Two Stars On Shoulder Quotes

He fell to the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that May blooms, that the dawns whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills? One kiss, and that was all. Both trembled, and they looked at each other in the darkness with brilliant eyes. They felt neither the cool night, nor the cold stone, nor the damp ground, nor the wet grass; they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thought. They had clasped hands, without knowing it. She did not ask him; did not even think where and how he had managed to get into the garden. It seemed so natural to her that he should be there. From time to time Marius’ knee touched Cosette’s. A touch that thrilled. At times, Cosette faltered out a word. Her soul trembled on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower. Gradually, they began to talk. Overflow succeeded to silence, which is fullness. The night was serene and glorious above their heads. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their dreams, their frenzies, their ecstasies, their chimeras, their despondencies, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They had confided to each other in an intimacy of the ideal, which already, nothing could have increased, all that was most hidden and most mysterious in themselves. They told each other, with a candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth and the remnant of childhood that was theirs, brought to mind. These two hearts poured themselves out to each other, so that at the end of an hour, it was the young man who had the young girl’s soul and the young girl who had the soul of the young man. They interpenetrated, they enchanted, they dazzled each other. When they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder, and asked him: "What is your name?" My name is Marius," he said. "And yours?" My name is Cosette.

I think I'm losing control all over again. This is because I've registered two things above and beyond his hypnotic green eyes and rock star hot voice. 1. His perfectly square chin has one of those little divots dead center. 2. He's taller, and wider across the shoulders than I'd thought. My heart ramps into some sort of a private hailstorm. My list won't stop. 3. His hair is still shower damp. It's made up of little inky-black curls—an amazing amount of them. 4. The dumb eyes aren't simply green. They're like an exploded rainbow of greens and gold and browns. On closer inspection, he's…he's simply overall amazing and…I'll just say it again: HOLY. HOLY. WOW.

In Chloe, a great city, the people who move through the streets are all strangers. At each encounter, they imagine a thousand things about one another; meetings which could take place between them, conversations, surprises, caresses, bites. But no one greets anyone; eyes lock for a second, then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping. A girl comes along, twirling a parasol on her shoulder, and twirling slightly also her rounded hips. A woman in black comes along, showing her full age, her eyes restless beneath her veil, her lips trembling. At tattooed giant comes along; a young man with white hair; a female dwarf; two girls, twins, dressed in coral. Something runs among them, an exchange of glances link lines that connect one figure with another and draws arrows, stars, triangles, until all combinations are used up in a moment, and other characters come on to the scene: a blind man with a cheetah on a leash, a courtesan with an ostrich-plume fan, an ephebe, a Fat Woman. And thus, when some people happen to find themselves together, taking shelter from the rain under an arcade, or crowding beneath an awning of the bazaar, or stopping to listen to the band in the square, meetings, seductions, copulations, orgies are consummated among them without a word exchanged, without a finger touching anything, almost without an eye raised. A voluptuous vibration constantly stirs Chloe, the most chaste of cities. If men and women began to live their ephemeral dreams, every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretenses, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions, and the carousel of fantasies would stop.

As they walked back to the Kentucky Star, Rob thought about what Willie May had said about the tiger rising on up. It reminded him of what she had said about his sadness needing to rise up. And when he thought about the two things together, the tiger and his sadness, the truth circled over and above him and then came and landed lightly on his shoulder. He knew what he had to do.

I glanced over his shoulder to get a look at his latest drawing. A wolf and a coyote stood side by side beneath a dual sky, sun and moon shining at the same time. "They're brothers," Rafael said. He laid his charcoal on the grass. "Wolf is wise and judicious. Coyote's a trickster. They're the two faces of God. Everything in the world is dual-natured. Even God isn't all good or all bad." He told me about how the sun used to be married to the moon before they quarreled and parted ways, leaving the sun to rule the world at day and the moon at night. He told me how the Wolf had sewn us all out of seeds and put us in a cloth bag to keep us safe, but the Coyote had clawed the bag open and everyone had spilled out, landing and taking root in different parts of the world. He told me about the girl with Two Faces, one half of her face devastatingly beautiful, the other half impossibly ugly, and the man who lover her anyway. He told me about the days when death lacked permanence and ten different generations lived together beneath the same stars. He talked, as he always talked, without any real purpose, clearing his head of the cluttering thoughts that had gathered and built up until he could pour them into me.

Beautiful girls in fairy stories are as common as pebbles on the beach. Magnolia-skinned milkmaids rub shoulders with starry-eyed princesses and, in fact, counting two eyes in each bright-eyed damsel would result in a whole galaxy of twinkling stars.

I smack into him as if shoved from behind. He doesn't budge, not an inch. Just holds my shoulders and waits. Maybe he's waiting for me to find my balance. Maybe he's waiting for me to gather my pride. I hope he's got all day. I hear people passing on the boardwalk and imagine them staring. Best-case scenario, they think I know this guy, that we're hugging. Worst-case scenario, they saw me totter like an intoxicated walrus into this complete stranger because I was looking down for a place to park our beach stuff. Either way, he knows what happened. He knows why my cheek is plastered to his bare chest. And there is definite humiliation waiting when I get around to looking up at him. Options skim through my head like a flip book. Option One: Run away as fast as my dollar-store flip flops can take me. Thing is, tripping over them is partly responsible for my current dilemma. In fact, one of them is missing, probably caught in a crack of the boardwalk. I'm getting Cinderella didn't feel this foolish, but then again, Cinderella wasn't as clumsy as an intoxicated walrus. Option two: Pretend I've fainted. Go limp and everything. Drool, even. But I know this won't work because my eyes flutter too much to fake it, and besides, people don't blush while unconscious. Option Three: Pray for a lightning bolt. A deadly one that you feel in advance because the air gets all atingle and your skin crawls-or so the science books say. It might kill us both, but really, he should have been paying more attention to me when he saw that I wasn't paying attention at all. For a shaved second, I think my prayers are answered because I go get tingly all over; goose bumps sprout everywhere, and my pulse feels like electricity. Then I realize, it's coming from my shoulders. From his hands. Option Last: For the love of God, peel my cheek off his chest and apologize for the casual assault. Then hobble away on my one flip-flop before I faint. With my luck, the lightning would only maim me, and he would feel obligated to carry me somewhere anyway. Also, do it now. I ease away from him and peer up. The fire on my cheeks has nothing to do with the fact that it's sweaty-eight degrees in the Florida sun and everything to do with the fact that I just tripped into the most attractive guy on the planet. Fan-flipping-tastic. "Are-are you all right?" he says, incredulous. I think I can see the shape of my cheek indented on his chest. I nod. "I'm fine. I'm used to it. Sorry." I shrug off his hands when he doesn't let go. The tingling stays behind, as if he left some of himself on me. "Jeez, Emma, are you okay?" Chloe calls from behind. The calm fwopping of my best friend's sandals suggests she's not as concerned as she sounds. Track star that she is, she would already be at my side if she thought I was hurt. I groan and face her, not surprised that she's grinning wide as the equator. She holds out my flip-flop, which I try not to snatch from her hand. "I'm fine. Everybody's fine," I say. I turn back to the guy, who seems to get more gorgeous by the second. "You're fine, right? No broken bones or anything?" He blinks, gives a slight nod. Chloe setts her surfboard against the rail of the boardwalk and extends her hand to him. He accepts it without taking his eyes off me. "I'm Chloe and this is Emma," she says. "We usually bring her helmet with us, but we left it back in the hotel room this time.

It was an old hunter in camp and the hunter shared tobacco with him and told him of the buffalo and the stands he'd made against them, laid up in a sag on some rise with the dead animals scattered over the grounds and the herd beginning to mill and the riflebarrel so hot the wiping patches sizzled in the bore and the animals by the thousands and the tens of thousands and the hides pegged out over actual square miles of ground the teams of skinners spelling one another around the clock and the shooting and shooting weeks and months till the bore shot slick and the stock shot loose at the tang and their shoulders were yellow and blue to the elbow and the tandem wagons groaned away over the prairie twenty and twenty-two ox teams and the flint hides by the hundred ton and the meat rotting on the ground and the air whining with flies and the buzzards and ravens and the night a horror of snarling and feeding with the wolves half-crazed and wallowing in the carrion. I seen Studebaker wagons with six and eight ox teams headed out for the grounds not hauling a thing but lead. Just pure galena. Tons of it. On this ground alone between the Arkansas River and the Concho there were eight million carcasses for that's how many hides reached the railhead. Two years ago we pulled out from Griffin for a last hunt. We ransacked the country. Six weeks. Finally found a herd of eight animals and we killed them and come in. They're gone. Ever one of them that God ever made is gone as if they'd never been at all. The ragged sparks blew down the wind. The prairie about them lay silent. Beyond the fire it was cold and the night was clear and the stars were falling. The old hunter pulled his blanket about him. I wonder if there's other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one.

...then he blushed and seemed to fade where he stood....When the musical star moved on, Lotto turned to her and silently docked his head on her shoulder for two moments, recharged he turned to face the others.

Will and Lake, Love is the most beautiful thing in the world. Unfortunately, it's also one of the hardest things in the world to hold on to, and one of the easiest to throw away. Neither of you has a mother or a father to go to for relationship advice anymore. Neither of you has anyone to go to for a shoulder to cry on when things get touch, and they will get touch. Neither of you has someone to go to when you just want to share the funny, or the happy, or the heartache. You are both at a disadvantage when it comes to this aspect of love. You both only have each other, and because of this, you will have to work harder at building a strong foundation for your future together. You are not only each other's love; you are also one another's sole confidant. I hand wrote some things onto strips of paper and folded them into stars. It might be an inspirational quote, an inspiring lyric, or just some downright good parental advice. I don't want you to open one and read it until you truly feel you need it. If you have a bad day, if the two of you fight, or if you just need something to lift your spirits...that's what these are for. You can open one together; you can open one alone. I just want there to be something both of you can go to, if and when you ever need it. Will...thank you. Thank you for coming into our lives. So much of the pain and worry I've been feeling has been alleviated by the mere fact that I know my daughter is loved by you....You are a wonderful man, and you've been a wonderful friend to me. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for loving my daughter like you do. You respect her, you don't need to change for her, and you inspire her. You can never know how grateful I have been for you, and how much peace you have brought my soul. And Lake; this is me-nudging your shoulder, giving you my approval. You couldn't have picked anyone better to love if I would have hand-picked him myself. Also, thank you for being so determined to keep our family together. You were right about Kel needing to be with you. Thank you for helping me see that. And remember when things get touch for him, please teach him how to stop caring pumpkins... I love you both and with you a lifetime of happiness together. -Julia "And all around my memories, you dance..." ~The Avett Brothers

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told. You see, I'd never actually been to Florida before the war, much less Miami. I was a newspaper reporter from Chicago before the war and had never even seen the ocean until I was flying over the Pacific for the Air Corp. There wasn't much time for admiring the waves when Japanese Zeroes were trying to shoot you out of the sky and bury you at the bottom of that deep blue sea. It was because of my friend Pete that I knew so much about Miami. Florida was his home, so when we both got leave in '42 I followed him to the warm waters of Miami to see what all the fuss was about. It would be easy to say that I skipped Chicago for Miami after the war ended because Pete and I were such good pals and I'd had such a great time there on leave. But in truth I decided to stay on in Miami because of Veronica Lake. I'd better explain that. Veronica Lake never knew she was the reason I came back with Pete to Miami after the war. But she had been there in '42 while Pete and I were enjoying the sand, sun, and the sweet kisses of more than a few love-starved girls desperate to remember what it felt like to have a man's arm around them — not to mention a few other sensations. Lake had been there promoting war bonds on Florida's first radio station, WQAM. It was a big outdoor event and Pete and I were among those listening with relish to Lake's sultry voice as she urged everyone to pitch-in for our boys overseas. We were in those dark early days of the war at the time, and the outcome was very much in question. Lake's appearance at the event was a morale booster for civilians and servicemen alike. She was standing behind a microphone that sat on a table draped in the American flag. I'd never seen a Hollywood star up-close and though I liked the movies as much as any other guy, I had always attributed most of what I saw on-screen to smoke and mirrors. I doubted I'd be impressed seeing a star off-screen. A girl was a girl, after all, and there were loads of real dolls in Miami, as I'd already discovered. Boy, was I wrong." - Where Flamingos Fly

