Stretched Ears Quotes

He pressed a kiss to my ear. “Do you feel stretched? Can you tell I’ve been inside you?” I nodded, feeling my knees go a little weak from the tone in his voice. “Good. I like knowing you can feel where I’ve been.

I didn't wait for him to stretch out his hand before I went to him. And looking up into his face I said, "I want to paint you." He gently lifted me into his arms. "Nude would be best," he said in my ear.

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.” The first psycho therapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they give than what they get. The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.” The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me forget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said, “Write the poems.

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then -the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

If something bad smells in the basement, it will eventually make its way to the attic.

The newcomer stood well over six feet, as tall as any Warden. His hair was dark, the color of obsidian, and it reflected blue in the dim light. Lazy locks slipped over his forehead and curled just below his ears. Brows arched over golden eyes and his cheekbones were broad and high. He was attractive. Very attractive. Mind-bendingly beautiful, actually, but the sardonic twist to his full lips chilled his beauty. The black T-shirt stretched across his chest and flat stomach. A huge tattoo of a snake curled around his forearm, the tail disappearing under his sleeve and the diamond-shaped head rested on the top of his hand. He looked my age. Total crush material—if it wasn’t for the fact that he had no soul.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect; Let pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it As fearfully as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide, Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on, you noblest English. Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof! Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, Have in these parts from morn till even fought And sheathed their swords for lack of argument: Dishonour not your mothers; now attest That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you. Be copy now to men of grosser blood, And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman, Whose limbs were made in England, show us here The mettle of your pasture; let us swear That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not; For there is none of you so mean and base, That hath not noble lustre in your eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game's afoot: Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!

For Jenn At 12 years old I started bleeding with the moon and beating up boys who dreamed of becoming astronauts. I fought with my knuckles white as stars, and left bruises the shape of Salem. There are things we know by heart, and things we don't. At 13 my friend Jen tried to teach me how to blow rings of smoke. I'd watch the nicotine rising from her lips like halos, but I could never make dying beautiful. The sky didn't fill with colors the night I convinced myself veins are kite strings you can only cut free. I suppose I love this life, in spite of my clenched fist. I open my palm and my lifelines look like branches from an Aspen tree, and there are songbirds perched on the tips of my fingers, and I wonder if Beethoven held his breath the first time his fingers touched the keys the same way a soldier holds his breath the first time his finger clicks the trigger. We all have different reasons for forgetting to breathe. But my lungs remember the day my mother took my hand and placed it on her belly and told me the symphony beneath was my baby sister's heartbeat. And I knew life would tremble like the first tear on a prison guard's hardened cheek, like a prayer on a dying man's lips, like a vet holding a full bottle of whisky like an empty gun in a war zone… just take me just take me Sometimes the scales themselves weigh far too much, the heaviness of forever balancing blue sky with red blood. We were all born on days when too many people died in terrible ways, but you still have to call it a birthday. You still have to fall for the prettiest girl on the playground at recess and hope she knows you can hit a baseball further than any boy in the whole third grade and I've been running for home through the windpipe of a man who sings while his hands playing washboard with a spoon on a street corner in New Orleans where every boarded up window is still painted with the words We're Coming Back like a promise to the ocean that we will always keep moving towards the music, the way Basquait slept in a cardboard box to be closer to the rain. Beauty, catch me on your tongue. Thunder, clap us open. The pupils in our eyes were not born to hide beneath their desks. Tonight lay us down to rest in the Arizona desert, then wake us washing the feet of pregnant women who climbed across the border with their bellies aimed towards the sun. I know a thousand things louder than a soldier's gun. I know the heartbeat of his mother. Don't cover your ears, Love. Don't cover your ears, Life. There is a boy writing poems in Central Park and as he writes he moves and his bones become the bars of Mandela's jail cell stretching apart, and there are men playing chess in the December cold who can't tell if the breath rising from the board is their opponents or their own, and there's a woman on the stairwell of the subway swearing she can hear Niagara Falls from her rooftop in Brooklyn, and I'm remembering how Niagara Falls is a city overrun with strip malls and traffic and vendors and one incredibly brave river that makes it all worth it. Ya'll, I know this world is far from perfect. I am not the type to mistake a streetlight for the moon. I know our wounds are deep as the Atlantic. But every ocean has a shoreline and every shoreline has a tide that is constantly returning to wake the songbirds in our hands, to wake the music in our bones, to place one fearless kiss on the mouth of that brave river that has to run through the center of our hearts to find its way home.

Beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted. It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears. It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a win attached to a claw, But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels forever in flight. Beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in the mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

Look around you--there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn't make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you'll hear. Thin strands of human lives stretch from island to island of the Archipelago. They intertwine, touch one another for one night only in just such a clickety-clacking half-dark car as this and then separate once and for all. Put your ear to their quiet humming and the steady clickety-clack beneath the car. After all, it is the spinning wheel of life that is clicking and clacking away there.

Still doing your best to ruin the horses, I see.' Katsa froze. The voice came from above rather than behind, and it didn't sound quite like Skye. She turned. 'I though it was supposed to be impossible to sneak up on you. Eyes of a hawk and ears of a wolf and all that,' he said- and there, he was there, standing straight, eyes glimmering, mouth twitching, and the path he'd plowed through the snow stretching behind him. Katsa cried out and ran, tackling Po so hard that he fell back into the snow and she on top of him. And he laughed, and held her tight, and she was crying; and then Bitterblue came and threw herself squealing on top of them.

His laugh rumbled against me. Eyes closed, the wind roaring like a wild animal, I adjusted my position, gripping him tighter. My knuckles brushed one of his wings- smooth and cool like silk, but hard as stone with it stretched taut. Fascinating. I blindly reached again... and dared to run a fingertip along some inner edge. Rhysand shuddered, a soft groan slipping past my ear. "That," he said tightly, "is very sensitive". I snatched my finger back, pulling away far enough to see his face. With the wind, I had to squint, and my braided hair ripped this way and that, but- he was entirely focused on the montains around us. "Does it tickle?" He flicked his gaze to me, then on the snow and pine that went on forever. "It feels like this," he said, and learned in so close that his lips brushed the shell of my ear as he sent a gentle breath into it. My back arched on instinct, my chin tipping up at the carees of that breath. "Oh", I managed to say. I felt him smile against my ear and pull away.

How do you wake up? It was one thing to know that you had been asleep all your life, but something else to wake up from it, to find out you were really alive and it wasn't anybody's fault but your own. Of course that was the problem. All right. Everything is a dream. Nothing hangs together. You move from one dream to another and there is no reason for the change. Your eyes see things and your ears hear, but nothing has any reason behind it. It would be easier to believe in God. Then you could wake up and yawn and stretch and grin at a world that was put together on a plan of mercy and death, punishment for evil, joy for good, and if the game was crazy at least it had rules. But that didn't make sense. It had never made any sense. The trouble was, now that he was not asleep and not awake, what he saw and heard didn't make sense either. Mishmash, he thought. You know enough to know how you feel is senseless, but you don't know enough to know why.

Mary tucked into a ball, shielding herself from the tail's barbs. She covered her ears and closed her eyes, cutting off the juicy sounds and the horrible sight of the killing. Moments later she felt her body being nudged. The beast was pushing at her with its nose. She rolled over and looked up into its white eyes. "I'm fine. But we're going to have to work on your table manners." The beast purred and stretched out on the ground next to her, resting its head between its forelegs. There was a brilliant flash of light and then Rhage appeared in the same position.

so, when I spotted a cougar stretched out on a thick pine tree branch near the park gates, I wasn't surprised. I can't say the same for the women clinging to the branch above the cat. she was the one screaming. The cougar-a ragged-ear old top I clled Marv-just stared at her, like he couldn't believe anyone would be dumb to climb a tree to escape a cat.

Such moments passed and the wasting fires of lust sprang up again. The verses passed from his lips and the inarticulate cries and the unspoken brutal words rushed forth from his brain to force a passage. His blood was in revolt. He wandered up and down the dark slimy streets peering into the gloom of lanes and doorways, listening eagerly for any sound. He moaned to himself like some baffled prowling beast. He wanted to sin with another of his kind, to force another being to sin with him and to exult with her in sin. He felt some dark presence moving irresistibly upon him from the darkness, a presence subtle and murmurous as a flood filling him wholly with itself. Its murmur besieged his ears like the murmur of some multitude in sleep; its subtle streams penetrated his being. His hands clenched convulsively and his teeth set together as he suffered the agony of its penetration. He stretched out his arms in the street to hold fast the frail swooning form that eluded him and incited him: and the cry that he had strangled for so long in his throat issued from his lips. It broke from him like a wail of despair from a hell of sufferers and died in a wail of furious entreaty, a cry for an iniquitous abandonment, a cry which was but the echo of an obscene scrawl which he had read on the oozing wall of a urinal.

Storm Ending Thunder blossoms gorgeously above our heads, Great, hollow, bell-like flowers, Rumbling in the wind, Stretching clappers to strike our ears . . . Full-lipped flowers Bitten by the sun Bleeding rain Dripping rain like golden honey— And the sweet earth flying from the thunder.

Hundreds of hopeless waves rushed constantly shorewards, falling exhausted upon a beach of great loose stones, that seemed to stretch miles and miles in both directions. There was nothing for the eye but mingling shades of gray; nothing for the ear but the rush of the coming, the roar of the breaking, and the moan of the retreating wave.

The gardens were brilliant with summer magic, with plump cushions of forget-me-nots, lemon balm, and vibrant yellow daylilies, surrounding plots of roses shot through with garnet clematis. Long rows of silvery lamb's-ear stretched between large stone urns filled with rainbow Oriental poppies.

Indeed ... but no sand this time, so the lever goes up into fourth, and now there's no sound except wind. Screw it all the way over, reach through the handlebars to raise the headlight beam, the needle leans down on a hundred, and wind-burned eyeballs strain to see down the centerline, trying to provide a margin for the reflexes. But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right ... and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it ... howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica ... letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge ... The Edge ... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.

And there, far ahead of me, running by the side of the road, a human. The low sun stretched his shadow out one hundred times taller than him. Cole St. Clair, running alongside the wolves, side-stepping debris on the roadside every so often and sometimes jumping the ditch for a few strides and then back again. He held his arms out for balance as he leaped, unself-conscious, like a boy. There was something so fiercely big about the gesture of Cole running with the wolves that it made the last thing I said to him ring in my ears.

Weird grey forms came pouring out of the woods. They were only about three or four feet tall, but they were covered in taut muscle. Their heads were wider than their shoulders and their mouths, bristling with teeth, stretched from ear to ear. They chattered as they came, shrieking in voices that were at once guttural and chirruping.

He stretched out in the grass too, leaning on his elbow, facing his friend, the pal of his heart, happy to watch him, fondly, his face. The grass was wonderfully cool in the shadows. It gave a fringy brush to his legs. Doyler grinned. He took the grass stem from his mouth and tickled its ear under Jim's chin. 'You can tell does a fellow like you with a spear of grass, did you know that?' 'How do you tell?' 'You wave it under his chin, and if his face goes red at all, then you know.' Jim laughed. The blush had risen, as of course it must, but for once he could be glad of it. He thought how lovely it would be to touch at this moment. The notion hadn't formed before Doyler's leg came to rest against his own. It pressed ever so lightly, and Jim pressed lightly back. he smiled with his bottom lip caught in his teeth, for it was wonderful to lie in the long grass, with just this tiny pressure of touch between. Then Doyler said, 'I think I'm going to ask for a kiss.' And Jim said, 'I think I hoped if you would.

