Spinning Silver Quotes

But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.

But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.

A robber who steals a knife and cuts himself cannot cry out against the woman who kept it sharp.

But it was all the same choice, every time. The choice between the one death and all the little ones.

And more to the point, I was reasonably certain he wasn’t going to try and devour my soul. My expectations for a husband had lowered.

You were challenged beyond the bounds of what could be done, and found a path to make it true.

So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows.

He would only shrug and look at me expectantly again, waiting for high magic: magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.

My mother had enough magic to give me three blessings before she died,” I said, and he instinctively bent in to hear it. “The first was wit; the second beauty, and the third—that fools should recognize neither.” Irina

Because my demon told me to” isn’t a generally accepted reason,

I am not your subject or your servant, and if you want a cowering mouse for a wife, go find someone else who can turn silver to gold for you.

And on the wedding contract, before me and my parents and the rabbi, and Wanda and Sergey for our witnesses, in silver ink he signed his name. But I won't ever tell you what it is.

Hush, sweetheart. You don't have a mother anymore, but let me to speak to you with her voice a minute. Listen. Stepon told us what happened in your house. There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That it what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.

A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true

I wouldn't hold myself that cheap, to marry a man who'd love me less than everything else he had, even if what he had was a winter kingdom.

It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness...

She was safe for another moment, one more moment, and all of life was only moments, after all.

It's not seemly for a girl," my grandmother tried, but my grandfather snorted. "Gold doesn't know the hand that holds it," he said, and frowned at me, but in a pleased way.

With a demon wanting to devour me, I was feeling inclined to be devout . . .

That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away.

Anger was a fire in a grate, and I'd never had any wood to burn. Until now, it seemed.

Because that's what the story's really about: getting out of paying your debts. That's not how they tell it, but I knew. My father was a moneylender, you see.

Of course I was afraid. But I had learned to fear other things more: being despised, whittled down one small piece of myself at a time, smirked at and taken advantage of. I put my chin up and said, as cold as I could be in answer, “And what will you give me in return?

A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true; the proving makes it so.

A crowd of women around me doing the ocean of women’s work that never subsided and never changed and always swallowed whatever time you gave it and wanted more, another hungry body of water. I submerged into it like a ritual bath and let it close over my head gladly.

Rich meant that this room with three beds and a table and chairs and a window filled with glass was something to say sorry for.

My mother had enough magic to give me three blessings before she died,” I said, and he instinctively bent in to hear it. “The first was wit; the second beauty, and the third—that fools should recognize neither.

I'd chosen- not the lesser evil, but the less immediate one.

Bring me the winter king, and I will make you a summer queen.

He is mine, too.

The only thing that had ever done me any good in my father's house was thinking: no one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I'd had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I'd never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life.

But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them.

They would have devoured my family and picked their teeth with the bones, and never been sorry at all. Better to be turned to ice by the Staryk, who didn't pretend to be a neighbor.

...where your mind goes...energy flows

The first was wit; the second beauty, and the third—that fools should recognize neither.

I say to you, here are the dangers. Some are more likely than others. Weigh them, put them all together, and you will know the cost. Then you must say, is this what you owe?

Because that’s what the story’s really about: getting out of paying your debts.

Lady, though you choose a home in the sunlit world, you are a Staryk queen indeed.

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That is what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away.

By death the moon was gathered in Long ago, ah long ago; Yet still the silver corpse must spin And with another's light must glow. Her frozen mountains must forget Their primal hot volcanic breath, Doomed to revolve for ages yet, Void amphitheatres of death. And all about the cosmic sky, The black that lies beyond our blue, Dead stars innumerable lie, And stars of red and angry hue Not dead but doomed to die.

I didn't really understand what mothers were, because mine was in a tree, but I knew they were very good things and you were very angry and sad if you lost them.

I will lay my hand upon the flow of time, if need be, that you shall have however much of it you seek.

I reached out my hands to them, suddenly: I put out my hand to Sergey on one side, and to Stepon on the other, and they put out their hands to me, and to each other, and we held tight, tight; we made a circle together, my brothers and me, around the food that we had been given, and there was no wolf in the room.

The real story isn’t half as pretty as the one you’ve heard. The real story is, the miller’s daughter with her long golden hair wants to catch a lord, a prince, a rich man’s son, so she goes to the moneylender and borrows for a ring and a necklace and decks herself out for the festival. And she’s beautiful enough, so the lord, the prince, the rich man’s son notices her, and dances with her, and tumbles her in a quiet hayloft when the dancing is over, and afterwards he goes home and marries the rich woman his family has picked out for him. Then the miller’s despoiled daughter tells everyone that the moneylender’s in league with the devil, and the village runs him out or maybe even stones him, so at least she gets to keep the jewels for a dowry, and the blacksmith marries her before that firstborn child comes along a little early. Because that’s what the story’s really about: getting out of paying your debts.

I worked very hard after that. I took as much of Da's work as I could. I didn't want to make a row of dead babies and die.

A servant is easy to make dishonest when they bring you coin and never touch any themselves,” he said. “Let her feel that her fortune rises with yours.

He made her give him gold just to live, as if she belonged to him because he was strong enough to kill her. My father was strong enough to kill me but that did not mean I belonged to him.

The tsar was holding her hands against his chest, the ring on his finger gleaming pale silver like the tears running in silver lines down his cheeks; he was gazing down at her with eyes shining jewel-green, as though she were the most beautiful thing in the world.

What I mean—what we mean by it is—it’s like credit,” I said, suddenly thinking of my grandfather. “Gifts, and thanks—we’ll accept from someone what they can give then, and make return to them when it’s wanted, if we can. And there are some cheats, and some debts aren’t paid, but others are paid with interest to make up for it, and we can all do the more for not having to pay as we go.

How far would we have to go to run from winter?

I thought I could smell the sorcery in him, a sharp pungent mix of cinnamon and pepper and resin of pine, and deep below it burning woodsmoke.

My lady, I did not think you could answer it, when I took you from your home without your leave, and set value only on your gift. But I am answered truly. You have given fair return for insult thrice over and set your worth: higher than my life and all my kingdom and all who live therein, and though you send my people to the fire, I can claim no debt to repay. It is justly done.

I did not really need Magretta to tell me that love had caught my father like an unwilling fish, and having slipped the hook he had been glad to forget he had ever been on it in the first place.

People often need to accept the reality of a situation before moving forward. Not all situations have a silver lining or a positive spin. Some things are just really, really hard, and that’s OK.

You refused him,” he said to me, almost angrily. “I’m not a fool, to take gifts from monsters,” I said. “Where do you think its power comes from? Nothing like that comes without a price.” He laughed, a little shrill and sharp. “Yes, the trick is to have someone else pay it for you,

My girl, my brave girl had done this. She had gone and come back bloody and she had brought us back the spring. And she had come back, she had come back, which was worth all the spring and more for me.

I looked at Lukas. He did not look very pleased, but he did not look very sad either. He was only giving me a considering eye. I was a pig at the market he had decided to buy. He was hoping I fattened up well and gave him many piglets before it was time to make bacon.

I recognized that hunger: a devouring thing that would gulp down lives with pleasure and would only pretend to care about law or justice, unless you had some greater power behind you that it couldn’t find a way to cheat or break, and that would never, never be satisfied.

Four years! My heart was glad as birds.

Angry, I think. I didn’t remember ever being angry before. Anger had always seemed pointless to me, a dog circling after its own tail.

Did the tsar refuse to marry you?" I asked. I thought the duke might have been angry with her if he had: he hadn't seemed like a man to be satisfied if his plans went awry. "No," she said. "I am tsarina. For as long as I live." She said it dryly, as if she didn't expect that to last long. "The tsar is a black sorcerer. He is possessed by a demon of flame that wants to devour me." I laughed; I couldn't help it. It wasn't mirth, it was bitterness. "So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows.

She had heard tales of magical ones who could do marvelous things. Of people who really had been blessed by Hulda. Who could spin not only gold, but also silver and silk and strands of perfect white pearls. But the only blessing she carried was from the god of lies, and now her cursed tongue had ruined her.

My heart broke, but I was not a young girl anymore, afraid of being trapped behind a door forever. I knew the door was safety, I knew the door would not always be closed, and I did not let her out.

One day when I was ten one of out neighbors came to the house and said that the tsar was dead and when I asked what ir meant they said that there would be a new tsar. So I did not really see why a tsar mattered.

Here are the sounds of Wear. It rattles stone on stone. It sucks its teeth. It sings. It hisses like the rain. It roars. It laughs. It claps its hands. Sometimes I think it prays. In winter, through the ice, I've seen it moving swift and black as Tune, without a sound. Here are the sights of Wear. It falls in braids. It parts at rocks and tumbles round them white as down or flashes over them in silver quilts. It tosses fallen trees like bits of straw yet spins a single leaf as gentle as a maid. Sometimes it coils for rest in darkling pools and sometimes it leaps its banks and shatters in the air. In autumn, I've seen it breathe a mist so thick and grey you'd never know old Wear was there at all. Each day, for years and years, I've gone and sat in it. Usually at dusk I clamber down and slowly sink myself to where it laps against my breast. Is it too much to say, in winter, that I die? Something of me dies at least. First there's the fiery sting of cold that almost stops my breath, the aching torment in my limbs. I think I may go mad, my wits so outraged that they seek to flee my skull like rats a ship that's going down. I puff. I gasp. Then inch by inch a blessed numbness comes. I have no legs, no arms. My very heart grows still. These floating hands are not my hands. The ancient flesh I wear is rags for all I feel of it. "Praise, Praise!" I croak. Praise God for all that's holy, cold, and dark. Praise him for all we lose, for all the river of the years bears off. Praise him for stillness in the wake of pain. Praise him for emptiness. And as you race to spill into the sea, praise him yourself, old Wear. Praise him for dying and the peace of death. In the little church I built of wood for Mary, I hollowed out a place for him. Perkin brings him by the pail and pours him in. Now that I can hardly walk, I crawl to meet him there. He takes me in his chilly lap to wash me of my sins. Or I kneel down beside him till within his depths I see a star. Sometimes this star is still. Sometimes she dances. She is Mary's star. Within that little pool of Wear she winks at me. I wink at her. The secret that we share I cannot tell in full. But this much I will tell. What's lost is nothing to what's found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.

