Whipping Hair Quotes

Isabella with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time.

V was half way down the hall when he heard a yelp. He hightailed it back, barging through the door. “What? What’s …” “I’m going bald!” V whipped back the shower curtain and frowned. “What are you talking about? You’ve still got your hair…” “Not my head! My body, you idiot! I’m going bald!” Vishous glanced down. Butch’s torso and legs were shedding, a rush of dark brown fuzz pooling around the drain. V started laughing. “Think of it this way. At least you won’t have to worry about shaving your back as you get old, true? No manscaping for you.” He was not surprised when a bar of soap came firing at him.

Picture yourself standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The wind is whipping your hair. The sun is setting. You long, body and soul, for one thing. One person. You hear footsteps behind you. You turn. Who's there? I remembered a voice. Jameson Winchester Hawthorne.

I am the twentieth century. I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government. the cafe-dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone, the tourist-lady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the travelling clock which always tells the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night.

I had never seen hair that purely black. It was glossy and slightly long, the ends drifting over his collar. That sexy length was the crowning touch of bad boy hotness over the successful businessman, like whipped cream topping on a hot fudge brownie sundae. As my mother would say, only rogues and raiders had hair like that." (Eva about Gideon)

There was a small wooden gazebo built out over the water; Isabelle was sitting in it, staring out across the lake. She looked like a princess in a fairy tale, waiting at the top of her tower for someone to ride up and rescue her. Not that traditional princess behavior was like Isabelle at all. Isabelle with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time.

The unpredictability of life sucks. One minute you’re riding high with the wind whipping through your hair and the next minute you’re flat on your ass with a face full of gravel.

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze. Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet. Age: five thousand three hundred days. Profession: none, or "starlet" Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze? Why are you hiding, darling? (I Talk in a daze, I walk in a maze I cannot get out, said the starling). Where are you riding, Dolores Haze? What make is the magic carpet? Is a Cream Cougar the present craze? And where are you parked, my car pet? Who is your hero, Dolores Haze? Still one of those blue-capped star-men? Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays, And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen! Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts! Are you still dancin', darlin'? (Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts, And I, in my corner, snarlin'). Happy, happy is gnarled McFate Touring the States with a child wife, Plowing his Molly in every State Among the protected wild life. My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair, And never closed when I kissed her. Know an old perfume called Soliel Vert? Are you from Paris, mister? L'autre soir un air froid d'opera m'alita; Son fele -- bien fol est qui s'y fie! Il neige, le decor s'ecroule, Lolita! Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie? Dying, dying, Lolita Haze, Of hate and remorse, I'm dying. And again my hairy fist I raise, And again I hear you crying. Officer, officer, there they go-- In the rain, where that lighted store is! And her socks are white, and I love her so, And her name is Haze, Dolores. Officer, officer, there they are-- Dolores Haze and her lover! Whip out your gun and follow that car. Now tumble out and take cover. Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze. Her dream-gray gaze never flinches. Ninety pounds is all she weighs With a height of sixty inches. My car is limping, Dolores Haze, And the last long lap is the hardest, And I shall be dumped where the weed decays, And the rest is rust and stardust.

J.D. scoffed at this. “Please—as if I’m worried about anything Payton has to say. What’s she going to do, give me another one of her little pissed-off hair flips?” He flung imaginary long hair off his shoulders, exaggerating. “I’ll tell you, one of these days I’m going to grab her by that hair and . . .” He gestured as if throttling someone. Without breaking stride, he returned Tyler’s serve. The two smashed a few back and forth, concentrating on the game when— Is violence always part of your sexual fantasies?” Tyler interjected. J.D. whipped around— Sexual—?” —and got hit smack in the face with the squash ball. He toppled back and sprawled ungracefully across the court. Tyler stepped over and twirled his racquet. “This is nice. We should talk like this more often.

Then she ripped everything from that well inside her, ripped it out with both hands and her entire raging, hopeless heart. As she fell, hair whipping her face, Celaena thrust her hands toward the skinwalkers. "Surprise," she hissed. The world erupted in blue wildfire.

And still on a winter's night, they say, when the wind is in the trees, When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas, When the road is a gypsy's ribbon looping the purple moor, The highwayman comes riding-- Riding--riding-- The highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn-door. Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark inn-yard, He taps with his whip on the shutters, but all is locked and barred, He whistles a tune to the window, and who should be waiting there But the landlord's black-eyed daughter-- Bess, the landlord's daughter-- Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.

You could just marry each other,” Yrene said, and Dorian whipped his head to her, incredulous. “It’d make it easier for you both, so you don’t need to pretend.” Chaol gaped at his wife. Yrene shrugged. “And be a strong alliance for our two kingdoms.” Dorian knew his face was red when he turned to Manon, apologies and denials on his lips. But Manon smirked at Yrene, her silver-white hair lifting in the breeze, as if reaching for the united people who would soon soar westward. That smirk softened as she mounted Abraxos and gathered up the reins. “We’ll see,” was all Manon Blackbeak, High Queen of the Crochans and Ironteeth, said before she and her wyvern leaped into the skies. Chaol and Yrene began bickering, laughing as they did, but Dorian strode to the edge of the aerie. Watched that white-haired rider and the wyvern with silver wings become distant as they sailed toward the horizon. Dorian smiled. And found himself, for the first time in a while, looking forward to tomorrow.

Matty blinked. 'You're passing up whips for shopping?' 'You're bitching about shopping?' Rob countered. 'I feel so torn!' Matty pulled at his hair. 'Oh my god. You suck.

A storm was brewing. The wind has picked up and a mass of purple clouds was coming in from the West. It felt good to have my hair whipping around my head. I thought it might feel good to have hail beat down on me. Sometimes storms outside are the only relief for storms inside...

Jace turned to look over his shoulder, the wind whipping his hair into tangles. "What are you thinking?" he called back to her. "Just how different everything down there is now, you know, now that I can see." "Everything down there is exactly the same," he said. "You're the one that's different.

Picture yourself standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The wind is whipping in your hair. The sun is setting. You long, body and soul, for one thing. One person. You hear footsteps behind you. You turn. Who’s there?

When I entered and shut the door, the Darkling gave me a small bow. “How are you, Alina?” “I’m fine,” I managed. “She’s fine!” hooted Baghra. “She’s fine! She cannot light a hallway, but she’s fine.” I winced and wished I could disappear into my boots. To my surprise, the Darkling said, “Leave her be.” Baghra’s eyes narrowed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” The Darkling sighed and ran his hands through his dark hair in exasperation. When he looked at me, there was a rueful smile on his lips, and his hair was going every which way. “Baghra has her own way of doing things,” he said. “Don’t patronize me, boy!” Her voice cracked out like a whip. To my amazement, I saw the Darkling stand up straighter and then scowl as if he’d caught himself. “Don’t chide me, old woman,” he said in a low, dangerous voice.