I AM ROWING (a hex poem) i have cursed your forehead, your belly, your life i have cursed the streets your steps plod through the things your hands touch i have cursed the inside of your dreams i have placed a puddle in your eye so that you cant see anymore an insect in your ear so that you cant hear anymore a sponge in your brain so that you cant understand anymore i have frozen you in the soul of your body iced you in the depths of your life the air you breathe suffocates you the air you breathe has the air of a cellar is an air that has already been exhaled been puffed out by hyenas the dung of this air is something no one can breathe your skin is damp all over your skin sweats out waters of great fear your armpits reak far and wide of the crypt animals drop dead as you pass dogs howl at night their heads raised toward your house you cant run away you cant muster the strength of an ant to the tip of your feet your fatigue makes a lead stump in your body your fatigue is a long caravan your fatigue stretches out to the country of nan your fatigue is inexpressible your mouth bites you your nails scratch you no longer yours, your wife no longer yours, your brother the sole of his foot bitten by an angry snake someone has slobbered on your descendents someone has drooled in the mouth of your laughing little girl someone has walked by slobbering all over the face of your domain the world moves away from you i am rowing i am rowing i am rowing against your life i am rowing i split into countless rowers to row more strongly against you you fall into blurriness you are out of breath you get tired before the slightest effort i row i row i row you go off drunk tied to the tail of a mule drunkenness like a huge umbrella that darkens the sky and assembles the flies dizzy drunkenness of the semicircular canals unnoticed beginnings of hemiplegia drunkeness no longer leaves you lays you out to the left lays you out to the right lays you out on the stony ground of the path i row i row i am rowing against your days you enter the house of suffering i row i row on a black blinfold your life is unfolding on the great white eye of a one eyed horse your future is unrolling I AM ROWING

Willie experienced the strange sensations of the first days of a new captain: a shrinking of his personal identiy, and a stretching out of his nerve ends to all the spaces and machinery of the ship. He was less free than before. He developed the apprehensive listening ears of a young mother; the ears listened on in his sleep; he never quite slept, not the way he had before.

I trust you’re going to treat my girl like an absolute queen from here on end.” Nathan’s grin stretched from ear to ear. “Like a fairytale princess. When I first met her I told her she was as beautiful as a princess in a storybook.” “Oh, brother. And she actually fell for a dorky line like that?”“Hook, line and sinker.” A smile played about Nathan’s lips. “And I fell for her like a ton of bricks.

Drawn lids one screen of skin, dreampaintings move across Day's colored dark. Tonight, in a lapse unfluttered by time, he travels what seems to be back. Shrinking, smoother, loses his belly and faint acne scars. Bird-boned gangle; bowl haircut and cup-handle ears; skin sucks hair, nose recedes into face; he swaddles in his pants and then curls, pink and mute and smaller until he feels himself split into something that wriggles and something that spins. Nothing stretches tight across everything else. A black point rotates. The point breaks open, jagged. His soul sails toward one color.

Thanks for putting me in bed last night,” I said, watching the swift line of his throat as he yawned again. He grumbled, “Uh–huh,” as he rolled his shoulders before slipping his arms beneath the covers again. “And for giving me a massage.” I had already tried moving my legs, and sure they were sore, but I knew how much worse they could be. I’d done everything I was supposed to do to help prevent the stiffness, but there was only so much a body that wasn’t 100 percent to begin with could handle. “There wasn’t much to massage.” Uh. “What’s the supposed to mean?” “I have more muscles in my glutes than you have in your thighs.” Anyone who had seen Aiden’s ass would know that was a fact, so I wasn’t going to take it personally. Maybe because I was still so sleepy, I raised my eyebrows at him and said, “Have you seen your butt? That’s not an insult. It has more muscles in it than most people have all over their bodies.” His own thick eyebrows rose about a millimeter, just slightly but enough for me to notice. “I didn’t know you paid that much attention to it.” “Why do you think you have so many female fans?” Aiden let out another low groan, but he didn’t tell me to stop. “You could raise a small fortune if you ever auctioned off the chance for a person to take a—” “Vanessa!” Mr. Proper reached over to throw a hand over my mouth, like he was shocked. That big hand literally covered me from ear to ear, and I burst out laughing though it was muffled. “You make me feel cheap,” he said as he slowly pulled his hand away, but the shine in his eyes said he didn’t really mind it that much. I stretched my own limbs with a yawn. “I’m just telling you what anyone else would.” “No, no one else would ever say that to me.” So he had a point. “Well, I’ll tell you the truth then.” He made this noise that had me rolling to face him again. “You always have

When Reiko left, I stretched out on the sofa and closed my eyes. I lay there steeping myself into silence when, out of nowhere, I thought of the time Kizuki and I took a motorcycle trip. That had been autumn too, I realized. Autumn how many years ago? Yes, four years ago. I recalled the small of Kizuki's leather jacket and the racket made by that red Yamaha 125cc bike. We went to a spot far down the coast, and came back the same evening, exhausted. Nothing special happened on that trip, but I remembered it well. the sharp autumn wind moaned in my ears, and looking up at the sky, my hands clutching Kizuki's jacket, I felt as if I might be swept into outer space.

A man goes away from his home and it is in him to do it. He lies in strange beds in the dark, and the wind is different in the trees. He walks in the street and there are the faces in front of his eyes, but there are no names for the faces. the voices he hears are not the voices he carried away in his ears a long time back when he went away. The voices he hears are loud. they are so loud he does not hear for a long time at a stretch those voices he carried away in his ears. but there comes a minute when it is quiet and he can hear those voices he carried away in his ears a long time back. He can make out what they say, and they say: Come back. They say: Come back, boy. So he comes back.

And late at night when he folds her in his arms beside the crackling fire and kisses the space just behind her ear, she knows he's falling in love with her. And maybe he's loved her long before this, long before he pulled her from the water on the night of the summer solstice—the night that is a blur in her memory. But she doesn't ask. She doesn't want to know about the before. Because she loves him now, with the wind seeping through the cracks in the cottage windows...the world stretched out before them. They have eternity. Or even if it's just one life, one long, singular life—that's enough.

He thinks about Henry’s voice low in his ear over the phone at three in the morning, and suddenly he has a name for what ignites in the pit of his stomach. Henry’s hands on him, his thumbs braced against his temples back in the garden, Henry’s hands other places, Henry’s mouth, what he might do with it if Alex let him. Henry’s broad shoulders and long legs and narrow waist, the place his jaw meets his neck and the place his neck meets his shoulder and the tendon that stretches the length between them, and the way it looks when Henry turns his head to shoot him a challenging glare, and his impossibly blue eyes-

What's coming out of the stereo is like a genre unto itself, a charming, fucked-up fairy tale that immediately breaks my heart in all the best ways. I stretch out on the floor with my ear parked next to the speaker, in a trance. I place the album cover over my face to block out any interruption as "I'll Be Your Mirror" seduces me. I immediately add the song to my mental list of top ten songs ever. And as I'm bobbing my head with dreamy abandon, I hear a voice. "Nice choice, DJ," it says. I slowly slide the album cover down past my eyes and look up. My eyes spy his shoes first--paint-splattered brogues. My heart stops when I look at his face. Pale skin, messy black hair, emerald eyes...Senor Smolder! He's eighteen, maybe nineteen. And no, my imagination didn't lie, he is just as devastating now as he was the first time I saw him. Only even more, because he just complimented my taste in music.

...Nature becomes your teacher, and from her you will learn what is beautiful and who you are and what is your special quest in life and whither you should go...You live on manna vouchsafed to you daily, miraculously. You stretch out arms for hidden gifts, you year toward the moonbeams and the stars, you listen with new ears to bird's songs and the murmurs of trees and streams....From day to day you keep your log, your day-book of the soul, and you may think at first that it is a mere record of travel and of facts; but something else will be entering into it, poetry, the new poetry of your life, and it will be evident to a seeing eye that you are gradually becoming an artist in life, you are learning the gentle art of tramping, and it is giving you an artist's joy in creation.

When I woke, I was nestled on top of Ren’s chest. His arms were wrapped around me, and my legs were entwined with his. I was surprised I could breathe all night since my nose was smashed against his muscular torso. It had gotten cold, but my quilt covered both of us and his body, which maintained a warmer-than-average temperature, had kept me toasty all night. Ren was still asleep, so I took the rare opportunity to study him. His powerful frame was relaxed and his face was softened by sleep. His lips were full, smooth, and utterly kissable, and for the first time, I noticed how long his sooty lashes were. His glossy dark hair fell softly over his brow and was mussed in a way that made him look even more irresistible. So this is the real Ren. He doesn’t seem real. He looked like an archangel who fell to the earth. I’d been with Ren night and day for the past four weeks, but the time he was a man was such a small fraction of each day that he seemed almost like a dream guy, a real life Prince Charming. I traced a black eyebrow, following its arch with my finger, and lightly brushed the silky dark hair away from his face. Hoping not to disturb him, I sighed, shifted slowly, and tried to move away, but his arms tensed, restraining me. He sleepily mumbled, “Don’t even think about moving” and pulled me back to snuggle me close again. I rested my cheek against his chest, felt his heartbeat, and contented myself with listening to its rhythm. After a few minutes, he stretched and rolled to his side, pulling me with him. He kissed my forehead, blinked open his eyes, and smiled at me. It was like watching the sun come up. The handsome, sleeping man was potent enough, but when he turned his dazzling white smile on me and blinked open his cobalt blue eyes, I was dumbstruck. I bit my lip. Alarm bells started going off in my head. Ren’s eyes fluttered open, and he tucked some loose hair behind my ear. “Good morning, rajkumari. Sleep well?” I stammered, “I…you…I…slept just fine, thank you.” I closed my eyes, rolled away from him, and stood up. I could deal with him a lot better if I didn’t think about him much, or look at him, or talk to him, or hear him. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I felt his smile as he pressed his lips to the soft spot behind my ear. “Best night of sleep I’ve had in about three hundred and fifty years.

All these things have you said of beauty. Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied, And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears. It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw, But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight. People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and your are the mirror.

I got my grade back.” I slip the paper out of my pocket, holding it up. “I aced it.” And for the first time, I say out loud, “I’m valedictorian.” Logan gazes at the paper for a long moment. And when he takes it, I feel the brush of his finger against mine. “Look at that,” he says with awe. “That’s brilliant. Smart girl.” His large hand moves to my shoulder, squeezing. And I feel it everywhere. Warmth tingles through me, from the top of my ears to the tips of my toes. "Congratulations, Ellie." My mouth stretches so far into a smile, tears spring up in my eyes. “Thanks. I just . . . I wanted to tell someone.” Him. I wanted to tell him. "I'm glad it was me.

Own nothing! Possess nothing! Buddha and Christ taught us this, and the Stoics and the Cynics. Greedy though we are, why can't we seem to grasp that simple teaching? Can't we understand that with property we destroy our soul? So let the herring keep warm in your pocket until you get to the transit prison rather than beg for something to drink here. And did they give us a two-day supply of bread and sugar? In that case, eat it in one sitting. Then no one will steal it from you, and you won't have to worry about it. And you'll be free as a bird in heaven! Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday. Look around you-there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heartout because you didn't make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you'll hear. Thin strands of human lives stretch from island to island of the Archipelago. They intertwine, touch one another for one night only in just such a clickety-clacking half-dark car as this and then separate once and for all. Put your ear to their quiet humming and the steady clickety-clack beneath the car. After all, it is the spinning wheel of life that is clicking and clacking away there. What strange stories you can hear! What things you will laugh at!

If you had come to me a hundred years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half my correspondence by means of it, but I don’t understand it. Think of that little stretched disk of iron at the end of a wire repeating in your ear not only sounds, but words—not only words, but all the most delicate and elusive inflections and nuances of tone which separate one human voice from another!

And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart inflamed and a soul enchanted. It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.

The young man, perched insecurely in the slen­der branches, rocked till he felt slightly drunk, reached down the boughs, where the scarlet beady cherries hung thick underneath, and tore off handful after handful of the sleek, cool-fleshed fruit. Cherries touched his ears and his neck as he stretched forward, their chill fingertips sending a flash down his blood. All shades of red, from a golden vermilion to a rich crimson, glowed and met his eyes under a dark­ness of leaves.