If you really wanted to court me, you'd have to do it by my family's laws, and you'd have to marry me the same way." I said, and folded my arms, knowing that would be the end of it, of course. And I wasn't sorry; I wouldn't be. I wouldn't regret any man who wouldn't do that, no matter what else he was or offered me; that much had lived in my heart all my life, a promise between me and my people, that my children would still be Israel no matter where they lived. Even if in some sneaking corner of my mind I might have thought, once or twice, for only a moment, that it would be worth something to have a husband who'd sooner slit his own throat than ever lie to you or cheat you. But not if he didn't value you at least as high as his pride. I wouldn't hold myself that cheap, to marry a man who'd love me less than everything else he had, even if what he had was a winter kingdom.

Little Irina must be a woman grown by now. A beauty, I have heard, surely?' It was more mockery: he had heard nothing of the sort, of course. I had traveled with my father; the court and his advisers knew I was nothing out of the ordinary, and hardly a girl to turn a young tsar's head - if he had been in any danger of turning his head at all, except perhaps all the way round like an owl.

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies. That it what was in your house with you, all your life. But here you are with your brothers, and you are not eaten up, and there is not a wolf inside you. You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away. That is all we can do for each other in the world, to keep the wolf away. And if there has been food in my house for you, then I am glad, glad with all my heart. I hope there will always be.

Above her, he can see the trees and the bright, full moon, a shining coin of silver spinning through the sky. The first blush of sunrise on the horizon is still a ways off...

magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.

It certainly went quicker to throw money away than to make it

No one had ever shouted at me in my life: my mother with her quiet voice, my gentle father. But I found something bitter inside myself, something of that winter blown into my heart: the sound of my mother coughing, and the memory of the story the way they'd told it in the village square so many times, about a girl who made herself a queen with someone else's gold, and never paid her debts.

We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot's house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The 'Treues Liebes Herz' of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille, Then took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing. Then, turning to my love, I said, 'The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.' But she--she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust. Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz, The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

The Staryk didn’t know anything of keeping records: I suppose it was only to be expected from people who didn’t take on debts and were used to entire chambers wandering off and having to be called back like cats.

I [Miryem] went staggering to all the shelves in the room, looking for anything left to change, and when I didn’t find anything after going round three times, I just stood there stupidly for a few more moments, and then I lay down on my mountain of gold like an improbable dragon and fell asleep without meaning to do so.

That Staryk wanted to take her for nothing. He made her give him gold just to live, as if she belonged to him because he was strong enough to kill her. My father was strong enough to kill me but that did not mean I belonged to him. He sold me for six kopeks, for three pigs, for a jug of krupnik. He tried to sell me again and again like I was still his no matter how many times he sold me. And that was how that Staryk thought. He wanted to keep her and make more gold out of her forever, and it did not matter what she wanted, because he was strong.

I laughed; I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t mirth, it was bitterness. “So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows.

Ethanol plus carbon dioxide was like a demon spawn pounding against the frontal lobes of my head from the previous night at the bar. Somewhere in the city there was a church bell ringing, and—oh, not a bell. That was my phone. My head pounded and I felt dizzy, like I was spinning in circles on a Tilt-A-Whirl ride. Slowly, I opened an eye to try and find my cell phone. I groaned as I reached for the blue- and-silver-plated device on my nightstand. The spins from al- cohol sucked.

The alchemy that the ratings agencies performed was to spin uncertainty into what looked and felt like risk. They took highly novel securities, subject to an enormous amount of systemic uncertainty, and claimed the ability to quantify just how risky they were. Not only that, but of all possible conclusions, they came to the astounding one that these investments were almost risk-free.

Upon the scent of dying jasmine she loomed out that solemn brook, spinning herself a crown of silver, witches bones and citadels. For her longing was the sky dripping with dark fever ... And she will lick the face of oblivion, till the stars scream her name.

I can't," I said. "I have a crown. If it means anything, it means this." "Then leave it," she said. "Leave it, Irinushka. It's only sorrow on sorrow." I bent and kissed her cheek. "Help me put it on," I said softly, and she went and took it with tears in her eyes

Mma Ramotswe found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no people. There were, she knew, those who had no others in this life, who had no uncles, or aunts, or distant cousins of any degree; people who were just themselves. Many white people were like that, for some unfathomable reason; they did not seem to want to have people and were happy to be just themselves. How lonely they must be -- like spacemen deep in space, floating in darkness, but without even that silver, unfurling cord that linked the astronauts to their little metal womb of oxygen and warmth. For a moment, she indulged the metaphor, and imagined the tiny white van in space, slowly spinning against a background of stars and she, Mma Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Space Agency, floating weightless, head over heels, tied to the tiny white van with a thin washing line.

Ah, here we are. Your watercoach, Myerialanna.”Calivan gestured to a lacquered blue-green boat, open at the front, and shaped to resemble a cresting wave, complete with silver fringe and accents made to resemble sea foam. “How beautiful,” Gabriella said as Dilys helped her into the fanciful canal boat. “I almost feel as if it should be pulled by a harnessed team of dolphins.” “That’s only for when we take the coach for a spin on the open sea,” Dilys said.

I read somewhere that spiders can spin silk strong enough to hold the weight of a thousand trucks. I tried to imagine those lines of silver, thinner than air, stronger than steel. Sometimes I think that a hundred webs, invisible gossamers, connect Gracie and me. They coat our bodies, tie our limbs together, link our hearts. They can stretch across cities, countries – even anger. Unbreakable. I felt them that first time I watched her play soccer. She needed to win so badly. I watched a new Gracie crack out of her cocoon that day. Grey, moth-like, she seemed covered in a dust that let her take to the air. Fly. They’re beautiful things, moths, with their dark patterned wings hooking on wind to push them forward. You have to be careful with them, though. Brush them just lightly, and they can’t fly anymore.

It made me angry, because being angry was better than being afraid.

I snag a cap from the back seat and fit it to my head before spinning the brim to the back.

it’s not as much the planet as the human race, held in their own ignorance about the greater scheme of things, of which they are all a forgotten part.

My mother had enough magic to give me three blessings before she died. The first was wit; the second beauty, and the third — that fools should recognize neither.

But the world I wanted wasn’t the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.

The alchemy that the ratings agencies performed was to spin uncertainty into what looked and felt like risk.

Крадецът, който е откраднал нож и се е порязал на него, не може да обвинява домакинята, че го е държала остър.

But the world I wanted wasn’t the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at one, I would do nothing forever.

God does not save us from suffering on this Earth. The Staryk afflict the righteous as well as the sinful, just as do illness and sorrow.

In her fantastic mood she stretched her soft, clasped hands upward toward the moon. 'Sweet moon,' she said in a kind of mock prayer, 'make your white light come down in music into my dancing-room here, and I will dance most deliciously for you to see". She flung her head backward and let her hands fall; her eyes were half closed, and her mouth was a kissing mouth. 'Ah! sweet moon,' she whispered, 'do this for me, and I will be your slave; I will be what you will.' Quite suddenly the air was filled with the sound of a grand invisible orchestra. Viola did not stop to wonder. To the music of a slow saraband she swayed and postured. In the music there was the regular beat of small drums and a perpetual drone. The air seemed to be filled with the perfume of some bitter spice. Viola could fancy almost that she saw a smoldering campfire and heard far off the roar of some desolate wild beast. She let her long hair fall, raising the heavy strands of it in either hand as she moved slowly to the laden music. Slowly her body swayed with drowsy grace, slowly her satin shoes slid over the silver sand. The music ceased with a clash of cymbals. Viola rubbed her eyes. She fastened her hair up carefully again. Suddenly she looked up, almost imperiously. "Music! more music!" she cried. Once more the music came. This time it was a dance of caprice, pelting along over the violin-strings, leaping, laughing, wanton. Again an illusion seemed to cross her eyes. An old king was watching her, a king with the sordid history of the exhaustion of pleasure written on his flaccid face. A hook-nosed courtier by his side settled the ruffles at his wrists and mumbled, 'Ravissant! Quel malheur que la vieillesse!' It was a strange illusion. Faster and faster she sped to the music, stepping, spinning, pirouetting; the dance was light as thistle-down, fierce as fire, smooth as a rapid stream. The moment that the music ceased Viola became horribly afraid. She turned and fled away from the moonlit space, through the trees, down the dark alleys of the maze, not heeding in the least which turn she took, and yet she found herself soon at the outside iron gate. ("The Moon Slave")

On Rachel's show for November 7, 2012: Ohio really did go to President Obama last night. and he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again. And the Bureau of Labor statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the congressional research service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not screwed to over-sample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad; Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy, sometimes. And evolution is a thing. And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us. And nobody is taking away anyone's guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And you and election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism. Listen, last night was a good night for liberals and for democrats for very obvious reasons, but it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country, we have a two-party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican Party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems. Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center. You guys, we're counting on you. Wake up. There are real problems in the world. There are real, knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there. If the Republican Party and the conservative movement and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. And in that spirit, congratulations, everyone!

