Slowly Drowning Quotes

We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so...

We are all drowning slowly in the tide of our opinions, oblivious that we are taking on water every time we open our mouths.

You look at me, you look at me closely, each time closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other closer each time and our eyes grow, they grow closer, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other, breathing confusion, their mouths find each other and fight warmly, biting with their lips, resting their tongues lightly on their teeth, playing in their caverns where the heavy air comes and goes with the scent of an old perfume and silence. Then my hands want to hide in your hair, slowly stroke the depth of your hair while we kiss with mouths full of flowers or fish, of living movements, of dark fragrance. And if we bite each other, the pain is sweet, and if we drown in a short and terrible surge of breath, that instant death is beauty. And there is a single saliva and a single flavour of ripe fruit, and I can feel you shiver against me like a moon on the water.

The uncertainty of my own experience is crushing. I am drowning in an infinite sea. Sinking slowly, the weight of the lightless depths forcing me down, forcing the air from my lungs, squeezing the blood from my heart.

I was a heavy heart to carry My beloved was weighed down My arms around his neck My fingers laced to crown. I was a heavy heart to carry My feet dragged across ground And he took me to the river Where he slowly let me drown My love has concrete feet My love's an iron ball Wrapped around your ankles Over the waterfall

We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep - it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

Anything can be taken from you, at any moment. Even the past isn't guaranteed. You can lose that too, slowly, like water eating away at stone.

We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds & expectations, to burst open & give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning, we hope, more than anything for more. Heaven only knows why we love it so.

There was an anchor, tied around both of his ankles, and it was taking him deep, into black fathomless depths, drowning him slowly but surely. I didn’t tell him that he was dragging me down with him.

My heart is an ocean of sorrows slowly drowning me, and I let it." - Thia Clay

I wanted you, nameless Woman of the South, No wraith, but utterly—as still more alone The Southern Cross takes night And lifts her girdles from her, one by one— High, cool, wide from the slowly smoldering fire Of lower heavens,— vaporous scars! Eve! Magdalene! or Mary, you? Whatever call—falls vainly on the wave. O simian Venus, homeless Eve, Unwedded, stumbling gardenless to grieve Windswept guitars on lonely decks forever; Finally to answer all within one grave! And this long wake of phosphor, iridescent Furrow of all our travel—trailed derision! Eyes crumble at its kiss. Its long-drawn spell Incites a yell. Slid on that backward vision The mind is churned to spittle, whispering hell. I wanted you . . . The embers of the Cross Climbed by aslant and huddling aromatically. It is blood to remember; it is fire To stammer back . . . It is God—your namelessness. And the wash— All night the water combed you with black Insolence. You crept out simmering, accomplished. Water rattled that stinging coil, your Rehearsed hair—docile, alas, from many arms. Yes, Eve—wraith of my unloved seed! The Cross, a phantom, buckled—dropped below the dawn. Light drowned the lithic trillions of your spawn.

And with the melody came the unmistakable sound of water slapping against the rocks far below us, slowly eroding the foundation of Port Coire and everything I loved.

Water is the most versatile of all elements. It isn't afraid to burn in fire or fade into the sky, it doesn't hesitate to shatter against sharp rocks in rainfall or drown into the dark shroud of the earth. It exists beyond all eginnings and ends. On the surface nothing will shift, but deep in underground silence, water will hide and with soft fingers coax a new channel for itself, until stone gives in and slowly settles around the secret space. Death is water's close companion, and neither of them can be separated from us, for we are made of the versatilitiy of water and the closeness of death. Water doesn't belong to us, be we belong to water: when it has passed through our fingers and pores and bodies, nothing separates us from earth.

I’ll tell you the story of the wave and the rock. It’s an old story. Older than we are. Listen. Once upon a time there was a wave who loved a rock in the sea, let us say in the Bay of Capri. The wave foamed and swirled around the rock, she kissed him day and night, she embraced him with her white arms, she sighed and wept and besought him to come to her. She loved him and stormed about him and in that way slowly undermined him, and one day he yielded, completely undermined, and sank into her arms.” “And suddenly he was no longer a rock to be played with, to be loved, to be dreamed of. He was only a block of stone at the bottom of the sea, drowned in her. The wave felt disappointed and deceived and looked for another rock “What does that mean? He should have remained a rock.” “The wave always says that. But things that move are stronger than immovable things. Water is stronger than rocks.

Chin up, and we'll drown a little slower.

Many of us are cursed to never let ourselves believe another person could love us-- and we will slowly drown our love in that confusion.

We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep--it's as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself.

I took him to the river and said “let’s watch something drown,” So he took a stone and I took my necklace and we threw it all together, the way I always think I will get better in July. Things will change and sounds won’t ache and I gave my heart to uncertainty so many times, and so I took him to the river, threw the necklace in the river to slowly watch it drown, or burn, or fade away like I’ve done so many times.

I'll tell the truth; all of my songs Are pretty much the fucking same I'm not a faerie but I need More than this life so I became This creature representing more to you Than just another girl And if I had a chance to change my mind I wouldn't for the world Twenty years Sinking slowly Can I trust you But I don't want to I don't want to be a legend Oh well that's a god damned lie - I do To say I do this for the people I admit is hardly true You tell me everything's all right As though it's something you've been through You think this torment is romantic Well it's not except to you Twenty years Sinking slowly Can I trust you But I don't want to I will swallow If it will help my sea level go down But I'll come back to haunt you if I drown Low tide and high tea The oysters are waiting for me If I'm not there on time I'll send my emissary If I photoshop you Out of every picture I could Go quietly quiet But would that do any good Will it hurt? No it won't Then what am I so afraid of Filthy victorians They made me what I'm made of The brighter the light The darker the shadow I don't need a minder I've made up my mind Go away

She liked to think of drowning, of sinking down into cool green water, and feeling herself slowly pressed into nothingness…

The tap of grief never turns off completely. It allows a person’s sorrow to slowly drip inside them until they are so unbearably full of sadness, they have no choice but to let it flow freely and pour out. Drowning every other thought and feeling.

Stagnation floods the mind with thoughts of failure and slowly drowns the will to succeed; always move forward.

Everyone grieves differently. No one handles the loss of a loved one the same. Some put on a brave face for others, keeping everything internal. Others let it all out at once and shatter, only to pick up the pieces just as quickly as they came apart. Still others don't grieve at all, implying they are incapable of emotion. Then there are the ones like me, where grief is a badge we wear, where it's hard to let go because we don't want to. We probably wouldn't know how even is we wanted to. There's unanswered questions, unresolved feelings. Tere is anger that this person could even conceive of leaving us behind. We are the furious ones, the ones that scream at the injustice and the pain. We are the ones who obsess and slowly lose rational thought, knowing it is happening but unable to find a way to care. We are the ones who drown.

First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue and then it is bluer and then green and then black I am blacking out and yet my mask is powerful it pumps my blood with power the sea is another story the sea is not a question of power I have to learn alone to turn my body without force in the deep element. And now: it is easy to forget what I came for among so many who have always lived here swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides you breathe differently down here. I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters. This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armored body. We circle silently about the wreck we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which our names do not appear.

what is love? what was love for me? it was when I believed I was the happiest person on earth if I had only him and nothing else it was when I looked at him and felt a pain in my chest over how I would find anything more beautiful it was when I started writing cause what he made me feel was so intense it couldn't just remain in my thoughts it was pain, a feeling that emptied out my chest and ate me alive knowing just because I love you, it didn't entitle me to have you. My love for you was like an ocean slowly drowning me and I was clinging to the last piece of driftwood that was my hope.

And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces. Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee--but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing.

Sometimes the darkness beyond is not glorious at all, it truly is an absolute absence of light. A clawing, needy tar that pulls you down. You drown but you don't. It turns you to lead so you sink faster in its viscous embrace. It robs you of hope and even the memory of hope. It makes you think you've always felt like this, and there's no place to go but down, where it slowly, ravenously digests your will, distilling it into the ebony crude of nightmares. And you know the darkness beyond despair, just as intimately as you know the soaring heights. Because in this and all universes, there is balance. You can't have the one without facing the other. And sometimes you think you can take it because the joy is worth the despair, and sometimes you know you can't take it and how did you ever think you could? And there is the dance; strength and weakness, confidence and desolation.

Have you heard the love story of the blue Cloud and Sea? They were always together as one until separated by the yellow Sun. Cloud drifted into the sky slowly. Sea cried until she became salty. Cloud grew big enough to block Sun but nothing could be done. Sea became enraged and drowned everyone but still nothing could be done. Cloud’s heart ached and he became grey, watching his beloved from far away. He was too proud and tried to stop his tears but they fell and fell for what felt like years. Losing himself drop by drop, he became empty and was once again reunited with his beloved Sea.

self-pity was like quicksand. Dip one toe in and it slowly sucked in the rest of you, until you were drowning in gloom.

She was a wild ocean. And he had always seen people giving up while trying to swim in her and swim back to the shore before they could drown. He always hesitated about that adventure. He was scared of failing to swim, and drowning to death. But he was never able to stop thinking about how the adventure could end up. He finally made his mind up and started swimming. And eventually, he gave up against the waves and the storms she created and he began to drown. But the moment he stopped fighting to survive, she slowly embraced him inside her arms. And he began to realise that everything was very different than what he had always imagined. He could feel every breath he took there, better than any place he had ever lived. She was splendid and he never felt like swimming away from her arms ever.

I keep having the same unkind thought: I am preparing for death and everyone else is on Instagram. I know it's not fair, that life is hard for everyone, but I sometimes feel like I'm the only one in the world who is dying. We're all sinking slowly but one day while everyone watches, I will run out of air, I am going to go under. Even explaining it, I feel more and more frantic. There will be a day when I can't take my next breath and I will drown.