He pushed himself a fraction deeper, still exploring his lazy rhythm. I could feel his thickness beginning to stretch me. The sensation was dizzying, and my vision blurred at the edges. “Is this what my Roses wants from me?” he whispered in my ear, biting the soft flesh of my lobe between his teeth. “Say it to me.” “Aye, warrior,” I gasped.

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, And through them passes a wild motley throng. Men from Volga and Tartar steppes. Featureless figures from the Hoang-ho, Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt and Slav, Flying the Old World’s poverty and scorn; These bringing with them unknown gods and rites, Those tiger passions here to stretch their claws, In street and alley what strange tongues are these, Accents of menace in our ear, Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew. —THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH, “UNGUARDED GATES,” 1882

With a sudden flash of anger, she blurted, "Lash wasn't impotent, all right? He wasn't ... impotent-" The temperature in the room plummeted so fast and so far, her breath came out in clouds. And what she saw in the mirror made her swing around and take a step back from John: His blue eyes glowed with an unholy light and his upper lip curled up to reveal fangs that were sharp and so long they looked like daggers. Objects all around the room began to vibrate: the lamps on the bed stands, the clothes on their hangers, the mirror on the wall. The collective rattling crescendoed to a dull roar and she had to steady herself on the bureau or run the risk of being knocked on her ass. The air was alive. Supercharged. Electric. Dangerous. And John was the center of the raging energy, his hands cranking into fists so tight his forearms trembled, his thighs grabbing onto his bones as he sank down into fighting stance. John's mouth stretched wide as his head shot forward on his spine... and he let out a war cry- Sound exploded all around her, so loud she had to cover her ears, so powerful she felt the blast against her face. For a moment, she thought he'd found his voice- except it wasn't vocal cords making that bellowing noise. The glass in the sliders blew out behind him, the sheets shattering into thousands of shards that blasted free of the house, the fragments bouncing on the slate and catching the light like raindrops... Or like tears.

Halfway through the second term of Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal braintrusters began to worry about mounting popular concern over the national debt. In those days the size of the national debt was on everyone’s mind. Indeed, Franklin Roosevelt had talked himself into office, in 1932, in part by promising to hack away at a debt which, even under the frugal Mr. Hoover, the people tended to think of as grown to menacing size. Mr. Roosevelt’s wisemen worried deeply about the mounting tension ... And then, suddenly, the academic community came to the rescue. Economists across the length and breadth of the land were electrified by a theory of debt introduced in England by John Maynard Keynes. The politicians wrung their hands in gratitude. Depicting the intoxicating political consequences of Lord Keynes’s discovery, the wry cartoonist of the Washington Times Herald drew a memorable picture. In the center, sitting on a throne in front of a Maypole, was a jubilant FDR, cigarette tilted almost vertically, a grin on his face that stretched from ear to ear. Dancing about him in a circle, hands clasped together, their faces glowing with ecstasy, the braintrusters, vested in academic robes, sang the magical incantation, the great discovery of Lord Keynes: “We owe it to ourselves.” With five talismanic words, the planners had disposed of the problem of deficit spending. Anyone thenceforward who worried about an increase in the national debt was just plain ignorant of the central insight of modern economics: What do we care how much we - the government - owe so long as we owe it to ourselves? On with the spending. Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect ...

Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech? The aggrieved and the injured say, "Beauty is kind and gentle. Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us." And the passionate say, "Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread. Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us." The tired and the weary say, "Beauty is of soft whisperings. She speaks in our spirit. Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow." But the restless say, "We have heard her shouting among the mountains, And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions." At night the watchmen of the city say, "Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east." And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, "We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset." In winter say the snow-bound, "She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills." And in the summer heat the reapers say, "We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair." All these things have you said of beauty, Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied, And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears. It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw, But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight. People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

The best example I know, of this astonishingly stupid attitude towards sport, is that of Franz Ferdinand. His, however, was an achievement with the gun. He used to shoot at Konopist with no less than seven weapons and four loaders, and he once killed more than 4,000 birds, himself, in one day. [A propos of statistics and quite beside the point: a Yorkshireman once drank 52½ pints of beer in one hour.] Now why did Franz Ferdinand do this? Even if he shot for twelve hours at a stretch, without pause for luncheon, it means that he killed six birds in each minute of the day. The mere manual labour, a pheasant every ten seconds for twelve successive hours, is enough to make a road-mender stagger; and there is little wonder that, by the time the unhappy archduke had accumulated his collection of 300,000 head of game, he was shooting with rubber pads on his coat and a bandage round his ears. The unfortunate man had practically stunned himself with gunpowder, long before they bagged him also at Sarajevo.

It so happens I am sick of being a man. And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes. The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs. The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool. The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens, no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators. It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails and my hair and my shadow. It so happens I am sick of being a man. Still it would be marvelous to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily, or kill a nun with a blow on the ear. It would be great to go through the streets with a green knife letting out yells until I died of the cold. I don't want to go on being a root in the dark, insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep, going on down, into the moist guts of the earth, taking in and thinking, eating every day. I don't want so much misery. I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb, alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses, half frozen, dying of grief. That's why Monday, when it sees me coming with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline, and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel, and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night. And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses, into hospitals where the bones fly out the window, into shoeshops that smell like vinegar, and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin. There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines hanging over the doors of houses that I hate, and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot, there are mirrors that ought to have wept from shame and terror, there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords. I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes, my rage, forgetting everything, I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops, and courtyards with washing hanging from the line: underwear, towels and shirts from which slow dirty tears are falling

Your cells are a country of ten thousand trillion citizens, each devoted in some intensively specific way to your overall well-being. There isn’t a thing they don’t do for you. They let you feel pleasure and form thoughts. They enable you to stand and stretch and caper. When you eat, they extract the nutrients, distribute the energy, and carry off the wastes - all those things you learned about in junior high school biology - but they also remember to make you hungry in the first place and reward you with a feeling of well-being afterward so that you won’t forget to eat again. They keep your hair growing, your ears waxed, your brain quietly purring. They manage every corner of your being. They will jump to your defence the instant you are threatened. They will unhesitatingly die for you - billions of them do so daily. And not once in all your years have you thanked even one of them.

I never thought people actually woke up the way I did that morning. I always figured it was hyperbole and massive overcompensation to say that you woke up grinning, woke up in a state of contentment and excitement for the smallest things. Even while I was in love formerly, it seemed more like a comfortable thing rather than a giddy, overwhelming happiness. Realize, then, that I had never been joined in a mutual state of infatuation with someone else. My infatuations tended to be unrequited, accompanied by a sense of muted sadness. I sat up at 7:00a.m. without even waiting for the alarm, and kept still there, smiling, looking at nothing and going over yesterday’s conversations, the fevered symphony of emotion ringing forever in my ears. I fell back and actually laughed to myself, reaching for my glasses to slide them on as I stretched out my back comfortably in a lazy, half-waking state. You are in love.

If we are stretching to live wiser and not just smarter, we will aspire to learn what love means, how it arises and deepens, how it withers and revives, what it looks like as a private good but also a common good. I long to make this word echo differently in hearts and ears—not less complicated, but differently so. Love as muscular, resilient. Love as social—not just about how we are intimately, but how we are together, in public. I want to aspire to a carnal practical love—eros become civic, not sexual and yet passionate, full-bodied. Because it is the best of which we are capable, loving is also supremely exacting, not always but again and again. Love is something we only master in moments.

Uncle Mort glanced at Pandora, then back at the Juniors. "Okay, kids. Brace yourselves. And try not to yell too much." Elysia's hand tensed on Lex's arm. "I hate it when he says that," she whispered. Uncle Mort gave them a sympathetic smile. "Remember that old chestnut about the wickedest Grim of all time?" He pounded on the roof. Grotton's head popped down through the ceiling, a snaky grin stretching from ear to ear. The screams were so loud, Dora nearly drove into a tree

by the assault. Shading his eyes against the dazzle from the window, he peered down into the shadows. “Oh, hallo there, wee dog,” he said politely, and took a step forward, knuckles stretched out. Bouton raised the growl a few decibels, and he took a step back. “Oh, like that, is it?” Jamie said. He eyed the dog narrowly. “Think it over, laddie,” he advised, squinting down his long, straight nose. “I’m a damn sight bigger than you. I wouldna undertake any rash ventures, if I were you.” Bouton shifted his ground slightly, still making a noise like a distant Fokker. “Faster, too,” said Jamie, making a feint to one side. Bouton’s teeth snapped together a few inches from Jamie’s calf, and he stepped back hastily. Leaning back against the wall, he folded his arms and nodded down at the dog. “Well, you’ve a point there, I’ll admit. When it comes to teeth, ye’ve the edge on me, and no mistake.” Bouton cocked an ear suspiciously at this gracious speech, but went back to the low-pitched growl. Jamie hooked one foot over the other, like one prepared to pass the time of day indefinitely. The multicolored light from the window washed his face with blue, making him look like one of the chilly marble statues in the cathedral next door. “Surely you’ve better things to do than harry innocent visitors?” he asked, conversationally. “I’ve heard of you—you’re the famous fellow that sniffs out sickness, no? Weel, then, why are they wastin’ ye on silly things like door-guarding, when ye might be makin’ yourself useful smelling gouty toes and pustulant arseholes?

Nick drank the coffee, the coffee according to Hopkins. The coffee was bitter. Nick laughed. It made a good ending to the story. His mind was starting to work. He knew he could choke it because he was tired enough. He spilled the coffee out of the pot and shook the grounds loose into the fire. He lit a cigarette and went inside the tent. He took off his shoes and trousers, sitting on the blankets, rolled the shoes up inside the trousers for a pillow and got in between the blankets. Out through the front of the tent he watched the glow of the fire when the night wind blew on it. It was a quiet night. The swamp was perfectly quiet. Nick stretched under the blanket comfortably. A mosquito hummed close to his ear. Nick sat up and lit a match. The mosquito was on the canvas, over his head. Nick moved the match quickly up to it. The mosquito made a satisfactory hiss in the flame. The match went out. Nick lay down again under the blankets. He turned on his side and shut his eyes. He was sleepy. He felt sleep coming. He curled up under the blanket and went to sleep.

The conductor stepped up, tapped twice on the rostrum, and a great hush descended. I felt the stillness, the auditorium alive, expectant. Then he brought down his baton and suddenly everything was pure sound. I felt the music like a physical thing; it didn’t just sit in my ears, it flowed through me, around me, made my senses vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen. Will hadn’t described any of it like this. I had thought I might be bored. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard. And it made my imagination do unexpected things; as I sat there, I found myself thinking of things I hadn’t thought of for years, old emotions washing over me, new thoughts and ideas being pulled from me as if my perception itself were being stretched out of shape. It was almost too much, but I didn’t want it to stop.