She lost too much blood. I couldn’t stop it. I’m a damn Healer and I couldn’t even save her. I buried her in the backyard with our baby. She was right. It was a girl. My heart stops. Time slows. “I buried her in the backyard with our baby.” I shake my head, ignoring the hand Kai places on my knee. “I… I don’t understand. Father said she died of illness when I was a baby but…” I trail off, tearing through the pages until I find the next entry. I wasn’t planning on writing in here after Alice. I wasn’t even planning on having an “after Alice,” but I woke to a bang on my door last night. Yet when I opened the door, no one was there. That is, until I looked down. And there she was. A baby girl. Someone left her on my doorstep. She can’t be more than a few weeks old with a head full of silver hair and deep blue eyes. She’s beautiful. Alice would tear up at the sight of her. I’m going to be a father. This is what Alice would have wanted. She already had a name picked out anyway. A tear splatters onto the parchment, drowning the ink. I think Kai might be saying something, but I can hear nothing past the ringing in my ears. My head is spinning, heart pounding, breath catching in my throat because I can’t seem to swallow it. I can’t breathe. I can’t—

I thought by then that maybe everything was all right because Panova Mandelstam was a mother. I didn’t really understand what mothers were, because mine was in a tree, but I knew they were very good things and you were very angry

What he meant was he didn’t want this in his house. He had come with his krupnik and his clever plans and got my father drunk and built this rage in him like a fire, and now it was burning everything and he wanted to run away from it.

But my father’s irritation told me otherwise. I had been a disappointment to him from the beginning, my mother having taken an excessive number of years to produce me, and shortly afterwards miscarrying the overdue son and dying with him.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have thought for an instant she’d have trouble with the court; a woman who can coolly bargain with a demon that wants to gnaw on her soul is hardly to be intimidated by Lord Reynauld D’Estaigne. Or, more to the point, by her husband.

Kay’s flying shuttle, Arkwright’s water frame, Crompton’s spinning mule, and Cartwright’s loom were all made possible with silver-working. Silver-working has catapulted Britain ahead of every other nation, and put thousands of labourers out of work in the process.

I've only one small silver night to spend So show me no luxuries. It will be enough If you spare me a spider, and when it spins I'll see The six days of Creation in a web And a fly caught on the seventh. And if the dew Should rise in the web, I may well die a Christian.

Once Tyler did his job, a nurse would take Tyler's sperm, wash them in the spin cycle, give them each a spritz of cologne and a tequila shot, and then load them into a turkey baster that would eventually be inserted into my waiting vagina. So this was how babies were made.

At the end of the letter he said, Fuck you, you heartless bitch, you rolled up my heart and squeezed it dry. Still, when I recalled him I would always see him waiting for me under the silver high school bleachers with a smile on his face and thirty-two perfect shining white teeth.

I would have preferred it if she'd slapped me across the face, and laughed at me, so I could hate her. I didn't want to be the good fairy in her story, scattering blessings on her hearth. Where did all those fairies come from, and how rich could they be in joy to spend their days flitting around to more-or-less deserving girls and bestowing wishes on them? The lonely old woman next door who died unlamented and left an empty house to rob, with a flock of chickens and a linen chest full of dresses to make over: that's the only kind of fairy godmother I believed in.

When I describe for my far-away friends the Northwest’s subtle shades of weather — from gloaming skies of ‘high-gray’ to ‘low-gray’ with violet streaks like the water’s delicate aura — they wonder if my brain and body have, indeed, become water-logged. Yet still, I find myself praising the solace and privacy of fine, silver drizzle, the comforting cloaks of salt, mold, moss, and fog, the secretive shelter of cedar and clouds. Whether it’s in the Florida Keys, along the rocky Maine coast, within the Gulf of Mexico’s warm curves, on the brave Outer Banks; or, for those who nestle near inland seas, such as the brine-steeped Great Salk Lake or the Midwest’s Great Lakes — water is alive and in relationship with those of us who are blessed with such a world-shaping, yet abiding, intimate ally. Every day I am moved by the double life of water — her power and her humility. But most of all, I am grateful for the partnership of this great body of inland sea. Living by water, I am never alone. Just as water has sculpted soil and canyon, it also molds my own living space, and every story I tell. …Living by water restores my sense of balance and natural rhythm — the ebb and flow of high tides and low tides, so like the rise and fall of everyday life. Wind, water, waves are not simply a backdrop to my life, they are steady companions. And that is the grace, the gift of inviting nature to live inside my home. Like a Chambered Nautilus I spin out my days, drifting and dreaming, nurtured by marine mists, like another bright shell on the beach, balancing on the back of a greater body.

I wanted to stand up and shout at them all that my wife not only wasn’t divinely beautiful, she wasn’t even interestingly ugly; her conversation consisted entirely of insults, dire warnings, and tedious lectures I couldn’t even ignore; and they were all extraordinary idiots for imagining I could possibly have had the bad taste to fall in love with a dull, prosing, long-faced harridan.

Make Believe When I wake up in the morning Not all is what it seems I drift through a world of make believe Between my real life and my dreams. Strange Adventures from the space book That I read the night before Crowd in upon on my drowsiness Through imagination's door. Between sleeping and waking The alarm clock's jangalang cry Becomes the roaring fire-railed rocket That hurls me through the sky. My bed's a silver spacecraft Which I pilot all alone Whisp'ring through endless stratospheres Towards planets still unknown. Outside through the mists of morning The spinning lights of cars In my make-believe space voyage Become eternities of stars. Is that my mother calling something That my dreams can't understand? Or can it be crackling instructions From far off Mission Command? Gareth Owen

I’m starting to spin out. I stare down and rifle through my oversized purse to find his painkillers, feeling a full-on freak-out like I’ve never had coming on. My hand wraps around something long and slender and I pull out . . . a carrot? My eyes water and panic rises, and I just toss it in the back seat. “Was that a carrot?” is the first thing Cade says to me since I told him I was pregnant with his baby.

In 1701, a braggadocian teenager named Johann Friedrich Böttger, ecstatic at the crowd he’d rallied with a few white lies, pulled out two silver coins for a magic show. After he waved his hands and performed chemical voodoo on them, the silver pieces “disappeared,” and a single gold piece materialized in their place. It was the most convincing display of alchemy the locals had ever seen. Böttger thought his reputation was set, and unfortunately it was. Rumors about Böttger inevitably reached the king of Poland, Augustus the Strong, who arrested the young alchemist and locked him, Rumpelstiltskin-like, in a castle to spin gold for the king’s realm. Obviously, Böttger couldn’t deliver on this demand, and after a few futile experiments, this harmless liar, still quite young, found himself a candidate for hanging.

Blake Drakharrow was beautiful in a way I didn't want to admit. In a way that made my blood simmer and my mind spin with confusion. How could someone so vile be so compelling? Blake suddenly stopped, his eyes flicking towards me before I could turn away. Our gazes locked and a slow smirk curled over his lips. My heart skipped a beat and for the first time I saw something in those pale, silver eyes. Awareness. Did he know the effect he was having on me?

As a child I had loved the legend of the cowherd and the spinning girl. They were so in love that they neglected their work and so the God of Heaven placed them in the sky as constellations, separated by the Silver River of Heaven—the Milky Way. Once a year, on the seventh evening of the seventh month, a flock of magpies, taking pity on the lovesick couple, fly to the sky and form a bridge so that they can meet. On this night all over China, women make offerings to these stars, hoping for love.

The alchemy that the ratings agencies performed was to spin uncertainty into what looked and felt like risk. They took highly novel securities, subject to an enormous amount of systematic uncertainty, and claimed the ability to quantify just how risky they were. Not only that, but of all possible conclusions, they came to the astounding one that these investments were almost risk-free. Too many investors mistook these confident conclusions for accurate ones, and too few made backup plans in case things went wrong.

I am sure you understand," Father began, looking past Violet at the wall, "that I cannot allow you back into my house after what you have done. I have arranged for you to be taken to a finishing school in Scotland. You will stay there for two years, and after that I will decide what is to be done with you." Violet heard Graham clear his throat. "No," she said, before her brother could open his mouth to speak. "That won't be acceptable, I'm afraid, Father." His jowls slackened with shock. He looked as if she had slapped him. "I beg your pardon?" "I won't be going to Scotland. In fact, I won't be going anywhere. I'm staying right here." As she spoke, Violet became aware of a strange simmering sensation, as though electricity was humming beneath her skin. Images flashed in her mind---a crow cutting through the air, wings glittered with snow; the spokes of a wheel spinning. Briefly, she closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling until she could almost see it, glinting gold inside her. "That is not for you to decide," said Father. The window was open, and a bee flitted about the room, wings a silver blur. It flew near Father's cheek and he jerked away from it. "It's been decided." She stood up straight, her dark eyes boring into Father's watery ones. He blinked. The bee hovered about his face, dancing away from his hands, and she saw sweat break out on his nose. Soon it was joined by another, and then another and another, until it seemed like Father---shouting and swearing---had been engulfed in a cloud of tawny, glistening bodies. "I think it would be best if you left now, Father," said Violet softly. "After all, as you said, I'm my mother's daughter.

Slowly I asked, “What did your father do with the six kopeks he borrowed?” So she told me. Knowing didn’t help much, of course. He was her father. He had the right to borrow money from someone who would lend it to him, and the right to spend it as stupidly as he wanted, and the right to put his daughter to work to pay off his debt, and the right to take any money she earned. If she didn’t want to marry, there was nothing she could do to be free of him. She didn’t say what she had been doing with the money, but she couldn’t have been doing anything with it, except piling it up like a dragon-hoard somewhere.