She persisted when I resisted. And thank God for that. Because the number of storms I needed to go through before appreciating the way the wind whipped through her hair was one to many. Now, I'd move mountains to make her mine. Rain or shine.

We were just a hair's breadth from electing America's first female president to succeed America's first black president. We weren't done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form-like the Balrog's whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, 'If I can't have you, no one can'-white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.

I was happy with myself before – with my little life. But this is different. It feels like I’m on the edge of a mountain cliff, the wind whipping my hair, the sun blinding – but there is no fear. Only exhilaration, pure and right. I’m not going to fall. I can’t. Because Henry has shown me how to fly.

I stumbled upon Friedrich Nietzsche when I was 17, following the usual trail of existential candies—Camus, Sartre, Beckett—that unsuspecting teenagers find in the woods. The effect was more like a drug than a philosophy. I was whirled upward—or was it downward?—into a one-man universe, a secret cult demanding that you put a gun to the head of your dearest habits and beliefs. That intoxicating whiff of half-conscious madness; that casually hair-raising evisceration of everything moral, responsible and parentally approved—these waves overwhelmed my adolescent dinghy. And even more than by his ideas—many of which I didn't understand at all, but some of which I perhaps grasped better then than I do now—I was seduced by his prose. At the end of his sentences you could hear an electric crack, like the whip of a steel blade being tested in the air. He might have been the Devil, but he had better lines than God.

So there it is," Aelin said, nodding toward the dark stain on the balcony stones. "Where Erawan met his end at the hands of a healer." She frowned. "I hope it will wash off." Rowan snorted, and when she looked over her shoulder, the wind whipping her hair, she found him leaning against the stairwell door, his arms crossed. "I mean it," she said. "It'll be odious to have his mess there. And I plan to use this balcony to sun myself.

That means a lot, that you told me.” “It means a lot that you didn’t act like you see me differently now.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear as the wind whips it across my face. “I don’t see you differently. I see you better.

This is the one thing I hope: that she never stopped. I hope when her body couldn’t run any farther she left it behind like everything else that tried to hold her down, she floored the pedal and she went like wildfire, streamed down night freeways with both hands off the wheel and her head back screaming to the sky like a lynx, white lines and green lights whipping away into the dark, her tires inches off the ground and freedom crashing up her spine. I hope every second she could have had came flooding through that cottage like speed wind: ribbons and sea spray, a wedding ring and Chad’s mother crying, sun-wrinkles and gallops through wild red brush, a baby’s first tooth and its shoulder blades like tiny wings in Amsterdam Toronto Dubai; hawthorn flowers spinning through summer air, Daniel’s hair turning gray under high ceilings and candle flames and the sweet cadences of Abby’s singing. Time works so hard for us, Daniel told me once. I hope those last few minutes worked like hell for her. I hope in that half hour she lived all her million lives.

Willow Tree Its limbs the long hair of a sad girl, reaching for the ground. ‘Sturdy as an oak,’ they say. A willow is stronger. It bends to the storm. Harsh winds whip it, its leaves are torn and carried away. It bends but doesn’t break. It may weep but it will never fall.

Whenever someone tells you that you're doing XYZ like a girl, then you can whip out, "Thank you, hater, you're my motivator," and then go back to being XX chromosome AF.

There were no other cars on the road. Just the sound of the wind, and the motor idling, and through his open window, the faint clicking sounds of Roger making another mix. I closed my eyes and let the wind whip my hair around my face, letting out a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding.

When did you start here?” I ask her. “Three days ago. Sir. Aspirant. Um—” She wrings her hands. “Veturius is fine.” She walks carefully, gingerly—the Commandant must have whipped her recently. And yet she doesn't hunch or shuffle like the others slaves. The straight-backed grace with which she moves tells her story better than words. She'd been a freewoman before this—I'd bet my scims on it. And she has no idea how pretty she is—or what kind of problems her beauty will cause for her at a place like Blackcliff. The wind pulls at her hair again, and I catch her scent—like fruit and sugar. “Can I give you some advice?” Her head flies up like a scared animal's. At least she's wary. “Right now you...” Will grab the attention of every male in a square mile. “Stand out,” I finish. “It's hot, but you should wear a hood or a cloak—something to help you blend in.” She nods, but her eyes are suspicious. She wraps her arms around herself and drops back a little. I don't speak to her again.

More’s earnest character caused him while studying law to aim at the subduing of the flesh, by wearing a hair shirt, taking a log for a pillow, and whipping himself on Fridays. 

The regime had understood that one person leaving her house while asking herself: "Are my trousers long enough? Is my veil in place? Can my make-up be seen? Are they going to whip me?" - No longer asks herself: "Where is my freedom of thought? Where is my freedom of speech? My life, is it livable? What's going on in the political prisons?" It's only natural! When we're afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators' repression. Showing your hair or putting on makeup logically became acts of rebellion.

Maybe I was just flattering myself, thinking I'd be worth some sort of risk. Not that I'd wish that on anyone!" he clarified. "I don't mean that. It just...I don't know. Don't you all see everything I'm risking?" "Umm, no. You're here with your family to give you advice, and we all live around your schedule. Everything about your life stays the same, and ours changed overnight. What in the world could you possibly be risking?" Maxon looked shocked. "America, I might have my family, but imagine how embarrassing it is to have your parents watch as you attempt to date for the first time. And not just your parents-the whole country! Worse than that, it's not even a normal style of dating. "And living around my schedule? When I'm not with you all, I'm organizing troops, making laws, perfecting budgets...and all on my own these days, while my father watches me stumble in my own stupidity because I have none of his experience. And then, when I inevitably do things in a way he wouldn't, he goes and corrects my mistakes. And while I'm trying to do all this work, you-the girls, I mean-are all I can think about. I'm excited and terrified by the lot of you!" He was using his hands more than I'd ever seen, whipping them in the air and running them through his hair. "And you think my life isn't changing? What do you think my chances might be of finding a soul mate in the group of you? I'll be lucky if I can just find someone who'll be able to stand me for the rest of our lives. What if I've already sent her home because I was relying on some sort of spark I didn't feel? What if she's waiting to leave me at the first sign of adversity? What if I don't find anyone at all? What do I do then, America?" His speech had started out angered and impassioned, but by the end his questions weren't rhetorical anymore. He really wanted to know: What was he going to do if no one here was even close to being someone he could love? Though that didn't even seem to be his main concern; he was more worried that no one would love him. "Actually, Maxon, I think you will find your soul mate here. Honestly." "Really?" His voice charged with hope at my prediction. "Absolutely." I put a hand on his shoulder. He seemed to be comforted by that touch alone. I wondered how often people simply touched him. "If your life is as upside down as you say it is, then she has to be here somewhere. In my experience, true love is usually the most inconvenient kind.

