. “Stop,” he calls. “Halt,” he calls. But Werner has crossed the edge of the field, where he steps on a trigger land mine set there by his own army three months before, and disappears in a fountain of earth.

To test this theory, I sent this picture to my mother and asked her what she thought had happened. She immediately replied,2 “The kid knocked over the vase and the cat is investigating.” She cleverly rejected alternate hypotheses, including: The cat knocked over the vase. The cat jumped out of the vase at the kid. The kid was being chased by the cat and tried to climb up the dresser with a rope to escape. There’s a wild cat in the house, and someone threw a vase at it. The cat was mummified in the vase, but arose when the kid touched it with a magic rope. The rope holding the vase broke and the cat is trying to put it back together. The vase exploded, attracting a child and a cat. The child put on the hat for protection from future explosions. The kid and cat are running around trying to catch a snake. The kid finally caught it and tied a knot in it.

1. Success is a choice. -Rick Pitino 2. Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well. -Warren Lester 3. I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment; it takes place every day. -Albert Camus 4. If you're not fired up with enthusiasm, you'll be fired with enthusiasm. -Vince Lombardi 5. There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity. -Douglas MacArthur 6. Yesterday's the past and tomorrow's the future. Today is a gift, which is why they call it the present. -Bill Keane 7. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure. -Thomas Edison 8. When you get to the end of your rope tie a knot and hang on. -Franklin D. Roosevelt 9. The best way to predict your future is to create it. -Author unknown 10. I always remember an epitaph which is in the cemetery at Tombstone, Arizona. It says, "Here lies Jack Williams. He done his damnedest." I think that is the greatest epitaph a man can have. -Harry S Truman 11. Triumph? Try Umph! -Author unknown 12. You hit home runs not by chance but by preparation. -Roger Maris 13. If you don't have enough pride, you're going to get your butt beat every play. -Gale Sayers 14. My mother taught me very early to believe I could achieve any accomplishment I wanted to. The first was to walk without braces. -Wilma Rudolph 15. You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it. -Margaret Thatcher

To Marry One's Soul Being true to who we are means carrying our spirit like a candle in the center of our darkness. If we are to live without silencing or numbing essential parts of who we are, a vow must be invoked and upheld within oneself. The same commitments we pronounce when embarking on a marriage can be understood internally as a devotion to the care of one's soul: to have and to hold … for better or for worse … in sickness and in health … to love and to cherish, till death do us part. This means staying committed to your inner path. This means not separating from yourself when things get tough or confusing. This means accepting and embracing your faults and limitations. It means loving yourself no matter how others see you. It means cherishing the unchangeable radiance that lives within you, no matter the cuts and bruises along the way. It means binding your life with a solemn pledge to the truth of your soul. It is interesting that the nautical definition of marry is “to join two ropes end to end by interweaving their strands.” To marry one's soul suggests that we interweave the life of our spirit with the life of our psychology; the life of our heart with the life of our mind; the life of our faith and truth with the life of our doubt and anxiety. And just as two ropes that are married create a tie that is twice as strong, when we marry our humanness to our spirit, we create a life that is doubly strong in the world.

People like my father preach love, but are filled with hate. Anyone who threatens their narrow beliefs can not be tolerated. They day my Mother caught my brother holding hands with another boy, that was it. After a year of hearing he was an aberration and didn't deserve to live, he went out to the shed with a rope.

No one wants to occupy a black hole of sadness and despair or slip on the tight rope that separates sanity from insanity, and reside in a vortex devoid of reality. I entered the world as a freeman and desire to escape a state of existential vertigo. I yearn to discover a synthesizing spirit of my being and hold my head high, free of doubt, and devoid of fear. I wish to foment the cerebral energy to stave off premature destruction and forevermore blunt an intolerable state of anguish.

To reach the farthest chamber of Lascaux, it's likely a man had to snuff out his light, lower himself down a shaft with a rope made of twisted fibers, and then rekindle his lamp in the dark so as to draw the woolly rhinoceros, the half horse, and the raging bison there. A long spear transfixes that bison, and entrails pour from its side. Beneath its front hooves lies the one painted man in all of Lascaux: prone, spindly wounded, disguised behind a bird mask. And below him, until its discovery in 196o, lay a spoon-shaped lamp carved of red sandstone ... Hold it again as it once was held, and the animals will emerge out of darkness as you pass. Nothing stays still. Shadows nestle in the cavities; a flicker of light across pale protruding rock turns a hoof or raises a head. One shape recedes as another emerges, and everything lingers in the imagination.

His rope, his legs, his luck. Either all would hold or all would break, quite possibly at the same time.

I don't mind walking the tight rope. Something strong is holding it

Yes! Yes! Yes!” Marty kept leaping into the air. I thought I might have to tie a rope around his waist and hold onto it to keep him from floating away!

The matriarch is a knot that holds together a rope made of many strings. Cut the rope below the knot, and it unravels.

How long could a person hold on the end of their rope before their grip slipped?

High-voltage wires stretched between steel towers like giants holding jump ropes into the distance.

Water was not my element. It dragged at my clothes as I swam. A little farther, I told myself. I could hear him coming, his arms stronger than mine from a lifetime of lifting marble. I felt the water shiver near my foot where he had grabbed and almost caught me. I looked back, and saw how close he was and how far the shore behind. Then his hand seized my ankle and yanked, pulling me to him like a rope, hand over hand, and then he had me up and by the throat, his face pressed to mine. I think he expected me to fight and claw. I didn’t fight. I seized him close around the ribs, holding my wrists so he could not get free. The sudden weight pulled us both under. He kicked and flailed back to the surface, but I was heavier than he had thought, and the waves slopped at our mouths. Let it be now, I prayed. At first I thought it was just the cold of the water. It crept up my fingers and my arms, which stiffed around him. He struggled and fought, but my hands were fused together and nothing he tried could break them. Then it was in my legs too, and my belly and my chest, and no matter how he kicked, he could not haul us back up to the air. He hit at me, but it was watery and weak and I felt nothing, just the solid circle of my arms, and the inexorable drag of my body. He had no chance, really. He was only flesh. We fell through the darkness, and the coolness slid up my neck and bled the color from my lips and cheeks. I thought of Paphos and how clever she was. I thought of her stone sister, peaceful on her couch. We fell through the currents and I thought of how the crabs would come for him, climbing over my pale shoulders. The ocean floor was sandy and soft as pillows. I settled into it and slept.

I would like to know who thinks this heart is worth one million dollars. Or maybe, I already do. A low murmur builds, rolling from the back of the room, gaining momentum as the crowd parts. I hold my breath, and

It was the cruelest thing about bipolar disorder, I thought; there was never one thing that worked forever. No one med, no one dose, no one routine. My mom said it was like walking on a rope bridge, where every step was slightly different from the last and sometimes you had to stop and just hold on until you could find your balance again. But she also liked to remind me that sometimes the views from her bridge were incredible too.

This is just a change of setting, a new storyline, a fresh chapter. We have a whole book to write," she says, squeezing me around the shoulders, "and how do we write it?" "One page at a time," I say automatically. It's Mom's favorite saying, and ever since my dip in the river, I've tried to hold on to it like a rope. Every time I get nervous or scared, I remind myself that every good story needs twists and turns. Every heroine needs an adventure.

I used to picture time as a rope you followed along, hand over hand, into the distance, but it's nothing like that. It moves outward but holds everything that's come before. Cut me open and I'm a tree trunk, rings of nostalgia radiating inward. All the years are nested inside me like I'm my own personal one-woman matryoshka doll. I guess that's true for everybody, but then I drive everybody crazy with my nostalgia and happiness. I am bittersweet personified.

And yet the hope of this paradise had not been enough to save him from a course which shut him out of it forever. Instead of keeping fast hold of the strong silken rope by which Nancy would have drawn him safe to the green banks where it was easy to step firmly, he had let himself be dragged back into the mud and slime, in which it was useless to struggle. He had made his ties for himself which robbed him of all wholesome motive and were a constant exasperation.

All human beings are connected. It’s like we’re all holding onto ropes that tie to each other. The bond is closer and stronger with people you’ve met; the longer or better you know someone, the easier it is to tune into their energy.

In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the tunnel of the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope to the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end had been accomplished, and in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.

True Friendship is a bliss that no person should miss,As there can be only a handful in your life who can bestow it upon you no matter Who you are? Where you are? What you are? How you are? Always Hold on Tightly to them with the Ropes of Truth,Honesty and Trust

Vulnerability is usually attacked, not with fists but with shaming. Many children learn quickly to cover up any signs of weakness, sensitivity, and fragility, as well as alarm, fear, eagerness, neediness, or even curiosity. Above all, they must never disclose that the teasing has hit its mark. Carl Jung explained that we tend to attack in others what we are most uncomfortable with in ourselves. When vulnerability is the enemy, it is attacked wherever it is perceived, even in a best friend. Signs of alarm may provoke verbal taunts such as “fraidy cat” or “chicken.” Tears evoke ridicule. Expressions of curiosity can precipitate the rolling of eyes and accusations of being weird or nerdy. Manifestations of tenderness can result in incessant teasing. Revealing that something caused hurt or really caring about something is risky around someone uncomfortable with his vulnerability. In the company of the desensitized, any show of emotional openness is likely to be targeted. The vulnerability engendered by peer orientation can be overwhelming even when children are not hurting one another. This vulnerability is built into the highly insecure nature of peer-oriented relationships. Vulnerability does not have to do only with what is happening but with what could happen — with the inherent insecurity of attachment. What we have, we can lose, and the greater the value of what we have, the greater the potential loss. We may be able to achieve closeness in a relationship, but we cannot secure it in the sense of holding on to it — not like securing a rope or a boat or a fixed interest-bearing government bond. One has very little control over what happens in a relationship, whether we will still be wanted and loved tomorrow. Although the possibility of loss is present in any relationship, we parents strive to give our children what they are constitutionally unable to give to one another: a connection that is not based on their pleasing us, making us feel good, or reciprocating in any way. In other words, we offer our children precisely what is missing in peer attachments: unconditional acceptance.

His eyes are cold and restless His wounds have almost healed And she'd give half of Texas Just to change the way he feels She knows his love's in Tulsa And she knows he's gonna go Well it ain't no woman flesh and blood It's that damned old rodeo Well it's bulls and blood It's dust and mud It's the roar of a Sunday crowd It's the white in his knuckles The gold in the buckle He'll win the next go 'round It's boots and chaps It's cowboy hats It's spurs and latigo It's the ropes and the reins And the joy and the pain And they call the thing rodeo She does her best to hold him When his love comes to call But his need for it controls him And her back's against the wall And it's So long girl I'll see you When it's time for him to go You know the woman wants her cowboy Like he wants his rodeo

They were locked into either arm, head resting on either breast. Their cries were soundless, but Akua could see the sound, floating out of their mouths like puffs of smoke from the fetish man’s favored pipe. Akua had the urge to hold them, and she reached out her hands to them. Her hands caught fire, but she touched them still. Soon she cradled them with her own burning hands, playing with the braided ropes of fire that made up their hair, their coal-black lips. She felt calm, happy even, that the firewoman had found her children again at last. And

Those who visited that exhibition-room found an auto-de-fé of immense skies in ignition, globes blotted out by bleeding suns; hemorrhages of stars, flowing down in purple cataracts over tumbling tufts of clouds. Against this background of terrible din, silent women passed, nude or appareled in jeweled stuffs, like the bindings of the old Evangelists; women with hair of shaggy silk, with pale blue eyes, hard and fixed, and flesh of the frozen whiteness of milk; Salomes holding, motionless upon a platter, the head of the Baptist, which shone, soaked in phosphorus, under the quincunxes with shorn leaves, of a green that was almost black; goddesses galloping on hippogriffs and streaking, with the lapis lazuli of their wings, the agony of the clouds; feminine idols, in tiaras, upright on thrones, at the top of stairs submerged in extraordinary flowers, or seated, in rigid poses, upon the backs of elephants with green-mantled foreheads and breasts strung with pearl-ropes like cavalry bells, stamping about upon their own heavy image, reflected in a sheet of water and splashed by the columns of the ring-circled legs!

There is just this moment. This now. I take him back into my mouth. I run my tongue over every part of his cock as if my tongue were a memory machine that will hold this shape inside me forever. I move up and down, finding rhythm, as I had done as a girl skipping with a rope. I want to bite him, chew him all up, swallow him down. He grows tense, rigid. I hear the milling of his breath, the quickening beat of his heart and, when he comes, his sperm is warm and fruity, a hint of the sea, a taste that will stay on the edge of my senses for the rest of my life.

Tomorrow at seven o'clock a strange phenomenon will occur: the earth is going to sit on the moon. This has also been written about by the noted English chemist Wellington. I confess, I felt troubled at heart when I pictured to myself the extraordinary delicacy and fragility of the moon. For the moon is usually made in Hamburg, and made quite poorly. I'm surprised England doesn't pay attention to this. It's made by a lame cooper, and one can see that the fool understands nothing about the moon. He used tarred rope and a quantity of cheap olive oil, and that's why there's a terrible stench all over the earth, so that you have to hold your nose. And that's why the moon itself is such a delicate sphere that people can't live on it, and now only noses live there. And for the same reason, we can't see our own noses, for they're all in the moon.

I felt a warm hand touch mine. “Are you okay?” “If you mean am I injured, then the answer is no. If you mean am I ‘okay’ as in am-I-confident-I’m-still-sane, the answer is still no.” Ren frowned. “We have to find a way to get across the chasm.” “You’re certainly welcome to give it a try.” I waved him off and went back to drinking my water. He moved to the edge and peered across, looking speculatively at the distance. Changing back to a tiger, he trotted a few paces back in the direction we had come from, turned, and ran at full speed toward the hole. “Ren, no!” I screamed. He leapt, clearing the hole easily, and landed lightly on his front paws. Then he trotted a short distance away and did the same thing to come back. He landed at my feet and changed back to human form. “Kells, I have an idea.” “Oh, this I’ve got to hear. I just hope you don’t plan on including me in this scheme of yours. Ah. Let me guess. I know. You want to tie a rope to your tail, leap across, tie it off, and then have me pull my body across the rope, right?” He cocked his head as if considering it, and then shook his head. “No, you don’t have the strength to do something like that. Plus, we have no rope and nothing to tie a rope to.” “Right. So what’s the plan?” He held my hands and explained. “What I’m proposing will be much easier. Do you trust me?” I was going to be sick. “I trust you. It’s just-“ I looked into his concerned blue eyes and sighed. “Okay, what do I have to do?” “You saw that I was able to clear the gap pretty well as a tiger, right? So what I need you to do is to stand right at the edge and wait for me. I’ll run to the end of the tunnel, build up speed, and leap as a tiger. At the same time, I want you to jump up and grab me around my neck. I’ll change to a man in midair so that I can hold onto you, and we’ll fall together to the other side.” I snorted noisily and laughed. “You’re kidding, right?” He ignored my skepticism. “We’ll have to time it precisely, and you’ll have to jump too, in the same direction, because if you don’t, I’ll just hit you full power and drive us both over the edge.” “You’re serious? You seriously want me to do this?” “Yes, I’m serious. Now stand here while I make a few practice runs.” “Can’t we just find another corridor or something?” “There aren’t any. This is the right way.” Reluctantly, I stood near the edge and watched him leap back and forth a few times. Observing the rhythm of his running and jumping, I began to grasp the idea of what he wanted me to do. All too quickly Ren was back in front of me again. “I can’t believe you’ve talked me into doing this. Are you sure?” I asked. “Yes, I’m sure. Are you ready?” “No! Give me a minute to mentally write a last will and testament.” “Kells, it’ll be fine.” “Sure it will. Alright, let me take in my surroundings. I want to make sure I can record every minute of this experience in my journal. Of course, that’s probably a moot point because I’m assuming that I’m going to die in the jump anyway.” Ren put his hand on my cheek, looked in my eyes, and said fiercely, “Kelsey, trust me. I will not let you fall.