The Harlot’s House. We caught the tread of dancing feet, We loitered down the moonlit street, And stopped beneath the harlot’s house. Inside, above the din and fray, We heard the loud musicians play The ‘Treues Liebes Herz’ of Strauss. Like strange mechanical grotesques, Making fantastic arabesques, The shadows raced across the blind. We watched the ghostly dancers spin To sound of horn and violin, Like black leaves wheeling in the wind. Like wire-pulled automatons, Slim silhouetted skeletons Went sidling through the slow quadrille. They took each other by the hand, And danced a stately saraband; Their laughter echoed thin and shrill. Sometimes a clockwork puppet pressed A phantom lover to her breast, Sometimes they seemed to try to sing. Sometimes a horrible marionette Came out, and smoked its cigarette Upon the steps like a live thing. Then, turning to my love, I said, ‘The dead are dancing with the dead, The dust is whirling with the dust.’ But she—she heard the violin, And left my side, and entered in: Love passed into the house of lust. Then suddenly the tune went false, The dancers wearied of the waltz, The shadows ceased to wheel and whirl. And down the long and silent street, The dawn, with silver-sandalled feet, Crept like a frightened girl.

The Fairy Bride The fairy bride picked the lock And tiptoed through the summer wood She gave no mind to life behind Or shadows thrown by bad or good She gave no mind to wrong or right Or screeching call of owls at night She listened for the haunting cries That called her from her blushing bud Ferns unfurl a tickled fronds Laughing at her slightest brush Dewdrops glisten with green eyes Meadows sway with lightest hush A captive note arrests her breath Dreamers weave intricate maze Lithe and quick she shines the light Illuminating shadow glades She gives no mind to life and limb Or captor’s hiss from deep within Her purity will seize the thread Dangling loose from dreamer’s web She spins a silver spool of light To catch the rays of stars at night Now innocence can spread its wings Making haste for freedom flight She gives no mind to where they fly Or how tall grasses lift her high She clicks the lock and in she glides All nature hails the fairy bride

So . . . fuck you.” My finger pokes him in the center of his rock-hard chest. “And double fuck you for being jealous when you have no right. If I smell like him, you smell like bullshit.” I spin away, but Cade is faster. His hand shoots out and wraps around my arm, stopping me in my tracks. I jolt around to face him, my body drawing into his so naturally. “Keep talking like that and I’m going to fuck the filth right out of your pretty mouth.” I arch a brow at him as goose bumps break out over my body. The air between us sizzles. “Excuse me?” He swipes the back of his hand over his mouth, like he’s pulling away the filter that’s been there all along. “You heard me, Red. You keep barking at me like that and I’m going to put you on your knees, open those strawberry lips, and fuck your face just to shut you up.” My mind whirs. The man before me is not the same man I’ve been living with this past month. This is another version of him. A version he’s hidden. A version I can work with. A version I like.

T'here are no gods left to watch, I’m afraid. And there are no gods left to help you now, Aelin Galathynius.' Aelin smiled, and Goldryn burned brighter. 'I am a god.'” “You do not yield.” “Live, Manon. Live.” “And far away, across the snow-covered mountains, on a barren plain before the ruins of a once-great city, a flower began to bloom” “Aelin looked at Chaol and Dorian and sobbed. Opened her arms to them, and wept as they held each other. 'I love you both,' she whispered. 'And no matter what may happen, no matter how far we may be, that will never change.'” “Yet the songs would mention this—that the Lion fell before the western gate of Orynth, defending the city and his son.” “'We came,' Manon said, loud enough that all on the city walls could hear, 'to honor a promise made to Aelin Galathynius. To fight for what she promised us.' Darrow said quietly, 'And what was that?' Manon smiled then. 'A better world.'” “Her mother placed a phantom hand over Aelin’s heart.b'It is the strength of this that matters. No matter where you are, no matter how far, this will lead you home.'” “'Rise,' Darrow said, 'Aelin Ashryver Whitethorn Galathynius, Queen of Terrasen.'” “One blink for yes. Two for no. Three for Are you all right? Four for I am here, I am with you. Five for This is real, you are awake.” And she said to Abraxos, touching his spin, 'I love you.' It was the only thing that mattered in the end. The only thing that mattered now.” “Lord Lorcan Lochan?” Chaol and Yrene began bickering, laughing as they did, but Dorian strode to the edge of the aerie. Watched that white-haired rider and the wyvern with silver wings become distant as they sailed toward the horizon. Dorian smiled. And found himself, for the first time in a while, looking forward to tomorrow.” “'I took his name,' Erawan spat, writhing as the words flowed from his tongue under Damaris's power. 'I wiped it away from existence. Yet he only remembered it once. Only once. The first time He behelded you.' Tears slid down Dorian's face at the unbearable truth.” “Gavriel smiled at him. 'Close the gate, Aedion,' was all his father said. And then Gavriel stepped beyond the gates. That golden shield spreading thin.

As he deployed his forces, Newton imposed the same empirical rigor on his new job as he had with his pendulums and prisms. The Mint could not operate any faster than his men could spin their capstans, and every other step had to be timed to match the work of his presses. So Newton watched to “judge of the workmen’s diligence.” He saw how quickly the brutal effort needed to turn the press wore out its team. He observed just how nimble the man loading blanks and pulling finished coins from the press had to be to keep his fingers. Eventually, he identified the perfect pace: if the press thumped just slightly slower than the human heart, striking fifty to fifty-five times a minute, men and machines could stamp out coins for hours at a time. By autumn, Newton had the Mint’s output up to £100,000 every working week—a century ahead of Adam Smith, and more than double again before Henry Ford showed the world just how powerful time-and-motion rigor could be. Newton continued to drive his horses and men for the next two and a half years until the nation’s entire silver money supply had been remade. In all, under his command, the Mint recoined over £6 million—£6,722,970 0s. 2d., to be exact. As that last tuppence indicates, Newton, having spent the whole of his prior life as an essentially solitary thinker, proved to be a truly extraordinary administrator, bringing the effort home with accounts accurate to the penny and stunningly free of corruption.

Today Ramon defended the garbage bin by Plumpy’s back door, and I defended a shiny silver Mercedes because, according to Ramon, it represented the privileged white aristocracy of America trying to keep the Latino man down. “Our duel,” Ramon said, spinning his broom like a bo staff, “will represent the struggle our nation’s currently engaged in.” “Please, we both know you’re just going for home team advantage.” “You wound me, Sam. I can’t help it if your crackerlike oppression gives me the better playing field.” He did a quick hamstring stretch. “Suck it up.” “Fine,” I said, “then I get the handicap.” “Sam, you’re Texas. Texas always gets the handicap.” “I’m Team Texas again?” He grinned, rolled his shoulders, and wiggled his arms, loosening them. I gave up and nodded at the Mercedes. It looked old and expensive, especially in our parking lot. “Shiny.” Ramon snorted. “Classic. Check out the gullwing doors.” “Fine. Classic Shiny.” Ramon tossed an empty Plumpy’s cup into the Dumpster. “Sometimes, Sammy, I question your manhood.” “A car is to get you from place to place. That’s it.” Ramon shook his head at my ignorance. “Whatever. Just try not to dent the car, Team Mexico.” “It’s Team South America,” he said. “You do know that Mexico is in North America, right?” “Yeah, but I have the whole continent behind me.” He held up his fist dramatically. “They support their cousin to the north.” I laughed and he dropped his hand back down. “And it’s that guy’s own fault for parking in our lot so he could sneak over to Eddie Bauer or Starbucks or whatever.

My mother had a passion for all fruit except oranges, which she refused to allow in the house. She named each one of us, on a seeming whim, after a fruit and a recipe- Cassis, for her thick black-currant cake. Framboise, her raspberry liqueur, and Reinette after the reine-claude greengages that grew against the south wall of the house, thick as grapes, syrupy with wasps in midsummer. At one time we had over a hundred trees (apples, pears, plums, gages, cherries, quinces), not to mention the raspberry canes and the fields of strawberries, gooseberries, currants- the fruits of which were dried, stored, made into jams and liqueurs and wonderful cartwheel tarts on pâte brisée and crème pâtissière and almond paste. My memories are flavored with their scents, their colors, their names. My mother tended them as if they were her favorite children. Smudge pots against the frost, which we base every spring. And in summer, to keep the birds away, we would tie shapes cut out of silver paper onto the ends of the branches that would shiver and flick-flack in the wind, moose blowers of string drawn tightly across empty tin cans to make eerie bird-frightening sounds, windmills of colored paper that would spin wildly, so that the orchard was a carnival of baubles and shining ribbons and shrieking wires, like a Christmas party in midsummer. And the trees all had names. Belle Yvonne, my mother would say as she passed a gnarled pear tree. Rose d'Aquitane. Beurre du Roe Henry. Her voice at these times was soft, almost monotone. I could not tell whether she was speaking to me or to herself. Conference. Williams. Ghislane de Penthièvre. This sweetness.