Dean? Dean… are you there?” “I’m here.” I’ll always be here. She could rip me open, tear me apart, and I’d still crawl back to her. She’s had me whipped since the day she stood in front of me on the sidewalk with her hair all windblown as she asked me about medieval knights.

Lilah stood above them, tall and beautiful, her white hair whipping in the fresh breeze, her clothes streaked with gore, her hazel eyes glowing with fire. She turned slowly to Nix and in her ghostly whisper of a voice said, "I hate boys.

But just like the sea air, there was nothing like the wind whipping through your hair as the island came into view.

As if I didn't have enough to worry about. My kingdom is threatened by war, extinction, or both, and the only way to solve it is to give up the only thing I've ever really wanted. Then Toraf pulls something like this. Betrays me and my sister. Galen cant imagine how things could get worse. So he's not expecting it when Emma giggles. He turns on her. "What could be funny?" She laughs so hard she has to lean into him for support. He stiffens against the urge to wrap his arms around her. Wiping tears from her eyes, she says, "He kissed me!" The confession makes her crack up all over again. "And you think that's funny?" "You don't understand, Galen," she says, the beginnings of hiccups robbing her of breath. "Obviously." "Don't you see? It worked!" "All I saw was Toraf, my sister's mate, my best friend, kissing my...my..." "Your what?" "Student." Obsession. "Your student. Wow." Emma shakes her head then hiccups. "Well, I know you're mad about what he did to Rayna, but he did it to make her jealous." Galen tries to let that sink in, but it stays on the surface like a bobber. "You're saying he kissed you to make Rayna jealous?" She nods, laugher bubbling up again. "And it worked! Did you see her face?" "You're saying he set Rayna up." Instead of me? Galen shakes his head. "Where would he get an idea like that?" "I told him to do it." Galen's fists ball against his will. "You told him to kiss you?" "No! Sort of. Not really though." "Emma-" "I told him to play hard to get. You know, act uninterested. He came up with kissing me all on his own. I'm so proud of him!" She thinks Toraf is a genius for kissing her. Great. "Did...did you like it?" "I just told you I did, Galen." "Not his plan. The kiss." The delight leaves her face like a receding tide. "That's none of your business, Highness." He runs a hand through his hair to keep from shaking her. And kissing her. "Triton's trident, Emma. Did you like it or not?" Taking several steps back, she throws her hands on her hips. "Do you remember Mr. Pinter, Galen? World history?" "What does that have to do with anything?" "Tomorrow is Monday. When I walk into Mr. Pinter's class, he won't ask me how I liked Toraf's kiss. In fact, he won't care what I did for the entire weekend. Because I'm his student. Just like I'm your student, remember?" Her hair whips to the side as she turns and walks away with that intoxicating saunter of hers. She picks up her towel and steps into her flip-flops before heading up the hill to the house. "Emma, wait." "I'm tired of waiting, Galen. Good night.

Suddenly, the wind changed course. Dora’s hair slowly changed direction too, whipping over to the opposite side. The breeze carried her scent to my nose. It was a scent I hadn’t smelled before. It smelled like fallen leaves, or the first buds in spring. The kind of smell that evoked contrary images all at once. I

Mia faces me now. The wind is whipping her hair this way and that so she looks like some kind of mystical sorceress, beautiful, powerful, and scary at the same time. She shakes her head and starts to turn away. Oh, no! We’ve come this far over the bridge. She can blow the damn thing up if she wants to. But not without telling me everything. I grab her, turn her to face me. “Why not? Tell me. You owe me this!” She looks at me, square in the eye. Taking aim. And then she pulls the trigger. “Because I hated you.

She jotted down the order, then forced herself to meet his gaze. "It's going to be a bit of a wait, we're short-staffed this morning." The following words rushed out of her. "And breakfast's on me." "Normally, I wouldn't protest," he said, leaning closer. "But in public, I'd prefer a plate." An image of Rukh, hair untied, licking whipped cream off her navel flashed through her mind, left her staring.

I’ve got a call on hold to send your way,” she said. “And I hope it’s personal, because holy hell is his voice smokin’ hot. He sounds like S-E-X rolled in chocolate and covered in whipped cream.” Nervous excitement raised the hairs on my nape. “Did he give his name?” “Yep. Brett Kline.

You listen to me, and listen good!" she shouted, shocking me. "I am not evil because I have a thousand years of demon smut on my soul!" she exclaimed, the tips of her hair trembling and her face flushed. "Every time you disturb reality, nature has to balance it out. The black on your soul isn't evil, it's a promise to make up for what you have done. It's a mark, not a death sentence. And you can get rid of it given time." "Ceri, I'm sorry," I fumbled, but she wasn't listening. "You're an ignorant, foolish, stupid witch," she berated, and I cringed, my grip tightening on the copper spell pot and feeling the anger from her like a whip. "Are you saying because I carry the stink of demon magic, that I'm a bad person?" "No..." I wedged in. "That God will show no pity?" she said, green eyes flashing. "That because I made one mistake in fear that led to a thousand more that I will burn in hell?" "No. Ceri -" I took a step forward. "My soul is black," she said, her fear showing in her suddenly pale cheeks. "I'll never be rid of it all before I die, but it won't be because I'm a bad person but because I was a frightened one.

Great party, Max!' Amy congratulated. Marvin hung back, watching their exchange. 'Anything for Jessie,' Max muttered, but his eyes were completely on Amy. Amy dressed as... 'Little Red Riding Hood?' I gulped. Uh-oh. 'The same.' She laughed, doing a little spin so her head fell back, her short cape ruffled and her brilliant red hair whipped loose. A low cut blouse did double duty, exposing the thinnest hint of both cleavage and midriff. Max gaped. 'You even have'—he stuttered—'a—an amazingly well-packed basket of goodies.' Ohhh...I looked. Thank God. Amy was actually carrying a basket.

They seemed to fall forever. Geryon retained an iron-edged grip on the trembling Kadence, her hair whipping around them like angry silk ribbons. She didn't scream something he'd expected, but she did turn and wind her legs around him, something he had not.