Book Excerpt: "What about your family, Abu Huwa? Are you an orphan?” the little girl very innocently asked the Sphinx. “My father and your father are one and the same. However, I do have a brother who has stood as my mirror throughout time on the opposite horizon. It is I who faces east, but it is he who faces west. I am the recorder of yesterday and he holds the records of tomorrow. I am the positive, and he is my negative. I carry the right eye of the sun and he carries the left eye of the moon. He keeps his eye on the underworld and I keep an eye on the world over. Together we have joined the sky and earth, and split fire and water.” Seham stood on all toes to peek over the Sphinx's shoulder for a sign of his brother. “Where is he?” she asked, her eyes still searching the open horizon. “He has yet to be uncovered, but as I stand above the sands of time, he still sleeps below. Before the descent of Adam, we have both stood as loyal Protectors of the Two Halls of Truth.” The girl asked in astonishment, “I've never heard of these halls, Abu Huwa. Where are they?” “At the end of each of our tails is a passage that will reveal to you the secrets of Time. One hall reflects a thousand truths, and the other hall reflects all that is untrue. One will speak to your heart, and the other will speak to your mind. This is why you need to use both your heart and mind to understand which one is real, and which is a distorted illusion created to misguide those that have neglected their conscience. Both passageways connect you to the Great Hall of Records.” “What is the Hall of Records?” “The Great Pyramid, my child. It is as multidimensional in its shape as it is in its purpose. Every layer and every brick marks the coming of a prophet, the ascension of evil, or another cycle of man. It contains the entire history and future of mankind. And, as is above, so is below. Above ground, it serves as the most powerful energy source to harmonize and power the world! The shape of the pyramid above ground is also the same image mirrored beneath it. Underground, it serves as a powerful well and drain. This is really why Egypt is called the Land of Two Lands. There exists a huge world of its own underneath the plateau, a world within worlds. Large amounts of gold, copper and mercury were once housed here, including the secrets of Time, the 100th name of He Who Is All, and a gift from Truth that still awaits to be discovered. It sleeps with Time in the Great Pyramid, hidden away in a lower shaft that leads to the stars.” Dialogue from 'The Little Girl and the Sphinx' by Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (Dar-El Shams, 2010)

He paused, then, I behind him, arms locked around the powerful ribs, fingers caressing him. To lie with him, to lie with him, burning forgetful in the delicious animal fire. Locked first upright, thighs ground together, shuddering, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, legs enmeshed, then lying full length, with the good heavy weight of body upon body, arching, undulating, blind, growing together, force fighting force: to kill? To drive into burning dark of oblivion? To lose identity? Not love, this, quite. But something else rather. A refined hedonism. Hedonism: because of the blind sucking mouthing fingering quest for physical gratification. Refined: because of the desire to stimulate another in return, not being quite only concerned for self alone, but mostly so. An easy end to arguments on the mouth: a warm meeting of mouths, tongues quivering, licking, tasting. An easy substitute for bad slashing with angry hating teeth and nails and voice: the curious musical tempo of hands lifting under breasts, caressing throat, shoulders, knees, thighs. And giving up to the corrosive black whirlpool of mutual necessary destruction. - Once there is the first kiss, then the cycle becomes inevitable. Training, conditioning, make a hunger burn in breasts and secrete fluid in vagina, driving blindly for destruction. What is it but destruction? Some mystic desire to beat to sensual annihilation - to snuff out one’s identity on the identity of the other - a mingling and mangling of identities? A death of one? Or both? A devouring and subordination? No, no. A polarization rather - a balance of two integrities, changing, electrically, one with the other, yet with centers of coolness, like stars. And there it is: when asked what role I will plan to fill, I say “What do you mean role? I plan not to step into a part on marrying - but to go on living as an intelligent mature human being, growing and learning as I always have. No shift, no radical change in life habits.” Never will there be a circle, signifying me and my operations, confined solely to home, other womenfolk, and community service, enclosed in the larger worldly circle of my mate, who brings home from his periphery of contact with the world the tales only of vicarious experience to me. No, rather, there will be two over-lapping circles, with a certain strong riveted center of common ground, but both with separate arcs jutting out in the world. A balanced tension; adaptible to circumstances, in which there is an elasticity of pull, tension, yet firm unity. Two stars, polarized; in moments of communication that is complete, almost fusing onto one. But fusion is an undesirable impossibility - and quite non-durable. So there will be no illusion of that. So he accuses me of “struggling for dominance”? Sorry, wrong number. Sure, I’m a little scared of being dominated. (Who isn’t? Just the submissive, docile, milky type of individual. And that is Not he, Not me.) But that doesn’t mean I, ipso facto, want to dominate. No, it is not a black-and-white choice or alternative like: “Either-I’m-victorious on-top-or-you-are.” It is only balance that I ask for.

Don't you know that the less you tell someone, the more they want to know? You're better off to make something up than to say nothing at all." "I'm the youngest of twelve children of two South African missionaries," he said with such ease,she very nearly believed him. "When I was six,I wandered into the jungle and was taken in by a pride of lions.I still have a pechant for zebra meat.Then when I was eightteen,I was captured by hunters and sold to a circus.For five years I was the star of the sideshow." "The Lion Boy," Gennie put in. "Naturally.One night during a storm the tent caught fire.In the confusion I escaped.Living off the land, I wandered the country-stealing a few chickens now and again.Eventually an old hermit took me in after I'd saved him from a grizzly." "With your bare hands," Gennie added. "I'm telling the story," he reminded her. "He taught me to read and write. On his deathbead he told me where he'd buried his life savings-a quarter million in gold bullion. After giving him the Viking funeral he'd requested, I had to decide whether to be a stockbroker or go back to the wilderness." "So you decided against Wall Street, came here, and began to collect stamps." "That's about it." "Well," Gennie said after a moment. "With a boring story like that, I can see why you keep it to yourself." "You asked," Grant pointed out. "You might have made something up." "No imagination." She laughed then and leaned her head on his shoulder. "No,I can see you have a very literal mind.

Alex, please.” He balls his fists. “Stop saying my name. You don’t know me anymore.” “I do know you.” I’m still crying, swallowing back spasms in my throat, struggling to breathe. This is a nightmare and I will wake up. This is a monster-story, and he has come back to me a terror-creation, patched together, broken and hateful, and I will wake up and he will be here, and whole, and mine again. I find his hands, lace my fingers through his even as he tries to pull away. “It’s me, Alex. Lena. Your Lena. Remember? Remember 37 Brooks, and the blanket we used to keep in the backyard—” “Don’t,” he says. His voice breaks on the word. “And I always beat you in Scrabble,” I say. I have to keep talking, and keep him here, and make him remember. “Because you always let me win. And remember how we had a picnic one time, and the only thing we could find from the store was canned spaghetti and some green beans? And you said to mix them—” “Don’t.” “And we did, and it wasn’t bad. We ate the whole stupid can, we were so hungry. And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told me there was a star for every thing you loved about me.” I’m gasping, feeling as though I am about to drown; I’m reaching for him blindly, grabbing at his collar. “Stop.” He grabs my shoulders. His face is an inch from mine but unrecognizable: a gross, contorted mask. “Just stop. No more. It’s done, okay? That’s all done now.” “Alex, please—” “Stop!” His voice rings out sharply, hard as a slap. He releases me and I stumble backward. “Alex is dead, do you hear me? All of that—what we felt, what it meant—that’s done now, okay? Buried. Blown away.” “Alex!” He has started to turn away; now he whirls around. The moon lights him stark white and furious, a camera image, two-dimensional, gripped by the flash. “I don’t love you, Lena. Do you hear me? I never loved you.” The air goes. Everything goes. “I don’t believe you.” I’m crying so hard, I can hardly speak. He takes one step toward me. And now I don’t recognize him at all. He has transformed entirely, turned into a stranger. “It was a lie. Okay? It was all a lie. Craziness, like they always said. Just forget about it. Forget it ever happened.” “Please.” I don’t know how I stay on my feet, why I don’t shatter into dust right there, why my heart keeps beating when I want it so badly to stop. “Please don’t do this, Alex.” “Stop saying my name.

He peeled the towel that imprisoned us away and let it fall. I felt it slide softly off my backside, and I felt, too, his rising excite¬ment, hard, erect, pressing against me. My nipples were erect, straining, aching, pressed against his strong warm damp chest, the tangle and pattern of his hair. He was a beast, an animal. My excitement was rising again, to match his. It was as if my heart were about to burst or to flip flop, breathless, into a dark abyss. “Of course, you are crazy, my darling, but, then, so am I.” He kissed me and his oh-so-clever hands seized my waist, tighten¬ing, and then sneaking up my backside, pulling me, pressing me closer, into him. He kissed me again, and his lips moved down my neck to my shoulder and then to my breasts. “Oh,” I said, “Oh.” He bent over me, kissing my collarbone and then my breasts, carefully, slowly, his hands traveling down my back, and over my backside; suddenly, he was on his knees, kissing the whorl of 101 my belly button; then he was forcing me open, gently, gently, his tongue exploring caressing, devouring … “Oh …” I exhaled a deep, shuddering breath. I tipped on the very edge. He bit me, gently. Oooooh! He pulled in the reins, the bit and bridle, of the frisky frothing filly that I had become; this sudden halt made me wilder, crazier; then, once again, he brought me, trembling, up to the very, very edge of the cliff – of orgasm, of loss of self. Then he pulled me back. I blinked and trembled. Around the two of us, there was a whole world, a whole universe. It seemed too vivid to be real, like the backdrop in an opera. Venus was brighter and lower now. The sky had turned deep indigo. One by one, stars appeared.

As he reached for his Visa card, the security monitor next to the register caught Billy in all his glory: football burly but slump-shouldered, his pale face with its exhaustion-starred eyes topped with half a pitchfork’s worth of prematurely graying hair. He was only forty-two, but that crushed-cellophane gaze of his combined with a world-class insomniac’s posture had once gotten him into a movie at a senior citizen’s discount.

Mine was, probably, the easiest imaginable kind of arrest. It did not tear me from the embrace of kith and kin, nor wrench me from a deeply cherished home life. One pallid European February it took me from our narrow salient on the Baltic Sea, where, depending on one's point of view, either we had surrounded the Germans or they had surrounded us, and it deprived me only of my familiar artillery battery and the scenes of the last three months of war. The brigade commander called me to his headquarters and asked me for my pistol; I turned it over without suspecting any evil intent, when suddenly, from a tense, immobile suite of staff officers in the corner, two counterintelligence officers stepped forward hurriedly, crossed the room in a few quick bounds, their four hands grabbed simultaneously at the star on my cap, my shoulder boards, my officer's belt, my map case, and they shouted theatrically: "You are under arrest!" Burning and prickling from head to toe, all I could explain was, "Me? What for?" Across the sheer gap separating me from those left behind, across that quarantine line not event a sound dared penetrate, came the unthinkable magic words of the brigade commander: "Sholzhenitsyn. Come back here." "You have ..." he asked weightily, "a friend on the First Ukrainian Front?" I knew instantly I had been arrested because of my correspondence with a school friend and understood what direction to expect danger.

I’ll start in the air,” I said, far more steadily than I thought I could, considering. I knelt to tie the shirt around his thigh, cinching it tight above the wound; he stiffened but let me finish the knot. “The air first, the airship, and then-then I’ll dive.” “You can’t swim,” broke in Armand. “You told me that you can’t.” “Maybe I can now. If I’m a dragon.” “Don’t be an idiot! If you can’t swim, you can’t swim, Eleanore! You’ll drown out there, and what the bloody hell do you think you’re going to do anyway to a U-boat? Bite it open?” I stood again. “Yes! If I must! I don’t hear you coming up with a better-“ “You’ll die out there!” “Or we’ll all die here!” “We’re going to find another way!” “You two work on that. I’m off.” I fixed them both with one last, vehement look, the Turn rising inside me. Remember this. Remember them, this moment, this heartbreak, these two boys. Remember that they loved you. Armand had reached for my shoulders. “I forbid-Eleanore, please, no-“ “No,” echoed Jesse, speaking at last. “You’re not going after the submarine, Lora. You won’t need to.” Armand and I paused together, glancing down at him. I stood practically on tiptoe, so ready to become my other self. Jesse climbed clumsily to his feet. When he swayed, we both lunged to catch him. “Armand will take me to the shore. I’ll handle the U-boat.” “How?” demanded Armand at once. But I understood. I could read him so well now, Jesse-of-the-stars. I understood what he meant to do, and what it would cost him. I felt myself shaking my head. Above us, the airship propellers thumped louder and louder. “Yes,” said Jesse, smiling his lovely smile at me. “I already sense your agreement. Death and the Elemental were stronger joined than apart, remember? This is our joining. Don’t waste any more time quarreling with me about it. That’s not your way.” He leaned down to me, a hand tangled in my hair. His mouth pressed to mine, and for the first time ever I didn’t feel bliss at his touch. I felt misery. “Go on, Lora-of-the-moon,” he murmured against my lips. “You’re going to save us. I know you will.” I glared past him to the harsh, baffled face of Armand. “Will you help him? Do you swear it?” “I-yes, I will. I do.” I disentangled Jesse’s hand, kissed it, stepped back, and let the Turn consume me, smoke rising and rising, leaving the castle and all I loved behind me for the wild open sky.