I can’t talk, I’m busy making you tea,” I grumbled. I flicked the kettle on, hoping the noise would drown him out. William stared at me for a second, blinking slowly. “Are you passively-aggressively making me tea?” “Correct.

Their bodies lay flatly on the rocks, and their eyes regarded him with evil interest: but it does not appear that Mr. Fison was afraid, or that he realized that he was in any danger. Possibly his confidence is to be ascribed to the limpness of their attitudes. But he was horrified, of course, and intensely excited and indignant at such revolting creatures preying upon human flesh. He thought they had chanced upon a drowned body. He shouted to them, with the idea of driving them off, and, finding they did not budge, cast about him, picked up a big rounded lump of rock, and flung it at one. And then, slowly uncoiling their tentacles, they all began moving towards him - creeping at first deliberately, and making a soft purring sound to each other.

Love is an elixir, so poets claim, a frothy hormonal brew to cure what's ailing you. Drink it in. Sip it slowly. Savor its peculiar flavour as loneliness and pain all melt away. Dive headlong into the rush, ride the raging river up against the brink, careful not to drown. Drop over the edge. Negotiate your fall, for drug or love or object thrown, one thing is certain. What goes up eventually come down.

Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird's feather. He stiffened, but he didn't pull away. "I'm not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it's worth saving." I think you're worth saving. Once they stood on the deck of a ship and she'd waited just like this. He had no spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragging under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and she knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown, too. Back on Black Veil, he'd told her that they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, guns blazing. Because that's what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying. She felt his knuckles slide against hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm was pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine. For a long while, they stood there, hands clasped, looking out at the gray expanse of sea.

She held him at arms’ length, looked at the pipe still gripped in his hand, then looked at his face and read him like a book. She ran the tip of her red tongue slowly across her full cushiony, sensuous lips, making them wet-red and looked him straight in the eyes with her own glassy, speckled bedroom eyes. The man drowned. When he came up, he stared back, passion cocked, his whole black being on a live-wire edge. Ready! Solid ready to cut throats, crack skulls, dodge police, steal hearses, drink muddy water, live in a hollow log, and take any rape-fiend chance to be once more in the arms of his high-yellow heart.

How will we know if it’s changing us?” I asked. “Maybe we won’t. The biggest changes happen so slowly you hardly notice them.

Start meditating. Start putting off the constant chattering of the head. Slowly, the mind becomes quiet. Get into things where the mind is not needed—for example, dancing. Dance, and dance to abandon, because in dance the mind is not needed. You can lose yourself in a dance. In losing yourself in a dance, the heart will start functioning again. Drown yourself in music. And slowly you will see that there is a totally different world of the heart. And in the heart there is always trust. The heart does not know how to doubt, just as the mind does not know how to trust.

Sometimes, it feels like we will stop breathing when we are forced to let go. Like the very oxygen that lifted us up has brought us down again. The days drag on and your heart barely beats. Sadness fills your days and hardly a smile comes to your face. Then, all of a sudden, you gasp as if you have just reemerged from almost drowning. You draw in a breath from deep down inside of you and you begin to slowly live again.

We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out windows, or drown themselves, or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease, or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult.

The faucet of grief never turns off completely. It allows a person’s sorrow to slowly drip inside them until they are so unbearably full of sadness they have no choice but to let it flow freely and pour out. Drowning every other thought and feeling.

When people bury you in the sand, what they fail to realize is that the tides come in slowly but surely. When the tides come in slowly, start wiggling your way out, so by the time the huge tides arrive, you are already out and dusting the sand off. They never take the time to look back to see how you do it, they just think you drown. When they wonder why and how you made it, it’s because they made you stronger. They also don’t realize—there’s always a solution to a problem.” ~Love is respect ♥~

That’s right,” he said. “Every time I closed my eyes.” “What happened in the dreams?” she asked, eager for an answer, but fearing it, too. “Horrible things. The worst kinds of torture. You drowned me slowly. You burned my heart from my chest. You blinded me.” “I was a monster.” “A monster, a maiden, a sylph of the ice. You kissed me, whispered stories in my ear. You sang to me and held me as I slept. Your laugh chased me into waking.” “You always hated my laugh.” “I loved your laugh, Nina. And your fierce warrior’s heart. I might have loved you, too.” Might have. Once. Before she had betrayed him. Those words carved an ache into her chest. She

So as technology continues to speed ahead, I continue to read slowly, knowing that I am respecting the author's work and the story's lasting power. And I read slowly to drown out the noise and remember those who came before me, who were probably the first people who finally learned to control fire and circled their new power of flame and light and heat. And I read slowly to remember the Selfish Giant, how he finally tore that wall down and let the children run free through his garden. And I read slowly to pay homage to my ancestors, who were not allowed to read at all. They, too, must have circled fires, speaking softly of their dreams, their hopes, their futures. Each time we read, write or tell a story, we step inside their circle, and it remains unbroken. And the power of story lives on.

...his sleep, though deep as death itself, was not dreamless this time, but threaded with ghostly wisps of dreams. These wisps were clearly recognizable as scraps of odors. At first they merely floated in thin threads past Grenouille's nose, but then they grew thicker, more cloudlike. And now it seemed as if he were standing in the middle of a moor from which fog was rising. The fog slowly climbed higher. Soon Grenouille was completely wrapped in fog, saturated with fog, and it seemed he could not get his breath for the foggy vapor. If he did not want to suffocate, he would have to breathe the fog in. And the fog was, as noted, an odor. And Grenouille knew what kind of odor. The fog ws his own odor. His, Grenouille's, own body odor was the fog. And the awful thing was that Grenouille, although he knew that his odor was his odor, could not smell it. Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself!

I am a runaway, lost at sea. I am a broken bird, yearning to fly free. I am a sinner, unworthy and unholy. I am a rose, wilting slowly. I am a raindrop, touching your cheek. I am a child who plays hide and seek. I am nothing, and yet I am everything. I am contradictions and complexities. I am a face with a hundred entities. I am love and I am hate. I am the voice that cannot communicate. I am a melody, haunting and sad. I am a soul that has slowly gone mad. I am death in a living body. I am a dangerous opium poppy. I am rage, running through my veins. I am pain, bound in chains. I am isolation, imprisoned in my mind. I am abandoned and left behind. I am tenderness, soft and kind. I am trust, naïve and blind. I am remorse, shattered and frozen. I am the path I have not chosen. I am sadness, drowning in an ocean. I am faith, yearning for devotion. I am madness, rebellious and wild. I am sanity, safely filed. I am wisdom, cursed and blessed. I am a name that will burn in your chest. I am a journey, destination unknown. I am a heart turned to stone. I am forever alone.

Paths of the mirror" I And above all else, to look with innocence. As if nothing was happening, which is true. II But you, I want to look at you until your face escapes from my fear like a bird from the sharp edge of the night. III Like a girl made of pink chalk on a very old wall that is suddenly washed away by the rain. IV Like when a flower blooms and reveals the heart that isn’t there. V Every gesture of my body and my voice to make myself into the offering, the bouquet that is abandoned by the wind on the porch. VI Cover the memory of your face with the mask of who you will be and scare the girl you once were. VII The night of us both scattered with the fog. It’s the season of cold foods. VIII And the thirst, my memory is of the thirst, me underneath, at the bottom, in the hole, I drank, I remember. IX To fall like a wounded animal in a place that was meant to be for revelations. X As if it meant nothing. No thing. Mouth zipped. Eyelids sewn. I forgot. Inside, the wind. Everything closed and the wind inside. XI Under the black sun of the silence the words burned slowly. XII But the silence is true. That’s why I write. I’m alone and I write. No, I’m not alone. There’s somebody here shivering. XIII Even if I say sun and moon and star I’m talking about things that happen to me. And what did I wish for? I wished for a perfect silence. That’s why I speak. XIV The night is shaped like a wolf’s scream. XV Delight of losing one-self in the presaged image. I rose from my corpse, I went looking for who I am. Migrant of myself, I’ve gone towards the one who sleeps in a country of wind. XVI My endless falling into my endless falling where nobody waited for me –because when I saw who was waiting for me I saw no one but myself. XVII Something was falling in the silence. My last word was “I” but I was talking about the luminiscent dawn. XVIII Yellow flowers constellate a circle of blue earth. The water trembles full of wind. XIX The blinding of day, yellow birds in the morning. A hand untangles the darkness, a hand drags the hair of a drowned woman that never stops going through the mirror. To return to the memory of the body, I have to return to my mourning bones, I have to understand what my voice is saying.