The more south we were, the more deep a sky it seemed, till, in the Valley of Mexico, I thought it held back an element too strong for life, and that the flamy brilliance of blue stood off this menace and sometimes, like a sheath or silk membrane, shoed the weight it held in sags. So when later he would fly high over the old craters on the plain, coaly bubbles of the underworld, dangerous red everywhere from the sun, and then coats of snow on the peak of the cones—gliding like a Satan—well, it was here the old priests, before the Spaniards, waited for Aldebaran to come into the middle of heaven to tell them whether or not life would go on for another cycle, and when they received their astronomical sign built their new fire inside the split and emptied chest of a human sacrifice. And also, hereabouts, worshipers disguised as gods and as gods in the disguise of birds, jumped from platforms fixed on long poles, and glided as they spun by the ropes—feathered serpents, and eagles too, the voladores, or fliers. There still are such plummeters, in market places, as there seem to be remnants or conversions or equivalents of all the old things. Instead of racks or pyramids of skulls still in their hair and raining down scraps of flesh there are corpses of dogs, rats, horses, asses, by the roads; the bones dug out of the rented graves are thrown on a pile when the lease is up; and there are the coffins looking like such a rough joke on the female form, sold in the open shops, black, white, gray, and in all sizes, with their heavy death fringes daubed in Sapolio silver on the black. Beggars in dog voices on the church steps enact the last feebleness for you with ancient Church Spanish, and show their old flails of stump and their sores. The burden carriers with the long lines, hemp lines they wind over their foreheads to hold the loads on their backs, lie in the garbage at siesta and give themselves the same exhibited neglect the dead are shown. Which is all to emphasize how openly death is received everywhere, in the beauty of the place, and how it is acknowledged that anyone may be roughly handled—the proudest—pinched, slapped, and set down, thrown down; for death throws even worse in men’s faces and makes it horrible and absurd that one never touched should be roughly dumped under, dumped upon.

In violence, it is the getting away that you concentrate on. When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping only to land away from where you are.

Always something like that. Always. I heard an old mate tell Captain Colchester once that it had come to this with him, that he was afraid to open his mouth to give any sort of order. She was as much of a terror in harbour as at sea. You could never be certain what would hold her. On the slightest provocation she would start snapping ropes, cables, wire hawsers, like carrots. She was heavy, clumsy, unhandy—but that does not quite explain that power for mischief she had. You know, somehow, when I think of her I can't help remembering what we hear of incurable lunatics breaking loose now and then.

People like my father preach love, but are filled with hate. Anyone who threatens their narrow beliefs can not be tolerated. The day my mother caught my brother holding hands with another boy, that was it. After a year of hearing he was an aberration and didn't deserve to live, he went out to the shed with a rope.

The friction of your rope in your belay device is strong enough to keep you from falling.” “I know that. But I still feel safer holding on.” “You’re not safer. All you’re going to do is tire yourself out. So let go and relax.” Erica kicked off the rock wall and swung out over the void, grinning like a toddler on a playground swing.

And David and Goliath I have done before, but this time there is a difference. David holds the head at arm's length and looks disgusted. And onto Goliath's severed head, I put my own features. The head hangs in darkness so that the black hair and beard framing the face blend off into the shadows, and there are four thin ropes of dark blood trailing down into space from the neck. And in one eye of the freshly severed head, there is still the faint glimmer of life. That's me and that's the last painting I ever did. Spectator, viewer, audience, however you care to call yourself; I address you here, with this, my final picture. Cast a cold eye on it all, and on my work. I am still alive.

When I asked him what he thought, Neal said, 'Anatoli, many of our members are at high altitude for the first time, and they don't understand many of the simple things. They want us to hold their hands through everything.' I replied simply, saying that was an absurd position. I repeated again my concerns that we had to encourage self-reliance, and that our contributions to fixing ropes, getting the route ready, were just as important. About this Neal disagreed, saying that we had enough Sherpas to do this job. I told Neal that I thought, judging by our current situation, we were going to fall behind in the establishment of our high-altitude camps and our acclimatization routines could be compromised.

It is human nature to constantly reach out for something to tether oneself to, but it's the fool who cannot tell what he's trying to grasp. Is it a lifeline, or a length of rope just long enough to hang oneself with? And still he reaches out, in desperation and ignorance, taking hold of it with both hands, without ever wondering what the other end is attached to.

She waited for some time without hearing anything more: at last came a rumbling of little cart-wheels, and the sound of a good many voices all talking together: she made out the words: “Where’s the other ladder?—Why, I hadn’t to bring but one. Bill's got the other—Bill! Fetch it here, lad!—Here, put ’em up at this corner—No, tie ’em together first—they don't reach half high enough yet—Oh! they’ll do well enough. Don’t be particular—Here, Bill! catch hold of this rope—Will the roof bear?—Mind that loose slate—Oh, it’s coming down! Heads below!” (a loud crash)—“Now, who did that?—It was Bill, I fancy—Who’s to go down the chimney?—Nay, I shan’t! You do it!—That I wo’n’t, then!—Bill’s got to go down—Here, Bill! The master says you’ve got to go down the chimney!

I may not be holding you with a magic rope anymore, but I will never let you go, and I will never leave you. I would defy creatures, and Gods, and terrible, brutal queens to keep you safe and by my side. I would move Mount Olympus itself to hold you in my arms and feel your heart beat against mine. You are my soul, and yes, I will fight for you and protect you until my dying breath.

She has five days to live. The last person she will see as she climbs the ladder is her executioner, holding out his paw. If she cannot pay her way at the last, she may suffer longer than she needs. She had imagined how long it takes to burn, but not how long it takes to choke at the end of a rope. In England there is no mercy for the poor. You pay for everything, even a broken neck.

The white man uncocked the revolver and placed it on the ground before him. Two of the others came back to the fire and stood uneasily. Jackson sat with his legs crossed. One hand lay in his lap and the other was outstretched on his knee holding a slender black cigarillo. The nearest man to him was Tobin and when the black stepped out of the darkness bearing the bowieknife in both hands like some instrument of ceremony Tobin started to rise. The white man looked up drunkenly and the black stepped forward and with a single stroke swapt off his head. Two thick ropes of dark blood and two slender rose like snakes from the stump of his neck and arched hissing into the fire. The head rolled to the left and came to rest at the expriest's feet where it lay with eyes aghast. Tobin jerked his foot away and rose and stepped back. The fire steamed and blackened and a gray cloud of smoke rose and the columnar arches of blood slowly subsided until just the neck bubbled gently like a stew and then that too was stilled. He was sat as before save headless, drenched in blood, the cigarillo still between his fingers, leaning toward the dark and smoking grotto in the flames where his life had gone.

What's this? here's velvet shark-skin," intently gazing at Ahab's hand, and feeling it. "Ah, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing as this, perhaps he had ne'er been lost! This seems to me, sir as a man-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth now come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the white, for I will not let this go." "Oh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse horrors than are here. Come, then to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in gods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods oblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not what he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come! I feel prouder leading thee by they black hand, than though I grasped an Emperor's!

People like my father preach love but are filled with hate. Anyone who threatens their narrow beliefs cannot be tolerated. The day my mother caught my brother holding hands with another boy, that was it. After a year of hearing that he was an aberration and didn’t deserve to live, he went out to the shed with a rope.” She said it in a too-high voice, the way one does when one is trying very hard not to cry.

I retrieve Kai’s sword from where I abandoned it on the dock. The metal is scorching hot. I hold it out to him in the way he offered it to me, by the blade, apologetic. He accepts it but doesn’t let go, using it as a rope to pull me closer. “I am proud to call you my match.” Then he kisses me, in front of everyone, rules and decorum be damned. Whatever punishment awaits, we’ll suffer it together. It’ll be worth it.

As lovers, we poise together delicately on a tightrope. When the winds of doubt and fear begin blowing, if we panic and clutch at each other or abruptly turn away and head for cover, the rope sways more and more and our balance becomes even more precarious. To stay on the rope, we must shift with each other’s moves, respond to each other’s emotions. As we connect, we balance each other. We are in emotional equilibrium.

There is a moment during a structure fire when you know you are either going to get the upper hand or that it's going to get the upper hand on you. You notice the ceiling patch about to fall and the staircase eating itself alive and the synthetic carpet glued to the soles of your boots. The sum of the parts overwhelms, and that's when you back out and force yourself to remember that every fire will burn itself out, even without your help. These days, I'm fighting fire on six sides. I look in front of me and see Kate sick I look behind me and see Anna with her lawyer. The only time Jesse isn't drinking like a fish, he's strung out on drugs; Sara's grasping at straws. And me, I've got my gear on, safe. I'm holding dozens of hooks and irons and poles-all tools that are meant to destroy, when what I need is something to rope us together.

When they reached the ranch, Dave parked the truck at the stable. The girls heard laughter coming from the corral and saw Tex Britten perched on the fence. Bess was mounted on a brown quarter horse and holding a coiled lariat. “Watch me!” she called. “I’m learning to rope a steer.” Nancy and George walked over and saw Bud Moore put his hands on his head like horns and prance in front of Bess’s horse. “Come on and rope me, pardner!” he said.

He didn't want to think about this, didn't want to feel this, so he thought about the Foxes instead. He clung tight to the memory of their unhesitating friendship and their smiles. He pretended the heartbeat pounding a sick pace in his temples was an Exy ball ricocheting off the court walls. He thought of Wymack holding him up in December and Andrew pushing him down against the bedroom floor. The memories made him weak with grief and loss, but they made him stronger, too. He'd come to the Foxhole Court every inch a lie, but his friends made him into someone real. He'd hit the end of his rope before he wanted to and he hadn't accomplished everything he'd hoped to this year, but he'd done more with his life than he'd ever thought possible. That had to be enough. He traced the outline of a key into his bloody, burnt palm with a shaky finger, closed his eyes, and wished Neil Josten goodbye.

They just want your attention, can’t you see? Even if they have to tie you with ropes or douse you with water, or devise a different death for a doll every morning. Sometimes I think Daisy does it just for the excuse to hold your hand once a day. And you ought to see the way Rosamund looks at you when you’re too occupied to notice. She’d never admit it, but she’s desperate for your approval.” She reached for his hand. “Chase, they love you already.

The heartwood," Rob murmured, looking at me. "You wanted to marry me in the heart of Major Oak." I beamed at him grateful that he understood. "And Scar," he whispered. I leaned in close. "Are you wearing knives to our wedding?" Nodding, I laughed, telling him, "I was going to get you here one way or another, Hood." He laughed, a bright, merry sound. Standing in the heart of the tree, he reached again for my hand, fingers sliding over mine. Touching his hand, a rope of lightening lashed round my fingers, like it seared us together. Now, and for always. His fingers moved on mine, rubbing over my hand before capturing it tight and turning me to the priest. The priest looked over his shoulder, watching as the sun began to dip. He led us in prayer, he asked me to speak the same words I'd spoken not long past to Gisbourne, but that whole thing felt like a bad dream, like I were waking and it were fading and gone for good. "Lady Scarlet." he asked me with a smile, "known to some as Lady Marian of Huntingdon, will thou have this lord to thy wedded husband, will thou love him and honour him, keep him and obey him, in health and in sickness, as a wife should a husband, forsaking all others on account of him, so long as ye both shall live?" I looked at Robin, tears burning in my eyes. "I will," I promised. "I will, always." Rob's face were beaming back at me, his ocean eyes shimmering bright. The priest smiled. "Robin of Locksley, will thou have this lady to thy wedded wife, will thou love her and honor her, keep her and guard her, in health and in sickness, as a husband should a wife, forsaking all others on account of her, so long as ye both shall live?" the priest asked. "Yes," Rob said. "I will." "You have the rings?" the priest asked Rob. "I do," I told the priest, taking two rings from where Bess had tied them to my dress. I'd sent Godfrey out to buy them at market without Rob knowing. "I knew you weren't planning on this," I told him. Rob just grinned like a fool at me, taking the ring I handed him to put on my finger. Laughs bubbled up inside of me, and I felt like I were smiling so wide something were stuck in my cheeks and holding me open. More shy and proud than I thought I'd be, I said. "I take you as me wedded husband, Robin. And thereto I plight my troth." I pushed the ring onto his finger. He took my half hand in one of his, but the other- holding the ring- went into his pocket. "I may not have known I would marry you today Scar," he said. "But I did know I would marry you." He showed me a ring, a large ruby set in delicate gold. "This," he said to me, "was my mother's. It's the last thing I have of hers, and when I met you and loved you and realized your name was the exact colour of the stone- " He swallowed, and cleared his throat, looking at me with the blue eyes that shot right through me. "This was meant to be Scarlet. I was always meant to love you. To marry you." The priest coughed. "Say the words, my son, and you will marry her." Rob grinned and I laughed, and Rob stepped closer, cradling my hand. "I take you as my wedded wife, Scarlet. And thereto I plight my troth." He slipped the ring on my finger and it fit. "Receive the Holy Spirit," the priest said, and kissed Robin on the cheek. Rob's happy grin turned a touch wolflike as he turned back to me, hauling me against him and angling his mouth over mine. I wrapped my arms around him and my head spun- I couldn't tell if we were spinning, if I were dizzy, if my feet were on the ground anymore at all, but all I knew, all I cared for, were him, his mouth against mine, and letting the moment we became man and wife spin into eternity.

Rosier flung himself off his horse and ran towards then, already shouting. 'What a landing! What skill! The Prince and Princess of the Air!' 'And me?' said Armand, tossing Rosier a rope. 'Don't I warrant a mention?' 'Bah, you're not in this story!' Rosier pulled back on the line, holding it tight. 'My story is full of passion! Poetry! Danger and Thrills! But, if I ever write something in praise of tiny little numbers in a row - then Armand, you will be the hero.

Anna? Anna,are you there? I've been waiting in the lobby for fifteen minutes." A scrambling noise,and St. Clair curses from the floorboards. "And I see your light's off.Brilliant. Could've mentioned you'd decided to go on without me." I explode out of bed. I overslept! I can't believe I overslept! How could this happen? St. Clair's boots clomp away,and his suitcase drags heavily behind him. I throw open my door. Even though they're dimmed this time of night,the crystal sconces in the hall make me blink and shade my eyes. St. Clair twists into focus.He's stunned. "Anna?" "Help," I gasp. "Help me." He drops his suitcase and runs to me. "Are you all right? What happened?" I pull him in and flick on my light. The room is illuminated in its disheveled entirety. My luggage with its zippers open and clothes piled on top like acrobats. Toiletries scattered around my sink. Bedsheets twined into ropes. And me. Belatedly, I remember that not only is my hair crazy and my face smeared with zit cream,but I'm also wearing matching flannel Batman pajamas. "No way." He's gleeful. "You slept in? I woke you up?" I fall to the floor and frantically squish clothes into my suitcase. "You haven't packed yet?" "I was gonna finish this morning! WOULD YOU FREAKING HELP ALREADY?" I tug on a zipper.It catches a yellow Bat symbol, and I scream in frustration. We're going to miss our flight. We're going to iss it,and it's my fault. And who knows when the next plane will leave, and we'll be stuck here all day, and I'll never make it in time for Bridge and Toph's show. And St. Clair's mom will cry when she has to go to the hospital without him for her first round of internal radiation, because he'll be stuck iin an airport on the other side of the world,and its ALL. MY FAULT. "Okay,okay." He takes the zipper and wiggles it from my pajama bottoms. I make a strange sound between a moan and a squeal. The suitcase finally lets go, and St. Clair rests his arms on my shoulders to steady them. "Get dressed. Wipe your face off.I'll takecare of the rest." Yes,one thing at a time.I can do this. I can do this. ARRRGH! He packs my clothes. Don't think about him touching your underwear. Do NOT think about him touching your underwear. I grab my travel outfit-thankfully laid out the night before-and freeze. "Um." St. Clair looks up and sees me holding my jeans. He sputters. "I'll, I'll step out-" "Turn around.Just turn around, there's not time!" He quickly turns,and his shoulders hunch low over my suitcase to prove by posture how hard he is Not Looking.