He closes his eyes. What does God see? Cromwell in the fifty-fourth year of his age, in all his weight and gravitas, his bulk wrapped in wool and fur? Or a mere flicker, an illusion, a spark beneath a shoe, a spit in the ocean, a feather in a desert, a wisp, a phantom, a needle in a haystack? If Henry is the mirror, he is the pale actor who sheds no lustre of his own, but spins in a reflected light. If the light moves he is gone. When I was in Italy, he thinks, I saw Virgins painted on every wall, I saw in every fresco the sponged blood-colour of Christ's robe. I saw the sinuous tempter that winds from a branch, and Adam's face as he was tempted. I saw that the serpent was a woman, and about her face were curls of silver-gilt; I saw her writhe about the green bough, saw it sway under her coils. I saw the lamentation of Heaven over Christ crucified, angels flying and crying at the same time. I saw torturers nimble as dancers hurling stones at St Stephen, and I saw the martyr's bored face as he waited for death. I saw a dead child cast in bronze, standing over its own corpse: and all these pictures, images, I took into myself, as some kind of prophecy or sign. But I have known men and women, better than me and closer to grace, who have meditated on every splinter of the cross, till they forget who and what they are, and observe the Saviour's blood, running in the soaked fibres of the wood. Till they believe themselves no longer captive to misfortune nor crime, nor in thrall to a useless sacrifice in an alien land. Till they see Christ's cross is the tree of life, and the truth breaks inside them, and they are saved. He sands his paper. Puts down his pen. I believe, but I do not believe enough. I said to Lambert, my prayers are with you, but in the end I only prayed for myself, that I might not suffer the same death.

Oh, ’ello, ’Arry,” said Mundungus Fletcher, with a most unconvincing stab at airiness. “Well, don’t let me keep ya.” And he began scrabbling on the ground to retrieve the contents of his suitcase with every appearance of a man eager to be gone. “Are you selling this stuff?” asked Harry, watching Mundungus grab an assortment of grubby-looking objects from the ground. “Oh, well, gotta scrape a living,” said Mundungus. “Gimme that!” Ron had stooped down and picked up something silver. “Hang on,” Ron said slowly. “This looks familiar —” “Thank you!” said Mundungus, snatching the goblet out of Ron’s hand and stuffing it back into the case. “Well, I’ll see you all — OUCH!” Harry had pinned Mundungus against the wall of the pub by the throat. Holding him fast with one hand, he pulled out his wand. “Harry!” squealed Hermione. “You took that from Sirius’s house,” said Harry, who was almost nose to nose with Mundungus and was breathing in an unpleasant smell of old tobacco and spirits. “That had the Black family crest on it.” “I — no — what — ?” spluttered Mundungus, who was slowly turning purple. “What did you do, go back the night he died and strip the place?” snarled Harry. “I — no —” “Give it to me!” “Harry, you mustn’t!” shrieked Hermione, as Mundungus started to turn blue. There was a bang, and Harry felt his hands fly off Mundungus’s throat. Gasping and spluttering, Mundungus seized his fallen case, then — CRACK — he Disapparated. Harry swore at the top of his voice, spinning on the spot to see where Mundungus had gone. “COME BACK, YOU THIEVING — !” “There’s no point, Harry.” Tonks had appeared out of nowhere, her mousy hair wet with sleet. “Mundungus will probably be in London by now. There’s no point yelling.” “He’s nicked Sirius’s stuff! Nicked it!” “Yes, but still,” said Tonks, who seemed perfectly untroubled by this piece of information. “You should get out of the cold.” She watched them go through the door of the Three Broomsticks. The moment he was inside, Harry burst out, “He was nicking Sirius’s stuff!” “I know, Harry, but please don’t shout, people are staring,” whispered Hermione.

She flailed in spinning darkness. Up and down blurred and warped, and she was drowning- Spindly hands slammed into her chest, one wrapping around her throat as her back hit something soft and silty. The bottom. No, she wouldn't end like this, helpless as she'd been that day against the Cauldron- Lips and teeth collided with her mouth, and she screamed as the kelpie kissed her. His black tongue shoved into her mouth, tasting of foul meat. For a heartbeat, she wasn't beneath the water, but against a woodpile in the human lands, Tomas's hard mouth crashing into hers, his hands pawing at her- Nesta struggled to pull her head away, to free her mouth, but air filled her lungs. As if the kelpie had breathed into her. As if he wanted her alive a little longer, to prolong her pain. The kelpie withdrew, and Nesta had enough sense to shut her aching, brutalised mouth, to trap in that breath he had given her. To not question how such a thing was even possible. The kelpie's hands ripped at her body, tearing away every weapon with unerring aim, as if he did not need to see in this darkness, as if those large black eyes could pick up any trickle of light like some deep-sea creature. Her entire body went stiff and unmoving, each brutal touch entitled and furious and delighting in her fear. When he had disarmed her, her lungs were burning again, and she felt that thin male body pushing her into the bottom once more as he shoved his mouth to hers. She gagged, but opened for him, letting him fill her mouth with another life-giving breath that had nothing to do with kindness. His tongue wriggled like a worm against hers, and his spindly, too-large hands ran down her breasts, her waist, and when she gagged again, fighting against her sob, his laugh puffed through her lips. He pulled away, rows of teeth ripping at her mouth as he did, and she shook when he lingered, stroking at her hair. His little prize- that was what the touch said. How he would make her suffer and beg before the end. She had escaped the monsters of the human realm only to find the same ones above the wall. Had escaped from Tomas only to wind up here, raging as she had then.

I don’t know how much time passed while we danced, spinning power between us like it was just another game. He tossed the ball of ice my way and I shattered it. “What were you thinking when you broke that?” he asked. Even though I saw him across the room, I could feel his voice at my ear, low and burning. “You.” He laughed and continued to conjure things out of the air and throw them to me. Amar’s movements were graceful, spinning. All his power seemed concentrated and sinewy as the muscle that corded his arms and shoulders. Mine felt strange. Lumbering. But instinctual all the same. I’d never felt this way before, as if there was an unexplored dimension in my body full of silver light, ready to be devastating. The power in my veins terrified me. Not just because I knew it was real, but because I wanted it. I reveled in it even as I glared at Amar across the room. He must have known because he grinned each time we sparred. He flung a chakra of flames in my direction and I turned it to a great wave of water to rush at him. Without blinking, he flattened the whole wave to a plane of ice and slid forward, graceful and serpentine. “You enjoy it, don’t you?” “You know the answer.” “I want to hear it from your lips.” “We don’t always get what we want,” I said. “Tell me, this ability of mine was not something the moon prevented you from revealing, was it?” This time, he had the grace to look guilty. “No. But such things need a foundation before they can be known. I thought it was best for you. It was a protective measure too. Untested power is a dangerous thing.” Another flash of fury shot through me. I thought it was best for you. The light in our room clung to him in silver wisps. Amar pushed his hands through the curls of his hair and in that moment, he looked so…lost. In spite of myself, I wanted to ease that pain from his face. To make him smile. I was weak before him. “This is why you couldn’t move the thread,” he said. “You need to believe in it. Believe in you.” Amar twisted his fingers and the silk of my sari changed…from yellow to deepest blue, flecked with stars. “My star-touched queen,” he said softly, as if he was remembering something from long ago. “I would break the world to give you what you want.” I touched my sari and the stars faded. “I want you to leave,” I said, not looking at him. When I looked up, he was gone.

Blessed Man” is a tribute to Updike’s tenacious maternal grandmother, Katherine Hoyer, who died in 1955. Inspired by an heirloom, a silver thimble engraved with her initials, a keepsake Katherine gave to John and Mary as a wedding present (their best present, he told his mother), the story is an explicit attempt to bring her back to life (“O Lord, bless these poor paragraphs, that would do in their vile ignorance Your work of resurrection”), and a meditation on the extent to which it’s possible to recapture experience and preserve it through writing. The death of his grandparents diminished his family by two fifths and deprived him of a treasured part of his past, the sheltered years of his youth and childhood. Could he make his grandmother live again on the page? It’s certainly one of his finest prose portraits, tender, clear-eyed, wonderfully vivid. At one point the narrator remembers how, as a high-spirited teenager, he would scoop up his tiny grandmother, “lift her like a child, crooking one arm under her knees and cupping the other behind her back. Exultant in my height, my strength, I would lift that frail brittle body weighing perhaps a hundred pounds and twirl with it in my arms while the rest of the family watched with startled smiles of alarm.” When he adds, “I was giving my past a dance,” we hear the voice of John Updike exulting in his strength. Katherine takes center stage only after an account of the dramatic day of her husband’s death. John Hoyer died a few months after John and Mary were married, on the day both the newlyweds and Mary’s parents were due to arrive in Plowville. From this unfortunate coincidence, the Updike family managed to spin a pair of short stories. Six months before he wrote “Blessed Man,” Updike’s mother had her first story accepted by The New Yorker. For years her son had been doing his filial best to help get her work published—with no success. In college he sent out the manuscript of her novel about Ponce de León to the major Boston publishers, and when he landed at The New Yorker he made sure her stories were read by editors instead of languishing in the slush pile. These efforts finally bore fruit when an editor at the magazine named Rachel MacKenzie championed “Translation,” a portentous family saga featuring Linda’s version of her father’s demise. Maxwell assured Updike that his colleagues all thought his mother “immensely gifted”; if that sounds like tactful exaggeration, Maxwell’s idea that he could detect “the same quality of mind running through” mother and son is curious to say the least. Published in The New Yorker on March 11, 1961, “Translation” was signed Linda Grace Hoyer and narrated by a character named Linda—but it wasn’t likely to be mistaken for a memoir. The story is overstuffed with biblical allusion, psychodrama, and magical thinking, most of it Linda’s. She believes that her ninety-year-old father plans to be translated directly to heaven, ascending like Elijah in a whirlwind, with chariots of fire, and to pass his mantle to a new generation, again like Elijah. It’s not clear whether this grand design is his obsession, as she claims, or hers. As it happens, the whirlwind is only a tussle with his wife that lands the old folks on the floor beside the bed. Linda finds them there and says, “Of all things. . . . What are you two doing?” Her father answers, his voice “matter-of-fact and conversational”: “We are sitting on the floor.” Having spoken these words, he dies. Linda’s son Eric (a writer, of course) arrives on the scene almost immediately. When she tells him, “Grampy died,” he replies, “I know, Mother, I know. It happened as we turned off the turnpike. I felt

could only buy it by giving in sooner, giving in all the time; like Scheherazade, humbly asking my murderous husband to go on sparing me night after night. And

But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thinf at once, I would do nothing forever.