If someone drowned at sea 300 years ago, or they died elsewhere but their remains were disposed of in the ocean, they’d either start to decompose immediately or they’d get eaten by fish or other scavengers. Their bones would eventually sink down to the seabed and be slowly buried by marine silt or broken down further over the years, but the flesh would one way or another eventually become water, which would evaporate into clouds and then rain down upon the earth once again to become plants and flowers. The flowers in your garden could once have been Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

The berth belongs to you too. It will always be there when—if you want to come back.” Inej could not speak. Her heart felt too full, a dry creek bed ill-prepared for such rain. “I don’t know what to say.” His bare hand flexed on the crow’s head of his cane. The sight was so strange Inej had trouble tearing her eyes from it. “Say you’ll return.” “I’m not done with Ketterdam.” She hadn’t known she meant it until she said the words. Kaz cast her a swift glance. “I thought you wanted to hunt slavers.” “I do. And I want your help.” Inej licked her lips, tasted the ocean on them. Her life had been a series of impossible moments, so why not ask for something impossible now? “It’s not just the slavers. It’s the procurers, the customers, the Barrel bosses, the politicians. It’s everyone who turns a blind eye to suffering when there’s money to be made.” “I’m a Barrel boss.” “You would never sell someone, Kaz. You know better than anyone that you’re not just one more boss scraping for the best margin.” “The bosses, the customers, the politicians,” he mused. “That could be half the people in Ketterdam—and you want to fight them all.” “Why not?” Inej asked. “One the seas and in the city. One by one.” “Brick by brick,” he said. Then he gave a single shake of his head, as if shrugging off the notion. “I wasn’t made to be a hero, Wraith. You should have learned that by now. You want me to be a better man, a good man. I—“ “This city doesn’t need a good man. It needs you.” “Inej—“ “How many times have you told me you’re a monster? So be a monster. Be the thing they all fear when they close their eyes at night. We don’t go after all the gangs. We don’t shut down the houses that treat fairly with their employees. We go after women like Tante Heleen, men like Pekka Rollins.” She paused. “And think about it this way…you’ll be thinning the competition.” He made a sound that might almost have been a laugh. One of his hands balanced on his cane. The other rested at his side next to her. She’d need only move the smallest amount and they’d be touching. He was that close. He was that far from reach. Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird’s feather. He stiffened, but he didn’t pull away. “I’m not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it’s worth saving.” I think you’re worth saving. Once they’d stood on the deck of a ship and she’d waited just like this. He had not spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragged under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown too. Back on Black Veil, he’d told her they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, pistols blazing. Because that’s what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying. She felt his knuckles slide again hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine.

Advancing computer performance is like water slowly flooding the landscape. A half century ago it began to drown the lowlands, driving out human calculators and record clerks, but leaving most of us dry. Now the flood has reached the foothills, and our outposts there are contemplating retreat. We feel safe on our peaks, but, at the present rate, those too will be submerged within another half century. I propose that we build Arks as that day nears, and adopt a seafaring life!

The slower a clock, the nearer it approximated to the infinitely gradual and majestic progression of cosmic time - in fact, by reversing a clock's direction and running it backwards one could devise a time-piece that in a sense was moving even more slowly than the universe, and consequently part of an even greater spatio-temporal system.

I leaned down and looked at his handsome face. I wanted to kiss him in a way that would remain soft and true on his lips, all the while help him from escaping the overwhelming sense of sadnes that he felt. I pressed forward and kissed him, tasting the saltiness of fish against his lips, and the disappointment that he held so very deeply inside. I kissed him long and wide, yet limp and yielding, pulling myself away from reality to only drown in the fantasy of our love. I touched his mouth in such a loving way, that not even his incapability to reach into my soul, could tear us away from exchanging such romance. He immediately gave into the kiss, his sadness slowly giving way to the moment that we so intimately shared. It amazed me what a merman could do, even when flowing tears streamed down his face. Through the bridge of kissing, I had healed him, and he had healed me in return.

It would be easy to stay in the dark, to drown. Slowly, I lower my hands and force myself to look at the sunlight.

She dreamt she saw the Polish Rider passing slowly by and he was weeping and she called out to him, but he turned his head away. She dreamt that she was drowning in the pool of tears.

If someone drowned at sea a couple of hundred years ago they’d either start to decompose immediately or they’d get eaten by fish or other scavengers. The bones would eventually sink down to the seabed and either be slowly buried by marine silt or broken down further over the years, but the flesh would one way or another eventually become water, which would evaporate into clouds and then rain down upon the earth once again to become plants and flowers. The flowers in your garden could once have been famous pirates such as Blackbeard or Calico Jack.

What does help is to just let yourself move as slowly as you need to. No timers. No agenda. You may not get it all done. But you get more done than you would’ve if you hadn’t done anything.

Savannah's fear was being pushed aside by the heated tenderness of Gregori's mouth, by the gentleness in his caressing hands. He carelessly shoved the sheet down, exposing her bare breasts to his hungry gaze. Hot. He was so hot. Savannah could not stand the feel of the thin sheet of her heated hips, twisting around her legs. Her hands were tangled in Gregori's thick hair, crushing it in her fingers like so much silk.His shirt was open to his tapered waist, his hard muscles pressing against her soft breasts. The rough,dark hair on his chest rasped erotically over nipples. A wave of heat heralded a storm of fire, through him, through her. Savannah's hands, of their own accord, pushed his shirt from his wide shoulders. She watched with enormous eyes as he slowly shrugged out of it, his silver gaze holding her blue one captive. She was drowning in those pale, mesmerizing eyes. Eyes filled with such intensity, with so much hunger for one woman. Her. Only her.

His terror became his companion. When it seemed to diminish, or grow easier to bear, he forced himself to remember the details of what he had said and done so that his fears returned, redoubled. His previous life, which had been without fear, he now dismissed as an illusion since he had come to believe that only in fear could the truth be found. When he woke from sleep without anxiety, he asked himself, What is wrong? What is missing? And then his door opened slowly, and a child put its head around and gazed at him: there are wheels, Ned thought, wheels within wheels. The curtains were now always closed, for the sun horrified him: he was reminded of a film he had seen some time before, and how the brightness of the noonday light had struck the water where a man, in danger of drowning, was struggling for his life.

And the moment she held that diary in her hands, she summoned all her demons at once. The moment she opened it a hand from every page held her and pulled her inside. And in a moment even before she could realize what was happening to her she was drowning in the sea, fighting to breathe and fighting to swim back to the surface. But the hands kept pulling her down deep into the darkness until her voice died slowly.

Cautiously, she let her knuckles brush against his, a slight weight, a bird's feather. He stiffened, but he didn't pull away. "I'm not ready to give up on this city, Kaz. I think it's worth saving." I think you're worth saving. Once they stood on the deck of a ship and she'd waited just like this. He had not spoken then and he did not speak now. Inej felt him slipping away, dragging under, caught in an undertow that would take him farther and farther from shore. She understood suffering and she knew it was a place she could not follow, not unless she wanted to drown, too. Back on Black Veil, he'd told her that they would fight their way out. Knives drawn, guns blazing. Because that's what we do. She would fight for him, but she could not heal him. She would not waste her life trying. She felt his knuckles slide against hers. Then his hand was in her hand, his palm was pressed against her own. A tremor moved through him. Slowly, he let their fingers entwine. For a long while, they stood there, hands clasped, looking out at the gray expanse of sea.

For you, a thousand times over." "Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors." "...attention shifted to him like sunflowers turning to the sun." "But even when he wasn't around, he was." "When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal a wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. There is no act more wretched than stealing." "...she had a voice that made me think of warm milk and honey." "My heart stuttered at the thought of her." "...and I would walk by, pretending not to know her, but dying to." "It turned out that, like satan, cancer had many names." "Every woman needed a husband, even if he did silence the song in her." "The first time I saw the Pacific, I almost cried." "Proud. His eyes gleamed when he said that and I liked being on the receiving end of that look." "Make morning into a key and throw it into the well, Go slowly, my lovely moon, go slowly. Let the morning sun forget to rise in the East, Go slowly, lovely moon, go slowly." "Men are easy,... a man's plumbing is like his mind: simple, very few surprises. You ladies, on the other hand... well, God put a lot of thought into making you." "All my life, I'd been around men. That night, I discovered the tenderness of a woman." "And I could almost feel the emptiness in [her] womb, like it was a living, breathing thing. It had seeped into our marriage, that emptiness, into our laughs, and our lovemaking. And late at night, in the darkness of our room, I'd feel it rising from [her] and settling between us. Sleeping between us. Like a newborn child." "America was a river, roaring along unmindful of the past. I could wade into this river, let my sins drown to the bottom, let the waters carry me someplace far. Someplace with no ghosts, no memories, and no sins. If for nothing else, for that I embraced America." "...and every day I thank [God] that I am alive, not because I fear death, but because my wife has a husband and my son is not an orphan." "...lifting him from the certainty of turmoil and dropping him in a turmoil of uncertainty." "...sometimes the dead are luckier." "He walked like he was afraid to leave behind footprints. He moved as if not to stir the air around him." "...and when she locked her arms around my neck, when I smelled apples in her hair, I realized how much I had missed her. 'You're still the morning sun to me...' I whispered." "...there is a God, there always has been. I see him here, in the eys of the people in this [hospital] corridor of desperation. This is the real house of God, this is where those who have lost God will find Him... there is a God, there has to be, and now I will pray, I will pray that He will forgive that I have neglected Him all of these years, forgive that I have betrayed, lied, and sinned with impunity only to turn to Him now in my hour of need. I pray that He is as merciful, benevolent, and gracious as His book says He is.

As he strode across the strand, a drowned man returning from a call of nature stumbled into him in the darkness. “Damphair,” he murmured. Aeron laid a hand upon his head, blessed him, and moved on. The ground rose beneath his feet, gently at first, then more steeply. When he felt scrub grass between his toes, he knew that he had left the strand behind. Slowly he climbed, listening to the waves. The sea is never weary. I must be as tireless.

1:147-148 A KING IN HALF-SLEEP I wake from sleep within you. I turn and hold you in my arms, as a king in half-sleep thinks himself alone, then feels his bride next to him in bed, smells her hair, and remembers he has a companion. Slowly waking more, he begins to talk. So I wake inside you, the pleasure, the soft-saying, the elegance of the hours we walk in wonder. I draw closer. When my servants ask of me, tell them I am near (2:186). Then I remember Moses fainting in the presence, Jesus' face, the mysteries that the saints unfold, Muhammad's sure stance, lovers mixing together in their songs, and I know that I have been given these feet to walk the amazement you gave them.