Between him and Father Johannes Nickel, as between two stars, lay unbridgeable gulfs of space-time. And yet across the sweep of that desolation each had swum, for a moment, into the other’s lens. Poor von Braun! He needed to know—my grandfather felt that he must find him and tell him—that such a thing was possible. Scattered in the void were minds capable of understanding, of reaching one another. He would put his hand on von Braun’s shoulder the way the old priest’s gnarled paw now lay benedictive on his own. He would transmit to von Braun the only message lonely slaves of gravity might send: We see you—we are here.

Surely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that, and answer, without treachery to the expedition behind him, “One perhaps.” One in a generation. Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and till he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you look from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare. His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still. (He looked into the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine figure of a soldier?

hand. I’m real sorry she left you, Celie. I remember how I felt when she left me. Then the old devil put his arms around me and just stood there on the porch with me real quiet. Way after while I bent my stiff neck onto his shoulder. Here us is, I thought, two old fools left over from love, keeping each other company under the stars. Other times he want to know bout my children. I told him you say they both wear long robes, sort of like dresses. That was the day he come to visit me while I was sewing and ast me what was so special bout my pants. Anybody can wear them, I said. Men and women not suppose to wear the same thing, he said. Men spose to wear the pants. So I said, You ought to tell that to the mens in Africa. Say what? he ast. First time he ever thought bout what

But here through the dusk comes one who is not glad to be at rest. He is a workman on the ranch, an old man, an immigrant Italian. He takes his hat off to me in all servility, because, forsooth, I am to him a lord of life. I am food to him, and shelter, and existence. He has toiled like a beast all his days, and lived less comfortably than my horses in their deep-strawed stalls. He is labour-crippled. He shambles as he walks. One shoulder is twisted higher than the other. His hands are gnarled claws, repulsive, horrible. As an apparition he is a pretty miserable specimen. His brain is as stupid as his body is ugly. "His brain is so stupid that he does not know he is an apparition," the White Logic chuckles to me. "He is sense-drunk. He is the slave of the dream of life. His brain is filled with superrational sanctions and obsessions. He believes in a transcendent over-world. He has listened to the vagaries of the prophets, who have given to him the sumptuous bubble of Paradise. He feels inarticulate self-affinities, with self-conjured non-realities. He sees penumbral visions of himself titubating fantastically through days and nights of space and stars. Beyond the shadow of any doubt he is convinced that the universe was made for him, and that it is his destiny to live for ever in the immaterial and supersensuous realms he and his kind have builded of the stuff of semblance and deception. "But you, who have opened the books and who share my awful confidence—you know him for what he is, brother to you and the dust, a cosmic joke, a sport of chemistry, a garmented beast that arose out of the ruck of screaming beastliness by virtue and accident of two opposable great toes. He is brother as well to the gorilla and the chimpanzee. He thumps his chest in anger, and roars and quivers with cataleptic ferocity. He knows monstrous, atavistic promptings, and he is composed of all manner of shreds of abysmal and forgotten instincts." "Yet he dreams he is immortal," I argue feebly. "It is vastly wonderful for so stupid a clod to bestride the shoulders of time and ride the eternities." "Pah!" is the retort. "Would you then shut the books and exchange places with this thing that is only an appetite and a desire, a marionette of the belly and the loins?" "To be stupid is to be happy," I contend. "Then your ideal of happiness is a jelly-like organism floating in a tideless, tepid twilight sea, eh?

The question has been raised, General Ia, as to whether or not you already know the outcome of this tribunal. Do you?” he asked her. “Is that why you’re trying to avoid being here? To avoid being bored?” “Sirs, I deal in percentages. There are eight possible outcomes to this tribunal which are greater than one percent in their probability, and fifty-two possible outcomes that are less than one percent, most being less than one-tenth of one percent. However small those minor possibilities are, I cannot rule them out as an outcome. I was shot in the shoulder with a handheld laser cannon on a less than three percent probability, which most people would consider to be a highly unlikely outcome. I was also elevated to the rank of a four-star General, never mind that I am now a five-star, on a less than one-hundred-thousandth of a percent, when the largest percentile, forty-seven percent, was that I should have been elevated only to the rank of Rear Admiral. “As for being bored . . . I actually would prefer to be here because that means nobody would be attacking our colonies. But they are, and that means my preferences must take second place to my sense of duty. I will admit I have sat through this tribunal around eight or nine times in the timestreams, examining those eight largest percentiles,” Ia added candidly. “This has left me very familiar with the majority of all evidence the prosecution will be presenting against me . . . but again, the outcome is never one hundred percent certain, until it has actually come to pass. I do take this tribunal seriously, but I also take the ongoing threat to Terran civilians equally seriously, sirs.

Thor looked out on the two great rolling rivers of cloud. It was a bad way for one to go, cold and suffocating. Yet if he went that way he could keep on his shoulder the hammer which he would not leave in another's charge. He stept out into the Cloud River that flowed by the Rainbow Bridge, and with his hammer upon his shoulder he went struggling on to the other river. Odin, Tyr, and Baldur were beside Urda's Well when Thor came struggling out of the Cloud River, wet and choking, but with his hammer still upon his shoulder. There stood Tyr, upright and handsome, leaning on his sword that was inscribed all over with magic runes; there stood Baldur, smiling, with his head bent as he listened to the murmur of the two fair swans; and there stood Odin All-Father, clad in his blue cloak fringed with golden stars, without the eagle-helmet upon his head, and with no spear in his hands.

And when they start talking, and they always do, you find that each of them has a story they want to tell. Everyone, no matter how old or young, has some lesson they want to teach. And I sit there and listen and learn all about life from people who have no idea how to live it. Nobody knows how to just shut the fuck up and look out the window anymore. The bathrooms are tiny and filthy and you have no choice but to piss all over yourself when the bus swerves, but the streetlights look like blurred stars exploding in the window when it rains at night, and you can sleep knowing that if there’s an accident and everyone on the bus dies it wasn’t your fault. Someone fat and snoring will sometimes sit beside you and sweat on your shoulder even though it’s twelve degrees outside, and someone else with a big head shaped like an onion and dirty hair that smells like fish sticks will sit in front of you and recline their seat into your lap. And you’ll be trapped and sleepless and sad for the entire ride. But then other times you get two whole seats to yourself, and when that becomes your idea of luxury you know you’ve found something that no one else is even looking for, and if you gave it to them for Christmas they’d return it the next morning as soon as the stores opened. And then you get to think of yourself like the little drummer boy, playing for Jesus even though he’s too young to understand, even though nobody in Bethlehem really likes percussion and they think you’re a cheap ass for not bringing gold or frankincense. And it’s a shame when you realize that you won’t get to be in the Bible, and it doesn’t seem right. But then nobody gets to be in the Bible anymore, no matter who they are or what they do, and the sooner you realize that the easier it all becomes. But it’s still a shame.

Hello, Gwyn,' he said warmly. 'Good to see you again.' Gwyn blushed, shaking herself out of her stupor and bowed low. 'My lord.' Nesta rolled her eyes, and found Rhys watching her. That casual smile sharpened as he met her stare. 'Nesta.' 'Rhysand.' The other two women were glancing between them, the bouncing of their stares almost comical. Cassian just strode to Nesta's side and slung an arm around her shoulders before drawling to Rhys, 'These ladies are going to hand your ass to you in combat soon enough.' Nesta made to step out from under the heavy, sweaty weight of his arm, but Cassian clamped a too-friendly hand on her shoulder, his grin unfaltering. Rhys's gaze slid between them, little warmth to be found in his eyes. But plenty of wariness. Little princeling didn't like her with his friend. Nesta leaned into Cassian. Not much, but enough for a trained warrior like Rhysand to note. A dark, silken hand brushed inside her mind. A request. She debated ignoring it, but found herself opening a small door through the steel, spiked barrier she kept around herself day and night. The door was essentially a peephole, and she allowed what she supposed was the equivalent of her mental face to peer through it to the dark, sparkling plane beyond. What? You are to treat Gwyn with kindness and respect. The thing that stood beyond the fortress of her mind was a creature of claws, scales and teeth. It was veiled from sight beneath writhing shadows and the occasional passing star glinting in the darkness, but every now and then, a glimpse of a wing or talon shone. Mind your own business. Nesta slammed the small viewing hole shut. She blinked, slowly registering Emerie asking Cassian about tomorrow morning's lesson, and what she'd miss today by leaving an hour early. Rhysand's eyes glimmered. Cassian's arm remained around Nesta, and his thumb moved over her shoulder in an idle, reassuring caress. Whether he knew of or sensed her silent conversation with his High Lord, he didn't let on.

In Truth,” I said, “there are no rules other than you have to tell the truth.” “How do you win?” he asked. “That,” I said, “is such a boy question.” “What, girls don’t like to win?” He snorted. “Please. You’re the one who got all rule driven on me claiming Instant Breakfast isn’t a food.” “It’s not,” I told him. “It’s a beverage.” He rolled his eyes. I can’t believe this, I thought. A week or two ago putting a full sentence together in front of Wes was a challenge. Now we were arguing about liquids. “Okay,” he said, “back to Truth. You were saying?” I took in a breath. “To win, one person has to refuse to answer a question,” I said. “So, for example, let’s say I ask you a question and you don’t answer it. Then you get to ask me a question, and if I answer it, I win.” “But that’s too simple,” he said. “What if I ask you something easy?” “You wouldn’t,” I told him. “It has to be a really hard question, because you don’t want me to win.” “Ahhh,” he said, nodding. Then, after mulling it for a second he said, “Man. This is diabolical.” “It’s a girl’s game,” I explained, tilting my head back and looking at the stars. “Always good for a little drama at the slumber party. I told you, you don’t want to play.” “No. I do,” he squared his shoulders. “I can handle it.

I stood next to Breeze in a small quartz room. A sea lantern served as the only light source, bathing the room in its pale blue light. Against the center of one wall stood a mysterious object. It was three meters tall, three meters wide, and flat, like a banner. However, instead of dyed wool was a surface like the calmest pool of water. Breeze reached out with her right hand. Her fingers touched those of her reflection. After she lowered her arm, we continued staring at ourselves in silence. In awe. It was the first time we'd seen ourselves this way. But more than that were our outfits. Our clothes were made of spider silk, a type of cloth crafted using spider string. Puddles, the owner of the Clothing Castle, had worked with the humans for days to craft perfect recreations of Earth fashion. Then, to make us look even more majestic, our cloaks had been modified to fall over our shoulders. Poster children. Symbols of hope. Villagetown's biggest stars. That's what we've become. Some say it's sweet: a budding romance between two young heroes fighting valiantly against all odds. I'd say that's an exaggeration. Although Breeze and I are close, we haven't had much time for anything beyond battle or preparing for the next. I guess the mayor wants to change that, though. The people need something to believe in, he says. I suppose that's why he whisked us away in

It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.