Eve let go of a rope she’d clung to for too long. And she fell. She fell right into him. Wrong or right, she gave up judging. Her lips found his, and he kissed her gently, not demanding any more than she was willing to offer. Eve added her tongue, exploring his taste. She grabbed the back of his neck with one hand and traced his gunshot wounds with her other. He let her lead. My call. Kill him or love him. He’ll allow either. Beckett smiled into her kiss when she started to shudder and fidget. She’d chosen passion. “Are you sure?” He made her look at him. She could only nod. Together they took off her leather armor. Then just before she could straddle him, Beckett stopped her. “Shit! Hold on. Let me get rid of this. My luck I’ll blow my balls off right fucking now.” Beckett put the gun on the floor and kicked it away. Eve put her knees on either side of his hips. She held herself just out of his reach and broke her last mental barriers. Then she slammed down on top of him with such force, she was sure Beckett was glad she had such impeccable aim.

It always is complicated, from the inside. People on the outside looking in seem to think it’s simple to cut ties, walk away . . . but there are so many ropes holding a person down. Children. Extended family. Friends. Jobs. Money. Obligations. Guilt. And fear, so much fear. The most dangerous time in any woman’s life is when she’s separating from a partner, particularly an abusive one. Women instinctively know that, even if they’ve never seen the blood-drenched statistics. Sometimes it feels safer to endure the devil you know.

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

In Civil War days a performer named Blondin astonished the nation by crossing the Niagara River on a tightrope. President Abraham Lincoln, facing a delegation of critics, said: “Gentlemen, suppose all the property you possessed were in gold, and you had placed it in the hands of a Blondin to carry across the Niagara River on a rope. With slow, cautious steps he walks to the rope, bearing your all. Would you shake the cable and keep shouting at him, ‘Blondin, stand up a little straighter; Blondin, stoop a little more; go a little faster; lean more to the south; lean a little more to the north?’ Would that be your behaviour in such an emergency? “No, you would hold your breath, every one of you, as well as your tongues. You would keep your hands off until he was safe on the other side. “This government, gentlemen, is carrying an immense weight. Untold treasures are in its hands. The persons managing the ship of state in this storm are doing the best they can. Don’t worry them with needless warnings and complaints. . . . Be patient, and we will get you safe[ly] across.”19

Correct me if I’m wrong. I’d love to be wrong. Ages ago, Loki had an affair with a giantess. They had three monstrous kids.’ ‘I was not one of them,’ Sam muttered. ‘I’ve heard all the jokes.’ Hearthstone winced, like he’d been wondering about that. ‘One,’ I said, ‘was a huge snake.’ ‘Jormungand,’ Sam said. ‘The World Serpent, which Odin threw into the sea.’ ‘The second was Hel,’ I continued. ‘She became, like, the goddess of the dishonourable dead.’ ‘And the third,’ Blitzen said, ‘was Fenris Wolf.’ His tone was bitter, full of pain. ‘Blitz,’ I said, ‘you sound like you know him.’ ‘Every dwarf knows of Fenris. That was the first time the Aesir came to us for help. Fenris grew so savage he would’ve devoured the gods. They tried to tie him up, but he broke every chain.’ ‘I remember,’ I said. ‘Finally the dwarves made a rope strong enough to hold him.’ ‘Ever since,’ Blitzen said, ‘the children of Fenris have been enemies of the dwarves.’ He looked up, his dark shades reflecting my face. ‘You’re not the only one who’s lost family to wolves, kid.’ I had a strange urge to hug him.

When I contacted her about my research, Dr. Dalmau's colleague Dr. Rita Balice-Gorodn brought up the old Indian proverb, often used by neuroscientists studying the brain, about six blind men trying to identify an elephant, offering it as a way of understanding how much more we have to learn about the disease. Each man grabs hold of a different part of the animal and tries to identify the unnamed object. One man touches the tail and says, "rope"; one touches a leg and says, "pillar"; one feels a trunk and says, "tree"; one feels an ear and says, "fan"; one feels the belly and says, "wall"; the last one feels the tusk and is certain it's a "pipe." (The tale has been told so many times that the outcomes differ widely. In a Buddhist iteration, the mean are told they are all correct and rejoice; in another, the men break out in violence when they can't agree.) Dr. Balice-Gordon has a hopeful interpretation of the analogy: "We're sort of approaching the elephant from the front end and from the back end in the hopes of touching in the middle. We're hoping to paint a detailed enough landscape of the elephant.

Not everyone believes in marriage then. To marry was to say you believed in the future and in the past, too – that history and tradition and hope could stay knitted together to hold you up. But the war had come and stolen all the fine young men and our faith too. There was only today to throw yourself into without thinking about tomorrow, let alone forever. To keep you from thinking there was liquor, an ocean's worth at least, all the usual vices and plenty of rope to hang yourself with. But some of us, very few in the end, bet on marriage against the odds.

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

Huxley suggested rock climbing as an ideal basic training for citizenship. This sport teaches young people that survival depends on developing skills and on preparing oneself to face risks and unexpected contingencies. They discover that every move they make has real consequences involving life and death. In addition, a rock climber learns to take responsibility for another person’s life, and learns to trust his life in the hands of the companion who holds the other end of the rope to which he is attached. What could be a more concrete way of shaping a complex self? The

mesmerizing -- gold, red, orange, black -- the colors of the dragons that had promised so much: prosperity, love, good health, a second chance, a new start. The fire began to pop, the small sounds lost in the constant boom of firecrackers going off in the streets of San Francisco in celebration of the Chinese New Year. No one would notice another noise, another spark of light, until it was too late. In the confusion of the smoke and the crowds, the dragons and the box they guarded would disappear. No one would ever know what had really happened. The flame reached the end of the gasoline-soaked rope and suddenly burst forth in a flash of intense, deadly heat. More explosions followed as the fire caught the cardboard boxes holding precious inventory and jumped toward the basement ceiling. A questioning cry came from somewhere, followed by the sound of footsteps running down the halls of the building that had once been their sanctuary, their dream for the future, where the treasures of the past were turned into cold, hard cash. The cost of betrayal would be high. They would be brothers no more. But then, their ties had never been of blood, only of friendship --

It came back to him at practice when he spotted Andrew and Renee. They were standing together near the goal, and Andrew was gesturing excitedly as they went on about something or other. Neil watched them longer than he meant to and remembered Nicky's words. There was no point dwelling on it when he knew how the year would end, but for a moment Neil wondered. He thought about Nicky's story and how he'd met Erik in the nick of time. Nicky had been at the end of his rope, but Erik was strong enough to hold him up. There was only one person in the world strong enough for all of Neil's problems, and she was dead now. Neil wouldn't wish his mess on anyone else. Except he'd already started sharing that burden, albeit unwillingly. He'd divided his secrets between Kevin and Andrew. Kevin reacted the way Neil expected everyone would to the truth: with a horrified demand that Neil leave immediately. Andrew, though, nodded in the face of it and told Neil to stay. He stood his ground when Neil asked him for murder and gave him a key to their house. But that didn't count, because Andrew was Andrew, and this was definitely the last turn he needed his thoughts to take. He dragged his attention back to the task at hand and vowed never to listen to Nicky again.

And Kas hits my clit just right, forcing the orgasm out of me. I slam down on his hand and he shoves up inside of me. Kas holds me fast against his chest as the ropes creak and the bindings on my wrist bite against my flesh. The orgasm pounds through every hollow, burning through every nerve as my own pleasure drenches me and Kas. “Fuck yeah,” Kas says. “Fuck, she’s clenching so tight around me.” “Our little Darling likes being used.” Bash angles me to the side, his mouth coming to my ear. “You hear that, Darling?” Kas drags his fingers out of me, then shoves back in, making a loud wet noise. “That’s the sound of your defeat.

he was moving across. He knew he could backtrack on land once he reached the opposite bank, but he didn’t have that much time. Focusing his sights on Ben, he kicked with everything he had. A large branch slammed into him, sending him under for a moment. When he surfaced again, disoriented, he saw Zeus behind him, paddling hard. He regained his bearings, then stroked and kicked with desperate effort. In despair, he saw that he hadn’t even reached the center of the creek. Beth saw Ben inching farther along the fraying rope bridge, and she dragged herself closer to the water’s edge. “Come on!” she shouted, sobbing now. “You can do it! Hold on, baby!

And yet, twenty-one feels just as overwhelming as ever. Twenty-two is even worse. Twenty-three offers no further enlightenment. As you slowly begin the march toward twenty-five — halfway through the defining decade of your life — you begin to accept the truth. There is no age at which you’ll ever have it figured out; no magic number where every missing piece falls abruptly into place. You will get older, there’s no stopping that, but there’s no guarantee you’ll ever get wiser. If anything, you merely get better at pretending. Acting like you have all the answers, holding all the loose threads of your life together in one fist, so they resemble a rope strong enough to guide you along until your time on earth expires.

All My Life All my life I've been searching for something Something never comes, never leads to nothing Nothing satisfies, but I'm getting close Closer to the prize at the end of the rope All night long I dream of the day When it comes around and it's taken away Leaves me with the feeling that I feel the most Feel it come to life when I see your ghost Calm down, don't you resist You've such a delicate wrist And if I give it a twist Something to hold when I lose my grip Will I find something in there To give me just what I need Another reason to bleed One by one hidden up my sleeve One by one hidden up my sleeve Hey don't let it go to waste I love it but I hate the taste Weight keep pinning me down Hey don't let it go to waste I love it but I hate the taste Weight keep pinning me down Will I find a believer Another one who believes Another one to deceive Over and over down on my knees If I get any closer And if you open up wide And if you let me inside On and on I got nothing to hide On and on I got nothing to hide Hey don't let it go to waste I love it but I hate the taste Weight keep pinning me down Hey don't let it go to waste I love it but I hate the taste Weight keep pinning me down All my life I've been searching for something Something never comes, never leads to nothing Nothing satisfies, but I'm getting close Closer to the prize at the end of the rope All night long I dream of the day When it comes around and it's taken away Leaves me with the feeling that I feel the most Feel it come to life when I see your ghost Then I'm done, done, on to the next one Done, done, and I'm on to the next one Done, done, and I'm on to the next one Done, done, and I'm on to the next one Done, done, and I'm on to the next one Done, done, and I'm on to the next one Done, done, and I'm on to the next one Done, I'm done, and on to the next Done, done, on to the next one Done, I'm done, and on to the next one Done, done, on to the next one Done, I'm done, and on to the next Hey don't let it go to waste I love it but I hate the taste Weight keep pinning me down Hey don't let it go to waste I love it but I hate the taste Weight keep pinning me down Done, done, on to the next one Done, I'm done, and on to the next

Wesson glanced back at the other ship. A gleeful smile threatened at his lips, but he wrapped it tightly with his will and pushed it deep into the dungeon from which it had sprung. It was a struggle, and part of him wanted to let it go, but Mage Threll’s firm grip kept him anchored. Then, the aftermath struck him. He heaved into the water as a cry escaped him. He looked at the evidence of his destruction. Where once dozens of men and women had lived, stood nothing but debris. He knew it was unlikely they would find bodies. They would have been crushed and vaporized, leaving behind no evidence that they had existed. Wesson slumped to the ground and buried his head in his hands as he sobbed. Rezkin grabbed hold of the rope ladder someone had thrown down to him.

The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realising that they would have to get Gilkey down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schoening and the others started lowering him down the mountain's steep Abruzzi Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay.

One of the first problems to be faced at Niagara was how to get a wire over the gorge and its violent river. Ellet solved that nicely by offering five dollars to the first American boy to fly a kite over to the Canadian side. The prize was won by young Homer Walsh, who would tell the story for the rest of his days. Once the kite string was across, a succession of heavier cords and ropes was pulled over, and in a short time the first length of wire went on its way. After that, when the initial cable had been completed, Ellet decided to demonstrate his faith in it in a fashion people would not forget. He had an iron basket made up big enough to hold him and attached it to the cable with pulleys. Then stepping inside, on a morning in March 1848, he pulled himself over the gorge and back again, all in no more than fifteen minutes’ time, and to the great excitement of crowds gathered along both rims.

Chapter 13 - 1 Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then—the glory—so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against? Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken. And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for this is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

Again the water rose, they both took a breath; again they were submerged and his leg hooked over something, an old pipe, unmoving. The next time, they both reached their heads high as the water rushed back, another breath taken. He heard Mrs. Kitteridge yelling from above. He couldn't hear the words, but he understood that help was coming. He had only to keep Patty from falling away, and as they went again beneath the swirling, sucking water, he strengthened his grip on her arm to let her known: He would not let her go. Even though, staring into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled water, with sun flashing through each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl who had once jumped rope like a queen, now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean - oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look she wanted to hold on.

My child, deep-thundering Zeus controls the end of all that is, disposing as he wills. We who are mortals have no mind; we live like cattle, day to day, knowing nothing of god's plans to end each one of us. Yet we are fed by hope and faith to dream impossible plans. Some wait for a day to come, others watch the turning of years. No one among the mortals feels so broken as not to hope in coming time to fly home rich to splendid goods and lands. Yet before he makes his goal, odious old age lays hold of him first. Appalling disease consumes another. Some are killed in war where death carries them under the dark earth. Some drown and die under the myriad waves when a hurricane slams across the blue salt water cracking their cargo ship. Others rope a noose around their wretched necks and choose to die, abandoning the sun of day. A thousand black spirits waylay man with unending grief and suffering. If you listen to my counsel, you won't want the good things of life; not batter your heart by torturing your skull with cold remorse.

My hands read a Braille map hewn from bone, starting with my hollow breasts threaded with blue-vein rivers thick with ice. I count my ribs like rosary beads, muttering incantations, fingers curling under the bony cage. They can almost touch what’s hiding inside. My skin slopes down over the empty belly, then around the inside sharp curve of my hip bones, bowls carved out of stone and painted with fading pink razor scars. I twist in the glass. My vertebrae are wet marbles piled one on top of the other. My winged shoulder blades look ready to sprout feathers. I pick up the knife. The tendons on the back of my hand tense, ropes holding down a tent while the wind blows. Thin scars etch the inside of my wrist, widening to the ribbons in the crook of my elbow where I cut too deep in ninth grade. I win, I won.   I’m lost.     The music from my bedroom shrieks so loud against the mirror it’s making my ears ring. I stare at the ghost-girl on the other side, her corset bones waiting to be laced even tighter so she can fold in on herself over and over until she disappears past zero.

Cardan is waiting for me when I get off the field. I am struck suddenly be his height, by the arrogant sneer he wears like a crown. He would seem like a prince even dressed in rags. Cardan grabs my face, fingers splayed against my neck. His breath is against my cheek. His other hand grabs my hair, winding it in to a rope. 'Do you know what mortal means? It means born to die. It means deserving of death. That's what you are, what defines you- dying. And yet here you stand, determined to oppose me even as you rot away from the inside out, you corrupt, corrosive mortal creature. Tell me how that is. Do you really think you can win against me? Against a prince of Faerie?' I swallow hard. 'No,' I say. His black eyes simmer with rage. 'So you're not completely lacking in some small amount of animal cunning. Good. Now, beg my forgiveness.' I take a step back and tug, trying to wrench free of his grasp. He holds on to my braid, staring down in to my face with hungry eyes and a small, awful smile. Then he opens his hand, letting me stagger free. Individual strands of hair flutter through the air.