Are you falling asleep before midnight?" Cassie leaned over the edge of the couch to look at Jack. He was stretched out on the floor, his head resting against a pillow near the center of the couch, his eyes closed. She was now wide awake and headache free. He wasn't in so good a shape. "The new year is eighteen minutes away." "Come kiss me awake in seventeen minutes." She blinked at that lazy suggestion, gave a quick grin, and dropped Benji on his chest. He opened one eye to look up at her as he settled his hand lightly on the kitten. "That's a no?" She smiled. She was looking forward to dating him, but she was smart enough to know he'd value more what he had to work at. He sighed. "That was a no. How much longer am I going to be on the fence with you?" "Is that a rhetorical question or do you want an answer?" If this was the right relationship God had for her future, time taken now would improve it, not hurt it. She was ready to admit she was tired of being alone. He scratched Benji under the chin and the kitten curled up on his chest and batted a paw at his hand. "Rhetorical. I'd hate to get my hopes up." She leaned her chin against her hand, looking down at him. "I like you, Jack." "You just figured that out?" "I'll like you more when you catch my mouse." "The only way we are going to catch T.J. is to turn this place into a cheese factory and help her get so fat and slow that she can no longer run and hide." Or you could move your left hand about three inches to the right right and catch her." Jack opened one eye and glanced toward his left. The white mouse was sitting motionless beside the plate he had set down earlier. "Let her have the cheeseburger. You put mustard on it." "You're horrible." He smiled. "I'm serious." "So am I." Jack leaned over, caught Cassie's foot, and tumbled her to the floor. "Oops." "That wasn't fair. You scared my mouse." Jack set the kitten on the floor. "Benji, go get her mouse." The kitten took off after it. "You're teaching her to be a mouser." "Working on it. Come here. You owe me a kiss for the new year." "Do I?" She reached over to the bowl of chocolates on the table and unwrapped a kiss. She popped the chocolate kiss into his mouth. "I called your bluff." He smiled and rubbed his hand across her forearm braced against his chest. "That will last me until next year." She glanced at the muted television. "That's two minutes away." "Two minutes to put this year behind us." He slid one arm behind his head, adjusting the pillow. She patted his chest with her hand. "That shouldn't take long." She felt him laugh. "It ended up being a very good year," she offered. "Next year will be even better." "Really? Promise?" "Absolutely." He reached behind her ear and a gold coin reappeared. "What do you think? Heads you say yes when I ask you out, tails you say no?" She grinned at the idea. "Are you cheating again?" She took the coin. "This one isn't edible," she realized, disappointed. And then she turned it over. "A real two-headed coin?" "A rare find." He smiled. "Like you." "That sounds like a bit of honey." "I'm good at being mushy." "Oh, really?" He glanced over her shoulder. "Turn up the TV. There's the countdown." She grabbed for the remote and hit the wrong button. The TV came on full volume just as the fireworks went off. Benji went racing past them spooked by the noise to dive under the collar of the jacket Jack had tossed on the floor. The white mouse scurried to run into the jacket sleeve. "Tell me I didn't see what I think I just did." "I won't tell you," Jack agreed, amused. He watched the jacket move and raised an eyebrow. "Am I supposed to rescue the kitten or the mouse?

Aiden was the whole world stretched out beneath him. Aiden’s hair spread out on the sheets, Aiden moaning in his ear. The magnitude of his certainty tipped Harvard over the edge into terrifying and unwelcome knowledge. Terrible realization dawned, remorseless illumination shed on a whole landscape. Harvard found himself looking at his entire life in a new light. Aiden on their first day of school, on their first day of fencing class, on their last day in the hospital, on their first day at Kings Row. Inextricably part of every important moment in Harvard’s life. The bright and shining center of Harvard’s life, ever since he’d turned around and seen Aiden and thought, That boy looks sad, and wanted nothing but to give Aiden everything. Finding Aiden and being too young to understand what he’d found. Only knowing Aiden was necessary to him and wanting Aiden there always. Of course he loved his best friend, of course he did. That was always such an absolute truth that Harvard could never question it. Harvard gasped against Aiden’s mouth. He should have questioned it before now. He should have asked himself what he was feeling. Only he’d been afraid. Dating someone else hadn’t been Harvard’s idea, and with this new clarity he realized he didn’t actually want to do it. He hadn’t wanted to be alone, hadn’t wanted to be left behind, but it was impossible and distinctly horrible to think of being like this with anyone but Aiden. Only very recently, as Aiden dated more and more people and the potential for distance between them started to feel far more real, had Harvard started to feel lonely. If it hadn’t been for Coach suggesting dating, it might never have occurred to him. Why would he go out and look for a partner when he had one at home? Why would he go searching for a lightning strike when there was all the brightness and all the pain he could wish for, always with him? He’d never cared about dating, never really felt the need to find someone, because he’d been otherwise emotionally committed all along. Apparently, Harvard’s subconscious was insane, bent on his own ruin. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d just decided he was Aiden’s boyfriend, without consulting Aiden. Without even consulting himself. He’d been in love with Aiden the whole time.

Speaking from experince, there are people who have too much space between their ears, and given the time, do nothing but free fall forever inside their heads. It's a spooky thing to be left alone inside an angry inner-verse. Drugs redirect the fall. They cushion it. Give you a parachute. Or maybe just a flashlight and scuba gear. I don't know how you look at the inside of your head-- what metaphor you choose-- but for those of us with endless yawning stretches of interior and nothing but nothing to stop us from getting lost in it, drugs can be wonderfully helpful. For a time.

When every link to the outside world is severed, time has no meaning. It ceases to exist other than as a dull memory, a vague recollection of what a minute used to be, an hour, a day. Sealed up tight so far beneath the ground, every single second was stretched out almost to infinity—each one a vast and empty abyss where time used to reign, an ageless aeon barren of significance and consequence. When every scrap of light and sound has been taken away, reality has no meaning. It too ceases to exist, for what is reality other than the cumulation of senses—images witnessed by our own eyes and the noises that enter through our ears? But when all those senses are starved, then the real world fades away like the last frantic gasp of a television program when the set is switched off. And when reality goes, sanity has no reason. How can your ability to behave in a normal and rational way still exist when nothing normal or rational remains? As soon as reality breaks, as soon as we are separated from the physical world, the cracks begin to appear in our minds. And through them seeps the madness that has always been there, flowing into your skull like a liquid nightmare.

Months later, when I rarely saw the Angels, I still had the legacy of the big machine -- four hundred pounds of chrome and deep red noise to take out on the Coast Highway and cut loose at three in the morning, when all the cops were lurking over on 101. My first crash had wrecked the bike completely and it took several months to have it rebuilt. After that I decided to ride it differently: I would stop pushing my luck on curves, always wear a helmet and try to keep within range of the nearest speed limit ... my insurance had already been canceled and my driver's license was hanging by a thread. So it was always at night, like a werewolf, that I would take the thing out for an honest run down the coast. I would start in Golden Gate Park, thinking only to run a few long curves to clear my head ... but in a matter of minutes I'd be out at the beach with the sound of the engine in my ears, the surf booming up on the sea wall and a fine empty road stretching all the way down to Santa Cruz ... not even a gas station in the whole seventy miles; the only public light along the way is an all-night diner down around Rockaway Beach. There was no helmet on those nights, no speed limit, and no cooling it down on the curves. The momentary freedom of the park was like the one unlucky drink that shoves a wavering alcoholic off the wagon. I would come out of the park near the soccer field and pause for a moment at the stop sign, wondering if I knew anyone parked out there on the midnight humping strip.

Jack didn't try to speak to me the following day. Or the day after.Or the day after that. But he was in Mrs. Stone's classroom, in the seat next to mine, every day for an hour after school, the only sounds coming from our pencils scratching against our papers. And the days passed like this quickly. Too quickly. I stole glances at him.Sometimes he tucked his hair behind one ear, but mostly it hung loose around his face. Sometimes he had stubble,as if he were shaving every other day.Sometimes I was sure he could feel me staring.His lip would twitch,and I'd know he was about to turn toward me,so I would hurry and look at my paper. And sometimes I would read the same sentence in the textbook over and over, and at the end of the hour, the only thing I'd learned was that Jack liked to tap his eraser on his desk when he was stumped, and when he would stretch forward,his shirt lifted,exposing a tiny bit of skin on his back.

If Only We Had Taller Been The fence we walked between the years Did bounce us serene. It was a place half in the sky where In the green of leaf and promising of peach We'd reach our hands to touch and almost touch the sky, If we could reach and touch, we said, 'Twould teach us, not to ,never to, be dead. We ached and almost touched that stuff; Our reach was never quite enough. If only we had taller been, And touched God's cuff, His hem, We would not have to go with them Who've gone before, Who, short as us, stood tall as they could stand And hoped by stretching, tall, that they might keep their land, Their home, their hearth, their flesh and soul. But they, like us, were standing in a hole. O, Thomas, will a Race one day stand really tall Across the Void, across the Universe and all? And, measured out with rocket fire, At last put Adam's finger forth As on the Sistene Ceiling, And God's hand come down the other way To measure man and find him Good, And Gift him with Forever's Day? I work for that. Short man, Large dream, I send my rockets forth between my ears, Hoping an inch of Good is worth a pound of years. Aching to hear a voice cry back along the universal Mall: We've reached Alpha Centauri! We're tall, O God, we're tall!

What were you doing with her?” The words burst from my lips. Before I can take them back, he stares at me. I stare back at him as the silence stretches onwards. We’re both stiff. He says nothing. “Maybe I should ask you the same thing.” I shake my head, my nails digging into my palms. Then before I can react, he has pushed me roughly up the wall, his eyes now dark and fiery, like a storm ready to unleash itself. Good. He’s mad too. His hands force me to the wall as he presses his body against mine. The intensity of the move, the feel of him makes my breath hitch. “Get off me,” I seethe, pounding my fists into his chest but Adrian keeps me locked in place, so that his breath caresses my ear. “Were you guys too rushed?’ He mocks. “Too desperate to book a hotel room?” I can barely stifle a disgusted snort. “What are you talking about?” Fury pumps through my head. “A hotel room? What kind of girl do you think I am—mmf?” He moves against me, moving to kiss me. The moment where his lips meet mine hard and unyielding. He tastes of smoke and lipgloss—and I’m reminded of the scene earlier where he and Lauren got out of the closet together. Disgust fills me as I squirm in his arms. He groans, fire burning in his voice. “You want me, you’re trying to hide from it.” “No,” I try to bite the words at him but it comes out strangled. I try to push him away but before I have to, he releases me. I try to put as much distance between him and myself, shaking. Loathing is my voice. "Get away from me. I hate you." He swallows and looks away, his breathing slowing. He pushes himself from the wall, still very pale. Then closing his eyes and turning, he starts walking away, heading towards the parking lot. "I hate you!" I scream again behind him. Adrian stops for a moment, his back to me. “I’ve told you from the very beginning. You should.” He keeps on walking, never glancing back.

Joshua said nothing, for his mind was even now limning the vacancy. Lincoln would no more be seated on the far side of the dining table. He would no more ride his horse into town or let his huge hands rove through the library of stroll past the hemp house or listen to Eliza gabble or applaud Mary's nocturnes or argue some abstruse point of law with James or scratch behind Growler's ears as the dog lay stretched around his feet. From henceforth, there would be only space where Lincoln used to be. And in Joshua's mind, that space began to expand and deepen until it became a vast nullity, blanketing everything around him until it seemed the night itself had been swallowed up by it.

A gentle warmth spread through my body and I felt a strange tingling in my veins. Feeling turned to thought, but my character seemed split into a thousand parts; each part was independent and had its own consciousness, and in vain did the head command e limbs, which, like faithless vassals, would not obey its author The thoughts in these separate parts now started to revolve like points of light, faster and faster, forming a fiery circle which became smaller as the speed increased, until it finally appeared like a stationary ball of fire, its burning rays shining from the flickering flames. “Those are my limbs dancing; I am waking up.” Such was my first clear thought, but a sudden pain shot through me at that moment and the chiming of bells sounded in my ears. “Flee! Flee!” I cried aloud. I could now open my eyes. The bells continued to ring. At first I thought I was still in the forest, and was amazed when I looked at myself and the objects around me. Dressed in the habit of a Capuchin, I was lying stretched out on comfortable mattress in a lofty room; the only other items of furniture were a few cane-chairs, a small table and a simple bed. I realized that my unconsciousness must have lasted some time and that in some way or other I had been brought to a monastery which offered hospitality to the sick; perhaps my clothes were torn and I had been given this habit for the time being.