He’s a murdering chud,” Zil was yelling. “What do you want to do? Lynch him?” Astrid demanded. That stopped the flow for a second as kids tried to figure out what “lynch” meant. But Zil quickly recovered. “I saw him do it. He used his powers to kill Harry.” “I was trying to stop you from smashing my head in!” Hunter shouted. “You’re a lying mutant freak!” “They think they can do anything they want,” another voice shouted. Astrid said, as calmly as she could while still pitching her voice to be heard, “We are not going down that path, people, dividing up between freaks and normals.” “They already did it!” Zil cried. “It’s the freaks acting all special and like their farts don’t stink.” That earned a laugh. “And now they’re starting to kill us,” Zil cried. Angry cheers. Edilio squared his shoulders and stepped into the crowd. He went first to Hank, the kid with the shotgun. He tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Give me that thing.” “No way,” Hank said. But he didn’t seem too certain. “You want to have that thing fire by accident and blow someone’s face off?” Edilio held his hand out. “Give it to me, man.” Zil rounded on Edilio. “You going to make Hunter give up his weapon? Huh? He’s got powers, man, and that’s okay, but the normals can’t have any weapon? How are we supposed to defend ourselves from the freaks?” “Man, give it a rest, huh?” Edilio said. He was doing his best to sound more weary than angry or scared. Things were already bad enough. “Zil, you want to be responsible if that gauge goes off and kills Astrid? You want to maybe give that some thought?” Zil blinked. But he said, “Dude, I’m not scared of Sam.” “Sam won’t be your problem, I will be,” Edilio snapped, losing patience. “Anything happens to her, I’ll take you down before Sam ever gets the chance.” Zil snorted derisively. “Ah, good little boy, Edilio, kissing up to the chuds. I got news for you, dilly dilly, you’re a lowly normal, just like me and the rest of us." “I’m going to let that go,” Edilio said evenly, striving to regain his cool, trying to sound calm and in control, even though he could hardly take his eyes off the twin barrels of the shotgun. “But now I’m taking that shotgun.” “No way!” Hank cried, and the next thing was an explosion so loud, Edilio thought a bomb had gone off. The muzzle flash blinded him, like camera flash going off in his face. Someone yelled in pain. Edilio staggered back, squeezed his eyes shut, trying to adjust. When he opened them again the shotgun was on the ground and the boy who’d accidentally fired it was holding his bruised hand, obviously shocked. Zil bent to grab the gun. Edilio took two steps forward and kicked Zil in the face. As Zil fell back Edilio made a grab for the shotgun. He never saw the blow that turned his knees to water and filled his head with stars. He fell like a sack of bricks, but even as he fell he lurched forward to cover the shotgun. Astrid screamed and launched herself down the stairs to protect Edilio. Antoine, the one who had hit Edilio, was raising his bat to hit Edilio again, but on the back swing he caught Astrid in the face. Antoine cursed, suddenly fearful. Zil yelled, “No, no, no!” There was a sudden rush of running feet. Down the walkway, into the street, echoing down the block.

Mindy runs to the DVD player and delicately places the disk in the holder and presses play. “Will you sit in this chair, please, Princess Mindy?” I ask, bowing deeply at the waist. Mindy giggles as she replies, ”I guess so.” After Mindy sits down, I take a wide-tooth comb and start gently combing out her tangles. Mindy starts vibrating with excitement as she blurts, “Mr. Jeff, you’re gonna fix my hair fancy, ain’t you?” “We’ll see if a certain Princess can hold still long enough for me to finish,” I tease. Immediately, Mindy becomes as still as a stone statue. After a couple of minutes, I have to say, “Mindy, sweetheart, it’s okay to breathe. I just can’t have you bouncing, because I’m afraid it will cause me to pull your hair.” Mindy slumps down in her chair just slightly. “Okay Mr. Jeff, I was ascared you was gonna stop,” she whispers, her chin quivering. I adopt a very fake, very over-the-top French accent and say, “Oh no, Monsieur Jeff must complete Princess Mindy’s look to make the Kingdom happy. Mindy erupts with the first belly laugh I’ve heard all day as she responds, “Okay, I’ll try to be still, but it’s hard ‘cause I have the wiggles real bad.” I pat her on the shoulder and chuckle as I say, “Just try your best, sweetheart. That’s all anyone can ask.” Kiera comes screeching around the corner in a blur, plunks her purse on the table, and says breathlessly, “Geez-O-Pete, I can’t believe I’m late for the makeover. I love makeovers.” Kiera digs through her purse and produces two bottles of nail polish and nail kit. “It’s time for your mani/pedi ma’am. Would you prefer Pink Pearl or Frosted Creamsicle? Mindy raises her hand like a schoolchild and Kiera calls on her like a pupil, “I want Frosted Cream toes please,” Mindy answers. “Your wish is my command, my dear,” Kiera responds with a grin. For the next few minutes, Mindy gets the spa treatment of her life as I carefully French braid her hair into pigtails. As a special treat, I purchased some ribbons from the gift shop and I’m weaving them into her hair. I tuck a yellow rose behind her ear. I don my French accent as I declare, “Monsieur Jeffery pronounces Princess Mindy finished and fit to rule the kingdom.” Kiera hands Mindy a new tube of grape ChapStick from her purse, “Hold on, a true princess never reigns with chapped lips,” she says. Mindy giggles as she responds, “You’re silly, Miss Kiera. Nobody in my kingdom is going to care if my lips are shiny.” Kiera’s laugh sounds like wind chimes as she covers her face with her hands as she confesses, “Okay, you busted me. I just like to use it because it tastes yummy.” “Okay, I want some, please,” Mindy decides. Kiera is putting the last minute touches on her as Mindy is scrambling to stand on Kiera’s thighs so she can get a better look in the mirror. When I reach out to steady her, she grabs my hand in a death grip. I glance down at her. Her eyes are wide and her mouth is opening and closing like a fish. I shoot Kiera a worried glance, but she merely shrugs. “Holy Sh — !” Mindy stops short when she sees Kiera’s expression. “Mr. Jeff is an angel for reals because he turned me into one. Look at my hair Miss Kiera, there are magic ribbons in it! I’m perfect. I can be anything I want to be.” Spontaneously, we all join together in a group hug. I kiss the top of her head as I agree, “Yes, Mindy, you are amazing and the sky is the limit for you.

On the other side of the mountain, Drizzt Do'Urden opened his eyes from his daytime slumber. Emerging from the cave into the growing gloom, he found Wulfgar in the customary spot, poised meditatively on a high stone, staring out over the plain. "You long for your home?" the drow asked rhetorically. Wulfgar shrugged his huge shoulders and answered absently, "Perhaps." The barbarian had come to ask many disturbing questions of himself about his people and their way of life since he had learned respect for Drizzt. The Drow was an enigma to him, a confusing combination of fighting brilliance and absolute control. Drizzt seemed able to weigh every move he ever made in the scales of high adventure and indisputable morals. Wulfgar turned a questioning gaze on the drow. "Why are you here?" he asked suddenly. Now it was Drizzt who stared reflectively into the openness before them. The first stars of the evening had appeared, their reflections sparkling distinctively in the dark pools of the elf's eyes. But Drizzt was not seeing them; his mind was viewing long past images of the lightless cities of the drow in their immense cavern complexes far beneath the ground. "I remember," Drizzt recalled vividly, as terrible memories are often vivid, "'the first time I ever viewed this surface world. I was a much younger elf then, a member of a large raiding party. We slipped out from a secret cave and descended upon a small elven village." The drow flinched at the images as they flashed again in his mind. "My companions slaughtered every member of the wood elf clan. Every female. Every child." Wulfgar listened with growing horror. The raid that Drizzt was describing might well have been one perpetrated by the ferocious Tribe of the Elk. "My people kill," Drizzt went on grimly. "They kill without mercy." He locked his stare onto Wulfgar to make sure that the barbarian heard him well. "They kill without passion." He paused for a moment to let the barbarian absorb the full weight of his words. The simple yet definitive description of the cold killers had confused Wulfgar. He had been raised and nurtured among passionate warriors, fighters whose entire purpose in life was the pursuit of battle-glory - fighting in praise of Tempos. The young barbarian simply could not understand such emotionless cruelty. A subtle difference, though, Wulfgar had to admit. Drow or barbarian, the results of the raids were much the same. "The demon goddess they serve leaves no room for the other races," Drizzt explained. "Particularly the other races of elves." "But you will never come to be accepted in this world," said Wulfgar. "Surely you must know that the humans will ever shun you." Drizzt nodded. "Most," he agreed. "I have few that I can call friends, yet I am content. You see, barbarian, I have my own respect, without guilt, without shame." He rose from his crouch and started away into the darkness. "Come," he instructed. "Let us fight well this night, for I am satisfied with the improvement of your skills, and this part of your lessons nears its end." Wulfgar sat a moment longer in contemplation. The drow lived a hard and materially empty existence, yet he was richer than any man Wulfgar had ever known. Drizzt had clung to his principles against overwhelming circumstances, leaving the familiar world of his own people by choice to remain in a world where he would never be accepted or appreciated. He looked at the departing elf, now a mere shadow in the gloom. "Perhaps we two are not so different," he mumbled under his breath.

More than putting another man on the moon, more than a New Year’s resolution of yogurt and yoga, we need the opportunity to dance with really exquisite strangers. A slow dance between the couch and dinning room table, at the end of the party, while the person we love has gone to bring the car around because it’s begun to rain and would break their heart if any part of us got wet. A slow dance to bring the evening home, to knock it out of the park. Two people rocking back and forth like a buoy. Nothing extravagant. A little music. An empty bottle of whiskey. It’s a little like cheating. Your head resting on his shoulder, your breath moving up his neck. Your hands along her spine. Her hips unfolding like a cotton napkin and you begin to think about how all the stars in the sky are dead. The my body is talking to your body slow dance. The Unchained Melody, Stairway to Heaven, power-cord slow dance. All my life I’ve made mistakes. Small and cruel. I made my plans. I never arrived. I ate my food. I drank my wine. The slow dance doesn’t care. It’s all kindness like children before they turn four. Like being held in the arms of my brother. The slow dance of siblings. Two men in the middle of the room. When I dance with him, one of my great loves, he is absolutely human, and when he turns to dip me or I step on his foot because we are both leading, I know that one of us will die first and the other will suffer. The slow dance of what’s to come and the slow dance of insomnia pouring across the floor like bath water. When the woman I’m sleeping with stands naked in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, the slow dance of ritual is being spit into the sink. There is no one to save us because there is no need to be saved. I’ve hurt you. I’ve loved you. I’ve mowed the front yard. When the stranger wearing a shear white dress covered in a million beads comes toward me like an over-sexed chandelier suddenly come to life, I take her hand in mine. I spin her out and bring her in. This is the almond grove in the dark slow dance. It is what we should be doing right now. Scrapping for joy. The haiku and honey. The orange and orangutan slow dance.