Imagine this: Instead of waiting in her tower, Rapunzel slices off her long, golden hair with a carving knife, and then uses it to climb down to freedom. Just as she’s about to take the poison apple, Snow White sees the familiar wicked glow in the old lady’s eyes, and slashes the evil queen’s throat with a pair of sewing scissors. Cinderella refuses everything but the glass slippers from her fairy godmother, crushes her stepmother’s windpipe under her heel, and the Prince falls madly in love with the mysterious girl who dons rags and blood-stained slippers. Imagine this: Persephone goes adventuring with weapons hidden under her dress. Persephone climbs into the gaping chasm. Or, Persephone uses her hands to carve a hole down to hell. In none of these versions is Persephone’s body violated unless she asks Hades to hold her down with his horse-whips. Not once does she hold out on eating the pomegranate, instead biting into it eagerly and relishing the juice running down her chin, staining it red. In some of the stories, Hades never appears and Persephone rules the underworld with a crown of her own making. In all of them, it is widely known that the name Persephone means Bringer of Destruction. Imagine this: Red Riding Hood marches from her grandmother’s house with a bloody wolf pelt. Medusa rights the wrongs that have been done to her. Eurydice breaks every muscle in her arms climbing out of the land of the dead. Imagine this: Girls are allowed to think dark thoughts, and be dark things. Imagine this: Instead of the dragon, it’s the princess with claws and fiery breath who smashes her way from the confines of her castle and swallows men whole.

Have you ridden before?' he asks me, and I return him the look he deserves. ... 'No? And yet you would look so well with your hair whipping behind you.' Oak says. 'Wild as the Folk of old.

She looked like a princess in a fairy tale, waiting at the top of her tower for someone to ride up and rescue her. Not that traditional princess behavior was like Isabelle at all. Isabelle with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time.

The light was crude. It made Artaud's eyes shrink into darkness, as they are deep-set. This brought into relief the intensity of his gestures. He looked tormented. His hair, rather long, fell at times over his forehead. He has the actor's nimbleness and quickness of gestures. His face is lean, as if ravaged by fevers. His eyes do not seem to see the people. They are the eyes of a visionary. His hands are long, long-fingered. Beside him Allendy looks earthy, heavy, gray. He sits at the desk, massive, brooding. Artaud steps out on the platform, and begins to talk about " The Theatre and the Plague." He asked me to sit in the front row. It seems to me that all he is asking for is intensity, a more heightened form of feeling and living. Is he trying to remind us that it was during the Plague that so many marvelous works of art and theater came to be, because, whipped by the fear of death, man seeks immortality, or to escape, or to surpass himself? But then, imperceptibly almost, he let go of the thread we were following and began to act out dying by plague. No one quite knew when it began. To illustrate his conference, he was acting out an agony. "La Peste" in French is so much more terrible than "The Plague" in English. But no word could describe what Artaud acted out on the platform of the Sorbonne. He forgot about his conference, the theatre, his ideas, Dr. Allendy sitting there, the public, the young students, his wife, professors, and directors. His face was contorted with anguish, one could see the perspiration dampening his hair. His eyes dilated, his muscles became cramped, his fingers struggled to retain their flexibility. He made one feel the parched and burning throat, the pains, the fever, the fire in the guts. He was in agony. He was screaming. He was delirious. He was enacting his own death, his own crucifixion. At first people gasped. And then they began to laugh. Everyone was laughing! They hissed. Then, one by one, they began to leave, noisily, talking, protesting. They banged the door as they left. The only ones who did not move were Allendy, his wife, the Lalous, Marguerite. More protestations. More jeering. But Artaud went on, until the last gasp. And stayed on the floor. Then when the hall had emptied of all but his small group of friends, he walked straight up to me and kissed my hand. He asked me to go to the cafe with him.

Thundering hooves beat the frozen ground, faster and faster as the rider whipped the horse. Snow and mud lay thick on the earth, and rogue snowflakes drifted through the night sky. Celaena ran—swifter than her young legs could manage. Everything hurt, Trees ripped at her dress and hair; stones sliced her feet. She scrambled through the woods, breathing so hard she couldn't muster the air to cry for help. She must reach the bridge. It couldn't cross the bridge. Behind her, a sword shrieked as it was drawn from its sheath. She fell, slamming into mud and rock. The sound of the approaching demon filled the air as she struggled to rise. But the mud held fast, and she could not run. Reaching for a bush, her small hands bleeding, the horse now close behind, she—

In all outward aspects he remained patient and mild now, not caring even to speak against heretics; he knew that he was likely to die soon enough, but the prospect of death was not an unwelcome one (...). More retained his hair shirt as he dwelled in his chamber, and is reported to have whipped himself for penitence; he fasted on the appointed days, sang hymns and prayed both day and night.

I mean, we don’t have to worry about it until winter, anyway,” she said. “I was just wondering if you felt cured.” I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t feel cured. I felt like what Cole said —almost cured. A war survivor with a phantom limb. I still felt that wolf that I’d been: living in my cells, sleeping uneasily, waiting to be coaxed out by weather or a rush of adrenaline or a needle in my veins. I didn’t know if that was real or suggested. I didn’t know if one day I would feel secure in my skin, taking my human body for granted. “You look cured,” Grace said. Just her face was visible at the end of the shower curtain, looking in at me. She grinned and I yelled. Grace reached in just far enough to shut off the tap. “I’m afraid,” she said, whipping the shower curtain open all the way and presenting me with my towel, “this is the sort of thing you’ll have to put up with in your old age.” I stood there, dripping, feeling utterly ridiculous, Grace standing opposite, smiling with her challenge. There was nothing for it but to get over the awkwardness. Instead of taking the towel, I took her chin with my wet fingers and kissed her. Water from my hair ran down my cheeks and onto our lips. I was getting her shirt all wet, but she didn’t seem to mind. A lifetime of this seemed rather appealing. I said gallantly, “That better be a promise.

Just when I despaired -- she was there, filling me as a melody fills a cottage. I was with her, running beside the Acis when we were a child. I knew the ancient villa moated by a dark lake, the view through the dusty windows of the belvedere, and the secret space in the odd angle between two rooms where we sat at noon to read by candlelight. I knew the life of the Autarch's court, where poison waited in a diamond cup. I learned what it was for one who had never seen a cell or felt a whip to be a prisoner of the torturers, what dying meant, and death. I learned that I had been more to her than I had ever guessed, and at last fell into a sleep in which my dreams were all of her. Not memories merely -- memories I had possessed in plenty before. I held her poor, cold hands in mine, and I no longer wore the rags of an apprentice, nor the fuligin of a journeyman. We were one, naked and happy and clean, and we knew that she was no more and that I still lived, and we struggled against neither of those things, but with woven hair read from a single book and talked and sang of other matters.