But the portal was closing, getting smaller and smaller, and— A glowing, black figure filled it. Then another. Aidas and Apollion. Their power grabbed the edges of the portal and held it a little wider. Held it open a moment longer. And with what little strength he had left, Hunt threw a desperate, raging, blazing-hot rope of lightning toward Apollion. The only being on Midgard who could handle his power. Apollion caught it, in that humanoid form once more, and pulled. Aidas flared with black light, pushing back against the sealing portal, against Urd’s wishes. Hunt was close enough to see the princes’ strained faces, Apollion’s teeth flashing as he dragged Hunt by his lightning, inch by inch, closer and closer. Aidas was sweating, panting as he fought to keep the portal open— And then Ruhn was there. Starlight flaring. Pushing back against the impossible. Lidia was beside him, crackling with fire. Tharion. Holstrom. Flynn and Dec. A fire sprite, her small body bright with flame. Isaiah and Naomi. So many hands, so many powers, from almost every House. The friends they’d made were what mattered in the end. Not the enemies. Through love, all is possible. It was love that was holding the portal open.

Release him or else.” Remy groaned as he couldn’t help imagining the jests he’d have to put up with. What male allowed himself to get saved by his woman? “What are you doing, Ysabel? I have this under control.” “Really, because from here it looks like you’re all tied up.” She strode into view with a cool smile, wearing an outfit that would look even better on the floor. “Bah, as if something like rope could hold me.” He yanked his arms apart and showed her his freed hands, a moment before a sharp point pressed against the back of his neck. “Move and he dies!” Francisco yelled. Cocking a hip, and crossing her arms, a smirk crossed his witch’s lips. “I don’t think so. That demon belongs to me, and I’d prefer him in one piece. So move the dagger away before I hurt you. Or don’t. But know this, if you even so much as scratch him, I’ll make sure your return to Hell is even more painful.” “I knew you cared,” Remy exclaimed. “Apparently, the insanity in your family is contagious,” she replied dryly. “Besides, you already forced me into admitting I loved you. As such, I realized I couldn’t exactly let Francisco kill you. That should be my pleasure alone.” “You say the sweetest things,” Remy teased.

Female sensibility is layers, words, membranes, cotton, cloth, rope, repetition, bodies, wet, opening, closing repetition, lists, lifestories, grids, destroying grids, houses, intimacy, doorways, breasts, vaginas, flow, strong, building, putting together many disparaging elements, repetition, red, ink, black, earth feel colors, the sun, the moon, roots skins, walls, yellow, flowers, streams, puzzles, questions, stuffing, sewing, fluffing, satin, hearts, tearing, tearing, tearing, tying, decorating, baking, feeding, holding, listening, seeing thru the layers, oil, varnish, shellac, jell, paste, glue, seeds, thread, more, not less, repetition, women critics, women, writers, women artists, either nourishing us or eating us up alive, tokenism, curators, universities, tokenism, fear of other women to acknowledge female sensibility, hostile boy artists, accepting men artists, separating the men from the boys, dividing women, piece of pie-ism, money, art, sex, beasts, layers, symphonies, multi-roled, multi-part, stories, narrative, paint/flesh, serious, overwhelming, soft, hard, women working, working women, hanging, dangling, breaking, being fruity, angry, naïve, born again and trying to describe hot white flesh ties.

What’s he doing?” I asked, leaning over the side of the boat, searching for him beneath the water. If the tow rope had gotten tangled, he might need help. And someone would need to go in the water with him, perhaps accidentally sliding against him down where no one else could see. “Boo!” A handful of bryozoa rushed up at me from the lake. I screamed (for once I didn’t have to think about this girl-reaction) and fell backward into the boat. Sean hefted himself over the side with one arm, holding the bryozoan high in the other hand. It dripped green slime through his fingers. “Bwa-ha-ha!” He came after me. I squealed again. It was so unbelievably fantastic that he was flirting with me, but bryozoa was involved. Was it worth it? No. I paused on the side of the boat, ready to jump back into the water myself. He might chase me around the lake with the bryozoa, but at least it would be diluted. On second thought, I didn’t particularly want to jump into the very waters the bryozoa had come from. Sean solved the problem for me. He slipped behind me and showed me he was holding the ties of my bikini in his free hand. If I jumped, Sean would take possession of my bikini top. I had thought about double knotting my bikini. I’d hoped against hope that Stage Two: Bikini would work, and that Sean might try something like this. Of course, I didn’t really want my top to come off in front of everyone. Nay, in front of anyone. But I’d checked the double knots in the mirror. They’d looked…well, double knotted, for protection, sort of like wearing a turtleneck to the prom. I’d re-tied the strings normally. Now I wished I’d double knotted after all. Sean brought the dripping slime close to my shoulder. “Go ahead and jump,” he said, twisting my bikini ties in his finges. “Sean,” came McGullicuddy’s voice in warning. This surprised me. My brother had never taken up for me before. Of course, none of the boys had ever crossed this particular line. But that was nothing compared with my surprise when the bryozoa suddenly lobbed out of Sean’s hand, sailed through the air, and plopped into the lake. Adam, standing behind him, must have shoved his arm. Which meant I owed Adam my gratitude for saving me. Except I didn’t want him to save me from Sean, and I thought I’d made that clear. Saving me from Sean with bryozoa…that was a more iffy proposition. I wasn’t sure whether I should give Adam the little dolphin look again when our eyes met. But it didn’t matter. When I turned around, he was already stepping over Cameron’s legs to return to the driver’s seat.

I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate other things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension toward a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused. At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against? Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man. And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken. And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

When Hodges was presented to Harmon the next morning for a positive ID, Harmon reportedly couldn’t be sure he was her attacker. “I can’t tell,” she said. “I can’t say he is the negro, but I can’t say he is not the negro.” Unfortunately, many citizens of Tyler subscribed to the guilty until proven innocent philosophy where African Americans were concerned. At approximately 11:15 a.m., a white mob three to four thousand strong broke into the county jail and seized Hodges. The lynch mob transported Hodges to the site of the new Smith County Courthouse, which was then under construction. A few members threw a rope up over an enormous derrick—which was being utilized at the site for hoisting large stones for the new courthouse—and fashioned a noose on one end, placing it around Hodges’s neck. Several men then took hold of the other end and, with one simultaneous pull, jerked Hodges up into the sky. Hodges squirmed as he swung back and forth high above the mob, and then his movements dwindled to a twitch or two before he grew still. Within ten minutes, the construction site was empty, save the deceased, whose gruesome figure hung motionless in midair. No one involved in the crime even attempted to conceal his identity. As the May 7, 1909 edition of the Alto Herald put it, “Those who took part in the lynching went about it just as they went about their daily business.

Akos sprinted to my side, bent over me, and wrapped an arm around my waist. Together we ran toward the rope. He grabbed it with one hand, and it jerked up, fast. Too fast for Vas to grab. Everyone around us was roaring. He shouted into my ear, “I’m going to need you to hold on by yourself!” I cursed at him. I tried not to look down at the crowded seats below us, the frenzy we had left behind, the distant ground, but it was hard not to. I focused instead on Akos’s armor. I wrapped my arms around his chest and clamped my hands around the collar of it. When he released me, I gritted my teeth--I was too weak to hold on like this, too weak to support my own weight. Akos reached up with the hand he had been using to hold me, and his fingers approached the force field that blanketed the amphitheater. It lit up brighter when his fingers touched it, then flickered, and went out. The rope jerked up, hard, making me whimper as I almost lost my grip, but then we were inside the transport vessel. We were inside, and it was deadly quiet. “You made Vas feel pain,” I said, breathless. I touched his face, ran a fingertip down his nose, over his upper lip. He wasn’t as bruised as he had been the last time I saw him, cowering on the floor at my touch. “I did,” he replied. “Eijeh was in the amphitheater, he was right there. You could have grabbed him. Why didn’t you--” His mouth--still under my fingers--twitched into a smile. “Because I came for you, you idiot.” I laughed and fell against him, not strong enough to stand anymore.

NOVA SLUNG THE BAG over her shoulder and reached for one of the weighted ropes she’d set up in the alley the night before. She wrapped her arm around the rope and untied the sailor’s knot from the weights holding it to the ground. The weights attached to the opposite end dropped, dragging it through the pulley on the rooftop above. Nova jerked upward, holding tight as the rope whistled past the building’s concrete wall. The second set of weights crashed into the ground below. She stopped with a shudder, her hand only a few inches shy of the pulley, her body swinging six stories in the air. Nova threw her bag onto the rooftop, then grabbed the ledge and hauled herself over. She dropped down into a crouch and riffled through the bag, pulling out the uniform she had designed with Queen Bee’s help. She slung the weaponry belt across her hips, where it hung comfortably, outfitted with specially crafted pockets and hooks for all of her favorite inventions. Next, the snug black hooded jacket: waterproof and flame-retardant, yet lightweight enough to keep from inhibiting her movements. She zipped it up to her neck and tugged the sleeves past her knuckles before pulling up the hood, where a couple of small weights stitched into the hem held it in place over her brow. The mask came last. A hard metallic shell perfectly molded to the bridge of her nose that disappeared into the high collar of the jacket, disguising the lower half of her face. Transformation complete, she stooped and pulled the rifle and a single poisoned dart from the bag.

To this day when I inhale a light scent of Wrangler—its sweet sharpness—or the stronger, darker scent of Musk, I return to those hours and it ceases to be just cologne that I take in but the very scent of age, of youth at its most beautiful peak. It bears the memory of possibility, of unknown forests, unchartered territories, and a heart light and skipping, hell-bent as the captain of any of the three ships, determined at all costs to prevail to the new world. Turning back was no option. Whatever the gales, whatever the emaciation, whatever the casualty to self, onward I kept my course. My heart felt the magnetism of its own compass guiding me on—its direction constant and sure. There was no other way through. I feel it again as once it had been, before it was broken-in; its strength and resolute ardency. The years of solitude were nothing compared to what lay ahead. In sailing for the horizon that part of my life had been sealed up, a gentle eddy, a trough of gentle waves diminishing further, receding away. Whatever loneliness and pain went with the years between the ages of 14 and 20, was closed, irretrievable—I was already cast in form and direction in a certain course. When I open the little bottle of eau de toilette five hundred different days unfold within me, conversations so strained, breaking slowly, so painstakingly, to a comfortable place. A place so warm and inviting after the years of silence and introspect, of hiding. A place in the sun that would burn me alive before I let it cast a shadow on me. Until that time I had not known, I had not been conscious of my loneliness. Yes, I had been taciturn in school, alone, I had set myself apart when others tried to engage. But though I was alone, I had not felt the pangs of loneliness. It had not burdened or tormented as such when I first felt the clear tang of its opposite in the form of another’s company. Of Regn’s company. We came, each in our own way, in our own need—listening, wanting, tentatively, as though we came upon each other from the side in spite of having seen each other head on for two years. It was a gradual advance, much again like a vessel waiting for its sails to catch wind, grasping hold of the ropes and learning much too quickly, all at once, how to move in a certain direction. There was no practicing. It was everything and all—for the first and last time. Everything had to be right, whether it was or not. The waters were beautiful, the work harder than anything in my life, but the very glimpse of any tempest of defeat was never in my line of vision. I’d never failed at anything. And though this may sound quite an exaggeration, I tell you earnestly, it is true. Everything to this point I’d ever set my mind to, I’d achieved. But this wasn’t about conquering some land, nor had any of my other desires ever been about proving something. It just had to be—I could not break, could not turn or retract once I’d committed myself to my course. You cannot force a clock to run backwards when it is made to persevere always, and ever, forward. Had I not been so young I’d never have had the courage to love her.

Dread is the first and the strongest types of fear. It is that tension, that waiting that comes when you know there is something to fear but you have not yet identified what it is. The fear that comes when you first realize that your spouse should have been home an hour ago; when you realize that a window you are sure you closed is now open, the curtains billowing, and you're alone in the house. Terror only comes when you see the thing you're afraid of. The intruder is coming at you with a knife. The headlights coming toward you are clearly in your lane. The Klansmen have emerged from the bushes and one of them is holding a rope. This is when all the muscles of your body, except perhaps the sphincters, tauten and you stand rigid; or you scream; or you run. There is a frenzy to this moment, a climactic power-but it is the power of release, not the power of tension. And bad as it is, it is better than dread in this respect: Now, at lest, you know the face of the thing you fear. You know its borders, its dimensions. You know what to expect. Horror is the weakest of all. After the fearful thing has happened, you see its remainder, its relics. The grisly, hacked-up corpse. Your emotions range from nausea to pity for the victim. And even your pity is tinged with revulsion and disgust; ultimately you reject the scene and deny its humanity; with repetition, horror loses its ability to move you and, to some degree, dehumanizes the victim and therefore dehumanizes you. As the sonderkommandos in the death camps learned, after you move enough naked murdered corpses, it stops making you want to weep or puke. You just do it. They've stopped being people to you.

I work as fast as I can. Binah will come soon looking for me. It’s Mother, however, who descends the back steps into the yard. Binah and the other house slaves are clumped behind her, moving with cautious, synchronized steps as if they’re a single creature, a centipede crossing an unprotected space. I sense the shadow that hovers over them in the air, some devouring dread, and I crawl back into the green-black gloom of the tree. The slaves stare at Mother’s back, which is straight and without give. She turns and admonishes them. “You are lagging. Quickly now, let us be done with this.” As she speaks, an older slave, Rosetta, is dragged from the cow house, dragged by a man, a yard slave. She fights, clawing at his face. Mother watches, impassive. He ties Rosetta’s hands to the corner column of the kitchen house porch. She looks over her shoulder and begs. Missus, please. Missus. Missus. Please. She begs even as the man lashes her with his whip. Her dress is cotton, a pale yellow color. I stare transfixed as the back of it sprouts blood, blooms of red that open like petals. I cannot reconcile the savagery of the blows with the mellifluous way she keens or the beauty of the roses coiling along the trellis of her spine. Someone counts the lashes—is it Mother? Six, seven. The scourging continues, but Rosetta stops wailing and sinks against the porch rail. Nine, ten. My eyes look away. They follow a black ant traveling the far reaches beneath the tree—the mountainous roots and forested mosses, the endless perils—and in my head I say the words I fashioned earlier. Boy Run. Girl Jump. Sarah Go. Thirteen. Fourteen . . . I bolt from the shadows, past the man who now coils his whip, job well done, past Rosetta hanging by her hands in a heap. As I bound up the back steps into the house, Mother calls to me, and Binah reaches to scoop me up, but I escape them, thrashing along the main passage, out the front door, where I break blindly for the wharves. I don’t remember the rest with clarity, only that I find myself wandering across the gangplank of a sailing vessel, sobbing, stumbling over a turban of rope. A kind man with a beard and a dark cap asks what I want. I plead with him, Sarah Go. Binah chases me, though I’m unaware of her until she pulls me into her arms and coos, “Poor Miss Sarah, poor Miss Sarah.” Like a decree, a proclamation, a prophecy. When I arrive home, I am a muss of snot, tears, yard dirt, and harbor filth. Mother holds me against her, rears back and gives me an incensed shake, then clasps me again. “You must promise never to run away again. Promise me.” I want to. I try to. The words are on my tongue—the rounded lumps of them, shining like the marbles beneath the tree. “Sarah!” she demands. Nothing comes. Not a sound. I remained mute for a week. My words seemed sucked into the cleft between my collar bones. I rescued them by degrees, by praying, bullying and wooing. I came to speak again, but with an odd and mercurial form of stammer. I’d never been a fluid speaker, even my first spoken words had possessed a certain belligerent quality, but now there were ugly, halting gaps between my sentences, endless seconds when the words cowered against my lips and people averted their eyes. Eventually, these horrid pauses began to come and go according to their own mysterious whims. They might plague me for weeks and then remain away months, only to return again as abruptly as they left.

Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. It is unending. I heave myself over the final lip and strain to pull myself clear of the edge. I clear the deep powder snow from in front of my face. I lie there hyperventilating. Then I clear my mask of the ice that my breath has formed in the freezing air. I unclip off the rope while still crouching. The line is now clear for Neil to follow up. I get to my feet and start staggering onward. I can see this distant cluster of prayer flags semisubmerged in the snow. Gently flapping in the wind, I know that these flags mark the true summit--the place of dreams. I feel this sudden surge of energy beginning to rise within me. It is adrenaline coursing around my veins and muscles. I have never felt so strong--and yet so weak--all at the same time. Intermittent waves of adrenaline and fatigue come and go as my body struggles to sustain the intensity of these final moments. I find it strangely ironic that the very last part of this immense climb is so gentle a slope. A sweeping curve--curling along the crest of the ridge toward the summit. Thank God. It feels like the mountain is beckoning me up. For the first time, willing me to climb up onto the roof of the world. I try to count the steps as I move, but my counting becomes confused. I am now breathing and gasping like a wild animal in an attempt to devour the oxygen that seeps into my mask. However many of these pathetically slow shuffles I take, this place never seems to get any closer. But it is. Slowly the summit is looming a little nearer. I can feel my eyes welling up with tears. I start to cry and cry inside my mask. Emotions held in for so long. I can’t hold them back any longer. I stagger on.

He grasped the rope and slowly began hoisting himself. Suddenly it began to stretch as if it were rubber. He was startled, and the perspiration gushed from his pores. Fortunately the stretching stopped after about a foot. He tried bringing all his weight to bear, and this time there seemed to be no further cause for worry. He spit on his hands, fitted the rope between his legs, and began to climb hand over hand. He rose like a toy monkey climbing a toy coconut tree. Perhaps it was his excitement, but the perspiration on his forehead felt strangely cold. In an effort to keep sand from falling on him, he avoided brushing against it and depended solely on the rope. But he felt uneasy as his body turned round and round in the air. The dead weight of his torso was more than he had anticipated, and his progress was slow. And whatever was this trembling? His arms had begun to jerk in spite of him, and he felt almost as if he were snapping himself like a whip. Perhaps it was a natural reaction, in view of those forty-six horrible days. When he had climbed a yard the hole seemed a hundred yards deep ... two yards, two hundred yards deep. Gradually, as the depth of the hole increased, he began to be dizzy. He was too tired. He mustn't look down! But there! There was the surface! The surface where, no matter which way he went, he would walk to freedom ... to the very ends of the earth. When he got to the surface, this endless moment would become a small flower pressed between the pages of his diary ... poisonous herb or carnivorous plant, it would be no more than a bit of half-transparent colored paper, and as he sipped his tea in the parlor he would hold it up to the light and take pleasure in telling its story.

The crowd as silent,holding their breaths.Hot wind rustled in the trees as the ax gleamed in the sun.Luce could feel that the end was coming,but why? Why had her soul dragged her here? What insight abouther past,or the curse, could she possibly gain from having her head cut off? Then Daniel dropped the ax to the ground. "What are you doing?" Luce asked. Daniel didn't answer.He rolled back his shoulders, turned his face toward the sky, and flung out her arms. Zotz stepped forward to interfere,but when he touched Daniel's shoulder,he screamed and recoiled as if he'd been burned. And then- Daniel's white wings unfurled from his shoulders.As they extended fully from his sides,huge and shockingly bright against the parched brown landscape, they sent twenty Mayans hurtling backward. Shouts rang out around the cenote: "What is he?" "The boy is winged!" "He is a god! Sent to us by Chaat!" Luce thrashed against the ropes binding her wrists and her ankles.She needed to run to Daniel.She tried to move toward him,until- Until she couldn't move anymore. Daniel's wings were so bright they were almost unbearable. Only, now it wasn't just Daniel's wings that were glowing. It was...all of him. His entire body shone.As if he'd swallowed the sun. Music filled the air.No,not music, but a single harmonious chord.Deafening and unending,glorious and frightening. Luce had heard it before...somewhere. In the cemetery at Sword&Cross, the last night she'd been there,the night Daniel had fought Cam,and Luce hadn't been allowed to watch.The night Miss Sophia had dragged her away and Penn had died and nothing had ever been the same.It had begun with that very same chord,and it was coming out of Daniel.He was lit up so brightly,his body actually hummed. She swayed where she stood,unable to take her eyes away.An intense wave of heat stroked her skin. Behind Luce,someone cried out.The cry was followed by another,and then another,and then a whole chorus of voices crying out. Something was burning.It was acrid and choking and turned her stomach instantly. Then,in the corner of her vision,there was an explosion of flame, right where Zotz had been standing a moment before. The boom knocked her backward,and she turned away from the burning brightness of Daniel,coughing on the black ash and bitter smoke. Hanhau was gone,the ground where she'd stood scorched black.The gap-toothed man was hiding his face,trying hard not to look at Daniel's radiance.But it was irresistible.Luce watched as the man peeked between his fingers and burst into a pillar of flame. All around the cenote,the Mayans stared at Daniel.And one by one,his brilliance set them ablaze.Soon a bright ring of fire lit up the jungle,lit up everyone but Luce. "Ix Cuat!" Daniel reached for her. His glow made Luce scream out in pain,but even as she felt as if she were on the verge of asphyxiation, the words tumbled from her mouth. "You're glorious." "Don't look at me," he pleaded. "When a mortal sees an angel's true essence, then-you can see what happened to the others.I can't let you leave me again so soon.Always so soon-" "I'm still here," Luce insisted. "You're still-" He was crying. "Can you see me? The true me?" "I can see you." And for just a fraction of a second,she could.Her vision cleared.His glow was still radiant but not so blinding.She could see his soul. It was white-hot and immaculate,and it looked-there was no other way to say it-like Daniel. And it felt like coming home.A rush of unparalleled joy spread through Luce.Somewhere in the back of her mind,a bell of recognition chimed. She'd seen him like this before. Hadn't she? As her mind strained to draw upon the past she couldn't quite touch,the light of him began to overwhelm her. "No!" she cried,feeling the fire sear her heart and her body shake free of something.

Do you remember the time we tied a lasso to a tree limb and decided to swing across the creek like Tarzan?" Wyatt tipped up his frosty bottle and took a long pull. "Yeah." Zane was already laughing. "As usual,you two decided that I'd be the one to try it out first.That way,if it broke,I'd be the one tossed into the creek." "It stands to reason." Jesse chuckled. "You were the youngest. That's just the price you had to pay to hang out with us." "And," Wyatt added, "you were always willing to go along with whatever we decided." Zane shook his head. "Not when I used it to fly across the creek." "And not when I followed him," Wyatt said with a laugh. "But Jesse, assured that it was safe,grabbed hold and was flying through the air when the branch snapped." Amy looked over at her husband. "You landed in the creek?" "Yeah? On the day after one of our biggest storms,with the water spilling over its banks and rushing so fast it carried me downstream half a mile or more." She put a hand to her mouth to cover her shock and saw Cora do the same. Wyatt laughed. "He was lucky Zane and I had our horses tethered nearby.We chased along the banks of the creek until we could get far enough ahead to toss him a tree branch to catch. By the time we hauled him out,he looked like a drowned rat and was spitting mad." "I had a right to be.I swallowed half the creek." Zane laughed. "But think how lucky we were that it happened to you instead of me. At least you could swim." Marilee's eyes rounded. "They had you test the rope when they knew you couldn't swim?" Wyatt was laughing even harder. "We figured it was one way for him to learn." "How old were you?" They thought a minute before Wyatt answered. "I was eight,so that would make Jesse ten and Zane seven." "You could have all drowned." "Yeah.Looking back,we were lucky to have surrived so many foolish adventures. But," Wyatt added, "I wouldn't have missed a single one of them." of them

In the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale, there is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands are wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no staying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has to be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the description of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was mentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale’s back, the blubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the spades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that same hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my particular friend Queequeg, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to descend upon the monster’s back for the special purpose referred to. But in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall remain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is concluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged, excepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten feet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about, half on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like a tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Queequeg figured in the Highland costume—a shirt and socks—in which to my eyes, at least, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better chance to observe him, as will presently be seen. Being the savage’s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar in his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to attend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead whale’s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by a long cord. Just so, from the ship’s steep side, did I hold Queequeg down there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a monkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his waist. It was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we proceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both ends; fast to Queequeg’s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow leather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time, were wedded; and should poor Queequeg sink to rise no more, then both usage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should drag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature united us. Queequeg was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I any way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond entailed. So strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then, that while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to perceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock company of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that another’s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited disaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of interregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have so gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering—while I jerked him now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Queequeg’s monkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I came very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do what I would, I only had the management of one end of it.

There was a bell clanging in the tower of the building next to the black-shrike-thorn-cave. She found the noise irritating, so she twisted her neck and loosed a jet of blue and yellow flame at it. The tower did not catch fire, as it was stone, but the rope and beams supporting the bell ignited, and a few seconds later, the bell fell crashing into the interior of the tower. That pleased her, as did the two-legs-round-ears who ran screaming from the area. She was a dragon, after all. It was only right that they should fear her. One of the two-legs paused by the edge of the square in front of the black-shrike-thorn-cave, and she heard him shout a spell at her, his voice like the squeaking of a frightened mouse. Whatever the spell was, Eragon’s wards shielded her from it--at least she assumed they did, for she noticed no difference in how she felt or in the appearance of the world around her. The wolf-elf-in-Eragon’s-shape killed the magician for her. She could feel how Blödhgarm grasped hold of the spellcaster’s mind and wrestled the two-legs-round-ears’ thoughts into submission, whereupon Blödhgarm uttered a single word in the ancient-elf-magic-language, and the two-legs-round-ears fell to the ground, blood seeping from his open mouth. Then the wolf-elf tapped her on the shoulder and said, “Ready yourself, Brightscales. Here they come.” She saw Thorn rising above the edge of the rooftops, Eragon-half-brother-Murtagh a small, dark figure on his back. In the light of the morning sun, Thorn shone and sparkled almost as brilliantly as she herself did. Her scales were cleaner than his, though, as she had taken special care when grooming earlier. She could not imagine going into battle looking anything but her best. Her enemies should not only fear her, but admire her. She knew it was vanity on her part, but she did not care. No other race could match the grandeur of the dragons. Also, she was the last female of her kind, and she wanted those who saw her to marvel at her appearance and to remember her well, so if dragons were to vanish forevermore, two-legs would continue to speak of them with the proper respect, awe, and wonder.

I’m telling you, you bastard, you’re going to pay for that rum. In gold or goods, I don’t care which.” “Captain Mallory.” Gray’s baritone was forbidding. “And I apply that title loosely, as you are no manner of captain in my estimation…I have no intention of compensating you for the loss of your cargo. I will, however, accept your thanks.” “My thanks? For what?” “For what?” Now O’Shea entered the mix. “For saving that heap of a ship and your worthless, rum-soaked arse, that’s what.” “I’ll thank you to go to hell,” the gravelly voice answered. Mallory, she presumed. “You can’t just board a man’s craft and pitch a hold full of spirits into the sea. Right knaves, you lot.” “Oh, now we’re the knaves, are we?” Gray asked. “I should have let that ship explode around your ears, you despicable sot. Knaves, indeed.” “Well, if you’re such virtuous, charitable gents, then how come I’m trussed like a pig?” Sophia craned her neck and pushed the hatch open a bit further. Across the deck, she saw a pair of split-toed boots tied together with rope. Gray answered, “We had to bind you last night because you were drunk out of your skull. And we’re keeping you bound now because you’re sober and still out of your skull.” The lashed boots shuffled across the deck, toward Gray. “Let me loose of these ropes, you blackguard, and I’ll pound you straight out of your skull into oblivion.” O’Shea responded with a stream of colorful profanity, which Captain Grayson cut short. “Captain Mallory,” he said, his own highly polished boots pacing slowly, deliberately to halt between Mallory’s and Gray’s. “I understand your concern over losing your cargo. But surely you or your investor can recoup the loss with an insurance claim. You could not have sailed without a policy against fire.” Gray gave an ironic laugh. “Joss, I’ll wager you anything, that rum wasn’t on any bill of lading or insurance policy. Can’t you see the man’s nothing but a smuggler? Probably wasn’t bound for any port at all. What was your destination, Mallory? A hidden cove off the coast of Cornwall, perhaps?” He clucked his tongue. “That ship was overloaded and undermanned, and it would have been a miracle if you’d made it as far as Portugal. As for the rum, take up your complaint with the Vice Admiralty court after you follow us to Tortola. I’d welcome it.

Leo was at her side in an instant, crouching on the floor as he sorted through the hissing tangle of limbs and skirts. “Are you hurt? I feel certain there’s a woman in here somewhere. … Ah, there you are. Easy, now. Let me—” “Don’t touch me,” she snapped, batting at him with her fists. “I’m not touching you. That is, I’m only touching you with the—ow, damn it—with the intention of helping.” Her hat, a little scrap of wool felt with cheap corded trim, had fallen over her face. Leo managed to push it back to the top of her head, narrowly missing a sharp blow to his jaw. “Christ. Would you stop flailing for a moment?” Struggling to a sitting position, she glared at him. Leo crawled to retrieve the spectacles and returned to hand them to her. She snatched them from him without a word of thanks. She was a lean, anxious-looking woman. A young woman with narrowed eyes, from which bad temper flashed out. Her light brown hair was pulled back with a gallows-rope tightness that made Leo wince just to see it. One would have hoped for some compensating feature—a soft pair of lips, perhaps, or a pretty bosom. But no, there was only a stern mouth, a flat chest, and gaunt cheeks. If Leo were compelled to spend any time with her—which, thankfully, he wasn’t—he would have started by feeding her. “If you want to help,” she said coldly, hooking the spectacles around her ears, “retrieve that blasted ferret for me. Perhaps I’ve tired him enough that you may be able to run him to ground.” Still crouching on the floor, Leo glanced at the ferret, which had paused ten yards away and was watching them both with bright, beady eyes. “What is his name?” “Dodger.” Leo gave a low whistle and a few clicks of his tongue. “Come here, Dodger. You’ve caused enough trouble for the morning. Though I can’t fault your taste in … ladies’ garters? Is that what you’re holding?” The woman watched, stupefied, as the ferret’s long, slender body wriggled toward Leo. Chattering busily, Dodger crawled onto Leo’s thigh. “Good fellow,” Leo said, stroking the sleek fur. “How did you do that?” the woman asked in annoyance. “I have a way with animals. They tend to acknowledge me as one of their own.” Leo gently pried a frilly bit of lace and ribbon from the long front teeth. It was definitely a garter, deliciously feminine and impractical. He gave the woman a mocking smile as he handed it to her. “No doubt this is yours.