Curtis Bane screamed and though I came around fast and fired in the same motion, he’d already pulled a heater and begun pumping metal at me. We both missed and I was empty, that drum clicking uselessly. I went straight at him. Happily, he too was out of bullets and I closed the gap and slammed the butt of the rifle into his chest. Should’ve knocked him down, but no. The bastard was squat and powerful as a wild animal, thanks to being a coke fiend, no doubt. He ripped the rifle from my grasp and flung it aside. He locked his fists and swung them up into my chin, and it was like getting clobbered with a hammer, and I sprawled into a row of trash cans. Stars zipped through my vision. A leather cosh dropped from his sleeve into his hand and he knew what to do with it all right. He swung it in a short chopping blow at my face and I got my left hand up and the blow snapped my two smallest fingers, and he swung again and I turned my head just enough that it only squashed my ear and you better believe that hurt, but now I’d drawn the sawback bayonet I kept strapped to my hip, a fourteen-inch grooved steel blade with notched and pitted edges—Jesus-fuck who knew how many Yankee boys the Kraut who’d owned it gashed before I did for him—and stabbed it to the guard into Bane’s groin. Took a couple of seconds for Bane to register it was curtains. His face whitened and his mouth slackened, breath steaming in the chill, his evil soul coming untethered. He had lots of gold fillings. He lurched away and I clutched his sleeve awkwardly with my broken hand and rose, twisting the handle of the blade side to side, turning it like a car crank into his guts and bladder, putting my shoulder and hip into it for leverage. He moaned in panic and dropped the cosh and pried at my wrist, but the strength was draining from him and I slammed him against the wall and worked the handle with murderous joy. The cords of his neck went taut and he looked away, as if embarrassed, eyes milky, a doomed petitioner gaping at Hell in all its fiery majesty. I freed the blade with a cork-like pop and blood spurted down his leg in a nice thick stream and he collapsed, folding into himself like a bug does when it dies.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and get lost in a sea of blue. A Jersey-accented voice says, “It’s about time, kid,” and Frank Sinatra rattles the ice in his glass of Jack Daniel’s. Looking at the swirling deep-brown liquid, he whispers, “Ain’t it beautiful?” This is my introduction to the Chairman of the Board. We spend the next half hour talking Jersey, Hoboken, swimming in the Hudson River and the Shore. We then sit down for dinner at a table with Robert De Niro, Angie Dickinson and Frank and his wife, Barbara. This is all occurring at the Hollywood “Guinea Party” Patti and I have been invited to, courtesy of Tita Cahn. Patti had met Tita a few weeks previous at the nail parlor. She’s the wife of Sammy Cahn, famous for such songs as “All The Way,” “Teach Me Tonight” and “Only the Lonely.” She called one afternoon and told us she was hosting a private event. She said it would be very quiet and couldn’t tell us who would be there, but assured us we’d be very comfortable. So off into the LA night we went. During the evening, we befriend the Sinatras and are quietly invited into the circle of the last of the old Hollywood stars. Over the next several years we attend a few very private events where Frank and the remaining clan hold forth. The only other musician in the room is often Quincy Jones, and besides Patti and I there is rarely a rocker in sight. The Sinatras are gracious hosts and our acquaintance culminates in our being invited to Frank’s eightieth birthday party dinner. It’s a sedate event at the Sinatras’ Los Angeles home. Sometime after dinner, we find ourselves around the living room piano with Steve and Eydie Gorme and Bob Dylan. Steve is playing the piano and up close he and Eydie can really sing the great standards. Patti has been thoroughly schooled in jazz by Jerry Coker, one of the great jazz educators at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. She was there at the same time as Bruce Hornsby, Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, and she learned her stuff. At Frank’s, as the music drifts on, she slips gently in on “My One and Only Love.” Patti is a secret weapon. She can sing torch like a cross between Peggy Lee and Julie London (I’m not kidding). Eydie Gorme hears Patti, stops the music and says, “Frank, come over here. We’ve got a singer!” Frank moves to the piano and I then get to watch my wife beautifully serenade Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan, to be met by a torrent of applause when she’s finished. The next day we play Frank’s eightieth birthday celebration for ABC TV and I get to escort him to the stage along with Tony Bennett. It’s a beautiful evening and a fitting celebration for the greatest pop singer of all time. Two years later Frank passed away and we were generously invited to his funeral. A

HEROPANTI MOVIE REVIEW & RATING Movie Name: Heropanti Director: Sabbir Khan Producer: Sajid Nadiadwala Music Director: Sajid-Wajid, Manj Musik Cast: Tiger Shroff, Kirti Sanon, Sandeepa Dhar ‘Heropanti’, a love story is directed by Sabbir Khan and produced by Sajid Nadiadwala. It is the debut movie of Tiger Shroff (son of superstar Jackie Shroff) and Kirti Sanon, both starring in lead roles alongside Sandeepa Dhar featuring in a pivotal role. Overall it is a remake of Telugu movie ‘Parugu’ starring Allu Arjun. ‘Heropanti’ is all about another new gem in Bollywood industry. Big launch with hit songs. New faces- heroine as well as hero. Does it work? Let’s go through to know it… ‘Heropanti’ borrows half of its title from Sr. Shroff’s breakout film and is also having the signature tune from ‘Hero’ (1983) which is being played in the background repeatedly. The action movie is not as terrible as Salman and Akshay films. The newcomer Tiger Shroff has done amazing stunts in the film. The story is set in the land of Jattland in Harayana where Chaudhary (Prakash Raj), the Haryanvi goon is completely against love marriages. He has two daughters- Renu (Sandeepa Dhar) and Dimpi (Kirti Sanon). Chaudharyji’s elder daughter Renu’s marriage is held, but on the wedding night she elopes with her boyfriend Rakesh. Her step results in a frantic search for her across the village. Chaudharyji launches a manhunt to track them down and eliminate them. Now Haryanvi goon’s men suspects Rakesh’s friends and thinks that they may know where Renu is. So the goon decides to kidnap the buddies of his daughter’s lover. Bablu (Tiger Shroff) turns to be one of the buddies with ultra muscular head and shoulders model who falls in love with Chaudharyji’s younger daughter Dimpy (Kirti Sanon). The goons manage to trace Bablu who has actually helped Rakesh and Renu in escaping. Bablu, meanwhile in captivity, shares with his pals about his love interest. Bablu falls in love at first sight with the pretty younger daughter of Chaudharyji’s, Dimpy. He comes to know quite early that it is none other than the Harynavi goon Chaudharyji’s daughter. The movie tries to end up in a ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’ style where Bablu uses his superpowers and figures out to be with his love but without offending her father. launch pad for Shroff to show his acting and dancing skills. Plan to watch it, if nothing left to do. Tiger Shoff is a great action hero. When it comes to action, he is a star but comparatively his acting skills are zero. Kirti Sanon requires a little brushing up on her acting skills she reminds us somewhere of young Deepika Padukone who is surely going to have a good run in the industry someday. Verdict: It’s the most masala-less movie of this year with more action and less drama. But the movie is a perfect

The kingdom of Bosnia forms a division of the Ottoman empire, and is a key to the countries of Roumeli (or Romeli). Although its length and breadth be of unequal dimensions, yet it is not improper to say it is equal in climate to Misr and Sham (Egypt and Syria). Each one of its lofty mountains, exalted to Ayuk, (a bright red star that * The peace of Belgrade was signed on the first of September, 1739. By this peace the treaty of Passarowitz was nullified, and the rivers Danube, Save, and Una re-established, as the boundaries of the two empires. See note to page 1. always follows the Hyades,) is an eye-sore to a foe. By reason of this country's vicinity to the infidel nations, such as the deceitful Germans, Hungarians, Serbs (Sclavonians), the tribes of Croats, and the Venetians, strong and powerful, and furnished with abundance of cannon, muskets, and other weapons of destruction, it has had to carry on fierce war from time to time with one or other, or more, of these deceitful enemies—enemies accustomed to mischief, inured to deeds of violence, resembling wild mountaineers in asperity, and inflamed with the rage of seeking opportunities of putting their machinations into practice; but the inhabitants of Bosnia know this. The greater part of her peasants are strong, courageous, ardent, lion-hearted, professionally fond of war, and revengeful: if the enemy but only show himself in any quarter, they, never seeking any pretext for declining, hasten to the aid of each other. Though in general they are harmless, yet in conflict with an enemy they are particularly vehement and obstinate; in battle they are strong-hearted ; to high commands they are obedient, and submissive as sheep; they are free from injustice and wickedness; they commit no villany, and are never guilty of high-way robbery; and they are ready to sacrifice their lives in behalf of their religion and the emperor. This is an honour which the people of Bosnia have received as an inheritance from their forefathers, and which every parent bequeaths to his son at his death. By far the greater number of the inhabitants, but especially the warlike chiefs, capudans, and veterans of the borders, in order to mount and dismount without inconvenience, and to walk with greater freedom and agility, wear short and closely fitted garments: they wear the fur of the wolf and leopard about their shoulders, and eagles' wings in their caps, which are made of wolf-skins. The ornaments of their horses are wolf and bearskins: their weapons of defence are the sword, the javelin, the axe, the spear, pistols, and muskets : their cavalry are swift, and their foot nimble and quick. Thus dressed and accoutred they present a formidable appearance, and never fail to inspire their enemies with a dread of their valour and heroism. So much for the events which have taken place within so short a space of time.* It is not in our power to write and describe every thing connected with the war, or which came to pass during that eventful period. Let this suffice. * It will be seen by the dates given in page 1, that the war lasted about two years and five months. Prepared and printed from the rare and valuable collection of Omer EfFendi of Novi, a native of Bosnia, by Ibrahim.* * This Ibrahim was called Basmajee^ the printer. He is mentioned in history as a renegado, and to have been associated with the son of Mehemet Effendi, the negotiator of the peace of Paasarowitz, and who was, in 1721, deputed on a special em-, bassy to Louis XV. Seyd Effendi, who introduced the art of printing into Turkey. Ibrahim, under the auspices of the government, and by the munificence of Seyd Effendi aiding his labours^ succeeded in sending from the newly instituted presses several works, besides the Account of the War in Bosnia.

Sir Graham walked to the window, very aware of two worshipful pairs of young eyes on his back. He knew well how to make himself noticed; he knew well how to draw a lady’s eye, and with this in mind—and despite the heat—he had purposely and cunningly exchanged his seagoing frock coat for his finest full-dress uniform. The dark blue coat was carefully brushed, with bright gold bars of lace at sleeve and lapel, more lace at collar, cuffs, and pockets, and the epaulets with the single star winking proudly from each shoulder; the waistcoat and breeches were snowy white, and a cocked hat was framed with even more gold trim. Uniforms—especially full-dress ones usually reserved for formal occasions—were a sure bet for winning female hearts and with this in mind, the admiral turned just so, knowing that the sunlight would—move a little more to starboard, Gray—he heard one of the girls gasp—yes, that's it—touch upon the gold fringe of his epaulets with blinding brilliance. With a private, wicked smile, he struck a deliberate pose, relaxed yet commanding all at once;

He registered the empty room a split second before she dropped on him from the storage shelf above the bathroom door, nearly knocking him off his feet. "Hey. Stop that." He tried to twist to get hold of her, but his temple caught her sharp elbow and he saw stars. He staggered toward the bed and flipped her down at last, but she managed to hook her leg behind his neck and he ended up on the boom somehow, with her sittinbg on his chest. Her wild, shoulder-length waves framed cheeks pink from effort, her chest heaving as she leaned forward to pin his hands next to his head on each side. She ended up with her fine breasts inches from his lips. He could have subdued her in two moves, but he liked her on top of him.

The central police station of the governorate of Qasr el-Nil looked like the poorly maintained palace of a deceased sheikh. Protected by tall black fences, its dark facade opened onto a garden containing a mix of palm trees and police vehicles, which seemed more like grocers’ delivery vans. Only the large blue two-note revolving lights showed the difference. In front of a long staircase, six military guards—each with white short-sleeved shirt, kepi bearing the insignia of an eagle stamped with the national flag, Misr assault rifle across the shoulder—slapped the edge of their hands against their chests at the exit of a corpulent man endowed with three stars on his epaulettes.

The two colts landed and hooked their wings around each other, nickering and watching Star struggle. The shore on this end of the lake was steep, and Star sank when a cramp seized his oversize wings. Bubbles burst from his lips as the spasm rolled from his shoulders to his tail. He drifted helplessly to the bottom, his lungs burning, his black legs kicking.

UNION AND CHANGE The third article was union. To those who were small and few against the wilderness, the success of liberty demanded the strength of union. Two centuries of change have made this true again. No longer need capitalist and worker, farmer and clerk, city and countryside, struggle to divide our bounty. By working shoulder to shoulder, together we can increase the bounty of all. We have discovered that every child who learns, every man who finds work, every sick body that is made whole--like a candle added to an altar--brightens the hope of all the faithful. So let us reject any among us who seek to reopen old wounds and to rekindle old hatreds. They stand in the way of a seeking nation. Let us now join reason to faith and action to experience, to transform our unity of interest into a unity of purpose. For the hour and the day and the time are here to achieve progress without strife, to achieve change without hatred--not without difference of opinion, but without the deep and abiding divisions which scar the union for generations. THE AMERICAN BELIEF Under this covenant of justice, liberty, and union we have become a nation--prosperous, great, and mighty. And we have kept our freedom. But we have no promise from God that our greatness will endure. We have been allowed by Him to seek greatness with the sweat of our hands and the strength of our spirit. I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming--always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again--but always trying and always gaining. In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again. If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored. If we succeed, it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but, rather because of what we believe. For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and union, and in our own Union. We believe that every man must someday be free. And we believe in ourselves. Our enemies have always made the same mistake. In my lifetime--in depression and in war--they have awaited our defeat. Each time, from the secret places of the American heart, came forth the faith they could not see or that they could not even imagine. It brought us victory. And it will again. For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say "Farewell." Is a new world coming? We welcome it--and we will bend it to the hopes of man. To these trusted public servants and to my family and those close friends of mine who have followed me down a long, winding road, and to all the people of this Union and the world, I will repeat today what I said on that sorrowful day in November 1963: "I will lead and I will do the best I can." But you must look within your own hearts to the old promises and to the old dream. They will lead you best of all. For myself, I ask only, in the words of an ancient leader: "Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so great?