Look at it!” George’s voice shuddered with barely contained awe. “Look at it! Don’t you want to experience it? Don’t you want to be brave? You are not a gentle flower who spends its whole life in a greenhouse. You are a wildfire, Lark. A wildfire.” A sun burst on the images, its violent fury drowning the cosmos. “Dare to take that step and I will show you wonders beyond your imagination. I will give you a chance to make a difference. Come with me.” George offered his hand to her. “Live. Join me or not, but live, gods damn you, because I cannot stand the thought of you slowly aging here like some dusty fossil under glass. Take my hand and bring your sword. The universe is waiting.

I picture myself confined within my clinical cell, time slowly dripping down the four walls, forming puddles of dirty sludge that will slowly come up to drown me. Until then, I am existing in an infinite space where delusion is married to reality.

My gaze flicks to the black coat he is still holding above my head to shield me from the rain. "..You do know I'm already soaked, right?" "Yes, well." He sighs and ducks his head so we are eye to eye. "As adorable as you looked blinking up at me in the rain, I want you to see me clearly when I tell you this." There goes that stupid flutter in my chest. "I meant what I said. I can't take my eyes off you. I can't take my mind off you." I look away from his burning gaze, shaking my head as I mutter, "Kai, I-" "Paedyn." I still. I shiver. He says my name like it's sacred, like it's an oath he's swearing. He tilts his head to the side, eyes roaming over my face. "Tell me." he murmurs, "what do you want me to call you?" My eyes slowly meet his, confused by his question. "What do you want to call me?" "I want to call you mine." We stare at each other. Both of us breathing hard, both of us taking int he other. The rain is still splattering Kai, clinging to his thick lashes and dripping from his jaw. "I know you feel it too," he says quietly. "Feel what?" "Feel alive. Feel on fire. Feel." There is an intensity in his eyes, his voice, that makes my heart race even faster. He looks away, cursing under his breath before his gaze crashes back into mine. "Pae, when I look at you...I'm devastated. I'm drowning. I'm dying to catch my breath.

This is what it's like to drown: You take a last look at the sky, a last breath, slowly. Air goes into your lungs and then you are under water. You let the air out molecule by molecule, realizing for the first time how precious it is, this thing that feels so much like nothing, neither liquid nor solid. Your eyes are open wide. The world goes cool and green and you keep falling. There are shapes in the darkness, fronds of river weed waving, dark indescribable things that float and then sink with you. You never knew you were so heavy. The density of your flesh has never been of such prime importance. The air leaks out of you in spite of your mightiest attempts to hold it. You need more but there is none. Leafy things flail. The water's coolness is no longer soothing. You gasp. Water rushes into your lungs and floods them. Your eyes stare wider. You thrash. You want more than anything to live, to be able to rise again, but you keep falling. The river is bottomless. It pushes you along in the direction of its current like an impatient auntie, but it won't let you to the surface. Your eyes are wide open, but slowly everything goes black. You begin to float beneath the surface. You are conscious of the coolness again, of how green everything is. You move with the water and through it. You have left your body far behind. The river has become a part of you.

Do people really drown and come to life again? Well, not really, but it can seem so. The mammalian dive reflex is triggered when a person is suddenly submerged, face and body, into very cold water. The body’s metabolism slows as the reflex redirects circulation away from the limbs and routes blood between the heart, brain, and lungs only. The heart can beat more slowly and oxygen is conserved for essential bodily processes, so as to maintain life for as long as possible. Once recovered from the water, the near-drowned person will appear dead. This physiological phenomenon was first written up in the medical journals in the middle of the twentieth century. The dive reflex is thought to occur in all mammals, both terrestrial and aquatic. It has been observed in adult humans but is believed to be most dramatic in small children.

Dude, what're you waiting for?" Carlos calls. "Plant one on her." I lift my eyes and am shocked to see Brandon is staring at my mouth. He swallows audibly and flicks his gaze to mine. the emotions darkening the soft green color are too confusing to name. Does he want to back out? An exhale of breath leaves Brandon's lips, almost like a laugh, and he scoots closer to me on the blanket. I twist my legs under myself, sitting tall as I face him. He cups my chin and tilts it toward him, drowning me in the now dark-green depths of his eyes, the cologne I gave him for his birthday filling my head. It's woodsy and yummy and I always loved how it smelled on the store testers, but on Brandon, it's even sexier. My eyes flutter closed, and I inhale again, this time slowly. Goose bumps prickle my arms, and my head gets fuzzy. Brandon slides his hand down the column of my neck and brings the other up, threading his fingers through the hair at my nape. His breath fans across my cheek, and everything south of my bellybutton squeezes tight. When his mouth first meets mine, it's hesitant, questioning. But as I move my lips with his, he quickly grows bolder, coaxing them apart. Desire, pure and raw, electrifies my veins as his tongue sweeps my mouth. A whimpering sound springs from my chest, and instinctively, I wrap my arms around his neck, tugging him closer. Needing more. My teeth graze his full bottom lip, and I pull it, sucking on it gently. He moans and knots his fingers in my hair, and a thrill dances down my back. Brandon is an amazing kisser, just as I knew he would be. I have no control over my body's reactions. I lose myself in his lips, his tongue, and his strong arms, forgetting time and space and even my surroundings...

Trace started to wave toward Matt, still with Priss wrapped around him, and she blurted, “I love you, Trace.” That effectively drew him to a halt. His hands contracted on her backside. “What?” “I love you.” Then she pointed at Chris, and to where Matt had disappeared. “They told me to fess up, so I am, and if you reject me, I swear I’ll drown them both.” Very slowly, Trace’s expression changed from the heat of anger to a different type of heat. “Say it again.” “Why?” She frowned at him with challenge. “Why don’t you say something first?” “All right.” Sliding his hands up her back, over her shoulders, and into her wet hair, he kissed her. “You make me nuts, Priscilla.” He turned his head and kissed her again, a little longer this time. “You make me hot as hell, too.” “I love you,” Priss reminded him, hoping it might prompt him to a more telling declaration. His next kiss lasted long enough to take the chill off the lake, and Priss got so wrapped up in the taste of him that she almost forgot what she wanted to hear. Chris didn’t. From the dock, he said, “If you’re going to keep her waiting like this, someone needs to finish putting sunscreen on her.” Trace moved fast, grabbing for Chris’s ankle, but Chris jumped back out of reach. Priss, feeling very affected by that kiss, nuzzled Trace’s neck and stroked his shoulders. He smelled delicious, felt even better. “Stop being a voyeur, Chris, and go away.” Having joined Chris on the dock, Matt asked, “Does that mean I can stay?” Trace lurched forward again, and Matt jumped back so quick he fell on his butt. “I’m going. I’m going!” To bring Trace’s attention back to her, Priss bit him. Not a hard bite, but she felt the impression of her sharp teeth on that sensitive spot where his neck met his shoulder. Trace shuddered. “I love you, too.” She licked the bite mark. “I’m so glad.

Little do you know How I'm breaking while you fall asleep Little do you know I'm still haunted by the memories Little do you know I'm trying to pick myself up piece by piece Little do you know I need a little more time Underneath it all I'm held captive by the hole inside I've been holding back for the fear that you might change your mind I'm ready to forgive you but forgetting is a harder fight Little do you know I need a little more time I'll wait, I'll wait I love you like you've never felt the pain, I'll wait I promise you don't have to be afraid, I'll wait The love is here and here to stay So lay your head on me Little do you know I know you're hurting while I'm sound asleep Little do you know All my mistakes are slowly drowning me Little do you know I'm trying to make it better piece by piece Little do you know I, I love you 'til the sun dies Oh wait, just wait I love you like I've never felt the pain, Just wait I love you like I've never been afraid, Just wait Our love is here and here to stay So lay your head on me I'll wait (I'll wait), I'll wait (I'll wait) I love you like you've never felt the pain, I'll wait (I'll wait) I promise you don't have to be afraid, I'll wait The love is here and here to stay So lay your head on me Lay your head on me So lay your head on me 'Cause little do you know I, I love you 'til the sun dies

And for this imperfect immortality, what prices have been paid? How many livers, lungs, and veins? Shredded, polluted, shot? How many children deserted, family secrets betrayed, sordid trysts laid out for strangers to see? How many wives and husbands shoved to the side? How many ovens scorched with our hair? Gun barrels slid between our lips? Bathtubs slowly reddened by our blood and twisting drowned that drowned us? How many flawed pages burned in disgust and reduced to ashes? How many flawless moments observed from just a slight distance so that, later, we might reduce them to words? All with an unspoken prayer that these hard-won truths might outlast the brief years of our lives.

Jodiya's shoulders shook in a silent laugh. Slowly, she lowered her pistol. And flung the grenade she held in her other hand. The fuse kindled in midair, burning unnaturally fast. No chance to outrun the explosion. Instead, Isyllt caught it. She hissed at the pain in her left hand, at the precious fraction of fuse being consumed. As soon as iron touched her skin, he magic began to work. Rust bloomed across damp metal, corroding at preternatural speed. Within heartbeats the iron shell crumbled in her hands, black powder hissing to the ground. She turned her head just in time as the fuse caught the last of the gunpowder and sprayed her with sparks. Her hand twisted with the pain of it, but she bared her teeth at Jodiya. "Again?"