Nick grinned, swooping in for another kiss and then leaning back and scruffing his hair up. “Harriet Manners, I’m about to give you six stamps. Then I’m going to write something on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope with your address on it.” “OK …” “Then I’m going to put the envelope on the floor and spin us as fast as I can. As soon as either of us manage to stick a stamp on it, I’m going to race to the postbox and post it unless you can catch me first. If you win, you can read it.” Nick was obviously faster than me, but he didn’t know where the nearest postbox was. “Deal,” I agreed, yawning and rubbing my eyes. “But why six stamps?” “Just wait and see.” A few seconds later, I understood. As we spun in circles with our hands stretched out, one of my stamps got stuck to the ground at least a metre away from the envelope. Another ended up on a daisy. A third somehow got stuck to the roundabout. One of Nick’s ended up on his nose. And every time we both missed, we laughed harder and harder and our kisses got dizzier and dizzier until the whole world was a giggling, kissing, spinning blur. Finally, when we both had one stamp left, I stopped giggling. I had to win this. So I swallowed, wiped my eyes and took a few deep breaths. Then I reached out my hand. “Too late!” Nick yelled as I opened my eyes again. “Got it, Manners!” And he jumped off the still-spinning roundabout with the envelope held high over his head. So I promptly leapt off too. Straight into a bush. Thanks to a destabilised vestibular system – which is the upper portion of the inner ear – the ground wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Nick, in the meantime, had ended up flat on his back on the grass next to me. With a small shout I leant down and kissed him hard on the lips. “HA!” I shouted, grabbing the envelope off him and trying to rip it open. “I don’t think so,” he grinned, jumping up and wrapping one arm round my waist while he retrieved it again. Then he started running in a zigzag towards the postbox. A few seconds later, I wobbled after him. And we stumbled wonkily down the road, giggling and pulling at each other’s T-shirts and hanging on to tree trunks and kissing as we each fought for the prize. Finally, he picked me up and, without any effort, popped me on top of a high wall. Like Humpty Dumpty. Or some kind of really unathletic cat. “Hey!” I shouted as he whipped the envelope out of my hands and started sprinting towards the postbox at the bottom of the road. “That’s not fair!” “Course it is,” he shouted back. “All’s fair in love and war.” And Nick kissed the envelope then put it in the postbox with a flourish. I had to wait three days. Three days of lingering by the front door. Three days of lifting up the doormat, just in case it had accidentally slipped under there. Finally, the letter arrived: crumpled and stained with grass. Ha. Told you I was faster. LBxx

By shutting her eyes, by losing consciousness, Albertine had stripped off, one after another, the different human personalities with which we had deceived me ever since the day when I had first made her acquaintance. She was animated now only by the unconscious life of plants, of trees, a life more different from my own, more alien, and yet one that belonged more to me. Her psonality was not constantly escaping, as when we talked, by the outlets of her unacknowledged thoughts and of her eyes. She had called back into herself everything of her that lay outside, had withdrawn, enclosed, reabsorbed herself into her body. In keeping her in front of my eyes, in my hands, I had an impression of possessing her entirely which I never had when she was awake. Her life was submitted to me, exhaled towards me its gentle breath. I listened to this murmuring, mysterious emanation, soft as a sea breeze, magical as a gleam of moonlight, that was her sleep. So long as it lasted, I was free to dream about her and yet at the same time to look at her, and when that sleep grew deeper, to touch, to kiss her. What I felt then was a love as pure, as immaterial, as mysterious, as if I had been in the presence of those inanimate creatures which are the beauties of nature. And indeed, as soon as her sleep became at all deep, she ceased to be merely the plant that she had been; her sleep,on the margin of which I remained musing, with a fresh delight of which I never tired, which I could have gone on enjoying indefinitely, was to me a whole lanscape. Her sleep brought within my reach something as serene, as sensually delicious as those nights of full moon on the bay of Balbec, calm as a lake over which the branches barely stir, where, stretched out upon the stand, one could listen for hours on end to the surf breaking and receding. On entering the room, I would remain standing in the doorway, not venturing to make a sound, and hearing none but that of her breath rising to expire upon her lips at regular intervals, like the reflux of the sea, but drowsier and softer. And at the moment when my ear absorbed that divine sound, I felt that there was condensed in it the whole person, the whole life of the charming captive outstretched there before my eyes. Carriages went rattling past in the street, but her brow remained as smooth and untroubled, her breath as light, reduced to the simple expulsion of the necessary quantity of air. Then, seeing that her sleep would not be disturbed, I would advance cautiously, sit down on the chair that stood by the bedside, then on the bed itself.

Beautiful prairies, bordered by lofty hills sparsely scattered with timber, stretch around. The massive fronds of the Pinus Ponderosa replace the elegant leaflets of the Cedar, no longer found save rarely, perchance, in some deep dell moistened by a purling streamlet. Groves of aspen appear here and there. The Balsam Poplar shows itself at intervals only, along the streams. The white racemes of the Service-berry flower, and the chaste flowers of the Mock Orange, load the air with their fragrance. Every copse re-echoes with the low drumming of the ruffed Grouse; the trees resound with the muffled booming of the Cock of the Woods. The Pheasant shirrs past; the scrannel-pipe of the larger Crane -- ever a watchful sentinel -- grates harshly on the ear; and the shrill whistle of the Curlew as it soars aloft aides the general concert of the re-opined year. I speak still of Spring; for the impressions of that jocum season are ever the most vivid, and naturally recur with the greatest force in after years. -- Alexander Caulfield Anderson describing the new brigade trail between Lac la Hache and Kamloops.

And even though body has entwined with body, vows have been whispered into the lover’s ears in the throes of unimaginable passion, there’s a pang still. One has not felt understood by the lover. And that is a different quality of loneliness. A constant dull hammering. Like static hum. Dissonance. Ultimately it translates into a plain inability to see the other’s view. We shout betrayal. We shift blame. We feel inadequate. When it is plain inability. So their intimacy has a narrow gap running across, like a rift between two continents and it’s only when you examine it from above, do you really see it. You realize that the gap could be the breadth of a hairline but it is deep. It’s darkness stretches all the way down into a free falling abyss.

The crowd started going crazy. Like even crazier than when Romeo got up from the hit. I was clinging to the railing, wondering if I would like prison, when Ivy sighed. "I swear. You have all the luck." Confused, I glanced around. Romeo was jogging toward us, helmet in his hands. Quickly, I glanced at the big screen and it was showing a wide shot of me clinging onto the rails and him running toward us. When he arrived, he slapped the guard on his back and said something in his ear. The guard looked at me and grinned and then walked away. Romeo stepped up to where I was. At the height I was at one the railing, for once I was taller than him. "You're killing me, Smalls," he said. "I had to interrupt a championship game to keep you from going to the slammer." "I was worried. You didn't get up." "And so you were just going to march out on the field and what?" God, he looked so… so incredible right then. His uniform stretched out over his wide shoulders and narrow waist. The pads strapped to his body made him look even stronger. He had grass stains on his knees, sweat in his hair, and ornery laughter in his sparkling blue eyes. I swear I'd never seen anyone equal parts of to-die-for good looks and boy-next-door troublemaker. "I was going to come out there and kiss it and make it better." He threw back his head and laughed, and the stadium erupted once more. I was aware that every moment between us was being broadcast like some reality TV show, but for once, I didn't care how many people were staring. This was our moment. And I was so damn happy he wasn't hurt. "So you're okay, then?" I asked. "Takes a lot more than a shady illegal attack to keep me down." Behind him, the players were getting back to the game, rushing out onto the field, and the coach was yelling out orders. "I'll just go back to my seat, then," I said. He rushed forward and grabbed me off the railing. The crown cheered when he slid me down his body and pressed his lips to mine. It wasn't a chaste kiss. It was the kind of kiss that made me blush when I watched it on TV. But I kissed him back anyway. I got lost in him. When he pulled back, I said, "By the way, You're totally kicking ass out there." He chuckled and put me back on the railing and kept one hand on my butt as I climbed back over. Back in the stands, I gripped the cold metal and gave him a small wave. He'd been walking backward toward his team, but then he changed direction and sprinted toward me. In one graceful leap, he was up on the wall and leaning over the railing. "Love you," he half-growled and pressed a swift kiss to my lips. "Next touchdown's for you.

Goo, quit being nosey and give me a second, please.” There was a hum and then, “Can I have a hug too?” Dallas’s arms flexed and I swore I heard him laugh lightly before one of them dropped from around me as he took a step back. “Have at her, buddy.” It was then I finally glanced down at Louie to find he’d moved to stand beside my hip. The kid blinked and edged closer between us. “No, you too,” he said so effortlessly it made me want to cry. “Sandwich.” Just like that, Dallas crouched and scooped Louie up. One of those little arms went around my neck, and I would bet my life the other was around Dallas’s. The only other thing I knew for sure was that an arm too brawny to belong to a five-year-old wrapped low around my back. The side of my head went to a shoulder and one half of my chest was crushed against a much harder one. “This is nice,” Louie muttered somewhere close to my ear. I couldn’t help it. I laughed, and what I was sure was the hand connected to the arm around my back, stretched wide and covered part of my belly, the tips of long fingers touching my belly button. I sucked in a breath. “Can we do this more?” Lou continued on.

Oakheart,” Crookedpaw explained. “He’s my littermate.” Bluepaw stretched up on her hind legs to get a better view of the tom, but could see only the reddish-brown tips of his ears. “He’s great,” Crookedpaw purred. “He caught a fish on his first day as an apprentice.” I caught a squirrel. Bluepaw found herself competing. “He says that when he becomes leader, he’ll make me deputy.” How modest! “I have a sister,” Bluepaw announced. She nodded toward Snowpaw, who was sitting beside Sparrowpelt, a tail-length away. “She’s a brilliant hunter, too.” “Maybe if they both became leader we could be deputies together,” Crookedpaw mewed. Deputy? What was the point of being deputy? “I want to be the leader!” Crookedpaw looked at her in surprise, then broke into a purr. “Of course.” Bluepaw

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives. The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.” The first psycho therapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet. The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they give than what they get. The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamicatl, Lithium, Xanax.” The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me forget what the trauma said. The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.” But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.” My bones said, “Write the poems.

They dream of the happiness of stretching out one's legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in the summer and only to the depth of three feet—and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and the hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy [escort]. So what's this about unwiped feet? And what's this about a mother-in-law? What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory—property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life—don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart—and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted in their memory!

Cam reached for her left hand. Taking the signet ring between his fingers, he drew it off easily and gave it to her. “Here. Although I’d rather you left it on.” Amelia’s mouth fell open. She examined her hand, then the ring, and hesitantly pushed it back on the same finger. It slid over her knuckle and back again with ease. “How did you do that?” “I helped you to relax.” He ran a coaxing hand along her spine. “Put it back on, Amelia.” “I can’t. That would mean I’ve accepted your proposal, and I haven’t.” Stretching like a cat, Cam rolled her flat again, his weight partially supported on his elbows. Amelia drew in a quick breath as she felt him still firm within her. “You can’t lie with me twice and then refuse to marry me.” Cam lowered his head to kiss her ear. “I’ll be ruined.” He worked his way to the soft place behind her earlobe. “And I’ll feel so cheap.” Despite the seriousness of the matter, Amelia had to bite back a smile. “I’m doing you a great favor by refusing you. You’ll thank me for it someday.” “I’ll thank you right now if you’ll put the damned ring back on.” She shook her head. Cam pushed a bit farther inside her, making her gasp. “What about my personal endowments? Who’s going to take care of them?” “You can take care of them”— she squirmed to the side to set the ring on the bedside table—“ all by yourself.” Cam moved with her obligingly. “It’s much more satisfying when you’re involved.” As he reached to retrieve the ring, his body shifted higher in hers. She tensed in surprise. He felt harder inside her, thicker, his desire gaining new momentum. “Cam,” she protested, glancing at the closed door. She grabbed for his wrist, trying to keep his hand away from the ring. He grappled with her playfully, turning until they had completed a full revolution across the mattress and she was under him again. He was rampantly aroused now, teasing her with slow lunges. Twisting beneath him, Amelia pushed at his dark head as he began to kiss her breasts. “But … we just finished…” Cam lifted his head. “Roma,” he said, as if by way of explanation, and settled back over her.