Sure, I could have, no problem. The security they got around those room booking systems is like a kid’s playpen, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.” Eliot reached across Parker to grab Hardison by the front of his shirt, but Parker shoved her shoulder between the two men, foiling the effort. “That’s your thing, man,” Eliot said over Parker’s shoulder as Hardison backed away into the corner of the cab. “What’s stopping you?” Hardison shrugged, embarrassed. “All the people who come out here, they’re doing it for the sheer joy of being a geek about something. Might be the Avengers, Star Wars, Sailor Moon, or even them sparkly vampires, but hey, they took a week off work, saved up all their pennies for the badges—which sell out in about ninety minutes—and got their butts out there for the show. I—I just couldn’t do that to them.

When he reached the well Ur bent down and splashed cool water onto his face. Taking a wooden cup which had been laboriously carved by flints, he drank the water and was about to put the cup aside when he saw his face looming up from the well. It was hairy, surrounded by a circle formed of hunched shoulders, small tight ears and drooping brow, but it was marked by two blue eyes that shone like little stars. The light reflecting from his eyes fascinated Ur and he began to laugh, but as he did so a tiny pebble, scarce bigger than a bee’s wing, tumbled into the well and set up ripples which distorted the image of his face, and something in the way the water moved, taking his eyes and ears and mouth with it, frightened Ur and he drew back. But as quickly as the ripples had passed, the water restored his features to their proper place and he was once more Ur. He shivered to think that some unknown power could alter the essential he and smear it into a distorted form. Then he smiled at himself but he was not so free and happy as before.

It was only now that she understood, for the first time, that despite her title, her uniform, and the two stars on her shoulder, she was as helpless as any native herder or farmer or sailor.

A smaller screen near us pans to Sam. He’s pacing back and forth down the sideline, and he’s not even looking in our direction. But then one of his teammates smacks him on the shoulder and he looks toward me. He stops. He unstraps his helmet, pulls it from his head and stares up at me. Star motions for everyone in our section to be quiet, and they all lower their signs. Emily swipes a tear from her cheek and says, “Go for it.” Logan wraps an arm around her and Kit and holds them tight. Logan is grinning like a fool, though. The camera guy is right in front of me. “Forty-five seconds,” he reminds me. I see my image on the big screen and one of the guys on the field points to it, so Sam looks in that direction. I hold up my signs. I have them grouped in order, one after the other. I show the first one. I love you, 51! I flip to the next. I don’t want to be just a Zero anymore. Flip. I want to be a Zero-plus-one. Flip. Or a Zero-plus-two. Flip. Maybe even a Zero-plus-three. Flip. I want to make little cupcakes with you. Flip. Only you. Flip. Forever. Flip. Check yes or no. I take this last card and walk out of my section. I have hands of people I don’t even know reaching out to steady me, and they’re all saying encouraging things. The camera guy runs along behind me, cursing as he chases me down the stairs. I run with my last card all the way down to the bottom bleacher and I lean over the side, holding it down against the concrete block wall. I pull a marker from my pocket and hold it out, too. Then I wait. It’s the longest forty-five seconds of my life. Sam stands completely still. He scratches his head. His teammates say things to him and he still stands there. The clock is ticking. Maybe he doesn’t want what I want after all. Then he starts to run toward me. He jogs in my direction, and my heart is in my throat. I have tears running down my face, and I don’t care. When he gets to the wall, he stares up at me. There’s no way he can come up this high, so I drop the board with the check boxes and the pen on the ground in front of him. He grins up at me and lays the board on the grass. He takes the pen and starts to check a box. Then he stops and looks up. Then he moves like he’s finally going to do it. Then he stops and looks up. I’m going to kick his ass if he keeps messing with me. Then he checks the yes box and holds the board up for the whole stadium to see. The buzzer goes off and he has to run with his teammates back onto the field to play the last two minutes of the half. When that’s over, just before he goes into the tunnel, he turns back and flashes me the I love you sign, along with a big smile. My heart settles. I

I don’t know much about movies. Haven’t seen too many. And I don’t know anything about movie stars.” “Retired,” she said. “I’m sanding, varnishing, hauling trash and training my bird dog. I’m going to pick up another one pretty soon now—I picked the bitch and sire a while ago and she whelped, so as soon as they’ll let him go… And I don’t cook much, don’t bake at all, but as it happens I have sugar for my coffee. In case you want to borrow a cup for that cake you’re baking me.” “My thirty-year-old daughter has a man in her life—a good man—and they’re at the house every weekend,” he found himself explaining. “I have reasons to stay out of the house a lot. How much sugar do you keep on hand?” She grinned at him. “Plenty.” “I might need some as early as tomorrow evening,” he said. “That good man my daughter has is here for the weekend.” “Is that so?” Then Muriel turned her mount, facing the other way and said, “Luce!” She gave two short whistles. The Lab bolted back where she’d come from. Muriel looked over her shoulder and said, “Bring a decent bottle of red wine then,” she said. She put her horse into an easy canter and followed her dog. Walt sat there for a long time, till she was out of sight. “Damn,” he said aloud. *

It was then, after my presentations to thirty-two generals, that I first began to see how similar the approach to leadership problems was throughout our civilization. After two days of presentations, a three-star general, the commander of an entire Army corps—two panzer divisions—stood up and said to me, “You know, one of our problems is that the sergeant-majors coddle the new recruits, and we keep telling them that such helpfulness will not make them very good soldiers in the field.” And then he turned to his fellow officers and said, “But from what Ed has been saying here the past two days, we’re not going to have any more luck changing the sergeant-majors than they are having trying to change the new recruits.” Now this man had three stars on his shoulder; how much more authority would you want? He commanded more weapons of destruction than exploded in all of World War II; how much more power do you need? Yet neither his authority nor his power were enough to ensure a “command presence.” And I began to think about similar frustrations reported to me by imaginative psychiatrists who were frustrated by head nurses, creative clergy who were stymied by church treasurers, aggressive CEOs who were hindered by division chiefs, mothers who wished to take more responsible stands with their children but who were blindsided by their chronically passive husbands, not to mention my experience of watching nine eager Presidents sabotaged by a chronically recalcitrant Congress. Eventually I came to see that this “resistance,” as it is usually called, is more than a reaction to novelty; it is part and parcel of the systemic process of leadership. Sabotage is not merely something to be avoided or wished away; instead, it comes with the territory of leading, whether the “territory” is a family or an organization. And a leader’s capacity to recognize sabotage for what it is—that is, a systemic phenomenon connected to the shifting balances in the emotional processes of a relationship system and not to the institution’s specific issues, makeup, or goals—is the key to the kingdom. My

Oh my lord. It can’t be. But it most certainly was. What in the heck is he doing here? Why in the hell was the star wide receiver of the Georgia Bulldogs at his mother’s funeral? The man that made history by coming out and telling the world he was bisexual two years ago. He was a hero, and he looked the part. He stood tall, at least 6’2”, or 6’3”. His wavy, dirty blond hair was longer on top than the cropped hair on the sides. Dark shades covered what he knew were magnetic, emerald-green eyes. His broad shoulders made his suit hang beautifully on his large body. Curtis’ mouth watered at the thought of all those muscles. He’d gotten glimpses of the man’s chest and biceps when the reporters and cameramen of ESPN would go in the locker room to listen to the coach congratulate his team on a win. There he was right there, just twenty feet away from him. 

Blue Eyes, you will be a fine wife in time,” he said gravely. “No, I won’t.” Her gaze flew to his, brimming with misery and tears. “Oh, Hunter, what’s the matter with me?” Studying her small face, Hunter realized two things: he didn’t want her to be like anyone else, and, right or wrong, he had to bring this torturous waiting to an end, for both their sakes. For once, his father had given poor advice. “Blue Eyes…” Hunter sighed and interlaced his fingers, bending his knuckles backward, stalling because he didn’t want to say the wrong thing. “Can you say words so this Comanche can see into you?” “I’m afraid.” “Ah, yes, afraid.” He studied her beaded moccasins. “Because I am Comanche?” She squeezed her eyes closed. “It isn’t that, not anymore. That’s just an excuse!” Cautiously Hunter asked, “Then what makes your heart sad?” She bit her bottom lip and tipped her head back to stare at the smoke hole. After several seconds she sniffed and said, “You’re a man.” She looked so forlorn that Hunter had to bite back a smile. He started to speak, then thought better of it. Clearing his throat, he shifted his attention from her quivering mouth to her nervous hands, wishing he knew how to ease her fears. Being patient hadn’t worked. She closed her eyes again and made a strangled sound, whirling away from him. “Marry Bright Star. It’s only fair. I can’t expect you to wait forever for me to--” She made another angry swipe at her cheeks and took a jagged breath. “She’s very lovely. You wouldn’t be normal if you didn’t want her. And it’s clear she wants you. Why should you be tied to me?” He pushed to his feet and slowly approached her from behind. She jerked when he grasped her shoulders. “I have no wish to marry Bright Star. You are the wife I want. One wife, for always.

Somewhere inside him, beneath her fingers, was his upper trachea, and in the cavity of his larynx were his vocal cords, two pairs of folded membrane. Everyone had them, but his had been touched by magic, the sounds resonating from them were richer, more mellifluous than what came from everyone else's throats. Of course, his voice wasn't just from his vocal cords. It was from the air he took into his body and what he did with that air. He was better than an alchemist. He took air and turned it into music. She leaned her cheek against his shoulder and let her hand search over his chest, seeking the power of the lungs he kept stowed safe behind his fortressed ribs.

With his left hand Victor pulled the Beretta from the back of his waistband and pointed both guns at the doorway, one in each hand. Not so good for aiming accurately but he needed the extra stopping power if he was going to drop the gunman before he could open fire. He was a big guy and neither subsonic 5.7 mm or 9 mm rounds were going to guarantee putting him down instantly unless he was shot in the head, heart, or spine. But with enough bullets it wouldn’t matter where Victor hit. He held the Beretta directly below the FN so he could still line up one set of sights. Victor had seen amateurs hold two guns at arm’s length, hands shoulder-width apart, trying to emulate their favourite action movie stars. They always died quickly

I sat in the back with Omar napping against my right shoulder and Mother napping against my left, and I thumbed through the bird book and looked at pictures of all the new birds I had seen, and at the ones I had not seen. It was unimaginable to think that they were out there-all these hundreds, even thousands of birds-and that I had not seen them. I felt both hungry and sated-like a cat, I imagined. With Mother asleep on my shoulder, good crisp air coming in the window, a stomach full of flounder, and two dozen new birds flying through my mind-and returning home-I felt like there couldn't be a more satisfied person in the world. This, in turn, made me hungrier: made me want to see more.