You should have gone with them,” she said, lifting her chin to look at Taristan. The smoke grew so thick she could hardly see him through the shadows, the strange realm burning around them. But she could still feel his arms, wrapped around her as they were, holding them both together until some kind of ending came. “To what?” he answered, his voice raspy with smoke. Erida heaved another choking breath, the heat of the flames buffeting her back. Tears slipped from her eyes and Erida curled into him, as if she might disappear into Taristan entirely. “To anything but this,” she cried out, looking back to where the Spindle used to be. “There is nothing for you here.” Taristan only stared. “Yes, there is.” The fires spread, so close now Erida feared her armor might melt off her body. But there was nowhere to go, nothing to do. They had no blade. They had no doorways. There was only Taristan in front of her, the long years of his life welling up in his eyes. She knew them as much as anyone could. An orphan, a mercenary, a prince. A discarded child ripe for the picking, set on this terrible path for so terribly long. Did it always lead here? she wondered. Has this always been our fate? The steps shuddered behind her, one of them crumbling entirely. What Waits hissed with the cracking stone, closer by the second. The demon within called to the demon without, the two of them connected like a piece of rope pulling taut. Erida swallowed against the sensation, feeling her control slip. She gripped Taristan tighter, blinking fiercely. My mind is my own. My mind is my own. But her own voice began to fade, even in her head. She saw the same in Taristan, the same war raging behind his eyes. Before it could seize them both, Erida seized her prince by the neck, pulling his face to her own. He tasted like blood and smoke, but she reveled in it. “Does this make you mine?” Taristan whispered, his hand against her jaw. It was the same question he once asked so long ago, when Erida could give no answer. It felt foolish now, a stupid thing to hesitate over. Especially as another took over her head, conquering her mind as she tried to conquer the world. “Yes,” she answered, kissing him again. Kissing him until the flames pressed in, until she couldn’t breathe. Until her vision went black. Until the first footstep landed on the grass, the dirt going to ashes, beneath Him, and all the realms shook with the weight of it.

The madness surged around him, and Rhy tore himself away from the breaking city and turned his sights again to his quest for the captain of the Night Spire. There were only two places Alucard Emery would go: his family estate or his ship. Logic said he’d go to the house, but something in Rhy’s gut sent him in the opposite direction, toward the docks. He found the captain on his cabin floor. One of the chairs by the hearth had been toppled, a table knocked clean of glasses, their glittering shards scattered in the rug and across the wooden floor. Alucard—decisive, strong, beautiful Alucard—lay curled on his side, shivering with fever, his warm brown hair matted to his cheeks with sweat. He was clutching his head, breath escaping in ragged gasps as he spoke to ghosts. “Stop … please …” His voice—that even, clear voice, always brimming with laughter—broke. “Don’t make me …” Rhy was on his knees beside him. “Luc,” he said, touching the man’s shoulder. Alucard’s eyes flashed open, and Rhy recoiled when he saw them filled with shadows. Not the even black of Kell’s gaze, but instead menacing streaks of darkness that writhed and coiled like snakes through his vision, storm blue irises flashing and vanishing behind the fog. “Stop,” snarled the captain suddenly. He struggled up, limbs shaking, only to fall back against the floor. Rhy hovered over him, helpless, unsure whether to hold him down or try to help him up. Alucard’s eyes found his, but looked straight through him. He was somewhere else. “Please,” the captain pleaded with the ghosts. “Don’t make me go.” “I won’t,” said Rhy, wondering who Alucard saw. What he saw. How to free him. The captain’s veins stood out like ropes against his skin. “He’ll never forgive me.” “Who?” asked Rhy, and Alucard’s brow furrowed, as if he were trying to see through the fog, the fever. “Rhy—” The sickness tightened its hold, the shadows in his eyes streaking with lines of light like lightning. The captain bit back a scream. Rhy ran his fingers over Alucard’s hair, took his face in his hands. “Fight it,” he ordered. “Whatever’s holding you, fight it.” Alucard folded in on himself, shuddering. “I can’t….” “Focus on me.” “Rhy …” he sobbed. “I’m here.” Rhy Maresh lowered himself onto the glass-strewn floor, lay on his side so they were face-to-face. “I’m here.” He remembered, then. Like a dream flickering back to the surface, he remembered Alucard’s hands on his shoulders, his voice cutting through the pain, reaching out to him, even in the dark. I’m here now, he’d said, so you can’t die. “I’m here now,” echoed Rhy, twining his fingers through Alucard’s. “And I’m not letting go, so don’t you dare.” Another scream tore from Alucard’s throat, his grip tightening as the lines of black on his skin began to glow. First red, then white. Burning. He was burning from the inside out. And it hurt—hurt to watch, hurt to feel so helpless. But Rhy kept his word. He didn’t let go.

I don’t know what to do with you,” he said, his voice growing curt with anger again. “Deceitful little minx. I’m of half a mind to put you to work, milking the goats. But that’s out of the question with these hands, now isn’t it?” He curled and uncurled her fingers a few times, testing the bandage. “I’ll tell Stubb to change this twice a day. Can’t risk the wound going septic. And don’t use your hands for a few days, at least.” “Don’t use my hands? I suppose you’re going to spoon-feed me, then? Dress me? Bathe me?” He inhaled slowly and closed his eyes. “Don’t use your hands much.” His eyes snapped open. “None of that sketching, for instance.” She jerked her hands out of his grip. “You could slice off my hands and toss them to the sharks, and I wouldn’t stop sketching. I’d hold the pencil with my teeth if I had to. I’m an artist.” “Really. I thought you were a governess.” “Well, yes. I’m that, too.” He packed up the medical kit, jamming items back in the box with barely controlled fury. “Then start behaving like one. A governess knows her place. Speaks when spoken to. Stays out of the damn way.” Rising to his feet, he opened the drawer and threw the box back in. “From this point forward, you’re not to touch a sail, a pin, a rope, or so much as a damned splinter on this vessel. You’re not to speak to crewmen when they’re on watch. You’re forbidden to wander past the foremast, and you need to steer clear of the helm, as well.” “So that leaves me doing what? Circling the quarterdeck?” “Yes.” He slammed the drawer shut. “But only at designated times. Noon hour and the dogwatch. The rest of the day, you’ll remain in your cabin.” Sophia leapt to her feet, incensed. She hadn’t fled one restrictive program of behavior, just to submit to another. “Who are you to dictate where I can go, when I can go there, what I’m permitted to do? You’re not the captain of this ship.” “Who am I?” He stalked toward her, until they stood toe-to-toe. Until his radiant male heat brought her blood to a boil, and she had to grab the table edge to keep from swaying toward him. “I’ll tell you who I am,” he growled. “I’m a man who cares if you live or die, that’s who.” Her knees melted. “Truly?” “Truly. Because I may not be the captain, but I’m the investor. I’m the man you owe six pounds, eight. And now that I know you can’t pay your debts, I’m the man who knows he won’t see a bloody penny unless he delivers George Waltham a governess in one piece.” Sophia glared at him. How did he keep doing this to her? Since the moment they’d met in that Gravesend tavern, there’d been an attraction between them unlike anything she’d ever known. She knew he had to feel it, too. But one minute, he was so tender and sensual; the next, so crass and calculating. Now he would reduce her life’s value to this cold, impersonal amount? At least back home, her worth had been measured in thousands of pounds not in shillings. “I see,” she said. “This is about six pounds, eight shillings. That’s the reason you’ve been watching me-“ He made a dismissive snort. “I haven’t been watching you.” “Staring at me, every moment of the day, so intently it makes my…my skin crawl and all you’re seeing is a handful of coins. You’d wrestle a shark for a purse of six pounds, eight. It all comes down to money for you.

The history of the land is a history of blood. In this history, someone wins and someone loses. There are patriots and enemies. Folk heroes who save the day. Vanquished foes who had it coming. It’s all in the telling. The conquered have no voice. Ask the thirty-eight Santee Sioux singing the death song with the nooses around their necks, the treaty signed fair and square, then nullified with a snap of the rope. Ask the slave women forced to bear their masters’ children, to raise and love them and see them sold. Ask the miners slaughtered by the militia in Ludlow. Names are erased. The conqueror tells the story. The colonizer writes the history, winning twice: A theft of land. A theft of witness. Oh, but let’s not speak of such things! Look: Here is an eagle whipping above the vast grasslands where the buffalo once thundered bold as gods. (The buffalo are here among the dead. So many buffalo.) There is the Declaration in sepia. (Signed by slave owners. Shhh, hush up about that, now!) See how the sun shines down upon the homesteaders’ wagons racing toward a precious claim in the nation’s future, the pursuit of happiness pursued without rest, destiny made manifest? (Never mind about those same homesteaders eating the flesh of neighbors. Winters are harsh in this country. Pack a snack.) The history is a hungry history. Its mouth opens wide to consume. It must be fed. Bring me what you would forget, it cries, and I will swallow it whole and pull out the bones bleached of truth upon which you will hang the myths of yourselves. Feed me your pain and I will give you dreams and denial, a balm in Gilead. The land remembers everything, though. It knows the steps of this nation’s ballet of violence and forgetting. The land receives our dead, and the dead sing softly the song of us: blood. Blood on the plains. In the rivers. On the trees where the ropes swing. Blood on the leaves. Blood under the flowers of Gettysburg, of Antioch. Blood on the auction blocks. Blood of the Lenape, the Cherokee, the Cheyenne. Blood of the Alamo. Blood of the Chinese railroad workers. Blood of the midwives hung for witchcraft, for the crime of being women who bleed. Blood of the immigrants fleeing the hopeless, running toward the open arms of the nation’s seductive hope, its greatest export. Blood of the first removed to make way for the cities, the factories, the people and their unbridled dreams: The chugging of the railways. The tapping of the telegram. The humming of industry. Sound burbling along telephone wires. Printing presses whirring with the day’s news. And the next day’s. And the day after that’s. Endless cycles of information. Cities brimming with ambitions used and discarded. The dead hold what the people throw away. The stories sink the tendrils of their hope and sorrow down into the graves and coil around the dead buried there, deep in its womb. All passes away, the dead whisper. Except for us. We, the eternal. Always here. Always listening. Always seeing. One nation, under the earth. E Pluribus unum mortuis. Oh, how we wish we could reach you! You dreamers and schemers! Oh, you children of optimism! You pioneers! You stars and stripes, forever! Sometimes, the dreamers wake as if they have heard. They take to the streets. They pick up the plow, the pen, the banner, the promise. They reach out to neighbors. They reach out to strangers. Backs stooped from a hard day’s labor, two men, one black, one white, share water from a well. They are thirsty and, in this one moment, thirst and work make them brothers. They drink of shared trust, that all men are created equal. They wipe their brows and smile up at a faithful sun.

Vaelin paused to turn and offer a parting bow. "And only a fool sticks his head in a noose when no one is holding the rope.

Holding onto the rope too tight might hurt your hands, and both sides will fall apart. It's better sometimes to let go to save the both sides.

Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills.” Don’t wish for someone to hold your hand like you’re a four-year-old skipping rope and chewing bubblegum. Wish to build discipline of long-term investing, like an adult. Others have done it and you can too.

How may I help, Bea?” Poppy asked, approaching her. Her younger sister handed her a length of heavy silk cord. “Tie this ’round the neck of the jar, please. Your knots are always much better than mine.” “A clove hitch?” Poppy suggested, taking the twine. “Yes, perfect.” Jake Valentine regarded the two intent young women dubiously, and looked at Harry. “Mr. Rutledge—” Harry gestured for him to be silent and allow the Hathaway sisters to proceed. Whether or not their attempt actually worked, he was enjoying this too much to stop them. “Could you make some kind of loop for a handle at the other end?” Beatrix asked. Poppy frowned. “An overhand knot, perhaps? I’m not sure I remember how.” “Allow me,” Harry volunteered, stepping forward. Poppy surrendered the end of the cord to him, her eyes twinkling. Harry tied the end of the cord into an elaborate rope ball, first wrapping it several times around his fingers, then passing the free end back and forth. Not above a bit of showmanship, he tightened the whole thing with a deft flourish. “Nicely done,” Poppy said. “What knot is that?” “Ironically,” Harry replied, “it is known as the ‘Monkey’s Fist.’ ” Poppy smiled. “Is it really? No, you’re teasing.” “I never tease about knots. A good knot is a thing of beauty.” Harry gave the rope end to Beatrix, and watched as she placed the jar atop the frame of the food lift cab. Then he realized what her plan was. “Clever,” he murmured. “It may not work,” Beatrix said. “It depends on whether the monkey is more intelligent than we are.” “I’m rather afraid of the answer,” Harry replied dryly. Reaching inside the food lift shaft, he pulled the rope slowly, sending the jar up to the macaque, while Beatrix kept hold of the silk cord. All was quiet. The group held their breath en masse as they waited. Thump. The monkey had descended to the top of the cab. A few inquiring hoots and grunts echoed through the shaft. A rattle, a silence, and then a sharp tug at the line. Offended screams filled the air, and heavy thumps shook the food lift. “We caught him,” Beatrix exclaimed.

It’s tempting to think that when you call the bank or another financial service provider and you are put on hold for twenty-five minutes, it’s simply because it’s a peak time of day and many other account holders are calling at the same moment. Tempting, but wrong. In reality, the wait time likely has nothing to do with timing and everything to do with your CLV, or customer lifetime value. This is a calculation of how much your business is worth to whoever you are calling, and the higher the number, the better the service. At a bank or credit card company, it might be determined by your balance. Frequency of travel and spending levels help set your CLV at airlines and hotels. More and more, as soon as you call any consumer-facing company, according to Palmatier, the company’s first step is to identify your phone number and then determine your CLV. “If it’s high,” he explained, “they might take your call more quickly, or direct it to one of their best-performing or most highly trained representatives. We call this heterogeneity in customer service, and it’s driven by the profit motive.

The Night Bomber by Stewart Stafford Stefan and Elyse came home by rote, To find a stranger's chilling note, "I’m going to kill you" scrawled in red, Pranks locked out with nothing said. Then the hall window smashed, In a firework’s screaming flash, They threw it out before it burned, Danger had not passed, they learned. A ticking device left behind, Elyse kicked it away just in time, A garden explosion's massive bang, Their ears and windows loudly rang. They wondered what psycho did this deed, And how they'd crossed this evil breed, Then they heard them bomb their neighbours who thought Stefan and Elyse were perpetrators. Then another blast three doors down, Stefan ran to help with a worried frown, Concerned to see who else got hit, Seeing their attacker was still at it. A bomber in a ski mask did a backflip, To dodge their lunging, angry grip, He swung on ropes and vaulted high, An acrobat mocking with a stylish eye. The bomber fled in his getaway car, A neighbour leapt on before he got far, He held on tight but got dragged along, Rolled to the kerb, he couldn't hold on. The Night Bomber of Sheila’s Cabin On the loose, an explosive phantom, Stalking without any reason or pity, His laughter echoed across the city. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.

That's the thing, isn't it, when you grow with Time, you learn to value your Time more than anything in this world. You safeguard your peace from literally anything that seems to pull it down, even if that means transient happiness. I learnt long back that Life is a series of lessons, some bitter and well some very very bitter, but all of them assimilate into something so serene, so beautiful actually when looked from a distance. Because each time you're broken, you're made once again, some from the pieces that lay scattered on the ground while some entirely new coming from all across the Sky where He Smiles at You, knowing that your fall was nothing but a blur in the Time that would clutch you later in Life into understanding the Truest Meaning of Life, the virtue of Patience and Perseverance, the lesson on Time, that Time alone has the biggest Smile and if you evolve with it you would walk the fire with the Zeal of your Soul that never ages, you will find wrinkles and scars but those are like battle ropes that get you motivated to walk this Earth one more time, to know that you're still alive, only your core never changes, You in your heart is always that child, the one who is always eager to embrace as much colour from this moment as your senses can. I am not hushing the child but patting it with the serenity of a grey hair, knowing that Life has been kind even at the battles that were thrown along the way, and eventually letting my heart know that the biggest war I'd ever face is within, the war that demands me to hold on too tightly all while letting go too spontaneously, the least I could find is a victory of Knowing I have done it all with an Honest Heart and a Soul that thrives on Faith. If colours were hued on my Soul, let Integrity be my Sun and as for the Moon, I'd always be Kindness' arm. Thank You, Life And to every momentary transient passerby of this beautiful journey, no matter where we left off, I wish your journey finds the course it's meant to walk.