California, Labor Day weekend...early, with ocean fog still in the streets, outlaw motorcyclists wearing chains, shades and greasy Levis roll out from damp garages, all-night diners and cast-off one-night pads in Fricso, Hollywood, Berdoo and East Oakland, heading for the Monterey peninsula, north of Big Sur...The Menace is loose again, the Hell's Angels, the hundred-carat headline, running fast and loud on the early morning freeway, low in the saddle, nobody smiles, jamming crazy through traffic and ninety miles an hour down the center stripe, missing by inches...like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter's leg with no quarter asked and non given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of those kicks they'll never know...Ah, these righteous dudes, they love to screw it on...Little Jesus, the Gimp, Chocolate George, Buzzard, Zorro, Hambone, Clean Cut, Tiny, Terry the Tramp, Frenchy, Mouldy Marvin, Mother Miles, Dirty Ed, Chuck the Duck, Fat Freddy, Filthy Phil, Charger Charley the Child Molester, Crazy Cross, Puff, Magoo, Animal and at least a hundred more...tense for the action, long hair in the wind, beards and bandanas flapping, earrings, armpits, chain whips, swastikas and stripped-down Harleys flashing chrome as traffic on 101 moves over, nervous, to let the formation pass like a burst of dirty thunder...

I throw my arms around him and lift my chin expectantly, waiting for my good-night kiss. He nuzzles his face against mine, and I feel gladness for the fact that he has smooth cheeks and barely even needs to shave. I close my eyes, breathe him in, wait for my kiss. And he plants a chaste peck on my forehead. “Good night, Covey.” My eyes fly open. “That’s all I get?” Smugly he says, “You said earlier that I’m not that good at kissing, remember?” “I was kidding!” He winks at me as he hops in his car. I watch him drive away. Even after a whole year of being together, it can still feel so new. To love a boy, to have him love you back. It feels miraculous. I don’t go inside right away. Just in case he comes back. Hands on my hips, I wait a full twenty seconds before I turn toward the front steps, which is when his car comes peeling back down our street and stops right in front of our house. Peter sticks his head out the window. “All right then,” he calls out. “Let’s practice.” I run back to his car, I pull him toward me by his shirt, and angle my face against his— and then I push him away and run backward, laughing, my hair whipping around my face. “Covey!” he yells. “That’s what you get!” I call back gleefully. “See you on the bus tomorrow!

The corridor dissolved, and the scene took a little longer to reform: Harry seemed to fly through shifting shapes and colors until his surroundings solidified again and he stood on a hilltop, forlorn and cold in the darkness, the wind whistling through the branches of a few leafless trees. The adult Snape was panting, turning on the spot, his wand gripped tightly in his hand, waiting for something or for someone… His fear infected Harry too, even though he knew that he could not be harmed, and he looked over his shoulder, wondering what it was that Snape was waiting for — Then a blinding, jagged jet of white light flew through the air. Harry thought of lightning, but Snape had dropped to his knees and his wand had flown out of his hand. “Don’t kill me!” “That was not my intention.” Any sound of Dumbledore Apparating had been drowned by the sound of the wind in the branches. He stood before Snape with his robes whipping around him, and his face was illuminated from below in the light cast by his wand. “Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?” “No — no message — I’m here on my own account!” Snape was wringing his hands. He looked a little mad, with his straggling black hair flying around him. “I — I come with a warning — no, a request — please —” Dumbledore flicked his wand. Though leaves and branches still flew through the night air around them, silence fell on the spot where he and Snape faced each other. “What request could a Death Eater make of me?” “The — the prophecy… the prediction… Trelawney…” “Ah, yes,” said Dumbledore. “How much did you relay to Lord Voldemort?” “Everything — everything I heard!” said Snape. “That is why — it is for that reason — he thinks it means Lily Evans!” “The prophecy did not refer to a woman,” said Dumbledore. “It spoke of a boy born at the end of July —” “You know what I mean! He thinks it means her son, he is going to hunt her down — kill them all —” “If she means so much to you,” said Dumbledore, “surely Lord Voldemort will spare her? Could you not ask for mercy for the mother, in exchange for the son?” “I have — I have asked him —” “You disgust me,” said Dumbledore, and Harry had never heard so much contempt in his voice. Snape seemed to shrink a little, “You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?” Snape said nothing, but merely looked up at Dumbledore. “Hide them all, then,” he croaked. “Keep her — them — safe. Please.” “And what will you give me in return, Severus?” “In — in return?” Snape gaped at Dumbledore, and Harry expected him to protest, but after a long moment he said, “Anything.

Of course, it is true that plastic surgeries and sex reassignments are “artificial,” but then again so are the exercise bikes we work out on, the antiwrinkle moisturizers we smear on our faces, the dyes we use to color our hair, the clothes we buy to complement our figures, and the TV shows, movies, magazines, and billboards that bombard us with “ideal” images of gender, size, and beauty that set the standards that we try to live up to in the first place. The class systems based on attractiveness and gender are extraordinarily “artificial”— yet only those practices that seem to subvert those classes (rather than reaffirm them) are ever characterized as such.

Well?" Occipus said. Without an announcer translating his words, he possessed a flat, froggy voice. The announcer, who had long, curly blond hair that hug to his shoulders, reminded Brendan of Roger Daltrey, the vain lead singer of his dad's favorite band, the Who. He whipped back his long mane and said, "Emperor Occipus says, 'Well?

Oh, I’m old fashioned, you see,” he said, pushing his dark brown hair out of his eyes, only to have the wind whip the locks right back where they were. “I think a man should jump into a frigid river to save a pretty girl.” “But not an ugly one then?” “Oh, yeah, I’d save her too, but she’s not the one teetering on the edge of the railing.

I’m so sick of polite sex. I want someone to pull my hair. I want my ass smacked, I want fuzzy handcuffs and maybe some mild restraints—I’m not that kinky that I want the whole whips and chains deal, at least I don’t think I do, but some light bondage and a good hard fuck, the kind I’ll feel long into the next day, that I can totally handle.

I believe finally, that education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience; that the process and the goal of education are one and the same thing. —JOHN DEWEY I’m standing on the red railway car that sits abandoned next to the barn. The wind soars, whipping my hair across my face and pushing a chill down the open neck of my shirt. The gales are strong this close to the mountain, as if the peak itself is exhaling. Down below, the valley is peaceful, undisturbed. Meanwhile our farm dances: the heavy conifer trees sway slowly, while the sagebrush and thistles quiver,

West had always congratulated himself on being too clever to desire a woman he couldn't have. But Phoebe was as rare as a year with two blue moons. All through dinner, he'd marveled at how beautiful she was, the candlelight striking gleams from her hair and skin like rubies and pearls. She was clever, perceptive, quick as a whip. There had been hints of an absolutely lacerating wit, which he loved, but there were also touches of shyness and melancholy that went straight to his heart. She was a woman who badly needed to enjoy herself, and he wanted to indulge her in some thoroughly adult fun.