Don’t spin your wheels chasing after something that is not meant to be. There is something else better that is just around the corner, and it’s got your name on it in ALL CAPS!

Ethanol plus carbon dioxide was like a demon spawn pounding against the frontal lobes of my head from the previous night at the bar. Somewhere in the city there was a church bell ringing, and—oh, not a bell. That was my phone. My head pounded and I felt dizzy, like I was spinning in circles on a Tilt-A-Whirl ride. Slowly, I opened an eye to try and find my cell phone. I groaned as I reached for the blue- and-silver-plated device on my nightstand. The spins from alcohol sucked.

A robber who steals a knife and cuts himself cannot cry out against the woman who kept it sharp.” He

There are men who are wolves inside, and want to eat up other people to fill their bellies.

The mist swirled and Lanthys drawled, “Such exquisite music it makes. What wonder it spins. Everything pays fealty to that Harp: seasons, kingdoms, the order of time and worlds. These are of no consequence to it. And its last string …” He laughed. “Even Death bows to that string.

Beau nods and says a terse, “Okay,” before spinning on his heel and giving me his back, looking every bit the military man he is. Head held high, shoulders perfectly straight. Like he’s some sort of knight in shining armor. One who starts pulling up a stool every Sunday through Tuesday to drink chamomile tea until midnight, so I don’t have to close by myself.

Beyond these, illuminated by past summers, one summer remained that stayed the sun long into the night after you had watched the others; others with their fathers knee-deep, belly-button unconcerned, roly-poly mothers stretching out of the sea. Whiter than starch hands on bat and ball, you failed to catch. Tents, buckets, spades; others that went on digging barricades. You castle-bound, spying on princesses, honey-gold, singing against the blue, if touched surely their skin would ooze? Aware of own smell, skin-texture, sun in eyes, lips, toes, the softness underneath, in between, wondering what miracle made you, the sky, the sea. Conscious of sound, gulls hovering, crying, or silent at rarer intervals, their swift turns before being swallowed by the waves. Then no sound, all suddenly would be soundless, treading softly, dividing rocks with fins, and sword-fish fingers plucking away clothes, that were left with your anatomy, huddled like ruffled birds waiting. A chrysalis heart formed on the water’s surface, away from the hard-polished pebbles, sand-blowing and elongated shadows. Away, faster than air itself, dragon-whirled. Be given to, the sliding of water, to forget, be forgotten; premature thoughts—predetermined action. In a moment fixed between one wave and the next, the outline of what might be ahead. On your back, staring into space, becoming part of the sky, a speckled bird’s breast that opened up at the slightest notion on your part. But the hands, remember the hands that pulled your legs, that doubled you up, and dragged you down? Surprised at non-resistance. Voices that called, creating confusion. Cells tighter than shells, you spinning into spirals, quick-silver, thrashing the water, making stars scatter. Narcissus above, staring at a shadow-bat spreading out, finally disappearing into the very centre of the ocean. They were always there waiting by the edge, behind them the cliffs extended. Your head disembodied, bouncing above the separate force of arms and legs, rhythmical, the glorious sensation of weightlessness, moon-controlled, and far below your heart went on exploring, no matter how many years came between, nor how many people were thrust into focus. That had surely been the beginning, the separating of yourself from the world that no longer revolved round you, the awareness of becoming part of, merging into something else, no longer dependent upon anyone, a freedom that found its own reality, half of you the constant guardian, watching your actions, your responses, what you accepted, what you might reject.

Later, I sat down drunk on the corner of Carondelet and Canal Streets, listening for the rumble of the streetcar that would take me back uptown to my apartment, watching the evening sun bleed from the streets, the city shifting into night, when it truly became New Orleans: the music, the constant festival, the smell of late evening dinners pouring out, layering the beer-soaked streets, prostitutes, clubs with DJs, rowdy gay bars, dirty strip clubs, the insane out for a walk, college students vomiting in trash cans, daiquiri bars lit up like supermarkets, washing-machine-sized mixers built into the wall spinning every color of daiquiri, lone trumpet players, grown women crying, clawing at men in suits, portrait painters, spangers (spare change beggars), gutter punks with dogs, kids tap-dancing with spinning bike wheels on their heads, the golden cowboy frozen on a milk crate, his golden gun pointed at a child in the crowd, fortune-tellers, psycho preachers, mumblers, fighters, rock-faced college boys out for a date rape, club chicks wearing silver miniskirts, horse-drawn carriages, plastic cups piling against the high curbs of Bourbon Street, jazz music pressing up against rock-and-roll cover bands, murderers, scam artists, hippies selling anything, magic shows and people on unicycles, flying cockroaches the size of pocket rockets, rats without fear, men in drag, business execs wandering drunk in packs, deciding not to tell their wives, sluts sucking dick on open balconies, cops on horseback looking down blouses, cars wading across the river of drunks on Bourbon Street, the people screaming at them, pouring drinks on the hood, putting their asses to the window, whole bars of people laughing, shot girls with test tubes of neon-colored booze, bouncers dragging skinny white boys out by their necks, college girls rubbing each other’s backs after vomiting tequila, T-shirts, drinks sold in a green two-foot tube with a small souvenir grenade in the bottom, people stumbling, tripping, falling, laughing on the sidewalk in the filth, laughing too hard to stand back up, thin rivers of piss leaking out from corners, brides with dirty dresses, men in G-strings, mangy dogs, balloon animals, camcorders, twenty-four-hour 3-4-1, free admission, amateur night, black-eyed strippers, drunk bicyclers, clouds of termites like brown mist surrounding streetlamps, ventriloquists, bikers, people sitting on mailboxes, coffee with chicory, soul singers, the shoeless, the drunks, the blissful, the ignorant, the beaten, the assholes, the cheaters, the douche bags, the comedians, the holy, the broken, the affluent, the beggars, the forgotten, and the soft spring air pregnant with every scent created by such a town.

Here I had no idea what I was even meant to do, and if I didn't like it, still, I wanted to neglect my duties deliberately, and not just because I was a stupid girl who didn't know what they were.

high magic: magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.

Lying in state now in an exhibit case at London’s National Maritime Museum, H-4 draws millions of visitors a year. Most tourists approach the Watch after having passed the cases containing H-1, H-2, and H-3. Adults and youngsters alike stand mesmerized before the big sea clocks. They move their heads to follow the swinging balances, which rock like metronomes on H-1 and H-2. They breathe in time to the regular rhythm of the ticking, and they gasp when startled by the sudden, sporadic spinning of the single-blade fan that protrudes from the bottom of H-2. But H-4 stops them cold. It purports to be the end of some orderly progression of thought and effort, yet it constitutes a complete non sequitur. What’s more, it holds still, in stark contrast to the whirring of the going clocks. Not only are its mechanisms hidden by the silver case enclosure, but the hands are frozen in time. Even the second hand lies motionless. H-4 does not run. It could run, if curators would allow it to, but they demur, on the grounds that H-4 enjoys something of the status of a sacred relic or a priceless work of art that must be preserved for posterity. To run it would be to ruin it.

Hay hombres que son lobos por dentro, que quieren devorar a otros por dentro para llenarse la barriga. Eso fue lo que tuviste contigo en tu casa, toda tu vida.

I promise I’ll never hate you.” I drag my lips over her cheek, my teeth back down along her jaw. “You can’t know that,” she whispers, a sharp intake of breath hissing from between her lips as I spin her and face us toward the mirror. Forcing her to look at us. My hands trail over the silk, tracing every curve, thumbs detouring down into that little dip beneath her hips. “I can. I’ll be too busy loving you.

coruscating

I’m going to be the only one to do this to you, Bailey. Mark my words.” My head spins. He’s so fucking sure. I don’t know what to make of his confidence. How to cope with it. In my world, nothing lasts forever, and love isn’t even on the table.

The memory of the story the way they’d told it in the village square so many times, about a girl who made herself a queen with someone else’s gold, and never paid her debts.

Was a lesson to everyone that being a witch was not the same thing as being wise.

Spend one and save one; you remember the wise man’s rule,

Think on it with a clear head. Lords and kings often don’t ask for what they want, but they can afford to have bad manners.

And I was so tired of being afraid all the time. It felt like I had been afraid and afraid without stopping forever.

Better to make no bargain than a bad one, and be thought of forever as an easy mark.

No one had cared what I wanted, or whether I was happy. I’d had to find my own way to anything I wanted. I’d never been grateful for that before now, when what I wanted was my life.

Their law didn’t seem to allow for mistakes, and if you couldn’t make what you said true, they’d repair the fault in the world by putting you out of it.

I knew that no matter what there would be no mercy to it, no kindness allowed. You couldn’t return a kindness after you were dead.

I’m not a fool, to take gifts from monsters. Where do you think its power comes from? Nothing like that comes without a price.

I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to kill; I didn’t want to go to death a murderer with bloody hands. I wanted that more than I didn’t want to be a liar. But he was going to die anyway, die worse, and they would all die with him. There were a thousand ways to die, and not all of them were equally as bad.

Adevouring thing that would gulp down lives with pleasure and would only pretend to care about law or justice, unless you had some greater power behind you that it couldn’t find a way to cheat or break, and that would never, never be satisfied.