She has a point,” Caleb’s voice came from the shadows behind the massive Dragon who was taking all of my attention and I turned my head to find him, Seth and Max all watching this exchange with interest. That would explain the stars not smiting us or whatever other bullshit they might want to do. Though I was guessing I should really stop touching him…not that I did. “You did this to…help him?” Darius asked like he couldn’t understand why the fuck I’d do that and I narrowed my eyes at him. “I’m only an asshole like, ninety percent of the time,” I said, rolling my eyes at him. “The other ten percent I’m a fucking saint. So yes, I did it to help him. Turns out I only hold two members of your family in low regard.” “You pushed my brother out of a fucking window,” he growled. “I would have caught him with my air magic if I had to. Besides, this way Daddy Acrux can’t try and claim he was in on it. It’s a genius plan and you know it. Plus, your mom told me to post it so I don’t have to explain myself to you.” “Mother?” Darius scoffed. “She hardly notices anything beyond appearances. The last thing she’d encourage is a scandal like this. She-” “That’s not true, she loves you, she just…” I trailed off as the deal I’d made with Catalina stayed my tongue. I’d sworn not to tell a soul about the way I’d freed herfrom Lionel’s Dark Coercion and I wasn’t going to take even more punishment from the stars by breaking my word. “Just what?” Darius demanded. Phoenix fire burned hot beneath my skin and my palms twitched against his chest as a thought occurred to me. One I really should have considered before now if I hadn’t been so caught up with studying, the shadows, cheer practice and just plain old pining away for this monster before me to think of it. “Do you trust me?” I asked, my fingers shifting on his skin just enough to draw his attention. “Why?” “I want to try something. Something I did for your mother. But you’ll have to stay still while I do it.” Darius looked at me for a long moment and a faint tremor in the ground beneath my feet let me know that the stars had realised just how close we were to one another. Even with company they didn’t like us to touch each other, though it seemed to take them a lot longer to notice if we were. Darius exhaled angrily but his eyes shifted back as he managed to rein in some of his temper, their deep brown colour ringed with black once again. “I trust you,” he growled and the other Heirs muttered something behind him, but I didn’t care to hear it because there had been a sincerity in his words which reached out and touched my soul. He meant it. For whatever reason, despite everything we’d been through, he was still able to put his trust in me. I offered him the hint of a smile as my Phoenix fire reared up to the surface of my skin before I guided it into his flesh where I touched him. His muscles tightened beneath my hands, his eyes widening as he looked at me but he didn’t pull back, waiting as the liquid fire tore beneath his skin and sought out any signs of Lionel placing restrictions on his soul. ... “You…” Darius lifted me into his arms, staring at me with wide eyes like he didn’t even have words to explain what I’d just done for him. ,,, “She…I think she…but I don’t understand how-” “Phoenix fire burns through bullshit,” I supplied. “I just released him from every Dark Coercion spell Lionel has ever placed on him.” The Heirs all turned to stare at me like I’d just told them an alien named Clive lived up my butt and I sighed as I leaned my head back against Caleb’s shoulder. I felt like I’d just gone ten rounds in the ring against a Dragon with toothache. My eyes were hooded already and I was pretty sure that if we stood here much longer I’d fall asleep. “Thank you, Roxy,” Darius breathed and the look he was giving me made my heart do a weird squeezing kind of thing as I bit down on my bottom lip. (Tory POV)

He glanced at me as I started running at his side and I cast furtive looks at him beneath my lashes from time to time as I continued along our route. Students walked the paths, ensuring we were never actually alone for more than a moment or two but we weren’t really with anyone else either. So far, the stars didn’t seem to mind. We kept running all the way through The Wailing Wood to Aer Tower and beyond until we reached the crossroads where the path we usually took headed back towards The Orb and a narrow track led up to the fields which ran along the cliffs above Aer Cove. I hesitated at the crossroads, glancing at Darius for a moment as the damn butterflies made a return to my stomach before taking the narrow path up onto the cliff top. The path was empty with no one up on the cliff as far as I could see. If we ran up there, we really would be alone. I glanced back over my shoulder as Darius paused, wondering if he’d dare to follow me. How far was he willing to push the stars on this? He only hesitated a moment before jogging after me as I ran for the cliff top and a smile tugged at my lips as I put on a spurt of speed. If he wanted to run with me then he’d have to keep up. My feet pounded up the track and I panted as my muscles burned in protest at the incline. The sky grew dark overhead as we ran on and I glanced up to see thick storm clouds sweeping overhead despite the fact that there had been nothing but pale blue to see only minutes ago. Fuck you, stars. I gritted my teeth and kept going, ignoring a thin track which led back to the centre of campus and ploughing on. Thunder rumbled overhead, but I pretended I couldn’t hear it and kept running. The clifftop loomed ahead of me and I fixed my gaze on it as the sound of Darius’s feet hitting the trail chased me on. Rain spilled from the clouds, peppering my cheeks and I didn’t even bother to shield myself from it. I kept running until I made it to the very top of the cliff then stopped. I turned to face Darius as he came to a halt too. “Do you think this is a good idea?” he asked slowly, looking up at the sky as the shower grew heavier and the rain washed over us. He wasn’t shielding himself from it either and his tank was plastered to his skin as the rain pounded down. “Why should we have to listen to the stars?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard over the rain. “Because they govern everything,” Darius said sadly like there was nothing to be done for it. “They don’t govern me,” I growled. Darius frowned slightly as I took a step closer and thunder crashed so violently that the ground trembled. I waited to see what he was going to do and his jaw set as he moved towards me too. The rain slammed down over us so hard that I could hardly see through it. My hair was plastered to my back and a shiver ran through me, but I banished it with a flare of fire magic beneath my skin. Darius stopped inches from me and I looked up at him as water gathered in my lashes and slid over my cheeks. He reached out to cup my jaw in his large hand and the thunder crashed again, lightning forking through the clouds above us as the stars fought to make us part. “Are you sure about this?” he asked me. “Fuck fate,” I snarled because it was time I owned what was going on between us. “No one gets to pick my future for me. I choose what I want and I want you.” The smile he gave me was bright and fierce and full of an emotion I was afraid to put a name to, but the way he was looking at me lit me up from the inside out. “Fuck fate,” Darius agreed darkly. (Tory)

When they finished dressing, Jimena wore racy red hot pants, a silky blouse with a star-burst pattern, and crazy ankle boots with thin chains draped around her ankles. "Too cool." Serena admired Jimena's outfit, then she twirled to show off her own shoulder-baring top that exposed her midriff. She had pasted a crystal in her belly button. Kendra's bell-bottoms had been too long, but when she stepped into a pair of gold 70's platform shoes the length became just right. Catty wore a backless halter top and a pair of lacy bell-bottoms. She held up some stencils. "Kendra is going to start selling these at the shop. Anyone want to try one?" She had two dragons in one hand and a lacy snowflake pattern in the other. Jimena and Serena started to examine them, when Vanessa walked into the room. She was wearing a pinstripe shirt unbuttoned over a black leather bra top. Kendra's mini-skirt was too big and the waist fell around Vanessa's hips. Her skin looked golden bronze and she had applied one of the snowflake stencils on her stomach. "Wow," Serena said. "Talk about going for the jugular," Jimena teased. "You like it?" she asked and took off the shirt. "It's too hot to wear.

Who is that?” Ice formed in the room. No clothing could protect against the cold this demon brought with him. It pierced through every layer, snatching the breath from Hunt’s chest with clawed fingers. A shuddering inhale was the only sign of Bryce’s discomfort as she remained facing the circle on the other side of the room. The male now contained inside its dark border. “Aidas,” she said softly. Hunt had always imagined the Prince of the Chasm as similar to the lower-level demons he’d hunted over the centuries: scales or fangs or claws, brute muscle and snarling with blind animal rage. Not this slender, pale-skinned … pretty boy. Aidas’s blond hair fell to his shoulders in soft waves, loose, yet well cut around his fine-boned face. Undoubtedly to show off the eyes like blue opals, framed by thick, golden lashes. Those lashes bobbed once in a cursory blink. Then his full, sensuous mouth parted in a smile to reveal a row of too-white teeth. “Bryce Quinlan.” Hunt’s hand drifted to his gun. The Prince of the Chasm knew her name—her face. And the way he’d spoken her name was as much greeting as it was question, his voice velvet-soft. Aidas occupied the fifth level of Hel—the Chasm. He yielded only to two others: the Prince of the Abyss, and the Prince of the Pit, the seventh and mightiest of the demon princes. The Star-Eater himself, whose name was never uttered on this side of the Northern Rift.

Two cats on a highway. Nighttime. One is lying on the shoulder. Hit by a car. The second is sitting by it, mouth open toward the heavens in silent pain. Full of pointy teeth. Instead of stars. Like ammunition. An empty road. Behind them. In front of them. Only the omnipresent dotted white line.

A Fallen warrior with the power of …” Aidas’s groomed brows lifted in surprise. His blue opal eyes narrowed to slits—then simmered like the hottest flame. “What are you doing with a black crown around your brow?” Hunt didn’t dare let his surprise at the question show. He’d never heard it called that before—a black crown. Halo, witch-ink, mark-of-shame, but never that. Aidas looked between them now. Carefully. He didn’t bother to let Hunt answer his question before that awful smile returned. “The seven princes dwell in darkness and do not stir. We have no interest in your realm.” “I’d believe it if you and your brethren hadn’t been rattling the Northern Rift for the past two decades,” Hunt said. “And if I hadn’t been cleaning up after it.” Aidas sucked in a breath, as if tasting the air on which Hunt’s words had been delivered to him. “You do realize that it might not be my people? The Northern Rift opens to other places—other realms, yes, but other planets as well. What is Hel but a distant planet bound to yours by a ripple in space and time?” “Hel is a planet?” Hunt’s brows lowered. Most of the demons he’d killed and dealt with hadn’t been able to or inclined to speak. Aidas shrugged with one shoulder. “It is as real a place as Midgard, though most of us would have you believe it wasn’t.” The prince pointed to him. “Your kind, Fallen, were made in Midgard by the Asteri. But the Fae, the shifters, and many others came from their own worlds. The universe is massive. Some believe it has no end. Or that our universe might be one in a multitude, as bountiful as the stars in the sky or the sand on a beach.

（约克大学毕业证高仿学位证书((+《Q微2026614433》))）购买York毕业证修改York成绩单购买约克大学毕业证办york文凭办加拿大高仿毕业证约克大学毕业证购买约购买修改成绩单挂科退学如何进行学历认证留学退学办毕业证书/ 出国留学无法毕业买毕业证留学被劝退买毕业证（非正常毕业教育部认证咨询） York University SSBSBNSVSBNSNBsjSISOIOIWJKsvBSNVSNBSVBNS A Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Pick! A Most Anticipated Book From: Vulture * LitHub * Harper's Bazaar * Elle * Buzzfeed A vibrant story collection about Cambodian-American life--immersive and comic, yet unsparing--that offers profound insight into the intimacy of queer and immigrant communities Seamlessly transitioning between the absurd and the tenderhearted, balancing acerbic humor with sharp emotional depth, Afterparties offers an expansive portrait of the lives of Cambodian-Americans. As the children of refugees carve out radical new paths for themselves in California, they shoulder the inherited weight of the Khmer Rouge genocide and grapple with the complexities of race, sexuality, friendship, and family. A high school badminton coach and failing grocery store owner tries to relive his glory days by beating a rising star teenage player. Two drunken brothers attend a wedding afterparty and hatch a plan to expose their shady uncle's snubbing of the bride and groom. A queer love affair sparks between an older tech entrepreneur trying to launch a "safe space" app and a disillusioned young teacher obsessed with Moby-Dick.

. . . Or maybe because of the seizures he’d had since he was a kit. He knew his parents still worried about him, even though it had been a while since his last upsetting vision. They’re probably hoping that with some training from the other medicine cats, I’ll learn to control my visions once and for all . . . and I can be normal. Shadowpaw wanted that, too. “The snow must be really deep up on the moors,” Dovewing mewed. “Make sure you watch where you’re putting your paws.” Shadowpaw wriggled his shoulders, praying that none of his Clanmates were listening. “I will,” he promised, glancing toward the medicine cats’ den in the hope of seeing his mentor, Puddleshine, emerge. But there was no sign of him yet. To his relief, Tiger star gave Dovewing a nudge and they both moved off toward the Clan leader’s den. Shadowpaw rubbed one paw hastily across his face and bounded across the camp to see what was keeping Puddleshine. Intent on finding his mentor, Shadowpaw barely noticed the patrol trekking toward the fresh-kill pile, prey dangling from their jaws. He skidded to a halt just in time to avoid colliding with Cloverfoot, the Clan deputy. “Shadowpaw!” she exclaimed around the shrew she was carrying. “You nearly knocked me off my paws.” “Sorry, Cloverfoot,” Shadowpaw meowed, dipping his head respectfully. Cloverfoot let out a snort, half annoyed, half amused. “Apprentices!” Shadowpaw tried to hide his irritation. He was an apprentice, yes, but an old one—medicine cat apprentices’ training lasted longer than warriors’. His littermates were full warriors already. But he knew his parents would want him to respect the deputy. Cloverfoot padded on, followed by Strikestone, Yarrowleaf, and Blazefire. Though they were all carrying prey, they had only one or two pieces each, and what little they had managed to catch was undersized and scrawny. “I can’t remember a leaf-bare as cold as this,” Yarrowleaf complained as she dropped a blackbird on the fresh-kill pile. Strikestone nodded, shivering as he fluffed out his brown tabby pelt. “No wonder there’s no prey. They’re all hiding down their holes, and I can’t blame them.” As Shadowpaw moved on, out of earshot, he couldn’t help noticing how pitifully small the fresh-kill pile was, and he tried to ignore his own growling belly. He could hardly remember his first leaf-bare, when he’d been a tiny kit, so he didn’t know if the older cats were right and the weather was unusually cold. I only know I don’t like it, he grumbled to himself as he picked his way through the icy slush that covered the ground of the camp. My paws are so cold I think they’ll drop off. I can’t wait for newleaf!