It kind of freaked me out. Because I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of thing yet.” Or maybe the problem was that I wasn’t prepared for how ready I was… “Ready for-?” He broke off, and then frowned as if it had all become clear. “Wait.” He dropped his arms from around my waist and took a step away from me. “You think I spent the night wit you?” “Didn’t you?” I blinked back at him. “There’s only the one bed. And…well, you were in it when I woke up.” Thunder boomed overhead. It wasn’t as loud as the violent cracks that had occurred in my dream. Although the rumbles were long enough-and intense enough-that the silverware on the table began to make an eerie tinkling sound. And my bird, who’d been calmly cleaning herself on the back of my chair, suddenly took off, seeing shelter on the highest bookshelf against the far wall. I realized I’d just insulted my host, and no joke was going to get me out of it this time. “For your information, Pierce,” John said, his tone almost disturbingly calm-but his eyes flashed the same shade as the stone around my neck, which had gone the color of the metal studs at his wrists-“I spent most of last night on the couch. Until one point early this morning, when I heard you call my name. You were crying in your sleep.” The salt water I’d tasted on my lips. Not due to rain from a violent hurricane, but from the tears I’d shed, watching him die in front of me. “Oh,” I said uncomfortably. “John, I’m so-“ It turned out he wasn’t finished. “I put my arms around you to try to comfort you, because I know what this place can be like, at least at first. It’s not exactly hell, but it’s the next closest place to it. You wouldn’t let go of me. You held on to me like you were drowning, and I was your only lifeline.” I swallowed, astonished at how close he’d come to describing my dream…except it had been the other way around. I’d been his lifeline; only he’d let go of me, sacrificing himself so that I could live. “Right,” I said. “Of course. I’m sorry.” I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been, especially since my mother had always worried so much about my talking in my sleep. On the other hand, I had been upfront with him about my lack of experience when it came to men. “But this is good, see?” I reached out to take his hand. “I told you I could never hate you-“ He pulled his hand away, exactly like in my dream. Well, not exactly, because he wasn’t being sucked from my grasp by a giant ocean swell. Instead, he’d dropped my fingers because he was leaving to go sort the souls of the dead. “You will,” he assured me, bitterly. “You’re already regretting your decision to-what was it you called it? Oh, right-cohabitate with me.” “No,” I insisted. “I’m not. All I said was that I want to take things more slowly-“ That had nothing to do with him-it had to do with me and my fear of not being able to control myself when he was kissing me. It was too humiliating to admit that out loud, however.

grenade over the wall…and from a distance. And the world continues on its downward path, unaware that a global storm is gathering. Though Christians are, by nature, salt and light, we’re also masters at hiding in the saltshaker and hitting the dimmer switch. However, as the floodwaters of godlessness continue rising, we may find that simply tossing gospel life preservers to drowning victims may be a case of too little, too late. Like a dead body, our world is slowly decomposing, and God’s Spirit working though His people is all that delays the process, postponing inevitable judgment.44 Noah’s world didn’t begin without God, but it sure ended up that way. Look around. Which way do you think we’re headed? And what are you doing about it?

Now when he closes his eyes he can really look at himself. He no longer sees a mask. He sees without seeing, to be exact. Vision without sight, a fluid grasp of intangibles: the merging of sight and sound: the heart of the web. Here stream the different personalities which evade the crude contact of the senses; here the overtones of recognition discreetly lap against one another in bright, vibrant harmonies. There is no language employed, no outlines delineated. When a ship founders, it settles slowly; the spars, the masts, the rigging float away. On the ocean floor of death the bleeding hull bedecks itself with jewels; remorselessly the anatomic life begins. What was ship becomes the nameless indestructible. Like ships, men founder time and again. Only memory saves them from complete dispersion. Poets drop their stitches in the loom, straws for drowning men to grasp as they sink into extinction. Ghosts climb back on watery stairs, make imaginary ascents, vertiginous drops, memorize numbers, dates, events, in passing from gas to liquid and back again. There is no brain capable of registering the changing changes. Nothing happens in the brain, except the gradual rust and detrition of the cells. But in the minds, worlds unclassified, undenominated, unassimilated, form, break, unite, dissolve and harmonize ceaselessly. In the mind-world ideas are the indestructible elements which form the jewelled constellations of the interior life. We move within their orbits, freely if we follow their intricate patterns, enslaved or possessed if we try to subjugate them.

The autumn months are my domain: Mirrored in pools my castles dream Of wars long past and out of mind From towers with ivy garlands twined Weak and with regret the sun Drowns itself in the sluggish green Water that marble fountains weep; Trees open their nests to the wings of sleep. The wind like a phantom seems to roar, Returned to die of love once more At the false meeting of the ways Where a temple rounds its dome in the haze. Sometimes a child is heard to laugh In the house of the priest, far off; His lamp on the ledge of the window gleams Much as the Holy Spirit flames. Then nothing. Only a plane tree sways Its crown of leaves in the dark that graze Slowly and with a sound so alight They barely ripple the silent night. I am the lord of this domain. Through halls of hollow, echoing Armor, I haul the heavy shame Of not being able to be king.

The monstrous versions of himself and Hermione were gone: There was only Ron, standing there with the sword held slackly in his hand, looking down at the shattered remains of the locket on the flat rock. Slowly, Harry walked back to him, hardly knowing what to say or do. Ron was breathing heavily: His eyes were no longer red at all, but their normal blue; they were also wet. Harry stooped, pretending he had not seen, and picked up the broken Horcrux. Ron had pierced the glass in both windows: Riddle’s eyes were gone, and the stained silk lining of the locket was smoking slightly. The thing that had lived in the Horcrux had vanished; torturing Ron had been its final act. The sword clanged as Ron dropped it. He had sunk to his knees, his head in his arms. He was shaking, but not, Harry realized, from cold. Harry crammed the broken locket into his pocket, knelt down beside Ron, and placed a hand cautiously on his shoulder. He took it as a good sign that Ron did not throw it off. “After you left,” he said in a low voice, grateful for the fact that Ron’s face was hidden, “she cried for a week. Probably longer, only she didn’t want me to see. There were loads of nights when we never even spoke to each other. With you gone…” He could not finish; it was only now that Ron was here again that Harry fully realized how much his absence had cost them. “She’s like my sister,” he went on. “I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me. It’s always been like that. I thought you knew.” Ron did not respond, but turned his face away from Harry and wiped his nose noisily on his sleeve. Harry got to his feet again and walked to where Ron’s enormous rucksack lay yards away, discarded as Ron had run toward the pool to save Harry from drowning. He hoisted it onto his own back and walked back to Ron, who clambered to his feet as Harry approached, eyes bloodshot but otherwise composed. “I’m sorry,” he said in a thick voice. “I’m sorry I left. I know I was a--a--” He looked around at the darkness, as if hoping a bad enough word would swoop down upon him and claim him. “You’ve sort of made up for it tonight,” said Harry. “Getting the sword. Finishing off the Horcrux. Saving my life.” “That makes me sound a lot cooler than I was,” Ron mumbled. “Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was,” said Harry. “I’ve been trying to tell you that for years.” Simultaneously they walked forward and hugged, Harry gripping the still-sopping back of Ron’s jacket. “And now,” said Harry as they broke apart, “all we’ve got to do is find the tent again.

Look, I was a hungry shade, nothing more. I latched onto the men, and their energy felt like sticky fruit sliding between my fingers. and when we were done, I was still hungry. And after the next time. I was still hungry. And after the one after that one, I was still hungry. I would have drowned them all. I would have inched slowly over their bodies, dipped my fingers inside their throats and ripped out sounds. I filled their bed with secrets. Ada was right- I found pleasure in evil. I did many things in hunger that could be misconstrued.

That spring everyone in Judy Chicago’s class collaborated on a 24 hour performance called Route 126. The curator Moira Roth recalls: “the group created a sequence of events throughout the day along the highway. The day began with Suzanne Lacy’s Car Renovation in which the group decorated an abandoned car…and ended with the women standing on a beach watching Nancy Youdelman, wrapped in yards of gossamer silk, slowly wade out to sea until she drowned, apparently…” There’s a fabulous photo taken by Faith Wilding of the car—a Kotex-pink jalopy washed up on desert rocks. The trunk’s flung open and underneath it’s painted cuntblood red. Strands of desert grass spill from the crumpled hood like Rapunzel’s fucked-up hair. According to Performance Anthology—Source Book For A Decade Of California Art, this remarkable event received no critical coverage at the time though contemporaneous work by Baldessari, Burden, Terry Fox boasts bibliographies several pages long. Dear Dick, I’m wondering why every act that narrated female lived experience in the ’70s has been read only as “collaborative” and “feminist.” The Zurich Dadaists worked together too but they were geniuses and they had names.

Whispering Echoes, a contemporary fiction with Gothic undertones... Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we still live… This is the tale of two women standing at opposite ends of the tunnel of life. Sally Donaldson is at the beginning, whilst Miss Bella Connelly , is at the end. The story opens in the winter of 1990. Sally is a young woman on the verge of a breakdown, slowly drowning in the sorrow of an unimaginable loss. When her husband sends her to Brackenleigh Manor to recover, she encounters the unconventional healing methods of Miss Bella Connelly. Sally quickly discovers that the manor itself harbor’s its own sorrow, and the secrets that lay within the old groaning house are none other than the sad Whispering Echoes of Miss Bella Connelly’s past. The Story then shifts back to 1939 – Britain on the eve of WW2 – and reveals the secrets and lies that transform Bella, and completely change the lives of all who meet Miss Bella after. The events that carved and marked Miss Bella’s journey finally draw Sally out of her own shadows and back into life. For it is within Miss Bella’s story, that Sally learns that life has a measure that no one can count… A measure that far outweighs Death…

I need to see Inej," she said, eager to have him gone. He didn't leave. Instead he said, "Did you think of me at all, Nina? Did I trouble your sleep?" She shrugged. "A Corporalnik can sleep whenever she likes." Though she couldn't control her dreams. "Sleep is a luxury at Hellgate. It's a danger. But when I slept, I dreamed of you." Her head snapped up. "That's right," he said. "Every time I closed my eyes." "What happened in the dreams?" she asked, eager for an answer, but fearing it, too. "Horrible things. The worst kinds of torture. You drowned me slowly. You burned my heart from my chest. You blinded me." "I was a monster." "A monster, a maiden, a sylph of the ice. You kissed me, whispered stories in my ear. You sang to me and held me as I slept. Your laugh chased me into waking." "You always hated my laugh." "I loved your laugh, Nina. And your fierce warrior's heart. I might have loved you, too." Might have. Once. Before she had betrayed him. Those words carved an ache into her chest. She knew she shouldn't speak, but she couldn't help herself. "And what did you do, Matthias? What did you do to me in your dreams?" The ship listed gently. The lanterns swayed. His eyes were fire blue. "Everything," he said, as he turned to go. "Everything.