Gritting my teeth with determination, I floor the accelerator again, trying to gain as much distance as I can away from Redfin. Third gear it is! The wind is even stronger now and I feel like my hair is going to fly off my head. A strong whipping sound bursts into my ears as I floor the accelerator one more, engaging fourth gear. Nouveau Road is wide and long enough to take the truck and its speed for a little while.

the six of us are supposed to drive to the diner in Hastings for lunch. But the moment we enter the cavernous auditorium where the girls told us to meet them, my jaw drops and our plans change. “Holy shit—is that a red velvet chaise lounge?” The guys exchange a WTF look. “Um…sure?” Justin says. “Why—” I’m already sprinting toward the stage. The girls aren’t here yet, which means I have to act fast. “For fuck’s sake, get over here,” I call over my shoulder. Their footsteps echo behind me, and by the time they climb on the stage, I’ve already whipped my shirt off and am reaching for my belt buckle. I stop to fish my phone from my back pocket and toss it at Garrett, who catches it without missing a beat. “What is happening right now?” Justin bursts out. I drop trou, kick my jeans away, and dive onto the plush chair wearing nothing but my black boxer-briefs. “Quick. Take a picture.” Justin doesn’t stop shaking his head. Over and over again, and he’s blinking like an owl, as if he can’t fathom what he’s seeing. Garrett, on the other hand, knows better than to ask questions. Hell, he and Hannah spent two hours constructing origami hearts with me the other day. His lips twitch uncontrollably as he gets the phone in position. “Wait.” I pause in thought. “What do you think? Double guns, or double thumbs up?” “What is happening?” We both ignore Justin’s baffled exclamation. “Show me the thumbs up,” Garrett says. I give the camera a wolfish grin and stick up my thumbs. My best friend’s snort bounces off the auditorium walls. “Veto. Do the guns. Definitely the guns.” He takes two shots—one with flash, one without—and just like that, another romantic gesture is in the bag. As I hastily put my clothes back on, Justin rubs his temples with so much vigor it’s as if his brain has imploded. He gapes as I tug my jeans up to my hips. Gapes harder when I walk over to Garrett so I can study the pictures. I nod in approval. “Damn. I should go into modeling.” “You photograph really well,” Garrett agrees in a serious voice. “And dude, your package looks huge.” Fuck, it totally does. Justin drags both hands through his dark hair. “I swear on all that is holy—if one of you doesn’t tell me what the hell just went down here, I’m going to lose my shit.” I chuckle. “My girl wanted me to send her a boudoir shot of me on a red velvet chaise lounge, but you have no idea how hard it is to find a goddamn red velvet chaise lounge.” “You say this as if it’s an explanation. It is not.” Justin sighs like the weight of the world rests on his shoulders. “You hockey players are fucked up.” “Naah, we’re just not pussies like you and your football crowd,” Garrett says sweetly. “We own our sex appeal, dude.” “Sex appeal? That was the cheesiest thing I’ve ever—no, you know what? I’m not gonna engage,” Justin grumbles. “Let’s find the girls and grab some lunch

Edmund jumped and somersaulted in midair, vaulting neatly onto the roof of the carriage. As he did so, he drew weapons from the concealing folds of his garments: the two whips he had spoken of before, arcs of sizzling light against the night sky. He wielded them with cutting precision, their light waking golden fire in his tousled hair and casting a glow on his carved features, and by that light Magnus saw his face changed from a laughing boy's to the stern countenance of an an angel.

It's reasonable to try for success. Paradoxically, it's also sane to admit defeat. This excels the coming of the end. And when that tide has crested and broken, it recedes from the shore to leave behind something of principle significance. An artefact borne from the lunatic fight. The human struggle. And I can see myself, not too far into the future, with my hair whipping about in the fray of coastal spray, arching low to pick up that wriggling, billion-limbed nautilus, to hold it to my winter-cold ear, to hear what I could hear.

Endovier must have been terrible,” Chaol said. Nothing malicious or mocking lay beneath his words. Did she dare call it sympathy? “Yes,” she said slowly. “It was.” He gave her a look that asked for more. Well, what did she care if she told him? “When I arrived, they cut my hair, gave me rags, and put a pickax in my hand as if I knew what to do with it. They chained me to the others, and I endured my whippings with the rest of them. But the overseers had been instructed to treat me with extra care, and took the liberty of rubbing salt into my wounds—salt I mined—and whipped me often enough so that some of the gashes never really closed. It was through the kindness of a few prisoners from Eyllwe that my wounds didn’t become infected. Every night, one of them stayed up the hours it took to clean my back.

Doris Wales was a woman with straw-blond hair whose body appeared to have been dipped in corn oil; then she must have put her dress on, wet. The dress grabbed at all her parts, and plunged and sagged over the gaps in her body; a lover’s line of hickeys, or love bites – ‘love-sucks,’ Franny called them – dotted Doris’s chest and throat like a violent rash; the welts were like wounds from a whip. She wore plum-covered lipstick, some of which was on her teeth, and she said, to Sabrina Jones and me, ‘You want hot-dancin’ music, or slow-neckin’ music? Or both?’ ‘Both,’ said Sabrina Jones, without missing a beat, but I felt certain that if the world would stop indulging wars and famines and other perils, it would still be possible for human beings to embarrass each other to death. Our self-destruction might take a little longer that way, but I believe it would be no less complete.

Without screaming or weeping these people undressed, stood around in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells and waited for a sign from another S.S. man, who stood near the pit, also with a whip in his hand. During the fifteen minutes that I stood near the pit I heard no complaint or plea for mercy… An old woman with snow-white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a boy about 10 years old and speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked his head and seemed to explain something to him. At that moment the S.S. man at the pit shouted something to his comrade. The latter counted off about twenty persons and instructed them to go behind the earth mound… I well remember a girl, slim and with black hair, who, as she passed close to me, pointed to herself and said: “twenty-three years old.” I walked around the mound and found myself confronted by a tremendous grave. People were closely wedged together and lying on top of each other so that only their heads were visible. Nearly all had blood running over their shoulders from their heads. Some of the people were still moving. Some were lifting their arms and turning their heads to show that they were still alive. The pit was already two-thirds full. I estimated that it contained about a thousand people. I looked for the man who did the shooting. He was an S.S. man, who sat at the edge of the narrow end of the pit, his feet dangling into the pit. He had a tommy gun on his knees and was smoking a cigarette. The people, completely naked, went down some steps and clambered over the heads of the people lying there to the place to which the S.S. man directed them. They lay down in front of the dead or wounded people; some caressed those who were still alive and spoke to them in a low voice. Then I heard a series of shots. I looked into the pit and saw that the bodies were twitching or the heads lying already motionless on top of the bodies that lay beneath them. Blood was running from their necks. The next batch was approaching already. They went down into the pit, lined themselves up against the previous victims and were shot. And so it went, batch after batch. The next morning the German engineer returned to the site. I saw about thirty naked people lying near the pit. Some of them were still alive… Later the Jews still alive were ordered to throw the corpses into the pit. Then they themselves had to lie down in this to be shot in the neck… I swear before God that this is the absolute truth.47

I brightened when Reyes stepped into the small room, one hand behind his back. I'd dried my hair and pulled it into a ponytail for the time being, but I felt wonderful. Clean. Warm. Safe. "It's time," he said as I slipped into a T-shirt and the jeans he'd provided. "Time?" He brought his hand around, and it was like the clouds parted and heaven shone down on us. Blessing us. Nurturing our deepest, most primal desires. "One triple shot mocha latte with extra whipped cream." I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck, but only for a second. There was a mocha latte out there calling my name.