And there she is. I touch my jaw and she touches hers. I watch her lips part in awe and, for the first time in a long time, it’s not in a tight frown. She blinks slowly. I blink slowly. Because this is me. All I can do is stare. At some point the stretched-out neckline of my ratty thrift-store shirt slipped off my shoulder. A strand of hair falls across my face. A girl who could be my sister stares back at me—it’s not even that I did a good job with the makeup, because I didn’t, but she’s there. There’s a surge of vertigo as I realize this is what it’s like to bridge the gap between me-the-body and me-the-self. Or the start of it. It feels like waves are crashing in my ears, warm foam rising up to envelop me. I wrap my arms around my stomach and take a long, clean breath. And that’s really it—I feel clean for the first time in years.

The first thing I see when I wake, still on the couch in the hotel room, are the birds flying over her collarbone. Her shirt, retrieved from the floor in the middle of the night because of the cold, is pulled down on one side from where she’s lying on it. We have slept close to each other before, but this time feels different. Every other time we were there to comfort each other or to protect each other; this time we’re here just because we want to be--and because we fell asleep before we could go back to the dormitory. I stretch out my hand and touch my fingertips to her tattoos, and she opens her eyes. She wraps an arm around me and pulls herself across the cushions so she’s right up against me, warm and soft and pliable. “Morning,” I say. “Shh,” she says. “If you don’t acknowledge it, maybe it will go away.” I draw her toward me, my hand on her hip. Her eyes are wide, alert, despite just having opened. I kiss her cheek, then her jaw, then her throat, lingering there for a few seconds. Her hands tighten around my waist, and she sighs into my ear. My self-control is about to disappear in five, four, three… “Tobias,” she whispers, “I hate to say this, but…I think we have just a few things to do today.” “They can wait,” I say against her shoulder, and I kiss the first tattoo, slowly. “No, they can’t!” she says.

Standing in the hallway, I imagine the smell settling like snow on my hair and my skin, breathing it like smoke into my nose and mouth; how it curls its way into the fibers of my clothing and the hollows of my ears. Like death, it is an old smell; so fundamentally human that it can only be disavowed. You avoid this smell each time you take a shower and each time you wash your hands. Each time you brush your teeth or flush the toilet, or launder your sheets and towels. With every plate you scrub clean, every spill you mop up and every bag of trash you tie up and throw out. Every time you open a window or walk outside, breathing deeply, to stretch your legs and stand in sunlight. This smell is the lingering presence of all the physical things we put into and wash off ourselves. But it is equally the ineffable smell of defeat, of isolation, of self-hate. Or, more simply, it is the smell of pain.

Feeling the Wind in Your Hair The peak of the cliff sits tantalizingly close. Your hands rest on your knees as you gasp, willing more oxygen into your lungs. You look back with pride down the way you've come. Just a little farther and you'll be there. Your energy now partially restored, you step on and on. The light wind lifts the closer you get to the peak. A plateau soon falls away abruptly down to the sea, and the sweeping air collects and whips into your face. The view is sublime but the payoff comes as you stand--arms stretched wide in triumph--with your eyes closed as the raging wind buffets your face. This wind, collected and grown above oceans, flitting and crashing its way across the waves, finally reaches the shore and clasps itself around you in a fleeting embrace. The crack of its passing meets your ears and slowly it absorbs you--a streaming current of air caressing your rejoicing face.

We may now briefly enumerate the elements of style.  We have, peculiar to the prose writer, the task of keeping his phrases large, rhythmical, and pleasing to the ear, without ever allowing them to fall into the strictly metrical: peculiar to the versifier, the task of combining and contrasting his double, treble, and quadruple pattern, feet and groups, logic and metre—harmonious in diversity: common to both, the task of artfully combining the prime elements of language into phrases that shall be musical in the mouth; the task of weaving their argument into a texture of committed phrases and of rounded periods—but this particularly binding in the case of prose: and, again common to both, the task of choosing apt, explicit, and communicative words.  We begin to see now what an intricate affair is any perfect passage; how many faculties, whether of taste or pure reason, must be held upon the stretch to make it; and why, when it is made, it should afford us so complete a pleasure.  From the arrangement of according letters, which is altogether arabesque and sensual, up to the architecture of the elegant and pregnant sentence, which is a vigorous act of the pure intellect, there is scarce a faculty in man but has been exercised.  We need not wonder, then, if perfect sentences are rare, and perfect pages rarer. -ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE

I shook with cold and fear, without being able to answer. After a lapse of some moments, I was again called. I made an effort to speak, and then felt the bandage which wrapped me from head to foot. It was my shroud. At last, I managed feebly to articulate, 'Who calls?' 'Tis I' said a voice. 'Who art thou?' 'I! I! I!' was the answer; and the voice grew weaker, as if it was lost in the distance; or as if it was but the icy rustle of the trees. A third time my name sounded on my ears; but now it seemed to run from tree to tree, as if it whistled in each dead branch; so that the entire cemetery repeated it with a dull sound. Then I heard a noise of wings, as if my name, pronounced in the silence, had suddenly awakened a troop of nightbirds. My hands, as if by some mysterious power, sought my face. In silence I undid the shroud which bound me, and tried to see. It seemed as if I had awakened from a long sleep. I was cold. I then recalled the dread fear which oppressed me, and the mournful images by which I was surrounded. The trees had no longer any leaves upon them, and seemed to stretch forth their bare branches like huge spectres! A single ray of moonlight which shone forth, showed me a long row of tombs, forming an horizon around me, and seeming like the steps which might lead to Heaven. All the vague voices of the night, which seemed to preside at my awakening, were full of terror. ("The Dead Man's Story")

Presently a soprano voice of richness and depth floated from the open windows of the parlor, resonating over the darkening greenery. All at once it was as if the entire scene before them was awakened by that voice, infused with unexpected life: the western sky, streaked with bands of pale gold and purple; the two houses, standing gray and disconsolate against that sky; the clusters of trees casting deep black shadows here and there across the ground. The same voice that brought everything suddenly to life also drew them into another, much deeper world—a world that was normally hidden, a world that stretched out into eternity. Yusuke, who had at first looked on with a sense of distance as everyone else sat listening, their faces intent on the music, found himself being gradually drawn in as well, forgetting the moment and the place, lending his ear during that unworldly stretch of time as if entranced. No one spoke. The singing could not have lasted ten minutes, but when it ended he found the darkness all at once grew deeper.

Faolan stretched out on the blanket, propping his head on one elbow thoughtfully. “Eire is fine enough, I suppose,” he began, “but if I could have one wish, I’d show ye my Highlands. I’d take ye to the tops of the mountains and show ye where the golden eagles nest. I want ye to see the sun rise and set over the moors. I want to make love to ye in the heather with the warm sun beating down on us.” His eyes widened as an idea occurred to him. “We could sail out to one of the far islands and have it all to ourselves, like Adam and Eve in our very own Eden. I’d take ye walking on the beach in the moonlight, and I wouldna have to share ye with anyone but the selkies.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. “I’d teach ye to ride and hunt and fish, mo ruadh, and bank the fires to keep ye warm through the cold winter months.” With a blissful sigh, he pulled her tight against him and buried his face in the crook of her neck. “‘Twould be heaven for sure,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice when his lips brushed her ear, “pizza or no.

In those days there was no money to buy books. Books you borrowed from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 rue de l’Odéon. On a cold windswept street, this was a lovely, warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window, and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living. The photographs all looked like snapshots and even the dead writers looked as though they had really been alive. Sylvia had a lively, very sharply cut face, brown eyes that were as alive as a small animal’s and as gay as a young girl’s, and wavy brown hair that was brushed back from her fine forehead and cut thick below her ears and at the line of the collar of the brown velvet jacket she wore. She had pretty legs and she was kind, cheerful and interested, and loved to make jokes and gossip. No one that I ever knew was nicer to me. I was very shy when I first went into the bookshop and I did not have enough money on me to join the rental library. She told me I could pay the deposit any time I had the money and made me out a card and said I could take as many books as I wished. There was no reason for her to trust me. She did not know me and the address I had given her, 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine, could not have been a poorer one. But she was delightful and charming and welcoming and behind her, as high as the wall and stretching out into the back room which gave onto the inner court of the building, were the shelves and shelves of the richness of the library.

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

Kyran stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles. “You’re needed, River. It’s not by accident that you know what you do about the Fae and were put in our path. You’re destined to aid us in this.” When she didn’t respond, he tried again. “Think of all the innocents, like your family and Jordyn’s, who were killed. You have a chance to help us put an end to such things for everyone. The half-Fae will no longer need to fear for their lives. And I promise you I’ll figure out who has hunted your family and end it.” Her resigned look cut through him. “You can’t do that. You work for Death. I doubt you’ll be given leave to help me.” “Let me deal with that. Whether you help me or not, I’m going to find out why the Dark are hunting your family. And then I’m going to make sure it never happens again.” River swung her gaze to him. She tucked a long length of hair behind her ear. “Do I have your word you’ll stop whoever is after me?” “Aye.” Kyran held out his hand. River stared at it a moment before she leaned up and took it. They shook, her small hand in his. “Then I’ll help you.

Boney freckled knees pressed into bits of bark and stone, refusing to feel any more pain. Her faded t-shirt hugged her protruding ribs as she held on, hunched in silence. A lone tear followed the lumpy tracks down her cheek, jumped from her quivering jaw onto a thirsty browned leaf with a thunderous plop. Then the screen door squeaked open and she took flight. Crispy twigs snapped beneath her bare feet as she ran deeper and deeper into the woods behind the house. She heard him rumbling and calling her name, his voice fueling her tired muscles to go faster, to survive. He knew her path by now. He was ready for the hunt. The clanging unbuckled belt boomed in her ears as he gained on her. The woods were thin this time of year, not much to hide behind. If she couldn’t outrun him, up she would go. Young trees teased her in this direction, so she moved east towards the evergreens. Hunger and hurt left her no choice, she had to stop running soon. She grabbed the first tree with a branch low enough to reach, and up she went. The pine trees were taller here, older, but the branches were too far apart for her to reach. She chose the wrong tree. His footsteps pounded close by. She stood as tall as her little legs could, her bloodied fingers reaching, stretching, to no avail. A cry of defeat slipped from her lips, a knowing laugh barked from his. She would pay for this dearly. She didn’t know whether the price was more than she could bear. Her eyes closed, her next breath came out as Please, and an inky hand reached down from the lush needles above, wound its many fingers around hers, and pulled her up. Another hand, then another, grabbing her arms, her legs, firmly but gently, pulling her up, up, up. The rush of green pine needles and black limbs blurred together, then a flash of cobalt blue fluttered by, heading down. She looked beyond her dangling bare feet to see a flock of peculiar birds settle on the branches below her, their glossy feathers flickered at once and changed to the same greens and grays of the tree they perched upon, camouflaging her ascension. Her father’s footsteps below came to a stomping end, and she knew he was listening for her. Tracking her, trapping her, like he did the other beasts of the forest. He called her name once, twice. The third time’s tone not quite as friendly. The familiar slide–click sound of him readying his gun made her flinch before he had his chance to shoot at the sky. A warning. He wasn’t done with her. His feet crunched in circles around the tree, eventually heading back home. Finally, she exhaled and looked up. Dozens of golden-eyed creatures surrounded her from above. Covered in indigo pelts, with long limbs tipped with mint-colored claws, they seemed to move as one, like a heartbeat. As if they shared a pulse, a train of thought, a common sense. “Thank you,” she whispered, and the beasts moved in a wave to carefully place her on a thick branch.