We are lost; waiting tables at Denny's or forgetting ourselves stripping on poles, or working at a coffee shop misplaced in history or slowly dying on the inside as a secretary or landscaping lawns out of desperation working jobs with no futures, like bartending. The next generation of teachers, historians, lawyers, police officers and civil engineers work at this bar because the money can not be passed up, when you’re drowning in debt. The world brings us to our knees and we service it because it nourishes us just enough to get by. We are tired and we don't understand why. We, the over educated searching for happiness at the bottom of the bottle.

You have nothing to tell me!" said Vyesovshchikov slowly. "Nothing! My heart is so—it seems to me as if wolves were howling there!" "And I don't want to say anything to you. Only I know that you'll get over this, perhaps not entirely, but you'll get over it!" He smiled, and added, tapping Nikolay on the back: "Why, man, this is a children's disease, something like measles! We all suffer from it, the strong less, the weak more. It comes upon a man at the period when he has found himself, but does not yet understand life, and his own place in life. And when you do not see your place, and are unable to appraise your own value, it seems that you are the only, the inimitable cucumber on the face of the earth, and that no one can measure, no one can fathom your worth, and that all are eager only to eat you up. After a while you'll find out that the hearts in other people's breasts are no worse than a good part of your own heart, and you'll begin to feel better. And somewhat ashamed, too! Why should you climb up to the belfry tower, when your bell is so small that it can't be heard in the great peal of the holiday bells? Moreover, you'll see that in chorus the sound of your bell will be heard, too, but by itself the old church bells will drown it in their rumble as a fly is drowned in oil. Do you understand what I am saying?" "Maybe I understand," Nikolay said, nodding. "Only I don't believe it." The

Sloane inhaled sharply, and he relinquished control to his Therian side without any further thought. His claws came out, and his painful cry drowned out Dex’s as the tips of Sloane’s claws pierced his lover’s skin. Dex clutched at Sloane, his finger’s digging into his bicep and his jaw clenched as he tried desperately to keep himself quiet. His eyes grew glassy and red, but Sloane could see Dex fighting to keep himself from screaming. Darkness encroached Sloane’s vision, his senses sharpening. Slowly and deliberately he sliced at Dex’s arm, making sure to go deep enough to leave his mark permanently but not enough where Dex would need stitches. Sloane’s heart pounded, the scent of Dex’s blood filling his nostrils. He ground his hips against Dex as he finished leaving his mark around Dex’s forearm. As soon as he was finished, he pulled off his T-shirt and wrapped it around his partner’s bleeding arm, tying it firmly in place. His eyes landed on Dex, and he was taken aback by the heat in those amazing eyes. They clawed at each other’s clothes the best they could with Dex’s arm and Sloane’s leg. Desire and love turned into desperation, sending them both into a frenzy of need and lust. Sloane spit into his hand, making it good and wet, then wrapped it around his cock, stroking himself before he pushed a finger against Dex’s entrance. “Yes,” Dex hissed, his fingers slipping into Sloane’s hair and grabbing fistfuls of it. “Please, fuck me.” Sloane

The sea was the first thing he had found that was large enough to absorb his sorrow. ...Perdu would drift on his back, his feet pointing toward the beach. There, on the waves, with the water spilling through his outspread fingers, he drew up from the depths of his memory every hour he had spent with Manon. He examined each one until he no longer felt any regret that it was past, then he let it go. So Jean let the waves rock him, raise him up and pass him on. And slowly, infinitely slowly, he began to trust. Not the sea, far from it; no one should make that mistake! Jean Perdu trusted himself again. He wouldn't go under; he wouldn't drown in his emotions. And each time he abandoned himself to the sea another small grain of fear trickled out of him. It was his way of praying.

Gentle hands, soft lips, and hot little breaths down my stomach. Pleasure, a thick syrup pouring over my limbs. My cock rose, growing heavy with desire. We were so new together, by all accounts, I should be panting madly, trying to take over. But I was slowly heating wax molding to her will. Emma palmed me through my briefs, and I grunted. I wanted them off, no barriers between us. As if she heard the silent demand, she kissed my nipple and slowly eased the briefs down. I lifted my butt to help her. My dick slapped against my belly as it was freed. Emma made a noise of appreciation and then wrapped her clever fingers around me. "Please," I whispered. My body was weak, but my need grew stronger, drowning out everything else. She complied, stroking, her lips on my lower abs, teasing along the V leading to my hips. "Em..." My plea broke off into a groan as her hot mouth enveloped me. There were no more words. I let her have me, do as she willed, and I was thankful for it. And it felt so good I could only lie there and take it, try not to thrust into her mouth like an animal. But she pulled free with a lewd pop and gazed up at me. Panting lightly, I stared back at her, ready to promise her anything, when she kissed my pulsing tip. "Go ahead," she said. "Fuck my mouth." I almost spilled right there. She sucked me deep once more, and a sound tore out of me that was part pained, part "Oh God, please don't ever stop." The woman was dismantling me in the best of ways. Waves of heat licked up over my skin as I pumped gently into her mouth, keeping my moves light because I didn't want to hurt her, and because denying myself was outright torture. Apparently, I was into that. She sucked me like I was dessert----all the while, her hand stroking steady circles on the tight, sensitive skin of my lower abs. It was that touch, the knowledge that she was doing this because she wanted to take care of me, that rushed me straight to the edge. My trembling hand touched the crown of her head. "Em. Baby, I'm gonna..." I gasped as she did something truly inspired with her tongue. "I'm gonna..." She pulled free with one last suck and surged up to kiss me, her hand wrapping around my aching dick and stroking it. Panting into her mouth, my kiss frantic and sloppy, I came with a shudder of pleasure. And all the tension, all the pain, dissolved like a sugar cube dropped into hot tea.

In those first hours after he drowned, when the catastrophe was still confined to Calabash beach, and to Jake, Joe and me, its speed was impossible to reconcile with its scale. Nothing so big could happen this fast; it defied the laws of physics, it could not be true. Death is too much for the mind to register in a matter of minutes; the incalculable magnitude can only be absorbed by increment, day by day. As each day allows a new glimpse of its immensity, and the aftershock extends beyond the beach to reach hundreds of people all over the world, my comprehension slowly expands until its dimensions resemble a more accurate impression of the truth. But the bigger his death grows, the more inconceivable it becomes. It feels like an ambitious piece of performance art; a work of fiction, not real life. How strange that the truth of my own situation should be so much clearer to everybody else.

Yes, Clarissa thinks, it’s time for the day to be over. We throw our parties; we abandon our families to live alone in Canada; we struggle to write books that do not change the world, despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep—it’s as simple and ordinary as that. A few jump out of windows or drown themselves or take pills; more die by accident; and most of us, the vast majority, are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we’re very fortunate, by time itself. There’s just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we’ve ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) knows these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult. Still, we cherish the city, the morning; we hope, more than anything, for more.

My own good was stuck on a pirate ship, with an aura like a beacon that flared across the Barrens,’ he grits out, a thick spun voice meant to tie knots around me. ‘My own good was cowering before men who were nothing – fucking nothing – in comparison to her.’ All of my ability to breathe is gone as I stare at him in shock. ‘My own good hated me, fought me, argued with me, but I didn’t care, because I watched her slowly come out of her shell, peeling back one layer at a time, and it was stunning.’ He raises the finger in front of my face. ‘I got one touch. One taste, and if it was an act of selfishness, then you should know, it certainly wasn’t one-sided, Auren.’ I can’t blink. I can’t think. ‘What…what are you saying?’ My chest heaves with the breathless question, like undulating waves in an uncertain sea. I might drown in the depths of his bottomless eyes. His teeth snap together, as if my uncertainty sets him on edge. ‘I’m saying that you are my own good. And for you, I gave you a choice, but you chose him.

For an immeasurable period of time, hours, days, weeks, it seemed, Celia had been struggling against tides of anguish, sinking deeper and deeper into a dreadful sea, whose waves broke at ever shorter intervals until at last there was no respite, but an endless torment that drowned and broke and shattered her to nothing. There was no longer any such person as Celia Bryant in the living world. All that remained was an anonymous hulk, a bleeding rag of flesh in a universe of pain. Her brain had long ago ceased to function. Only somewhere, at the centre of torture, an inexorable core of consciousness persisted. Hours ago, years ago, she had thought: 'This is too much. No one could bear such agony and go on living.' It seemed that something in her must break; that she must either die or fall into oblivion. Yet somehow she had gone on bearing everything. She had not died. She had not lost consciousness. All that she had lost was the sense of her personal integrity. As a human being she was obliterated; her mind was dispersed. she could not any longer envisage an end of torment. 'Not only not to hope:not even to wait. Just to endure.' At last, in some region utterly remote, a new thing came into being, words were spoken, and strangely, incredibly, the words had significance. That which had once been Celia could not grasp their meaning because somewhere else a woman's voice was crying out lamentably. Nevertheless, she heard a man speaking, and with a new searing pain there pierced her also a thin shaft of hope, the first premonitory pang of deliverance. Thereafter she seemed to fall into a black and quiet place, a dark hole of oblivion, where she lay as at the bottom of a deep well. Slowly, painfully, the disintegrated fragments of her being reassembled themselves. By long and difficult stages she returned to some sort of normality. Her brain, her senses, all the strained mechanism of her body and mind, reluctantly began to function once more. The miracle for which she no longer hoped had actually come to pass: there was an end of pain.