In the sky there is nobody asleep. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. The creatures of the moon sniff and prowl about their cabins. The living iguanas will come and bite the men who do not dream, and the man who rushes out with his spirit broken will meet on the street corner the unbelievable alligator quiet beneath the tender protest of the stars. Nobody is asleep on earth. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is asleep. In a graveyard far off there is a corpse who has moaned for three years because of a dry countryside on his knee; and that boy they buried this morning cried so much it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet. Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful! We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of the dead dahlias. But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist; flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths in a thicket of new veins, and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders. One day the horses will live in the saloons and the enraged ants will throw themselves on the yellow skies that take refuge in the eyes of cows. Another day we will watch the preserved butterflies rise from the dead and still walking through a country of gray sponges and silent boats we will watch our ring flash and roses spring from our tongue. Careful! Be careful! Be careful! The men who still have marks of the claw and the thunderstorm, and that boy who cries because he has never heard of the invention of the bridge, or that dead man who possesses now only his head and a shoe, we must carry them to the wall where the iguanas and the snakes are waiting, where the bear’s teeth are waiting, where the mummified hand of the boy is waiting, and the hair of the camel stands on end with a violent blue shudder. Nobody is sleeping in the sky. Nobody, nobody. Nobody is sleeping. If someone does close his eyes, a whip, boys, a whip! Let there be a landscape of open eyes and bitter wounds on fire. No one is sleeping in this world. No one, no one. I have said it before. No one is sleeping. But if someone grows too much moss on his temples during the night, open the stage trapdoors so he can see in the moonlight the lying goblets, and the poison, and the skull of the theaters - City That Does Not Sleep

Jesus wasn’t blowing smoke. His major contribution to the world was not a set of aphorisms. He was born in a turdy barn, grew up in a dirty world, got baptized in a muddy river. He put his hands on the oozing wounds of lepers, he let whores brush his hair and soldiers pull it out. He went to dinner with dirtbags, both religious and irreligious. His closest friends were a collection of crude fishermen and cultural traitors. He felt the spittle of the Pharisees on his face and the metal hooks of the jailer’s whip in the flesh of his back. He got sweaty and dirty and bloody—and he took all of the sin and mess of the world onto himself, onto the cross to which he was nailed naked.

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

And all the sounds you heard- the wind whipping past your ears and the ocean's whispering and the trickle of whitecaps against your boat- that was the earth's blood pumping through imperceptible veins, and some of those veins were nothing more than people like Shy or Carmen or Addie. And when the end came it smelled like morning dew and brine and everything around you morphed into a man, and that man shined a flashlight in your eyes and kneeled down beside you to pet your hair and he said: You're gonna be okay, young fella. Now come on. And when he lifted you into his arms and carried you like a child into a hidden cave, where you would grow back into the earth's rich soil from which you came and where you would forever belong.

We’re at a stoplight when Peter suddenly sits up straight and says, “Oh, shit! The Epsteins!” I was halfway asleep. My eyes fly open and I yell, “Where? Where?” “Red SUV! Two cars ahead on the right.” I crane my neck to look. They are a gray-haired couple, maybe in their sixties or seventies. It’s hard to tell from this far away. As soon as the light turns green, Peter guns it and drives up on the shoulder. I scream out, “Go go go!” and then we’re flying past the Epsteins. My heart is racing out of control, I can’t help but lean my head out the window and scream because it’s such a thrill. My hair whips in the wind and I know it’s going to be a tangled mess, but I couldn’t care less. “Yahhh!” I scream. “You’re crazy,” Peter says, pulling me back in by the hem of my shirt.

She ran and didn't slow until she came to a hallway that terminated in a multipaned window of thick, old-fashioned glass. Her breath rasped in her throat, but the dizziness and nausea eased enough that she stood steadier on her feet. She heard again the gentle ringing of metal sliding against metal. Musty air rose up with the same smell of leather and dust, an acrid undertone beneath. She whipped her head toward the end of the hall. At first she didn't see anything. The light shifted and swirled, and the swordsman materialized from the shadows. Gold and red emblazoned his tunic in a chevron against a cobalt background. The sword was back in its scabbard, strapped across his back. He was tall, with broad shoulders and dark hair, and he looked like Sebastian. Timed to the wind stirring the ivy outside, he vanished through the wall.

A wave formed, swelling around Ariel's body. It lifted her up higher and higher- or maybe she herself was growing: it was hard to tell. She held the trident aloft. Storm clouds raced to her from all directions like a lost school of cichlid babies flicking to their father's mouth for protection. Lightning coursed through the sky and danced between the trident's tines. Ariel sang a song of rage. Notes rose and fell discordantly, her voice screeching at times like a banshee from the far north. She sang, and the wind sang with her. It whipped her hair out of its braids and pulled tresses into tentacles that billowed around her head. She sang of the unfairness of Eric's fate and her own, of her father's torture as a polyp, even of Scuttle's mortal life, slowly but visibly slipping away. Mostly she sang about Ursula. She sang about everyone whose lives had been touched and destroyed by evil like coral being killed and bleached, like dead spots in the ocean from algae blooms, like scale rot. She sang about what she would do to anyone who threatened those she loved and protected. And then, with her final note, she made a quick thrust as if to throw the trident toward the boats in the bay, pulling it back at the last moment. A clap louder than thunder echoed across the ocean. A wave even larger than the one she rode roared up from the depths of the open sea. It smashed through and around her, leaving her hair and body white with foam. She grinned fiercely at the power of the moment. The tsunami continued on, making straight for Tirulia. But... despite her rage... underneath it all the queen was still Ariel. Her momentary urge to destroy everything came and went like a single flash of summer lightning.