Hanne is stretched out on her back. Faces hover in a circle above her. A boy with big blue eyes. A woman whose front teeth rest on her lower lip. An old Chinese woman wearing all gray, her face expressionless, as if she’s seen this before, and much worse. Suddenly a man’s face zooms toward her. Beads of sweat on his upper lip. Dark sideburns. Dark nose hairs. His eyes are close-set, unnervingly so. “Don’t move,” he says, his breath reeking of garlic and cigarette smoke. An imperative. She tries to sit up, and when she can’t, attempts to understand why she’s on the floor. This is not where she should be. She knows that. What is she doing here? “She’s bleeding . . . Hurt. A woman.” But nothing hurts. Liquid streams from her nose, down her cheek, pools into her ear. The circle of faces still above her. But she can’t right herself. The world is tilting. The man with sideburns is squatting beside her. What does he want? He’s saying something to her. Telling her something, his horrible breath assaulting her. Get back. She can’t get her mouth to shout, Move back! She hunts for that perfect moment again, the water, her children when they were young, Hiro, but it is gone.

Girls, I was dead and down in the Underworld, a shade, a shadow of my former self, nowhen. It was a place where language stopped, a black full stop, a black hole Where the words had to come to an end. And end they did there, last words, famous or not. It suited me down to the ground. So imagine me there, unavailable, out of this world, then picture my face in that place of Eternal Repose, in the one place you’d think a girl would be safe from the kind of a man who follows her round writing poems, hovers about while she reads them, calls her His Muse, and once sulked for a night and a day because she remarked on his weakness for abstract nouns. Just picture my face when I heard - Ye Gods - a familiar knock-knock at Death’s door. Him. Big O. Larger than life. With his lyre and a poem to pitch, with me as the prize. Things were different back then. For the men, verse-wise, Big O was the boy. Legendary. The blurb on the back of his books claimed that animals, aardvark to zebra, flocked to his side when he sang, fish leapt in their shoals at the sound of his voice, even the mute, sullen stones at his feet wept wee, silver tears. Bollocks. (I’d done all the typing myself, I should know.) And given my time all over again, rest assured that I’d rather speak for myself than be Dearest, Beloved, Dark Lady, White Goddess etc., etc. In fact girls, I’d rather be dead. But the Gods are like publishers, usually male, and what you doubtless know of my tale is the deal. Orpheus strutted his stuff. The bloodless ghosts were in tears. Sisyphus sat on his rock for the first time in years. Tantalus was permitted a couple of beers. The woman in question could scarcely believe her ears. Like it or not, I must follow him back to our life - Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife - to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes, octaves and sextets, quatrains and couplets, elegies, limericks, villanelles, histories, myths… He’d been told that he mustn’t look back or turn round, but walk steadily upwards, myself right behind him, out of the Underworld into the upper air that for me was the past. He’d been warned that one look would lose me for ever and ever. So we walked, we walked. Nobody talked. Girls, forget what you’ve read. It happened like this - I did everything in my power to make him look back. What did I have to do, I said, to make him see we were through? I was dead. Deceased. I was Resting in Peace. Passé. Late. Past my sell-by date… I stretched out my hand to touch him once on the back of the neck. Please let me stay. But already the light had saddened from purple to grey. It was an uphill schlep from death to life and with every step I willed him to turn. I was thinking of filching the poem out of his cloak, when inspiration finally struck. I stopped, thrilled. He was a yard in front. My voice shook when I spoke - Orpheus, your poem’s a masterpiece. I’d love to hear it again… He was smiling modestly, when he turned, when he turned and he looked at me. What else? I noticed he hadn’t shaved. I waved once and was gone. The dead are so talented. The living walk by the edge of a vast lake near, the wise, drowned silence of the dead.

It is time for you to go. Lan and I must be on our way to the Stone. There can be no waiting, now.” “No.” He said it quietly, but when Moiraine opened her mouth, he raised his voice. “No! I will not leave her!” The Aes Sedai took a deep breath. “Very well, Perrin.” Her voice was ice; calm, smooth, cold. “Remain if you wish. Perhaps you will survive this night. Lan!” She and the Warder strode down the hall to their rooms. In moments they returned, Lan wearing his color-changing cloak, and vanished down the stairs without another word to him. He stared through the open door at Faile. I have to do something. If it is like the wolf dreams. . . . “Perrin,” came Loial’s deep rumble, “what is this about Faile?” The Ogier came striding down the hall in his shirtsleeves, ink on his fingers and a pen in his hand. “Lan told me I had to go, and then he said something about Faile, in a trap. What did he mean?” Distractedly, Perrin told him what Moiraine had said. It might work. It might. It has to! He was surprised when Loial growled. “No! Perrin, it is not right! Faile was so free. It is not right to trap her!” Perrin peered up at Loial’s face, and suddenly remembered the old stories that claimed Ogier were implacable enemies. Loial’s ears had laid back along the sides of his head, and his broad face was as hard as an anvil. “Loial, I am going to try to help Faile. But I will be helpless myself while I do. Will you guard my back?” Loial raised those huge hands that held books so carefully, and his thick fingers curled as if to crush stone. “None will pass me while I live, Perrin. Not Myrddraal or the Dark One himself.” He said it like a simple statement of fact. Perrin nodded, and looked through the door again. It has to work. I don’t care if Min warned me against her or not! With a snarl he leaped toward Faile, stretching out his hand. He thought he touched her ankle before he was gone.

When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded or unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to death, and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All you can see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched out straight and "streaking it" through the low sage-brush, head erect, eyes right, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing you where the animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib. Now and then he makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over the stunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse envious. Presently he comes down to a long, graceful "lope," and shortly he mysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a sage-bush, and will sit there and listen and tremble until you get within six feet of him, when he will get under way again. But one must shoot at this creature once, if he wishes to see him throw his heart into his heels, and do the best he knows how. He is frightened clear through, now, and he lays his long ears down on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stick every spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy indifference that is enchanting.

Beauty And a poet said, 'Speak to us of Beauty.' Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide? And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech? The aggrieved and the injured say, 'Beauty is kind and gentle. Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.' And the passionate say, 'Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread. Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.' The tired and the weary say, 'beauty is of soft whispering s. She speaks in our spirit. Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.' But the restless say, 'We have heard her shouting among the mountains, And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.' At night the watchmen of the city say, 'Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.' And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, 'we have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.' In winter say the snow-bound, 'She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.' And in the summer heat the reapers say, 'We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.' All these things have you said of beauty. Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied, And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy. It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth, But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted. It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear, But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears. It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw, But rather a garden forever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight. People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face. But you are life and you are the veil. Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror

His booted feet pounded out an insane, frantic rhythm underneath him as he raced into the cavern across from Baba Yaga’s den at a dead sprint. Pieces of dragon dung flew off him and hit the ground behind him in miniature chunks. He didn’t dare look behind him to see if the dragon had risen from the ground yet, but the deafening hiss that assaulted his ears meant she’d woken up. Icy claws of fear squeezed his heart with every breath as he ran, relying on the night vision goggles, the glimpse he’d gotten of the map, and his own instincts to figure out where to go. Jack raced around one corner too sharply and slipped on a piece of dung, crashing hard on his right side. He gasped as it knocked the wind out of him and gritted his teeth, his mind screaming at him to get up and run, run, run. He pushed onto his knees, nursing what felt like bruised ribs and a sprained wrist, and then paled as an unmistakable sensation traveled up the arm he’d used to push himself up. Impact tremors. Boom. Boom. Boom, boom, boom. Baba Yaga was coming. Baba Yaga was hunting him. Jack forced himself up onto his feet again, stumbling backwards and fumbling for the tracker. He got it switched on to see an ominous blob approaching from the right. He’d gotten a good lead on her—maybe a few hundred yards—but he had no way of knowing if he’d eventually run into a dead end. He couldn’t hide down here forever. He needed to get topside to join the others so they could take her down. Jack blocked out the rising crescendo of Baba Yaga’s hissing and pictured the map again. A mile up to the right had a man-made exit that spilled back up to the forest. The only problem was that it was a long passage. If Baba Yaga followed, there was a good chance she could catch up and roast him like a marshmallow. He could try to lose her in the twists and turns of the cave system, but there was a good chance he’d get lost, and Baba Yaga’s superior senses meant it would only be a matter of time before she found him. It came back to the most basic survival tactics: run or hide. Jack switched off the tracker and stuck it in his pocket, his voice ragged and shaking, but solid. “You aren’t about to die in this forest, Jackson. Move your ass.” He barreled forward into the passageway to the right in the wake of Baba Yaga’s ominous, bubbling warning, barely suppressing a groan as a spike of pain lanced through his chest from his bruised ribs. The adrenaline would only hold for so long. He could make it about halfway there before it ran out. Cold sweat plastered the mask to his face and ran down into his eyes. The tunnel stretched onward forever before him. No sunlight in sight. Had he been wrong? Jack ripped off the hood and cold air slapped his face, making his eyes water. He held his hands out to make sure he wouldn’t bounce off one of the cavern walls and squinted up ahead as he turned the corner into the straightaway. There, faintly, he could see the pale glow of the exit. Gasping for air, he collapsed against one wall and tried to catch his breath before the final marathon. He had to have put some amount of distance between himself and the dragon by now. “Who knows?” Jack panted. “Maybe she got annoyed and turned around.” An earth-shattering roar rocked the very walls of the cavern. Jack paled. Boom, boom, boom, boom! Boom, boom, boom, boomboomboomboom— Mother of God. The dragon had broken into a run. Jack shoved himself away from the wall, lowered his head, and ran as fast as his legs would carry him.

Speaking of… I gotta go. I need to be at the field.” His voice rumbled through his chest and against my ear as he spoke. I sighed and stepped out of his arms. I was sad that our couple days together were over and I would be here tonight without him. Classes started tomorrow, and I knew we were going to see a lot less of each other now that the semester was starting. “I’ll walk you out,” I said and followed him to the door. Ivy was still digging through my clothes and called out a good-bye. “Just stay inside,” he said, palming the handle. “It’s cold and slippery out there. You’ll be safer in here.” I grimaced. “You’re probably right.” He grinned. “I’ll call you later, ‘kay?” I nodded. He released the door handle and closed the distance between us with one step. The toes of his shoes bumped against my boots and the front of his jacket brushed against me. My stomach fluttered and my heart rate doubled. The effect he had on me was nothing short of amazing. I tipped my head back so I could look up into his eyes, and the corner of his mouth lifted. He looked at me with so much affection in his gaze that emotion caught in my throat. He didn’t have to say anything because I heard everything just by looking in his eyes. My fingers curled around the hem of his shirt and tangled in the cotton fabric, and at the same time I stretched up, he bent down. The feel of his lips against me was my favorite sensation. Nothing compared to the way his mouth owned mine. His tongue stretched out, sweeping through my mouth with gentle pressure, and I sighed into him and sagged forward. A low laugh vibrated his chest and he pulled back. “Be careful walking to class tomorrow, huh? Don’t fall and hurt yourself.” I nodded, barely comprehending his words. He slipped out the door before reality came flooding back. I rushed forward, caught the closing door, and called out his name. He stopped and turned. The lopsided, knowing smile on his face was smug. “Good luck at practice,” I called, ignoring the few girls who stopped to watch us. “Thanks, baby.” I swear every girl within earshot sighed. I couldn’t even blame them. I shut the door and leaned against it. Ivy put her hands on her hips and looked at me. “I’m gonna need a mega supply of barf bags to put up with you two this semester.” I smiled.