She kissed his lips and felt his smile form. Alone in this beautiful space, Blake and Livia made things right. Blake kissed her slowly and patiently, like he had all the time in the world. Carefully, they eased back to lie down, and Blake braced himself above her. He smelled of mint and fresh soap. Livia put her hands on his chest and felt the densely packed muscles there. Empowered by his adoration, she shrugged off her fleece shirt, enjoying the feeling of being trapped between his arms. Blake’s eyes became stormy seas. “Damn it all to hell,” he cursed. Despite his words, Livia believed she was winning this battle of seduction. Blake kissed her mouth and sucked on her bottom lip. He moved to her earlobe and breathed, “First, I will blow, then I will lick, last I will bite.” Holy crap. Blake blew a gentle stream of minty breath along the outside of Livia’s ear, down to her neck, and along the edge of her breasts where they peeked out of her bright blue bra. Blake took his time creating an elaborate pattern on her stomach, and Livia was pretty sure he’d spelled the word torture. He increased the pressure of his breath as he grazed below her belly button to the top of her jeans. He skipped back to her mouth and gave her another long, slow kiss. “And now I lick,” he murmured. Livia bit back the embarrassingly loud moan she felt building. He gently traced the same trail his breath had left, this time with his tongue. When he reached her breast, she lost control and grabbed his hair, intent on kissing him. “No. No.” Blake held her wrists above her head. “I’ve done this to you so many times in my mind. I won’t have you rush me.” Livia groaned and arched her back in an effort to change his mind. But his slow, sexy smile told her he was doing it his way. “Fine.” Livia dutifully kept her hands above her head as he picked up where he’d left off. His tongue had her making noises that surely scared the wildlife. He spent an inordinate amount of time licking just above her belt buckle. Then again he was back to her mouth. He spoke through his kiss. “I’m going to bite you now.” Blake began down the same flaming path on Livia’s body with his teeth, nibbling in time with her heartbeat. When it speeded up, he bit slightly harder. After what seemed to be sixteen million glorious years, Blake was at the top of her jeans again. A light, almost invisible, mist from the gray clouds now gave the clearing a slick sheen. The cool rain and his hot mouth were ecstasy. Blake unbuckled her belt and used his tongue and teeth to unbutton her jeans. He chuckled as he flipped her zipper with his teeth. Each pop of the releasing zipper filled the woods as he blew again on the newly revealed skin. Livia knew what to expect this time: blow, lick, bite. Oh, sweet God! This is heaven. At last, Livia could no longer obey and reached her hands down to his angelic face. Blake glanced up as if to rebuke her, but quickly smiled and let her sit up to meet his lips. Love. Crazy, soon, ever. Love, Livia’s mind raged. She tried to tell him with kisses, but it wasn’t enough. Blake knelt before her, and Livia straddled his thighs. She pulled back to try putting it into words and noticed how Blake glistened, covered in tiny raindrops. The clear, cool pond she’d described to Cole had just exploded over them. But instead of drowning, they wore it like a cloak.

Nobody ever talked about what a struggle this all was. I could see why women used to die in childbirth. They didn't catch some kind of microbe, or even hemorrhage. They just gave up. They knew that if they didn't die, they'd be going through it again the next year, and the next. I couldn't understand how a woman might just stop trying, like a tired swimmer, let her head go under, the water fill her lungs. I slowly massaged Yvonne's neck, her shoulders, I wouldn't let her go under. She sucked ice through threadbare white terry. If my mother were here, she'd have made Melinda meek cough up the drugs, sure enough. "Mamacita, ay," Yvonne wailed. I didn't know why she would call her mother. She hated her mother. She hadn't seen her in six years, since the day she locked Yvonne and her brother and sisters in their apartment in Burbank to go out and party, and never came back. Yvonne said she let her boyfriends run a train on her when she was eleven. I didn't even know what that meant. Gang bang, she said. And still she called out, Mama. It wasn't just Yvonne. All down the ward, they called for their mothers. ... I held onto Yvonne's hands, and I imagined my mother, seventeen years ago, giving birth to me. Did she call for her mother?...I thought of her mother, the one picture I had, the little I knew. Karin Thorvald, who may or may not have been a distant relation of King Olaf of Norway, classical actress and drunk, who could recite Shakespeare by heart while feeding the chickens and who drowned in the cow pond when my mother was thirteen. I couldn't imagine her calling out for anyone. But then I realized, they didn't mean their own mothers. Not those weak women, those victims. Drug addicts, shopaholics, cookie bakers. They didn't mean the women who let them down, who failed to help them into womanhood, women who let their boyfriends run a train on them. Bingers and purgers, women smiling into mirrors, women in girdles, women in barstools. Not those women with their complaints and their magazines, controlling women, women who asked, what's in it for me? Not the women who watched TV while they made dinner, women who dyed their hair blond behind closed doors trying to look twenty-three. They didn't mean the mothers washing dishes wishing they'd never married, the ones in the ER, saying they fell down the stairs, not the ones in prison saying loneliness is the human condition, get used to it. They wanted the real mother, the blood mother, the great womb, mother of a fierce compassion, a woman large enough to hold all the pain, to carry it away. What we needed was someone who bled, someone deep and rich as a field, a wide-hipped mother, awesome, immense, women like huge soft couches, mothers coursing with blood, mothers big enough, wide enough, for us to hide in, to sink down to the bottom of, mothers who would breathe for is when we could not breathe anymore, who would fight for us, who would kill for us, die for us. Yvonne was sitting up, holding her breath, eyes bulging out. It was the thing she should not do. "Breathe," I said in her ear. "Please, Yvonne, try." She tried to breathe, a couple of shallow inhalations, but it hurt too much. She flopped back on the narrow bed, too tired to go on. All she could do was grip my hand and cry. And I thought of the way the baby was linked to her, as she was linked to her mother, and her mother, all the way back, insider and inside, knit into a chain of disaster that brought her to this bed, this day. And not only her. I wondered what my own inheritance was going to be. "I wish I was dead," Yvonne said into the pillowcase with the flowers I'd brought from home. The baby came four hours later. A girl, born 5:32 PM.

I thought a lot about death. My death. I got used to the idea of dying. I always imagined it’d be peaceful, with slow-motion scenes and a nice background melody… like in a movie. But I was wrong. I was lost in the eerie quiet. It was cold and dark. My hair floated lightly in the air. No, not in the air, but in the water. Water surrounded me from every side. Frozen water that seemed to burn in my lungs. I was drowning and couldn’t breathe. I tried to swim. Desperately, I kicked my legs and waved my hands, but I wasn’t able to reach the surface. I felt all my energies slowly leave me. It was too dark, and I was tired, but I didn’t want to give up. I didn’t want to die. I tried to push harder with my feet, hoping to feel something solid underneath me, but there was nothing but the fluctuating light and darkness. It swallowed me and I didn’t know what to do. I had always been afraid of two things in my life, water and darkness, so I wondered how the hell I had ended up here. My head was spinning due to the lack of oxygen. I kept fighting, but every cell in my body screamed to let it go. I had to breathe, so I opened my mouth and inhaled strongly. Water came into my lungs, but it had stopped hurting. I no longer felt anything when my body became numb and the darkness devoured me.

I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. … My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds... I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought. I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!” I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!” It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream. … It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air. We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come. Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us. It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.

Lady Thornton,” Sutherland said in an awful, silky voice that made Elizabeth shake inside, “does the word ‘perjury’ have any meaning to you?” “I believe,” Elizabeth said, “it means to tell a lie in a place like this.” “Do you know how the Crown punishes perjurers? They are sentenced to gaol, and they live their lives in a dark, dank cell. Would you want that to happen to you?” “It certainly doesn’t sound very agreeable,” Elizabeth said. “Would I be able to take my jewels and gowns?” Shouts of laughter shook the chandeliers that hung from the vaulted ceilings. “No, you would not!” “Then I’m certainly happy I haven’t lied.” Sutherland was no longer certain whether he’d been duped, but he sensed that he’d lost his effort to make Elizabeth sound like a clever, scheming adulteress or a terrified, intimidated wife. The bizarre story of her flight with her brother had now taken on a certain absurd credibility, and he realized it with a sinking heart and a furious glower. “Madam, would you perjure yourself to protect that man?” His arm swung toward Ian, and Elizabeth’s gaze followed helplessly. Her heart froze with terror when she saw that, if anything, Ian looked more bored, more coldly remote and unmoved than he had before. “I asked you,” Sutherland boomed, “if you would perjure yourself to save that man from going to the gallows next month.” Elizabeth would have died to save him. Tearing her gaze from Ian’s terrifying face, she pinned a blank smile on her face. “Next month? What a disagreeable thing to suggest! Why, next month is-is Lady Northam’s ball, and Kensington very specifically promised that we would go”-thunderous guffaws exploded, rocking the rafters, drowning out Elizabeth’s last words-“and that I could have a new fur!!” Elizabeth waited, sensing that she had succeeded, not because her performance had been so convincing, but because many of the lords and wives who never thought beyond the next gown or ball or fur, and so she seemed entirely believable to them. “No further questions!” Sutherland rapped out, casting a contemptuous glance over her. Peterson Delham slowly arose, and though his expression was carefully blank, even bemused, Elizabeth sensed rather than saw that he was silently applauding her. “Lady Thornton,” he said in formal tones, “is there anything else you have to say to this court?” She realized that he wanted her to say something else, and in her state of relieved exhaustion Elizabeth couldn’t think what it was. She said the only thing she could think of, and she knew soon after she began speaking that he was pleased. “Yes, my lord. I wish to say how very sorry I am for the bother Bobby and I have caused everyone. I was wrong to believe him and to dash off without a word to anyone. And it was wrong of him to remain so angry with my husband all this time over what was, after all, rather an act of kindness on his part.” She sensed that she was going too far, sounding too sensible, and she hastily added, “If Kensington had had Bobby tossed into gaol for trying to shoot him, I daresay Bobby would have found it nearly as disagreeable a place as I. He is,” she confided, “a very fastidious person!” “Lady Thornton!” the Lord Chancellor said when the fresh waves of laughter had diminished to ripples. “You may step down.” At the scathing tone in his voice, Elizabeth dared a look in his direction, and then she almost missed her step when she saw the furious scorn on his face. The other lords might think her an incorrigible henwit, but the Lord Chancellor looked as if he would personally have enjoyed throttling her.