Getting It Right" Your ankles make me want to party, want to sit and beg and roll over under a pair of riding boots with your ankles hidden inside, sweating beneath the black tooled leather; they make me wish it was my birthday so I could blow out their candles, have them hung over my shoulders like two bags full of money. Your ankles are two monster-truck engines but smaller and lighter and sexier than a saucer with warm milk licking the outside edge; they make me want to sing, make me want to take them home and feed them pasta, I want to punish them for being bad and then hold them all night long and say I’m sorry, sugar, darling, it will never happen again, not in a million years. Your thighs make me quiet. Make me want to be hurled into the air like a cannonball and pulled down again like someone being pulled into a van. Your thighs are two boats burned out of redwood trees. I want to go sailing. Your thighs, the long breath of them under the blue denim of your high-end jeans, could starve me to death, could make me cry and cry. Your ass is a shopping mall at Christmas, a holy place, a hill I fell in love with once when I was falling in love with hills. Your ass is a string quartet, the northern lights tucked tightly into bed between a high-count-of-cotton sheets. Your back is the back of a river full of fish; I have my tackle and tackle box. You only have to say the word. Your back, a letter I have been writing for fifteen years, a smooth stone, a moan someone makes when his hair is pulled, your back like a warm tongue at rest, a tongue with a tab of acid on top; your spine is an alphabet, a ladder of celestial proportions. I am navigating the North and South of it. Your armpits are beehives, they make me want to spin wool, want to pour a glass of whiskey, your armpits dripping their honey, their heat, their inexhaustible love-making dark. I am bright yellow for them. I am always thinking about them, resting at your side or high in the air when I’m pulling off your shirt. Your arms of blue and ice with the blood running to make them believe in God. Your shoulders make me want to raise an arm and burn down the Capitol. They sing to each other underneath your turquoise slope-neck blouse. Each is a separate bowl of rice steaming and covered in soy sauce. Your neck is a skyscraper of erotic adult videos, a swan and a ballet and a throaty elevator made of light. Your neck is a scrim of wet silk that guides the dead into the hours of Heaven. It makes me want to die, your mouth, which is the mouth of everything worth saying. It’s abalone and coral reef. Your mouth, which opens like the legs of astronauts who disconnect their safety lines and ride their stars into the billion and one voting districts of the Milky Way. Darling, you’re my President; I want to get this right! Matthew Dickman, The New Yorker: Poems | August 29, 2011 Issue

She wore two thick mismatched sweaters over Her red-brown scholar’s robes, the gray and toupe cuffs rolled up around Her bony wrists. She’d let Her hood fall onto Her shoulders, revealing Her cropped gray hair, and the pinched marks of Her spectacles remained on the bridge of Her nose.

The stallion kicked off, angling his violet-tipped blue feathers, hovering over Star’s head. “Let’s go before those two colts we scared off tell Thunderwing we’re here.” “No!” Star screamed. Searing pain ripped through his shoulders as the stallions lifted him by the roots of his wings and carried him into the sky. Below him the trees shrank, and Feather Lake contracted into a mere blue swirl. He dangled between the two sweating stallions, their heavily muscled wings pumping in synchronized rhythm as they headed east—toward Mountain Herd’s territory.

At the top, I put the camera's viewfinder to my eye and slowly turned, the way my grandmother had taught me. From every vantage point something remarkable filled the screen- clusters of wild red columbine, fallen boulders forming geometric designs against the wall, crusty green lichen gnawing on rocks, a Baltimore oriole popping from a thicket of brush, and, at my feet, a grasshopper clinging to a stem of purple aster. I could spend a day here and barely scratch the surface. The sun felt warm on my shoulders as I bent down to capture the blossoms of yellow star grass, the feathery purple petals of spotted knapweed, and the lacy wings of two yellow jackets as they alighted on tiny white blossoms of Labrador tea. By the time I finished taking photos of a monarch butterfly resting on milkweed, I realized an hour had passed.

It’s the cats who trained with the Dark Forest who are fighting hardest, Crowfeather realized. They’re throwing themselves into the worst of the battle. As he looked around, Crowfeather’s heart swelled with pride as he saw his Clanmates, who had suffered so much suspicion after the mistake they’d made, showing their loyalty by risking their lives for their Clan. At the same time, rage against the stoats gave him new strength and energy. A stoat rushed at him, rearing up to attack him with both forepaws. Crowfeather ducked underneath its forelegs, and as the stoat landed, he spun around to fasten his teeth in its throat. He pinned it to the ground, his paws gripping it determinedly until he felt a warm rush of blood; the stoat went limp and he tossed it aside. Looking up, he found himself staring into the face of Nightcloud. “Neat kill,” she commented. “Leave some for the rest of us, won’t you?” As she spoke, a stoat dived for her, leaping up to land on her back. But before it could get a firm grip on her, Crowfeather lashed out with one forepaw, knocking it to the ground. Nightcloud sank her claws into its throat; the stoat twitched and lay still. She gave Crowfeather a nod of gratitude before turning back to the battle. Crowfeather and Nightcloud fought together, standing tail to tail as they turned in a circle, paws striking out at the endless surge of stoats. As soon as they killed or injured one, another would take its place. The white bodies, the small, malignant eyes and snarling fangs, seemed to Crowfeather like something out of a nightmare. He could only go on struggling, grateful for Nightcloud’s steady presence beside him. Then pain exploded in Crowfeather’s shoulder. He turned his head to see a stoat gripping him with its claws, while a splash of drool on his muzzle warned him it was going for his throat. Crowfeather couldn’t shake it off; he dropped to the ground, buying time, but the pressing weight of the frenzied creature made him feel there was no escape. The angle of their bodies meant that he couldn’t batter at it with his hind legs. StarClan, help me! he prayed. The stoat abruptly vanished. Crowfeather looked up to see Nightcloud holding it by the scruff, shaking it vigorously, then tossing it away into the crowd. “Thanks,” Crowfeather gasped, scrambling to his paws. “Anytime,” Nightcloud responded. They turned as one to attack two other stoats that dived in from opposite directions. Even while his body remembered his battle moves, Crowfeather could reflect on how well he and Nightcloud fought together, how well they knew each other. We may not be in love, but we make a fierce team on the battlefield. I know she’ll fight ferociously for me, and for all her Clanmates. Crowfeather’s reflections were interrupted by a screech of pain. Glancing over his shoulder he saw Lionblaze fall, the golden tabby warrior overwhelmed beneath a swarm of stoats. Crowfeather leaped toward him, only to run into what

AT 3:00 P.M. SHARP on August 23, 2012, Colonel Edgar escorted the two men into Mattis’s office on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. The sixty-one-year-old general was an intimidating figure in person: muscular and broad shouldered, with dark circles under his eyes that suggested a man who didn’t bother much with sleep. His office was decorated with the mementos of a long military career. Amid the flags, plaques, and coins, Shoemaker’s eyes rested briefly on a set of magnificent swords displayed in a glass cabinet. As they sat down in a wood-paneled conference room off to one side of the office, Mattis cut to the chase: “Guys, I’ve been trying to get this thing deployed for a year now. What’s going on?” Shoemaker had gone over everything again with Gutierrez and felt confident he was on solid ground. He spoke first, giving a brief overview of the issues raised by an in-theater test of the Theranos technology. Gutierrez took over from there and told the general his army colleague was correct in his interpretation of the law: the Theranos device was very much subject to regulation by the FDA. And since the agency hadn’t yet reviewed and approved it for commercial use, it could only be tested on human subjects under strict conditions set by an institutional review board. One of those conditions was that the test subjects give their informed consent—something that was notoriously hard to obtain in a war zone. Mattis was reluctant to give up. He wanted to know if they could suggest a way forward. As he’d put it to Elizabeth in an email a few months earlier, he was convinced her invention would be “a game-changer” for his men. Gutierrez and Shoemaker proposed a solution: a “limited objective experiment” using leftover de-identified blood samples from soldiers. It would obviate the need to obtain informed consent and it was the only type of study that could be put together as quickly as Mattis seemed to want to proceed. They agreed to pursue that course of action. Fifteen minutes after they’d walked in, Shoemaker and Gutierrez shook Mattis’s hand and walked out. Shoemaker was immensely relieved. All in all, Mattis had been gruff but reasonable and a workable compromise had been reached. The limited experiment agreed upon fell short of the more ambitious live field trial Mattis had had in mind. Theranos’s blood tests would not be used to inform the treatment of wounded soldiers. They would only be performed on leftover samples after the fact to see if their results matched the army’s regular testing methods. But it was something. Earlier in his career, Shoemaker had spent five years overseeing the development of diagnostic tests for biological threat agents and he would have given his left arm to get access to anonymized samples from service members in theater. The data generated from such testing could be very useful in supporting applications to the FDA. Yet, over the ensuing months, Theranos inexplicably failed to take advantage of the opportunity it was given. When General Mattis retired from the military in March 2013, the study using leftover de-identified samples hadn’t begun. When Colonel Edgar took on a new assignment as commander of the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases a few months later, it still hadn’t started. Theranos just couldn’t seem to get its act together. In July 2013, Lieutenant Colonel Shoemaker retired from the army. At his farewell ceremony, his Fort Detrick colleagues presented him with a “certificate of survival” for having the courage to stand up to Mattis in person and emerging from the encounter alive. They also gave him a T-shirt with the question, “What do you do after surviving a briefing with a 4 star?” written on the front. The answer could be found on the back: “Retire and sail off into the sunset.

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told.

Spread over the extravagant supper table was a silk tapestry of moons and stars and the six symbols of death. Talis couldn’t help but stare at the design, for the weavings glowed and the drawing was animated with a nefarious life of its own. A frightful illustration that seemed to follow his eyes as they perused the tapestry. Etched along the tassels flowed a river of blood, the river leading into the Underworld. Farther up, layers of bodies were piled high, their vicious fumes rising as incense to the lesser demons above, who devoured the mortals’ flesh. Then above them were the taskmasters of the Underworld, great demons with spiked whips. They endlessly struck the lesser demons as punishment for the act of consuming the mortals’ flesh. Arranged around the center of the tapestry were the gods themselves. At the head stood Zagros, the Lord of the Underworld, then Ractan, the Lord of the Dragons, and Ishta, the Lord of the Genie Sorcerers. At the other side hovered Nestria, the Goddess of the Sky, and Nacrea, the Goddess of the Sun, and opposite her was Satvis, the God of Darkness. Between both sets of gods sat two mythological heroes: Nyx the Destroyer and Lord Heti of Calabastria. Here were the triumphant gods, playing with the lives and flesh of all mortals. Talis stifled a groan. Atop the tapestry were glass jars filled with what looked like trapped souls. Their ghastly faces peered out, eyes desperate and longing for freedom. How did they get inside? He felt a sickness rising in his stomach. The dark sorcerers studied him with grave looks, as if they glimpsed something distasteful inside. He could tell they were suspicious of him. He was too young, from a strange land untouched by their power, and to their murmuring voices, unsuitable to attend this grand feast. Now, all he could think about was leaving this wretched city. Whatever danger lay ahead, he’d rather face it than fester here in the insidious poison seeping through the black and gold walls of Darkov. “To your charmed fortune.” A sorcerer raised a crystal vial filled with some bubbling substance. The man appeared to be hundreds of years old. Deep, harsh wrinkles lined his eyes and forehead, and yet his hands were perfectly smooth. He wore a black silk cloak fastened around his neck with a gold broach, ornately designed like the sun. He drank the vial and after a while, he appeared as youthful as a young man. Talis was taken aback at the man’s sudden transformation. He steadied his wine cup with his other hand. “Fortune smiles on you...” “Every day.” The sorcerer frowned at Talis. “You’d be wise to remember that. Without fortune shining on you daily”—he leaned in close to Talis—”your life is at risk.” Turning, the man whisked away and disappeared behind another group of sorcerers mingling in the corner of the room. Talis tried to discover where he’d gone, but the man had vanished. Just then Talis felt a cold hand settle on his right shoulder. He turned, glimpsed the eyes of Aurellia, and resisted the desire to flee. “I see you’ve finally joined us here in our illustrious