The captain walked the deck at a rapid stride, looked aloft at the sails, and then to windward; the mate stood in the gangway, rubbing his hands, and talking aloud to the ship—“Hurrah, old bucket! the Boston girls have got hold of the tow-rope!” and the like; and we were on the forecastle, looking to see how the spars stood it, and guessing the rate at which she was going,—when the captain called out—“Mr. Brown, get up the topmast studding-sail! What she can’t carry she may drag!” The mate looked a moment; but he would let no one be before him in daring. He sprang forward—“Hurrah, men! rig out the topmast studding-sail boom! Lay aloft, and I’ll send the rigging up to you!”—We sprang aloft into the top; lowered a girt-line down, by which we hauled up the rigging; rove the tacks and halyards; ran out the boom and lashed it fast, and sent down the lower halyards, as a preventer. It was a clear starlight night, cold and blowing; but everybody worked with a will. Some indeed, looked as though they thought the “old man” was mad, but no one said a word.

One of our boys, when off Cape Horn, reefing topsails of a dark night, and when there were no boats to be lowered away, and where, if a man fell overboard he must be left behind,—lost his hold of the reef-point, slipped from the foot-rope, and would have been in the water in a moment, when the man who was next to him on the yard caught him by the collar of his jacket, and hauled him up upon the yard, with—“Hold on, another time, you young monkey, and be d—d to you!”—and that was all that was heard about it.

And I learned a long time ago that hurt is like quicksand. It'll suck me under if I let it. Best to tiptoe around the edges. Not say too much. Hold on to the rope.

My mouth drops when my orgasm bursts from my cock. My knot pulsates, sending streams of come into her bath. My talons dig into the vanity of her sink so I can hold myself up as my legs give out from the intensity. The white ropes disappear into the bubbles, the evidence gone, and the come wasted. I sneer with discontent. Every drop deserves to be inside her. Demi swirls the water with her hands, splashing it on her chest, and every part of me purrs with satisfaction. She’s bathing in my come. She’s marked.

When I spoke again, I didn’t bother with any of the normal reassurances or spiritual platitudes. Instead I said honestly, “I don’t know if everything will be okay. It may not be. You may think you are at the lowest point now and then look up one day and see that it’s gotten so much worse.” I looked down at my hands, the hands that had pulled my oldest sister from a rope after she hung herself in my parents’ garage. “You may not ever be able to get out of bed in the morning with that security. That moment of okay may never come. All you can do is try to find a new balance, a new starting point. Find whatever love is left in your life and hold on to it tightly. And one day, things will have gotten less gray, less dull. One day, you might find that you have a life again. A life that makes you happy.

... She had the same air about her that I had hated in James, the assumption that those of us who found ourselves floundering in life needed only to pull ourselves together, forgetting that they'd been born in the lifeboat while some of had been dropped into the fathomless depths without so much as a rope to grab hold of.

It says Come don the veil of the type and token. Come learn to love what’s hidden inside. To hold and cherish. The almost unbelievably thick-ankled. The kyphotic and lordotic. The irremediably cellulitic. It says Progress Not Perfection. It says Never Perfection. The fatally pulchritudinous: Welcome. The Actaeonizing, side by side with the Medusoid. The papuled, the macular, the albinic. Medusas and odalisques both: Come find common ground. All meeting rooms windowless. That’s in ital: all meeting rooms windowless.’ Plus the music she’s cued for this inflectionless reading is weirdly compelling. You can never predict what it will be, but over time some kind of pattern emerges, a trend or rhythm. Tonight’s background fits, somehow, as she reads. There’s not any real forwardness to it. You don’t sense it’s straining to get anywhere. The thing it makes you see as she reads is something heavy swinging slowly at the end of a long rope. It’s minor-key enough to be eerie against the empty lilt of the voice and the clinks of tines and china as Mario’s relations eat turkey salad and steamed crosiers and drink lager and milk and vin blanc from Hull over behind the plants bathed in purple light.

When you start possessing someone, you bind yourself also. If you are walking holding your dog’s leash, be very clear that you are also bound. Don’t think only the dog is bound; you are also bound. Don’t think that only the dog cannot run away, you too cannot run away! You may be thinking that you are holding the rope and the dog may be thinking that he is holding the rope. Who knows?

...there's a rope still tethering me to social convention. The rope is well frayed and may only have the tensile strength of dental floss, but for now, it holds. [Rose Yates]

You stuffed me in that niche but didn’t have the sense to hold on to it yourself.” Helene glowers at me, but her hands shake as she gives me the water. “Then you dropped like a lead weight. Smacked your head on the way down. You should have died, but that rope between us anchored you. I sang at the top of my lungs until every last efrit bolted. Then I got you to the desert floor and holed up in a little cave behind some tumbleweeds. Good little fort, actually. Easy to defend.” “You had to fight? Again?” “The Augurs tried to kill us four more times. The scorpions were obvious, but the viper almost got you. Then there were wights—evil little bastards, them, nothing like the stories. Pain in the ass to kill, too—you have to squash them like bugs.

Elide said, “He told me you’d left.” Lorcan still didn’t set her down, holding her aloft with one arm as he untied the ropes. “You believed him.

I startle. Me too. Callie Thompson, the woman who might be my polar opposite, holds the same values I do. Shock keeps me stock-still against the ropes as I watch her.

Her reciprocation of my love is unneeded. I would never require her to hold the same attachments as myself because it is an impossible feat. I am possessed with a cruel and bloody love that collapses and suffocates, squeezes and rips until scars and bruises are the only traces left. She is the noose that hangs me, the rope that strangles and chokes at my soul, and no one—not her or anyone—could ever be left as breathless as I am.

In the fluorescent light of the motel, I see a bruised cheekbone. Black eye. A busted lip. Rage courses through me, swift, blinding. “Who did this, Dakota?” I demand, fighting to keep my voice controlled even as my breath comes out in ragged pants. “Who. The fuck. Did this?” Her eyes flutter closed. “Davis, don’t—” “Cupcake, I’m gonna need you to shut that pretty mouth and let me hold you.

On the day Alcott went to Concord to see Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison was holding an abolition meeting in Boston. So unpopular was the cause that a riot ensued, in which a large crowd of respectable Bostonians of all classes seized Garrison and dragged him through the streets of Boston with a rope around his neck.

and Delilah—my ruthless, rabid queen—is the dog who does what needs to be done while I hold her rope.

It’s time.” She helps Lady Huang move from her bed to a squatting position above the basin. Lady Huang reaches for the rope that hangs from the ceiling. She holds tight as the place between her legs bulges. She closes her eyes and moans. Meiling and the old woman support Lady Huang on each side of her waist. Midwife Shi moves behind Lady Huang, with her hands underneath the childbirth gate, ready to catch the baby. “Tell me if the good lady starts to droop,” the midwife requests of those in the room. “We cannot let any part of her touch the straw. Why is this, Meiling?” “Bad influences can creep inside her,” Meiling answers. “She could get infant-cord rigidity.” I glance questioningly at Grandmother, who explains, “ ‘Squatting on straw’—by that I mean labor—is a time for death to visit a woman. Her body is forced open as she gives birth, allowing Cold and Wind to invade her. If infant-cord rigidity creeps inside a woman, her back will become stiff and eventually bend backward like a bow. Her jaw will lock until death relieves her agony. You will recognize the symptoms if you see them.” Lady

I know, baby,” he says, peering at my lips as his rough, calloused hand travels to cup the curve of my breast. “I’m gonna take care of that ache so you can think clearly again.” He slaps my breast, causing me to feel the sting travel directly to my center like a lightning bolt of intense pleasure, before surprising me by roughly flipping me over on my stomach. With one leg still tied to the bed, the rope around my ankle, he props me on my knees, holding my hips as he slides off the bed behind me.

You messed up,” his grave, familiar tone purrs throughout my core, his hot breath warming my neck. “You hesitated, and now you’re dead.” This is Aero’s game; always has been. I’m still merely a player. I feel the rope circle my wrist as he tries to grab for the other. Sending an elbow to his jaw, I feel his teeth knock together before an angry growl reverberates from somewhere deep in his chest. Thrashing wildly in his hold, I feel his body push into me, forcing my face into the dirt beneath us, my legs splaying out behind me. He’s already hard.

goes to sit up, but her wrists pull against the cuffs on the bed. She moves her leg, feeling the rope I’ve tied there. Immediately, her chest heaves, and she pulls on all the restraints at the same time, thrashing her naked little body for my viewing pleasure. “Help!” she cries out. “Someone—” I slap my palm over her mouth. “No one is going to help you, Briony. No one but me,” I say, pushing down on her mouth. I pinch her nose closed, watching as those gorgeous panicked eyes focus in on mine beneath my ski mask. She tries to move her face away from my grasp, but I hold tight, taking her air. “Why don’t you understand that?

love was a rope bridge made of the thinnest strands. It might hold your

Traps' body leaned all the ways of the rope. He discovered the freedom in loosening and the protection in wrapping. The transformation in twisting and anticipation with coiling. And his commitment to the rope was his greatest knot. The pull of that rope was its very own raging desire -- his intentions and instinct, his fate and free will, all of it danced in the weave. His choices became tethers, his fears learned freedom.That was true rope to him. In that sacred inner place, the fight between surrender and control in no way rivaled the art of holding on. The innate beauty of letting go. Each twist and turn was a song in his soul. A song that sang silently for only his ears to hear.

Revive your inner spirit! Break free from all things weighing you down, grab hold of your strong rope and lift yourself out of hopelessness!

If a man says that having thought about the matter and having considered all sides he has on the whole decided for Christ, and if he has done so without any emotion or feeling, I cannot regard him as a man who has been regenerated. The convicted sinner no more ‘decides’ for Christ than the poor drowning man ‘decides’ to take hold of that rope that is thrown to him and suddenly provides him with the only means of escape.

You’re looking a little too amused, there, Pete,” she says. She fills her mouth with pool water and spits it from between her teeth at my foot. Damn, that’s hot. But, again, I’m a guy. We tend to get a little orally fixated. She could spit a goober and I’d still probably find it sexy. “What are you going to do about it?” I ask, sitting forward with my elbows on my knees. She looks startled for a second. Then I realize she’s plotting. I can almost smell the gears in her mind burning, they’re working that hard. Gonzo rolls up next to me. They must have warned everyone about Gonzo’s tracheostomy tube because no one tries to get him wet and he’s careful about the edge of the pool. Next thing I know, he’s beside me, and he doesn’t take the same care with me that he took with Reagan. A blast of water hits me in the face. I put my hands up to block him, but dammit, he’s having so much fun with it that I don’t want to stop him. Instead, I let him squirt until the gun’s empty. Then I blow water from my lips and open my eyes. She’s grinning like hell, and Gonzo’s almost as happy as she is. “You so deserved that,” she says. I stand up and point to her. “I’m coming for you, Reagan,” I warn. She squeals and backs away. She looks a little panicky, but then I realize she’s having fun and she’s panicking because I’m going to dunk her rather than because I’m going to touch her. This shit is like foreplay. The really good kind. I go in the shallow end and stalk her all the way to the rope that sections off the middle of the pool. I want to touch her so badly I can taste it. “Come here, little girl,” I taunt. “Let me show you what happens when you mess with a real man.” She laughs and ducks under the rope. She comes up smiling, though. I go under and reach for her, and she almost slides right by me, but I grab her at the last second. I slowly and gently pull her against me. We’re so close together that I can feel her heart beating against my chest. She stares into my eyes, and then her gaze drops to my lips and moves back up. “Pete,” she warns. She kicks her feet to stay afloat. “Reagan,” I mock. “It wasn’t my fault,” she says, but she’s a little breathless. “It was Gonzo. He planned the whole thing.” “Liar,” I whisper. Her face flushes. I tread water with one hand and hold her against me with the other. This feels so good that I don’t want to let go.

The rope of reality can not hold down my balloon of Imagination.

Good evening.” He gazed down at her lying in her hammock and realized she had already changed into her bedclothes. Well, well, well… “Is there room for two in that hammock?” he asked, still not quite sure of his welcome. “I don’t know, but let’s try it, and if we end up on the ground, we’ll know there isn’t.” Not exactly a rousing cheer, but the boys had said she was in a mood today. Val hopped around, pulling off his boots and stockings, and surveyed the challenge before him. “You roll up that way and hold to the edge, and I’ll climb aboard.” The hammock dipped significantly, and it took some nimbleness on Val’s part, but he was soon ensconced wonderfully close to Ellen, the hammock pitching them together by design. “We need a rope,” Val murmured into Ellen’s ear, “attached to one of the trees, so I can set this thing to swinging for you.” “There’s a breeze tonight.” She turned so her cheek rested on Val’s arm. “I wasn’t sure you were coming.” “Why wouldn’t I?” Val nuzzled her hair, loving the scent and softness of it. “Because the boys are still making a racket at the pond?” “I hoped it was our boys and not those other rotten little brats. You shoo them away, and they’re like flies. They just come buzzing back.” “Are they truly rotten?” He worked an arm under her neck, drawing her closer. “I was a boy once. I hesitate to think all regarded me as an insect merely on the strength of my puerile status.” “You were a good boy.” Ellen’s voice held the first hint of a smile.

You might have tried to stop her,” she exclaimed. As she glanced up at Christopher, a scowl flitted across her face. “Oh. It’s you.” “Miss Hathaway--” he began. “Hold this.” Something warm and wriggling was thrust into his grasp, and Beatrix dashed off to pursue the goat. Dumbfounded, Christopher glanced at the creature in his hands. A baby goat, cream colored, with a brown head. He fumbled to keep from dropping the creature as he glanced at Beatrix’s retreating form and realized she was wearing breeches and boots. Christopher had seen women in every imaginable state of dress or undress. But he had never seen one wearing the clothes of a stablehand. “I must be having a dream,” he told the squirming kid absently. “A very odd dream about Beatrix Hathaway and goats…” “I have her!” the masculine voice called out. “Beatrix, I told you the pen needed to be made taller.” “She didn’t leap over it,” came Beatrix’s protest, “she ate through it.” “Who let her into the house?” “No one. She butted one of the side doors open.” An inaudible conversation followed. As Christopher waited, a dark-haired boy of approximately four or five years of age made a breathless entrance through the front door. He was carrying a wooden sword and had tied a handkerchief around his head, which gave him the appearance of a miniature pirate. “Did they catch the goat?” he asked Christopher without preamble. “I believe so.” “Oh, thunderbolts. I missed all the fun.” The boy sighed. He looked up at Christopher. “Who are you?” “Captain Phelan. The child’s gaze sharpened with interest. “Where’s your uniform?” “I don’t wear it now that the war is over.” “Did you come to see my father?” “No, I…came to call on Miss Hathaway.” “Are you one of her suitors?” Christopher gave a decisive shake of his head. “You might be one,” the boy said wisely, “and just not know it yet.” Christopher felt a smile--his first genuine smile in a long time--pulling at his lips. “Does Miss Hathaway have many suitors?” “Oh, yes. But none of them want to marry her.” “Why is that, do you imagine?” “They don’t want to get shot,” the child said, shrugging. “Pardon?” Christopher’s brows lifted. “Before you marry, you have to get shot by an arrow and fall in love,” the boy explained. He paused thoughtfully. “But I don’t think the rest of it hurts as much as the beginning.” Christopher couldn’t prevent a grin. At that moment, Beatrix returned to the hallway, dragging the nanny goat on a rope lead. Beatrix looked at Christopher with an arrested expression. His smile faded, and he found himself staring into her blue-on-blue eyes. They were astonishingly direct and lucid…the eyes of a vagabond angel. One had the sense that no matter what she beheld of the sinful world, she would never be jaded. She reminded him that the things he had seen and done could not be polished away like tarnish from silver. Gradually her gaze lowered from his. “Rye,” she said, handing the lead to the boy. “Take Pandora to the barn, will you? And the baby goat as well.” Reaching out, she took the kid from Christopher’s arms. The touch of her hands against his shirtfront elicited an unnerving response, a pleasurable heaviness in his groin. “Yes, Auntie.” The boy left through the front door, somehow managing to retain possession of the goats and the wooden sword. Christopher stood facing Beatrix, trying not to gape. And failing utterly. She might as well have been standing there in her undergarments. In fact, that would have been preferable, because at least it wouldn’t have seemed so singularly erotic. He could see the feminine outline of her hips and thighs clad in the masculine garments. And she didn’t seem at all self-conscious. Confound her, what kind of woman was she?