I wanted to cry but I didn't cry, I probably should have cried, I should have drowned us there in the room, ended our suffering, they would have found us floating face-down in two thousand white pages, or buried under the salt of my evaporated tears, I remembered, just then and far too late, that years before I had pulled the ribbon from the machine, it had been an act of revenge against the typewriter and against mysel, I'd pulled it into one long thread, unwinding the negative it held—the future homes I had created for Anna, the letters I wrote without response—as if it would protect me from my actual life. But worse—it's unspeakable, write it!—I realized that your mother couldn't see the emptiness, she couldn't see anything. I knew that she'd had difficulty, I'd felt her grasp my arm when we walked, I'd heard her say, "My eyes are crummy," but I thought it was a way to touch me, another figure of speech, why didn't she ask for help, why, instead, did she ask for all of those magazines and papers if she couldn't see them, was that how she asked for help? Was that why she held so tightly to railings, why she wouldn't cook with me watching, or change her clothes with me watching, or open doors? Did she always have something to read in front of her so she wouldn't have to look at anything else? All of the words I'd written to her over all of those years, had I never said anything to her at all? "Wonderful," I told her by rubbing her shoulder in a certain way that we have between us, "it's wonderful." "Go ahead," she said, "Tell me what you think." I put her hand on the side of my face, I tilted my head toward my shoulder, in the context in which she thought our conversation was taking place that meant, "I can't read it here like this. I'll take it to the bedroom, I'll read it slowly, carefully. I'll give your life story what it deserves." But in what I knew to be the context of our conversation it meant, "I have failed you.

He held her down in the cushioning billows of the bed, kissed her, fondled and provocatively caressed until she arched, with her body begged; breaking from the kiss, he trailed hot, wet, openmouthed kisses down the taut line of her throat, over the creamy upper swell of her breast, and gave her the first course of what she'd asked for. He feasted on her breasts without quarter, licked, suckled, and laved as she writhed and gasped beneath him, as her hands gripped and tightened on his skull as he drew every last gasp and moan he could from her, then moved on. Over her midriff, down over her waist, pausing to pay homage to the sensitive indentation of her navel, then he shifted still lower. Trapping one of her long legs beneath him, lifting and draping the other over his shoulder, he held it there, held her steady as he pressed an ardent kiss to the curls shielding her mons. He heard her breath hitch, felt her body tremble, then tense and coil. Glancing at her face, he caught a glimpse of intense cornflower blue burning beneath her heavy lids, saw her lips slick and swollen from his kisses, parted in shocked disbelief. Deliberately he slid lower, bent and set his lips to the slick, swollen flesh between her thighs. She jerked, moaned. He licked and she screamed. She reached for him, but could only touch his head. Her fingers twined in his hair, tightened; she tensed to tug, but he licked again, then slowly, expertly probed, and she didn't move. Panting, eyes shut, she waited. Inwardly smug, he settled to worship her in that way, too, to taste her, to fill his senses with her, and hers with him. She let him have his way, let him taste her as he wished, let him try her with his tongue and drive her mindless. He asked, and she surrendered; he took, and she gave. In return, he pleasured her with unwavering devotion until she sobbed and cried out his name. Rising, he rolled her firmly onto her back, trailed kisses like fire up her belly and breasts as he loomed over her, spreading her thighs wide, settling between. He held himself over her, arms braced as he kissed her, tasted her desperation on her lips. Then with one, single powerful thrust he joined them. She closed about him like a glove, and he gasped; like the goddess he'd named her she welcomed her servant into her temple and embraced him. He moved, and she moved with him, fluidly meeting him as they gave themselves up to the now familiar dance. His thoughts fractured, ripped from him as a whirlpool of sensation rose up, drenched, then drowned him.

What I want to know is whether or not I can expect a repetition of it, if I were to agree with what Alexandra wants.” Drowning in angry mortification, Elizabeth nevertheless managed not to flinch or drop her gaze, and although her voice shook slightly, she managed to say calmly and clearly, “I have no control over wagging tongues, your grace. If I had, I would not have been the topic of scandal two years ago. However, I have no desire whatever to reenter your society. I still have scars enough from my last sortie among the Quality.” Having deliberately injected a liberal amount of derision into the word “Quality,” Elizabeth closed her mouth and braced herself to be verbally filleted by the old woman whose white brows had snapped together over the bridge of her thin nose. An instant later, however, the pale hazel eyes registered something that might have been approval, then they shifted to Alexandra. With a curt nod the dowager said, “I quite agree, Alexandra. She has spirit enough to endure what they will put her through. Amazing, is it not,” continued the dowager to Elizabeth with a gruff smile, “that on the one hand we of the ton pride ourselves on our civilized manners, and yet many of us will dine on one another’s reputations in preference to the most sumptuous meal.” Leaving Elizabeth to sink slowly and dazedly into a chair she’d shot out of but moments before, the dowager then walked over to the sofa and seated herself, her eyes narrowed in thought. “The Willington’s ball tonight will be a complete crush,” she said after a moment. “That may be to our advantage-everyone of importance and otherwise will be there. Afterward there’ll be less reason to gossip about Elizabeth’s appearance, for everyone will have seen her for themselves.” “Your grace,” Elizabeth said, flustered and feeling some expression of gratitude was surely in order for the trouble the dowager was about to be put to, “it-it’s beyond kind of you to do this-“ “Nonsense,” the woman interrupted, looking appalled. “I am rarely kind. Pleasant, at times,” she continued while Alexandra tried to hide her amusement. “Even gracious when the occasion demands, but I wouldn’t say ‘kind.’ ‘Kind’ is so very bland. Like lukewarm tea. Now, if you will take my advice, my girl,” she added, looking at Elizabeth’s strained features and pale skin, “you will immediately take yourself upstairs and have a long and restorative nap. You’re alarmingly peaked. While you rest”-she turned to Alexandra-“Alexandra and I will make our plans.” Elizabeth reacted to this peremptory order to go to bed exactly as everyone reacted to the dowager duchess’s orders: After a moment of shocked affront she did exactly as she was bidden.

3 INCIDENT IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL Not long afterwards, a Belgian ferry, the Oudenbourg, was steaming its way from Ostende to Ramsgate. In the straits of Dover the duty officer noticed that half a mile south of its usual course there was something going on in the water. He could not be sure that there was no-one drowning there and so he ordered a change of course down to where the perturbance was taking place. Two hundred passengers on the windward side of the ship were shown a very strange spectacle: in some places a vertical jet of water shot out from the surface, and in some of those vertical jets there could be seen something like a black body thrown up with it; the surface of the sea for one or two hundred yards all around was tossing and seething wildly while, from the depths, a loud rattling and humming could be heard. "It was as if there was a small volcano erupting under the sea." As the Oudenbourg slowly approached the place an enormous wave rose about ten yards ahead of it and a terrible noise thundered out like an explosion. The entire ship was lifted violently and the deck was showered with a rain of water that was nearly boiling hot; and landing on the deck with the water was a strong black body which writhed and let out a sharp loud scream; it was a newt that had been injured and burnt. The captain ordered the ship full steam astern so that the ship would not steam straight into the middle of this turbulent Hell; but the water all around had also begun to erupt and the surface of the sea was strewn with pieces of dismembered newts. The ship was finally able to turn around and it fled northwards as fast as possible. Then there was a terrible explosion about six hundred yards to the stern and a gigantic column of water and steam, perhaps a hundred yards high, shot out of the sea. The Oudenbourg set course for Harwich and sent out a radio warning in all directions: "Attention all shipping, attention all shipping! Severe danger on Ostende-Ramsgate lane. Underwater explosion. Cause unknown. All shipping advised avoid area!" All this time the sea was thundering and boiling, almost as if military manoeuvres had been taking place under the water; but apart from the erupting water and steam there was nothing to see. From both Dover and Calais, destroyers and torpedo boats set out at full steam and squadrons of military aircraft flew to the site of the disturbance; but by the time they got there all they found was that the surface was discoloured with something like a yellow mud and covered with startled fish and newts that had been torn to pieces. At first it was thought that a mine in the channel must have exploded; but once the shores on both sides of the Straits of Dover had been ringed off with a chain of soldiers and the English prime-minister had, for the fourth time in the history of the world, interrupted his Saturday evening and hurried back to London, there were those who thought the incident must be of extremely serious international importance. The papers carried some highly alarming rumours, but, oddly enough, this time remained far from the truth; nobody had any idea that Europe, and the whole world with it, stood for a few days on the brink of a major war. It was only several years later that a member of the then British cabinet, Sir Thomas Mulberry, failed to be re-elected in a general election and published his memoirs setting out just what had actually happened; but by then, though, nobody was interested.