Brian took her hand a final time, then turned and walked away. Lise sat at the table a while longer. The cooling air from the patio was pleasant. The stars were coming out. Mahmud poured coffee from a silver carafe. What we cannot remember, we must rediscover. “I’m sorry—did you say something?” “I said, it’s getting dark.” Mahmud smiled. “It’s these sunsets. Seems like they go on forever.

He stands behind me, gathering our towels, while I sit in the draining tub, watching the water swirl in a cyclone. A perfect reflection of how I’m currently feeling inside. Shaken up. Spinning. Thoroughly not myself and yet, more myself than I’ve ever felt.

I was torn into a swirling mass of uncontrollable visions, stretching out way into the future, then tomorrow, next week, a month, a year. It was a blur of everything and a thousand paths which had the potential to be followed, some of it more set in stone than others, the uncontrollable haze of fates making my mind spin wildly. I worked to focus and saw a huge stone throne made of snarling Hydra heads on long necks, all winding together into a monstrous being that almost looked alive. Blood coloured it red and in flashes I saw Fae after Fae sitting on it from the Savage King himself to each of the Councillor’s Heirs as grown men, to Lionel Acrux, to two twin girls with deep green eyes, their hands clasped in one another’s. Then the throne split apart, cut in two and crumbling to pieces as the vision shifted, making my gut clench and my heart race. Orion was older, fighting enemies I couldn’t see with a silver blade in his hand and Darius Acrux flew over him in his golden Dragon form. I saw the twins once more, bullied and broken by the Heirs. I felt their pain. I heard them suffering and saw their worlds fall to ruin before suddenly they were rising up in a roaring tower of flames which blinded me. I tried to focus, grasping onto my gifts and forcing them in the direction I wanted to go as the future kept spanning out in too many directions. I saw the world falling to ruin and death and destruction sweeping through the kingdom like a plague. I felt loss and heartache and I couldn’t tell if it was mine or the twins’, Orion’s, Darius’s, Lionel’s, or the whole world’s.

Okay, on three,” West’s voice booms from beside me, startling me. They all push their hands into the middle of the circle, and I awkwardly do the same when West gives me another nudge. “Three! Two! One!” Their sugary, little voices all shouting together makes a very real smile crack out over my face. “Sparkly Turquoise Unicorns!” is their final shout before the girls spin and take off to their spots, some on the field and others on the sidelines. Emmy front and center. I tilt my head in West’s direction. “Sparkly Turquoise Unicorns?” “Yes, ma’am. That’s us,” he responds as he crosses his arms and tips his chin out toward the field.

I was still deep underwater, a fish in a school, indistinguishable. But then suddenly the flow was checked.

looked around us down his nose with the faint disdain of borrowed superiority.

Perhaps it would only make sense to me that any changes you made in me would be useful to me!” “You will be pretty! And interesting to other dragons. And that is enough for any Elderling, let alone a human!” “Perhaps ‘pretty’ wings are enough for you, but if I must bear their weight and the inconvenience of having something growing out of my backbone, perhaps they should be useful. I have never understood why you don’t even try to use your wings. I see the other dragons stretching and working theirs. I’ve seen the silver almost lift himself from the water with his, and he began with a much more ungainly body and smaller wings than yours! You don’t try! I groom your wings and keep them clean. They’ve grown larger and stronger and you could try, but you don’t. All you do is tell me how lovely they are. And lovely they may be, but have you never considered trying to use them for what they are intended?” She could see the dragon’s fury build. She’d dared to criticize her, and Sintara could not tolerate even the implication that she was lazy or self-pitying or perhaps even just a bit…”Stupid.” Thymara said the word aloud. She had no idea what prompted her to do it. Perhaps simply to show Sintara that she’d gone too far and that her keeper would no longer be terrorized by her. How dare she put wings on her back when she could not even master the ones that had naturally on her own? The murmur of voices from the barge was growing louder. Thymara refused to even glance in that direction. She stood, her shirt clutched over her breasts, and faces the furiously spinning eyes of her dragon. Sintara was magnificent in her wrath. She lifted her head and opened her jaws wide, displaying the brightly colored poison sacs in her throat. She opened her wings wide, a reflexive display of size that the dragons often used in an attempt to remind one another of their relative sizes and strengths, and they spread like a magnificent stained-glass panels unfolding. For a moment, Thymara was dizzied by her glory and her glamour. She nearly fell to her knees before her dragon. Then she took a grip on herself and stood up to the blast of pure charisma that Sintara was radiating at her. “Yes. They are beautiful!” she shouted. “Beautiful and useless! As you are beautiful and useless!” A shudder passed over Thymara. She felt suddenly queasy and then realized what she had done. In a bizarre reaction to Sintara’s display, Thymara had spread her own wings. There were shouts of amazement from the keepers on the boat. Sintara was drawing breath. Her jaws were still wide, and Thymara stood rooted before her, watching her poison sacs swell. If the dragon chose to breathe venom on her, there would be no escape. She stood her ground, frozen with terror and fury. “Sintara!” The bellow came from Mercor. “Close your jaws and fold your wings! Do not harm your keeper for speaking truth to you!” “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Spit was trumpeting joyously. “Quiet, pest!” Ranculos roared at him. “Do not spray here! The drift will burn me! Blast your own keeper if you wish, Sintara, but spray me and I swear I will burn your wings as full of holes as rotting canvas!” This from small green Fente. The dragon reared onto her hind legs and spread her own wings in challenge. “Stop this madness!” Mercor bellowed again. “Sintara hurt not your keeper!” “She is mine, and I’ll do as I wish!” Sintara’s trumpet was a shrill whistle of anger. Despite herself, Thymara clapped her hands over her ears. Terror made her reckless. “I don’t care what you do to me! Look at what you’ve already done! You want to kill me? Go ahead, you stupid lizard. Someone else can clear the sucking insects from your eyes, take the leeches off your useless, beautiful wings. Go ahead, kill me!

There once was a girl of the Moth Folk, dark-winged, strong, and fearless. Her eyes were like the starlit sky; her footfall soft as shadow. And although she was lovely, love had no place in her heart, for hers was the tribe of the Moth King, who had waged a war on love, for ever and ever. But love, like all forbidden things, was fascinating to her. Every night of the clear full moon, she would go to the Moonlight Market and watch the traders sell their wares: printed books of every kind; pomegranates of the south; wines from the islands; gems from the north; flowers that bloomed only once in their lives. But she only had eyes for the sellers of charms and glamours. Here, there were spells for a broken heart, or to spin dead leaves into gold, or to rekindle a memory, or to summon the western wind. Most of all, there were love spells: tiny bottles of colored glass with stoppers worked in silver filled with potions made from the heart of a rose, or the tail fin of a mermaid. Here were glamours to melt a lover's heart: candles of every color; tokens of remembrance; silk-bound books of poetry. But among all the love-knots and bonbons and pressed flowers and handkerchiefs, the Moth girl never truly saw the nature of her enemy, for it seemed to her that Love was weak, and simpering, and faithless. She told herself she was too strong to fall for its blandishments. Until one day, at the Market, she saw a boy with a glamorie-glass in his hand, standing by a display of books, and stories, and legends, and memories.

lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.

I wanted to ease the moment past. The temptation was familiar: to go along, to make myself small enough to slip past a looming danger.

If you’re lucky enough to catch a goose that lays golden eggs,” I bit out, glaring up at the king, “and you’d like them delivered on a regular basis, you’d better see it tended to its satisfaction, if you have any sense: have you?

The court stared at me yearningly as I came into the church, as though I carried all the stars in the world at my throat and on my brow, but the fairy silver might have been brass as far as my bridegroom cared or noticed it. For all his insistence on speed, he said his vows as if they bored him, and afterwards he dropped my hand as quickly as if it were made of coals. I could only guess he found it delightful to have a chance of marrying for spite, a girl who didn’t want him, when all the maidens of the kingdom sighed at him and would have cut off their own toes to be his wife.

I loved nothing about the town or any of them, even now when it was at least familiar ground. I wasn’t sorry they didn’t like me, I wasn’t sorry I had been hard to them. I was glad, fiercely glad. They had wanted me to bury my mother and leave my father behind to die alone. They had wanted me to go be a beggar in my grandfather’s house, and live the rest of my days a quiet mouse in the kitchen. They would have devoured my family and picked their teeth with the bones, and never been sorry at all. Better to be turned to ice by the Staryk, who didn’t pretend to be a neighbor.

I was short and bony and sallow, and my nose was humped in the middle and too big for my face. In fact I wasn’t married yet on purpose: my grandfather had told me judiciously to wait another two years to go to the matchmaker, so I would grow a bit fatter, and meanwhile my dowry would plump up alongside me, to help bring me a husband with the good sense to want a wife who brought more to the marriage than beauty, but not so greedy he didn’t care for her appearance at all. That was the kind of man for me, a clear-eyed sensible man who could want me honestly;

I wasn’t jealous over him, but over what he’d made me feel, that stirring that should have belonged to a man I would have let touch me; a man who would have wanted to touch me, who could really be my husband. I wanted that shiver along my leg to be a gift I’d never expected; I wanted to be able to look at him in his bath and blush and be glad for it. And instead I had to deliberately look away, because if I had my way, tonight I’d throw him down into a pit with a Staryk king, and bury them both, and marry myself off to a brutish man as old as my father.

she’d told me of it all over again comfortingly, as something to be endured: not too bad, it’s only a few minutes, it won’t hurt much, and only the first time. I had been too old to be comforted so, however. I understood that she was lying, without knowing exactly how she was lying; perhaps it would hurt every time and perhaps it would hurt a great deal and perhaps it would go on for ages—a wide array of unpleasant possibilities.