Montreal November 1704 Temperature 34 degrees “Girl! English, eh? What is your name? Indians stole you, eh? I’ll send news to your people.” His excellent speech meant that he did a lot of trading with the English. It meant, Mercy prayed, that he liked the English. She found her tongue. “Will you take me to France, sir? Or anywhere at all? Wherever you are going--I can pay.” He raised his eyebrows. “You do not belong to an Indian?” She flushed and knew her red cheeks gave their own answer, but rather than speaking, she held out the cross. The sun was bright and the gemstones even brighter. The man sucked in his breath. He leaned very close to her to examine the cross. “Yes,” he said. “It is worth much.” He straightened up slowly, his eyes traveling from her waist to her breast to her throat to her hair. The other sailors also straightened, and they too left their work, drawn by the glittering cross. “So you want to sail with me, girl?” He stroked her cheek. His nails were yellow and thick like shingles, and filthy underneath. He twined her hair into a hank, circling it tighter and tighter, as if to scalp. “You are the jewel,” he said. “Come. I get a comb and fix this hair.” The other sailors slouched over. They pressed against her and she could not retreat. He continued to hold her by the hair, as if she were a rabbit to be skinned. She could see neither river nor sky, only the fierce grins of sailors leaning down. “Eh bien,” said the Frenchman, returning to his own tongue. “This little girl begs to sail with us,” he told his men. “What do you say, boys?” He began laughing. “Where should she sleep? What am I bid?” She did not have enough French to get every word, but it was the same in any language. The sailors laughed raucously. Indians had strong taboos about women. Men would not be with their women if they were going hunting or having important meetings, and certainly not when going off to war. She had never heard of an Indian man forcing himself on a woman. But these were not Indians. She let the cross fall on its chain and pushed the Frenchman away, but he caught both her wrists easily in his free hand and stretched her out by the wrists as well as by the hair. Tannhahorens pricked the white man’s hand with the tip of his scalping knife. White men loading barrels stood still. White sailors on deck ceased to move. White passersby froze where they walked. The bearded Frenchman drew back, holding his hands up in surrender. A little blood ran down his arm. “Of course,” he said, nodding. “She’s yours. I see.” The sailors edged away. Behind them now, Mercy could see two pirogues of Indians drifting by the floating dock. They looked like Sauk from the west. They were standing up in the deep wells of their sturdy boats, shifting their weapons to catch the sun. Tannhahorens did not look at Mercy. The tip of his knife advanced and the Frenchman backed away from it. He was a very strong man, possibly stronger than Tannhahorens. But behind Tannhahorens were twenty heavily armed braves. The Frenchman kept backing and Tannhahorens kept pressing. No sailor dared move a muscle, not outnumbered as they were. The Sauk let out a hideous wailing war cry. Mercy shuddered with the memory of other war cries. Even more terrified, all the French took another step back--and three of them fell into the St. Lawrence River. The Sauk burst into wild laughter. The voyageurs hooted and booed. The sailors threw ropes to their floundering comrades, because only Indians knew how to swim.

We were eighteen thousand vertical feet above sea level, in the mouth of Everest’s killer jaws. I noticed my hand was shaking as I fumbled with the ropes through thick mittens. It was pure fatigue. An hour later, it felt like we were still no closer to base camp, and it was starting to get late. I glanced nervously around the icefall. We should be meeting back up with Nima somewhere around here, as arranged. I scanned around but couldn’t see him. I dug my crampons into the snow, leaned back against the face to get my breath back, and waited for Mick behind me. He was still ten yards away, stepping carefully across the broken blocks of ice. We had been in this crevasse-ridden frozen death trap for more than nine hours, and we were both moving very laboriously. Watching him, I knew that if the mighty Mick was moving this slowly then we were indeed on a big mountain. I stood up and took a few more careful steps, testing the ice with each movement. I reached the end of one length of rope, unclipped, breathed hard, and grabbed the next rope. I held it loosely in my hand, looked around, took another deep breath, then clipped my karabiner into the line. Then all of a sudden, I felt the ground beneath me twitch. I looked down and saw a crack in the ice shoot between my feet, with a quiet, slicing sound. I didn’t dare move. The world seemed to stand still. The ice cracked once more behind me, then with no warning, it just dropped away beneath me, and I was falling. Falling down this lethal black scar in the glacier that had no visible bottom. Suddenly I smashed against the gray wall of the crevasse. The force threw me to the other side, crushing my shoulder and arm against the ice. Then I jerked to a halt as the thin rope that I had just clipped into held me. I am spinning round and round in free air. The tips of my crampons catch the edge of the crevasse wall. I can hear my screams echoing in the darkness below. Shards of ice keep raining down on me, and one larger bit smashes into my skull, jerking my head backward. I lose consciousness for a few precious seconds. I blink back into life to see the last of the ice falling away beneath me into the darkness. My body gently swings around on the end of the rope, and all is suddenly eerily silent. Adrenaline is coursing through my body, and I find myself shaking in waves of convulsions. I scream up at Mick, and the sound echoes around the walls. I looked up to the ray of light above, then down to the abyss below. I clutch frantically for the wall, but it is glassy smooth. I swing my ice axe at it wildly, but it doesn’t hold, and my crampons just screech across the ice. In desperation I cling to the rope above me and look up. I am twenty-three years old and about to die. Again.

The rope I was dangling off wasn’t designed for a long impact fall like mine. It was lightweight, thin rope that got replaced every few days as the ice, on the move, tore it from its anchor point. The rope was more of a guide, a support; not like proper, dynamic climbing rope. I knew that it could break at any point. The seconds felt like eternity. Then suddenly I felt a strong tug on the rope. I kicked into the walls with my crampons again. This time they bit into the ice. Up I pulled, kicking into the walls a few feet higher, in time with each heave from above. Near the lip I managed to smack my ice axe into the snow lip and pull myself over. Strong arms grabbed my wind suit and hauled me from the clutches of the crevasse. I wriggled away from the edge, out of danger, and collapsed in a heaving mess. I lay there, my face pressed to the snow, eyes closed, holding Mick’s and Nima’s hands, shaking with fear. If Nima had not heard the collapse and been so close, I doubt Mick would ever have had the strength to haul me out. Nima had saved my life and I knew it. Mick helped escort me the two hours back down the icefall. I clutched every rope, clipping in nervously. I now crossed the ladders like a different man--gone was the confidence. My breathing was shallow and labored, and any vestiges of strength or adrenaline had long left me. That thin line between life and death can make or break a man. And right now I was a mess. Yet we hadn’t even begun on Everest proper.

The final magic ingredient has been a willingness to risk it all. All in. No questions asked. The program started, and grew, from a determination to push the boundaries. Do the impossible. Climb the impassable--eat the inedible. Of course, there was often a safer, easier way down the waterfall or cliff face. But I rarely took it. That wasn’t my aim. I wanted to show you how to survive when you have no safe options. And I loved it. I had learned a while back that whenever I had succeeded, it had always come about because of total commitment. Heart and soul. No holds barred. I realized, early on, that this would also be the key to this show. It’s not rocket science. It’s a lesson as old as the hills: Hold back from the tackle and that’s when you get nailed. This commitment built the show. But I nearly paid for it with my life. Many times. There have been a multitude of near-death moments. None of which I am proud of. The list, though, is long. For old times’ sake, I used to write them down. Then I gave up when I passed the fiftieth. Anyway, I don’t like to think about those--they are in the past. Part of the learning process. Part of what made me stronger. Nowadays, the show is still crazy, but I manage the risk way better. I use ropes much more, off-camera. I think twice, not once, before I leap. I never did that before. It is called being aware. Aware of being a husband. Aware of being a dad. I am proud that I am learning; you only ever get it wrong once.

But when you're the mom, your whole life is holding the rope against these wily secret agents who never, ever stop trying to get you to drop your end.

The ground recoiled, shocked. The worktable swooped beneath him as though it were a swing whose rope had broken. He turned over, grinding his belly against the table, holding the sides with his outstretched hands to kill the fear. The figure was standing now, and his feet held the ground flatly, directly on the damp, breathing earth. As trees do, he sought strength with grasping, rock-splitting notes. The first step shook the earth almost as the standing had. After

But how do you throw a lifeline when you yourself don’t even have a rope to hold on to? I might have been able to keep her afloat for another day, but I’d never have been able to pull her back to me.

With a deep breath you reach down and grab the rope that holds the tether to the ground. You feel the stability that the tether provides. You don’t want to make a choice. The guides look at you with a confident smile on their faces. Stable and grounded. The ground looks rough, though. It is littered with all of your problems. Scattered like junk, thrown about in the wind. From where you were standing you just could not see them. With a confident resigned tug, you pull the tether out of the ground and start to float upwards. Some stress is good. Breathe in and out, Good breath in and bad breath out. You have less stress, and you are lighter than before. In and out. Pure in, stress out. As you leave the ground, then you are unsure that you made the right decision. You are now at the whims of the wind. You can't go back, though. You take an another deep, steadying breath. You proceed to your seat and start to float away. It is pretty simple and floats up gently without incident. The guide looks at you and with a friendly smile and slap on the back says “Well aren’t you brave for trusting the sky. We will do our best to guide you up here.

A physical education expert, asked to visit a grade school in East Orange, is astonished to be told that jump ropes are in short supply and that the children therefore have to jump “in groups.” Basketball courts, however, “are in abundance” in these schools, the visitor says, because the game involves little expense. Defendants in a recent suit brought by the parents of schoolchildren in New Jersey’s poorest districts claimed that differences like these, far from being offensive, should be honored as the consequence of “local choice”—the inference being that local choice in urban schools elects to let black children gravitate to basketball. But this “choice”—which feeds one of the most intransigent myths about black teen-age boys—is determined by the lack of other choices. Children in East Orange cannot choose to play lacrosse or soccer, or to practice modern dance, on fields or in dance studios they do not have; nor can they keep their bodies clean in showers that their schools cannot afford. Little children in East Orange do not choose to wait for 15 minutes for a chance to hold a jump rope.

Agnes cleared the toques and sequin chains from the kitchen table and set four places for supper. She would have liked for Lydia to join them, would happily have cradled her in her own lap. But that would ruin the meal for Eddie. So Agnes left Lydia alone in the front room, compensating, as always, by keeping her own attention fixed upon her like a rope whose two ends she and her younger daughter were holding. Through this rope Agnes felt the quiver of Lydia’s consciousness and curiosity, her trust that she wasn’t alone. She hoped that Lydia could feel her own feverish love and assurance. Of course, holding the rope meant that Agnes was only half-present—distracted, as Eddie often remarked. But in caring so little, he left her no choice.

With a few more days to hold on to, some of us are walking on a tight rope, ready to fall but we know not on which side we want to drown ourselves. On one side there is freedom and the desire to be this carefree, a little irresponsible, a little selfish, a little too thrifty, with some mismanagement, two broken cellphones, one broken laptop, some lost valuables but a heart unbroken and recently found. On the other side awaits luxury and responsibility amidst some smog, some corruption, some people dear to us, some love, some misunderstandings, some too-many-people suffocation, some fun, some reality you are willing to face, some reality you wish didn't exist. You don't wanna go back but there is nothing much left here to be for. You wanna go back but you know once you're back you're gonna miss this time, this place, this feeling terribly. You're a nobody here yet everything in some memorable times, You're somebody there holding on to not be a nobody. I had been living in the moment but today my wallet hardly made a sound as it dropped on the floor. "Nothing much left here to be for," it said.

I know he makes mistakes, but basically he’s a good kid,” she told him. “Trust him, and trust yourself.” She looked so earnest, he thought, as aroused as he was amused. “You’re the one who shouldn’t be trusting me,” he told her, right before he kissed her. As he lowered his mouth to hers, he wrapped his arms around her and drew her close. She leaned into him, her slender body warm and supple in his embrace. Her lips clung, then parted. When he swept inside, she was hot, sweet and more than willing to take him on. The second his tongue touched hers, she moaned. Her fingers dug into his shoulders, and he felt a shudder ripple through her body. He went from hard to ready to explode in two seconds. The way they were next to each other on a log didn’t allow him to explore her the way he wanted, so he broke the kiss and pulled her to her feet. Phoebe went willingly, if a little unsteadily. When they were both standing, he pressed his mouth to her jaw before sliding to her neck. She moaned and leaned back her head. Their lower bodies brushed against each other. When her belly came in contact with his erection, it was his turn to groan. He slid one hand from her waist up to her breast and cupped the feminine curve. Even through the layers of her shirt and bra, he could feel her tight nipple. One sweep of his thumb against it had her gasping. She touched his head and guided his mouth back to hers. This time when he entered her, she closed her lips around his tongue and sucked. He dropped his free hand to the small of her back, holding her in place so he could rub against her. The thick ropes of his control began to unravel. When she curled both arms around his neck, it seemed natural to place his around her waist and pick her up. She wrapped her legs around his hips, bringing herself in direct contact with his hard-on. It was paradise. It was pure torture. He swore. She broke the kiss and smiled at him. “So you find me annoying, but you still want me,” she whispered. “I don’t find you annoying.” He pushed against her crotch. “I don’t find you annoying, either.

We were not created to be independent. We were formed to be dependent on the One who made us, and we were re-created in Jesus Christ to be dependent on his grace. God does not hold you to a standard of independent strength. God does not expect of you what you do not have. He knows who you are. He is never shocked or dismayed by your weakness. He has moved toward you in grace because you are weak and would have no hope in life and death without him. The person who is shocked and dismayed by your weakness is you. It bothers you. It embarrasses you. It makes you want to hide and cover yourself. It causes you to playact in public and to deceive yourself in private. Your weakness will drive you crazy unless you understand the gospel of Jesus. What is that message? It is the story of a strong and able Savior who showers his powerful grace on people who are fundamentally weak and unable. He confronts you with your weakness so you will run to him for strength. He calls you to mountains too big to climb so that in your inability, you will look to him. He leads you to taste failure so that you will find your hope in him. He works to prove to you how weak you really are so that you will gladly accept his invitation to enabling grace. Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing to come to the end of your rope if at the end of your rope you find a strong and willing Savior. So don’t be afraid to cry out in weakness, because when you affirm your weakness, you are teaching your heart to esteem and celebrate the grace that can make you strong. Sometime in the next week, you’ll be confronted with your weakness; when you are, you’ll either work to convince yourself you’re strong or you’ll run to the One who is.

I don't think your dad is ever going to forget that the first time I met him I was holding ropes and a paddle he thought I was going to use on his daughter.