PANOTII LOOKS PUT OUT ABOUT BEING LEFT BEHIND AND dogs my steps as I stow his tack under the deep overhang on the south side of the wizard’s hovel. There’s plenty of grass here, water at the lake, and it’s not that cold yet, despite the shift in seasons. If the rains start before we get back, the horses can take shelter under the overhang. I’m not worried about them wandering off. Not one of them has stepped outside of the large makeshift corral of God Bolt pits since we got here. “You can’t come with us,” I tell him. “It’ll be cold and slippery. And big monsters will want to eat you.” He tosses his head, snorting. “Really big monsters. There might be Dragons. And the Hydra. And I can’t vouch for the friendliness of the Ipotane toward regular horses.” I blow gently into his nose. Panotii chuffs back. “You’ll be safe here, and if anyone tries to steal you, Grandpa Zeus will throw down a thunderbolt. Boom! No more horse thief.” “Zeus may have better things to do than babysit our horses,” Flynn says, stowing his own equine gear next to mine. I glance northward toward the Gods’ mountain home and speak loudly. “In that case, I’m announcing right now that I’ll make an Olympian stink if anything happens to my horse.” Flynn looks nervous and moves away from me like he’s expecting a God Bolt to come thundering down. “She’s not kidding.” Sunlight glints off Griffin’s windblown hair. Thick black stubble darkens his jaw. He flashes me a smile that brings out the slight hook in his nose, and something tightens in my belly. I turn back to Panotii and scratch under his jaw. “You’re in charge here.” His enormous ears flick my way. “You keep the others in line.” Panotii nods. I swear to the Gods, my horse nods. Brown Horse raises his head and pins me with a gimlet stare. I roll my eyes. “Fine. You can help. You’re both in charge.” Apparently satisfied, Griffin’s horse goes back to grazing, shearing the grass around him with neat, organized efficiency. Griffin and Brown Horse were made for each other. Panotii shoves his nose into my shoulder, knocking me back a step. Taking a handful of his chestnut mane, I stretch up on my toes to whisper into one of his donkey ears. “Seriously, you’re in charge. I’ll bet you can even rhyme.” Carver and Kato chuckle as they walk past. Griffin bands his arms around my waist from behind, surprising me. “I heard that.

When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death. I tried to push them away and asked, ‘Who are you? Where is the voice?’ His only answer was a sigh. Suddenly, a hot breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape, beside the man’s black shape, in the darkness. The black shape lifted me on to the white shape, a glad neighing greeted my astounded ears and I murmured, ‘Cesar!’ The animal quivered. Raoul, I was lying half back on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse out of the PROFETA, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost. I believed in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghost’s prisoner. I called upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that the voice and the ghost were one. You have heard about the Opera ghost, have you not, Raoul?” “Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of the Profeta?” “I made no movement and let myself go. The black shape held me up, and I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came over me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some cordial. I had the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used to the darkness, which was lit, here and there, by fitful gleams. I calculated that we were in a narrow circular gallery, probably running all round the Opera, which is immense, underground. I had once been down into those cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still, large enough to hold a town. But the figures of which I caught sight had made me run away. There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and, if you come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red mouths of their furnaces … Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me on his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces: they came into sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding way. At last, they disappeared altogether. The shape was still holding me up and Cesar walked on, unled and sure-footed. I could not tell you, even approximately, how long this ride lasted; I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair into the very heart of the earth. Even then, it may be that my head was turning, but I don’t think so: no, my mind was quite clear. At last, Cesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a little. I felt a moistness in the air and Cesar stopped. The darkness had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge of a lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkness; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf!” - Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre

I'd carry you," he added, "but I'd have to get you declawed first." "Don't count on it," I replied. Sage did an exaggerated stretch. "In the meantime, I think we should all get some sleep." He sprawled out across the dirt floor. "Good night." He shut his eyes and was perfectly still. There was no chance he was asleep already, but Ben spoke his mind anyway. He pulled me aside just the slightest bit and sneered down at Sage. "I don't like any of this, Clea." "Really? Because when he started talking about the Elixir of Life, I thought the two of you were ready to become blood brothers." "I believe in the Elixir," Ben said. "Enough that I want to believe Sage's story. I just don't now if we can. And we still can't explain the pictures. I don't trust him." "I don't care, Ben. Dad trusted him. And Sages plan is my best shot at finding him alive." "I guess. Just..." Ben took a moment to put together his next words. "Be careful around him, okay? I feel like..." I waited, but he wasn't going to finish. "Feel like what?" "Nothing. I'm here for you. You know that, right?" I could see him struggling. It was like he was trying to tell me something monumental, but the words that came out weren't doing it justice. He sprawled out on the cave floor as far away from Sage as he could, and patted his chest. "Need a pillow? It's not really in my job description, but I'm happy to offer." He pinched a corner of his shirt between two fingers. "Cotton twill. Very soft." I forced a laugh. "I'm okay. Thanks." I curled up on the cave floor in between the two guys. Despite everything, I could already feel myself drifting away. "Clea?" It was Ben's voice, now right next to my ear, but I was to tired to turn and respond. I think I managed a "Hmm?" but that might have been in my head. "Good night," he said, then I heard him lie back down.

Dog Talk … I have seen Ben place his nose meticulously into the shallow dampness of a deer’s hoofprint and shut his eyes as if listening. But it is smell he is listening to. The wild, high music of smell, that we know so little about. Tonight Ben charges up the yard; Bear follows. They run into the field and are gone. A soft wind, like a belt of silk, wraps the house. I follow them to the end of the field where I hear the long-eared owl, at wood’s edge, in one of the tall pines. All night the owl will sit there inventing his catty racket, except when he opens pale wings and drifts moth-like over the grass. I have seen both dogs look up as the bird floats by, and I suppose the field mouse hears it too, in the pebble of his tiny heart. Though I hear nothing. Bear is small and white with a curly tail. He was meant to be idle and pretty but learned instead to love the world, and to romp roughly with the big dogs. The brotherliness of the two, Ben and Bear, increases with each year. They have their separate habits, their own favorite sleeping places, for example, yet each worries without letup if the other is missing. They both bark rapturously and in support of each other. They both sneeze to express plea- sure, and yawn in humorous admittance of embarrassment. In the car, when we are getting close to home and the smell of the ocean begins to surround them, they both sit bolt upright and hum. With what vigor and intention to please himself the little white dog flings himself into every puddle on the muddy road. Somethings are unchangeably wild, others are stolid tame. The tiger is wild, the coyote, and the owl. I am tame, you are tame. The wild things that have been altered, but only into a semblance of tameness, it is no real change. But the dog lives in both worlds. Ben is devoted, he hates the door between us, is afraid of separation. But he had, for a number of years, a dog friend to whom he was also loyal. Every day they and a few others gathered into a noisy gang, and some of their games were bloody. Dog is docile, and then forgets. Dog promises then forgets. Voices call him. Wolf faces appear in dreams. He finds himself running over incredible lush or barren stretches of land, nothing any of us has ever seen. Deep in the dream, his paws twitch, his lip lifts. The dreaming dog leaps through the underbrush, enters the earth through a narrow tunnel, and is home. The dog wakes and the disturbance in his eyes when you say his name is a recognizable cloud. How glad he is to see you, and he sneezes a little to tell you so. But ah! the falling-back, fading dream where he was almost there again, in the pure, rocky weather-ruled beginning. Where he was almost wild again, and knew nothing else but that life, no other possibility. A world of trees and dogs and the white moon, the nest, the breast, the heart-warming milk! The thick-mantled ferocity at the end of the tunnel, known as father, a warrior he himself would grow to be. …

When he finally pulled his mouth from hers an eternity later, their breaths were coming in mingled gasps. Feeling almost bereft, Elizabeth surfaced slightly from the sensual Eden where he had sent her, and forced her heavy eyelids to open so that she could look at him. Stretched out beside her on the sofa, he was leaning over her, his tanned face hard and dark with passion, his amber eyes smoldering. Lifting his hand, he tenderly brushed a golden lock of hair off her cheek, and he tried to smile, but his breathing was as ragged as hers. Unaware of the effort he was making to keep their passion under control, Elizabeth let her gaze drop to his finely chiseled mouth, and she watched him draw an unsteady breath. “Don’t,” he warned her in a husky, tender voice, “look at my mouth unless you want it on yours again.” Too naïve to know how to hide her feelings, Elizabeth lifted her green eyes to his, and her longing for his kiss was in their soft depths. Ian drew a steadying breath, and yielded to temptation again, gently telling her how to show him what she wanted. “Put your hand around my neck,” he whispered tenderly. Her long fingers lifted to his nape, and he lowered his mouth to hers, so close their breaths mingled. Understanding finally dawned, and Elizabeth put firmer pressure on his nape. And even though she was braced for it, the shock of his parted lips on hers again was wild, indescribable sweetness. This time it was Elizabeth who touched her tongue to his lips, and when she felt him shudder, instinct told her she was doing something right. I told him the same thing, and he jerked his mouth from hers. “Don’t do this, Elizabeth,” he warned. In answer, she tightened her hand at his nape and at the same time turned into his arms. His mouth came down hard on hers, but instead of struggling, her body arched against him and she drew his tongue into her mouth. Against her breasts, she felt his heart slam into his ribs, and he began kissing her with unleashed passion, his tongue tangling with hers, then plunging and slowly retreating in some wildly exciting, forbidden rhythm that made the blood roar in Elizabeth’s ears. His hand slid up her side to her breast, covering it possessively, and Elizabeth jumped in shocked protest. “Don’t,” he whispered against her lips. “God, don’t. Not yet…” Stunned into stillness by the harsh need in his voice, Elizabeth gazed up into his face as he lifted his head, his eyes moving restlessly over the bodice of her dress. Despite his protest, his hand was still, and in her befuddled senses, she finally realized he was honoring his promise to stop whenever she asked him to stop. Helpless to stop or encourage him, she looked at the masculine fingers, still and tanned against her white shirt, then she dragged her eyes to his. Heat was beating behind them, and with a silent moan, Elizabeth curled her hand behind his head and turned into his body.

That man,” she announced huffily, referring to their host, “can’t put two words together without losing his meaning!” Obviously she’d expected better of the quality during the time she was allowed to mix with them. “He’s afraid of us, I think,” Elizabeth replied, climbing out of bed. “Do you know the time? He desired me to accompany him fishing this morning at seven.” “Half past ten,” Berta replied, opening drawers and turning toward Elizabeth for her decision as to which gown to wear. “He waited until a few minutes ago, then went of without you. He was carrying two poles. Said you could join him when you arose.” “In that case, I think I’ll wear the pink muslin,” she decided with a mischievous smile. The Earl of Marchman could scarcely believe his eyes when he finally saw his intended making her way toward him. Decked out in a frothy pink gown with an equally frothy pink parasol and a delicate pink bonnet, she came tripping across the bank. Amazed at the vagaries of the female mind, he quickly turned his attention back to the grandfather trout he’d been trying to catch for five years. Ever so gently he jiggled his pole, trying to entice or else annoy the wily old fish into taking his fly. The giant fish swam around his hook as if he knew it might be a trick and then he suddenly charged it, nearly jerking the pole out of John’s hands. The fish hurtled out of the water, breaking the surface in a tremendous, thrilling arch at the same moment John’s intended bride deliberately chose to let out a piercing shriek: “Snake!” Startled, John jerked his head in her direction and saw her charging at him as if Lucifer himself was on her heels, screaming, “Snake! Snake! Snnnaaaake!” And in that instant his connection was broken; he let his line go slack, and the fish dislodged the hook, exactly as Elizabeth had hoped. “I saw a snake,” she lied, panting and stopping just short of the arms he’d stretched out to catch her-or strangle her, Elizabeth thought, smothering a smile. She stole a quick searching glance at the water, hoping for a glimpse of the magnificent trout he’d nearly caught, her hands itching to hold the pole and try her own luck. Lord Marchman’s disgruntled question snapped her attention back to him. “Would you like to fish, or would you rather sit and watch for a bit, until you recover from your flight from the serpent?” Elizabeth looked around in feigned shock. “Goodness, sir, I don’t fish!” “Do you sit?” he asked with what might have been sarcasm. Elizabeth lowered her lashes to hide her smile at the mounting impatience in his voice. “Of course I sit,” she proudly told him. “Sitting is an excessively ladylike occupation, but fishing, in my opinion, is not. I shall adore watching you do it, however.” For the next two hours she sat on the boulder beside him, complaining about its hardness, the brightness of the sun and the dampness of the air, and when she ran out of matters to complain about she proceeded to completely spoil his morning by chattering his ears off about every inane topic she could think of while occasionally tossing rocks into the stream to scare off his fish.