What I mean—what we mean by it is—it’s like credit,” I said, suddenly thinking of my grandfather. “Gifts, and thanks—we’ll accept from someone what they can give then, and make return to them when it’s wanted, if we can. And there are some cheats, and some debts aren’t paid, but others are paid with interest to make up for it, and we can all do the more for not having to pay as we go. So I do thank you,” I added abruptly, “because you risked all you had to help me, and even if you count the return fair, I’ll still remember the chance you took and be glad to do more for you if I can.

My life has been a sequence of monsters one after another tossing me about to suit their whims; I’ve got a finely tuned sense for when another round of buffeting has arrived.

It got louder and louder and then music started playing. It was loud music and people were dancing to it. I felt it in my feet not just in my ears. I sat on the bed and covered my ears and I still felt it coming up all the way through the house. It kept going on and on. It was all the way dark outside and I was really afraid now because why would Wanda and Sergey stay down in all that noise unless something bad made them. I had my face pressed up against my knees and my arms over my head, and then there was a knock on the door. I didn’t say to come in because I would have to take my arms from over my head,

I was too busy dancing to be scared or cold. I didn’t know how to dance or how to sing the song but that didn’t matter because everyone else in the circle was helping me, and pulling me along, and what mattered was that we had decided to be there.

this a beginning... a new beginning for all who are tired of the tick tock world of illusion and hierarchical ordering.

this is what I know as truth...my truth, yes...my version...yes. Somewhere in the depths of your unconscious, if I can move you...stir you just to look a little...then there may be a few of you who will awaken and remember...remember the role you chose to play in the changes afoot on the planet today which through your thoughts and dreams must now manifest.

I was so connected to nature it hurt...a butterfly with a broken wing and no hope of repair...a squashed beetle, not quite dead...anything

She knelt and began gathering up the dirty cups, plates, and silverware she’d dropped with the tray. The movements of her hands were quick and jerky, but she went still when she saw a pair of scuffed black boots come to a stop directly in front of her, and her temper swelled anew. These rascals had been harassing her with their exuberant mischief all morning, and she was through turning the other cheek. She rose slowly to her feet and sighed as she felt the pins in her once-tidy hair give way, sending the silver-gold tresses tumbling down over her shoulders. Crows of amusement rose all around her as she set her hands on her hips and raised her chin. The eyes that gazed down at her were just the color of maple sugar and shadowed by the brim of a dusty blue field hat banded in gold braid. A gloved hand reached up to remove the hat, revealing a thatch of golden-brown hair. “On behalf of the United States Army, ma’am,” a deep voice said with barely contained amusement, “I’d like to apologize for these men.” Lily reminded herself that the soldiers from nearby Fort Deveraux kept the hotel dining room in business, and that without them she wouldn’t have a job. Nevertheless, she was near the end of her patience. “They would seem to be boys,” she answered pointedly, “rather than men.” The barb brought a chorus of howls, whistles, and cries of mock despair. The man looking down at Lily—a major, judging by his insignia—grinned rather insolently, showing teeth as white as the keys on a new piano. “They’ve been on patrol for two weeks, ma’am,” he explained with elaborate cordiality, apparently choosing to ignore her comment on their collective bad manners. Something about the curve of his lips made Lily feel as though the room had done a half spin. She reached out to steady herself by gripping the back of a chair. “I fail to see how that gives them the right to behave like circus gorillas.” The major’s grin intensified, half blinding Lily. “Of course, you’re right,” he said. Every word that came out of his mouth was congenial. So why did she feel that he was making fun of her? Lily found herself looking at the button-down panel on the front of his shirt and wondering about the chest beneath it. Was it as broad and muscled as it appeared, covered in a downy mass of maple hair? With a toss of her head she shook off the unwelcome thought and knelt to finish gathering the crockery.

Laughter! I remember laughter. I did laughter a lot, he thought. These colours spinning around them are matching their mirth, changing from moment to moment, flaring out as they run and throw and catch. There are silver joy-waves rippling about them

I’d done it for myself, and for my parents, and for these people: for my grandfather, for Basia, for my second cousin Ilena coming down the stairs and kissing us on our cheeks before she climbed into the waiting cart to set off for her own home in another narrow village where she lived with seven other houses around hers and every village around them hating them all. I’d done it for the men and women going by in the street in front of my grandfather’s house. Lithvas didn’t mean home to me; it was just the water we lived beside, my people huddled together on the riverbanks, and sometimes the wave came rolling up the slope and dragged some of us down into the depths for the fish to devour. I didn’t have a country to do it for. I only had people, so what about those people: what about Flek, and Tsop, and Shofer, whose lives I’d bound to mine, and a little girl I’d given a Jewish name like a gift, before I’d gone away to destroy her home?

Baruch ata adonai, eloheinu melech haolam, shelo hasair b’olamo kloom, ubara bo briyot tovot v’ilanot tovot, leihanot bahem b’nai adam,

These thoughts make me feel dizzy, as if I'm spinning out of control.

A crowd of women around me doing the ocean of women’s work that never subsided and never changed and always swallowed whatever time you gave it and wanted more, another hungry body of water.

I submerged into it like a ritual bath and let it close over my head gladly. I wanted to stop my ears and my eyes and my mouth with it.

He made her give him gold just to live, as if she belonged to him because he was strong enough to kill her. My father was strong enough to kill me but that did not mean I belonged to him. He sold me for six kopeks, for three pigs, for a jug of krupnik.

but the rest, I suspected, was the subtler magic of contrast; I didn’t imagine Mirnatius showed much courtesy to his servants. “Matas and Vladas,” I repeated. “Thank you for your care of my old nanushka, and now let us go inside: you must have a drink of hot krupnik in the kitchen after your long trip.

I walked slowly back to the baker, to give him a worn penny in return for a coarse half-burned loaf that hadn’t been the loaf I’d made at all. He’d given a good loaf to one of his other customers, and kept a ruined one for us.

I wasn’t sorry they didn’t like me, I wasn’t sorry I had been hard to them. I was glad, fiercely glad. They had wanted me to bury my mother and leave my father behind to die alone. They had wanted me to go be a beggar in my grandfather’s house, and live the rest of my days a quiet mouse in the kitchen. They would have devoured my family and picked their teeth with the bones, and never been sorry at all. Better

Yesterday,’ she said, referring to the collective past of her tribe, ‘the people of these forests knew the secret. They made the finest silk thread from the cocoon of a beautiful sleeping butterfly. The women reeled the silk thread on the spinning wheel, slowly and gently. Such delicate work it was, that the silk remembered, at last, the moth which had created it. And the women were awed at the silver shine of the silk produced. If the silk is so divine, they thought, what must be the beauty of the butterfly waiting to be born? They stopped breaking the cocoons and looked for the crimson wings of the butterflies emerging from the torn nests of raw silk. The sight took them aback. They became sages and storytellers..

Yesterday, she said, referring to the collective past of her tribe, the people of these forests knew the secret. They made the finest silk thread from the cocoon of a beautiful sleeping butterfly. The women reeled the silk thread on the spinning wheel, slowly and gently. Such delicate work it was, that the silk remembered, at last, the moth which had created it. And the women were awed at the silver shine of the silk produced. If the silk is so divine, they thought, what must be the beauty of the butterfly waiting to be born? They stopped breaking the cocoons and looked for the crimson wings of the butterflies emerging from the torn nests of raw silk. The sight took them aback. They became sages and storytellers. My mother’s mother was one of them.

You have fed each other, and you kept the wolf away.

You have done a great working. So now he can do another in return. But high magic never comes without a price.” “Why is it a great working that we shoved more than half his treasure into a tunnel?” I said, exasperated. “You were challenged beyond the bounds of what could be done, and found a path to make it true,” Tsop said.

Galina would not know where they came from; Palmira would not. Better not to know. To them they could be jewels, rich and fine, that someone had bought and paid for with gold and not with blood. They would have gone far enough away from the cruelty that made them, and then they could be only beautiful.

But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing

Blue shadows stretched out over the snow, cast by a pale thin light shining somewhere behind me, and as my breath rose in quick clouds around my face, the snow crunched: some large creature, picking its way toward the sleigh.

Philippa thought again of the bride, blushing, receiving her shoe-buckles; and the Pilgrims of Love, giving their hearts and their laughter and the moonlit song of the lyre. And Míkál’s beautiful voice: The fountains make thee thy bride’s veil; the lyre spins thee thy ribbons; the mallow under thy foot is the hand of thy bridegroom….Sometimes, one must travel to find what is love. She let her mind go just so far; and then, with gentle hands, closed the door she had opened. Then, wearing not her Turkish robe but a plain woollen dress of her own, her hair unbound; with no paint and no jewels but a small silver brooch long ago bought by her father, Philippa walked with Onophrion to the place of her wedding.

she wished it didn’t sound so much like a carnival ride from her nightmares. “Better hold on tight, then.” He grinned as she tightened her grip on his hand. “I meant to the railing.” “Oh.” Her face felt like it was on fire, and she’d barely grabbed the silver banister, when Keefe said, “Two Hundred!” Then everything turned into a spinning, sparkling blur of rushing air, and Sophie wanted to scream or throw up or pass out, but she didn’t have time for anything because they’d already stopped. “You with me, Foster?” Keefe asked as she leaned against the rail, wondering if her stomach was still on the ground floor. “Do you really ride that thing every day?” “You get used to it after a couple of turns. Come on.” He offered her his hand, and Sophie was too dizzy not to take it. It took ten deep breaths for her head to clear enough to realize they were in one of the golden-roofed towers. Dangling above them were more round crystals than Sophie had ever seen. “The Leapmaster 10,000,” Keefe explained.