Stop or I’ll kill him!” Sophia shouted at the angels as she tore out a fistful of arrows and leaped on Cam. Straddling him, she raised the silver shafts above his head. His dark hair was matted and greasy. His hands were pale and trembling. Miss Sophia studied these details with a smirk. “I do so love to see an angel die.” She cackled, holding the starshots high. “And such an arrogant one to kill.” She looked back down at Cam. “His death will be a beautiful thing to behold.” “Go ahead.” Cam’s voice came for the first time, low and even. Luce nearly cried out when she heard him mutter: “I never asked for a happy ending.” Luce had watched Sophia kill Penn with her bare hands and no remorse. It would not happen again. “No!” Luce shouted, struggling to break free from Daniel’s grip and dragging him with her into the chapel. Slowly Miss Sophia craned her body around toward Luce and Daniel, clutching her fistful of starshots. Her eyes gleamed silver and her thin lips curled in a ghastly smile as Luce tugged Daniel forward, pulling against his relentless grip. “We have to stop her, Daniel!” “No, Luce, it’s too dangerous.” “Oh, there you are, dear.” Miss Sophia beamed. “And Daniel Grigori! How nice. I’ve been waiting for you.” Then she winked and whipped the starshots over her head in a dense cluster aimed straight at Daniel and Luce.

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

Do you want to know my favorite?” My grip tightened on the railing. In. Out. “Andromeda.” Allister moved closer. “An autumn constellation, forty-four light-years away.” His steps were smooth and indifferent, but his voice was dry, as though he found my panic attack positively boring. His attitude brought a small rush of annoyance in, but it was suddenly swayed as my lungs contracted and wouldn’t release. I couldn’t keep a strangled gasp from escaping. “Look up.” It was an order, carrying a harsh edge. With no fight in me, I complied and tilted my head. Tears blurred my vision. Stars swam together and sparkled like diamonds. I was glad they weren’t. Humans would find a way to pluck them from the sky. “Andromeda is the dim, fuzzy star to the right. Find it.” My eyes searched it out. The stars weren’t often easy to see, hidden behind smog and the glow of city lights, but sometimes, on a lucky night like tonight, pollution cleared and they became visible. I found the star and focused on it. “Do you know her story?” he asked, his voice close behind me. A cold wind touched my cheeks, and I inhaled slowly. “Answer me.” “No,” I gritted. “Andromeda was boasted to be one of the most beautiful goddesses.” He moved closer, so close his jacket brushed my bare arm. His hands were in his pockets and his gaze was on the sky. “She was sacrificed for her beauty, tied to a rock by the sea.” I imagined her, a red-haired goddess with a heart of steel chained to a rock. The question bubbled up from the depths of me. “Did she survive?” His gaze fell to me. Down the tear tracks to the blood on my bottom lip. His eyes darkened, his jaw tightened, and he looked away. “She did.” I found the star again. Andromeda. “Ask me what her name means.” It was another rough demand, and I had the urge to refuse. To tell him to stop bossing me around. However, I wanted to know—I suddenly needed to. But he was already walking away, toward the exit. “Wait,” I breathed, turning to him. “What does her name mean?” He opened the door and a sliver of light poured onto the terrace. Black suit. Broad shoulders. Straight lines. His head turned just enough to meet my gaze. Blue. “It means ruler of men.” An icy breeze almost swallowed his words before they reached me, whipping my hair at my cheeks. And then he was gone.

When you are better rested, I’ll expect you to help with the chores.” Her head whipped around so quickly that hair like copper silk lashed his arm. “What makes you think I will be here long enough for that?” “I am paying you the compliment of assuming you are intelligent.” Before she could conceal her wary surprise, he added, “Or if not, that you have at least enough common sense to realize that you would not get very far.” Ominously, he added, “If I have to go after you again, I will put aside any concern I have about why you are concealing your identity and take you straight to the authorities. Is that clear?” She paled slightly, making him twinge with guilt, but he ignored that. The threat was as much for her own good as for his peace of mind. When she murmured under her breath, he bent closer. “What was that?” Their eyes were level. Hers blazed. “I said,” she repeated, enunciating very clearly, “You’ll have to catch me first.

Kathleen," he calls, his voice a groan. There is magic in names. Can she hear him? "Kathleen," he calls again, louder. Behind him, the denizens of Twilight murmur. "KATHLEEN," he cries. His anguish batters the shining wall, shifting the starstruck colors from rose and lapis to deep purple and bloody magenta, but it remains inviolable. Shadowman drops his scythe in the waters. He'll scream forever, if need be, until the day the walls tumble into the ocean. "Hey, you." Shadowman's attention whips to the top of the wall some distance down the shoreline to his left. An angel is perched on the edge - fair hair, fair-eyed, skin a soft café. A recent crossing. "Trade you," Custo says. Shadowman has no words. "You want in or don't you? Heaven's no place for me, and I'm not hanging around until they figure it out." The angel glances over his shoulder. The murmurs of Twilight grow louder, sharper, but Shadowman pays them no mind. Not anymore. They've already done their worst. "I do," Shadowman says. Custo flashes a grin. "Meet me at the wall.

The wind rose, whipping at Gregori's solid form, lashing his body,ripping at the waves of black hair so that it streamed around his face. His expression was impassive, the pale silver eyes cold and merciless, unblinking and fixed on his prey. The attack came from sky and ground simultaneously; slivers of sharpened wood shot through the air on the wild winds,aimed directly at Gregori. The wolves leapt for him,eyes glowing hotly in the night. The army of the dead moved relentlessly forward, pressing toward Gregori's lone figure. His hands moved, a complicated pattern drected at the approaching army;then he was whirling, a flowing wind of motion beautiful to the eye,so fast that he blurred. Yelps and howls accompanied bodies flying through the air. Wolves landed to lie motionless at his feet. His expression never changed. There was no hint of anger or emotion,no sign of fear,no break in concentration. He simply acted as the need arose. The skeletons were mowed down by a wall of flame, an orange-red conflagration that rose in the night sky and danced furiously for a brief moment. The army withered into ashes, leaving only a pile of blackened dust that spewed across the street in the ferocious onslaught of the wind. Savannah felt Gregori wince, the pain that sliced though him just before he shut out all sensation.She whirled to face him and saw a sharpened stake portruding from his right shoulder. Even as she saw it, Gregori jerked it free.Blood gushed,spraying the area around him.Just as quickly it stopped,as if cut off midstream. The winds rose to a thunderous pitch, a whirling gale of debris above their heads like the funnel cloud of a tornado. The black cloud spun faster and paster,threatening to suck everything and everyone up into its center where the malevolent red eye stared at them with hatred. The tourists screamed in fear,and even the guide grabbed for a lamppost to hang on grimly.Gregori stood alone,the winds assaulting him,tearing at him, reaching for him.As the whirling column threatened him from above, sounding like the roar of a freight train, he merely clapped his hands, then waved to send a backdraft slamming into the dark entity.The vampire screamed his rage. The thick black cloud sucked in on itself with an audible soumd, hovering in the air, waiting, watching, silent. Evil.No one moved.No one dared to breathe. Suddenly the churning black entity gathered itself and streamed across the night sky,racing away from the hunter over the French Quarter and toward the swamp.Gregori launched himself into the air,shape-shifting as he did so,ducking the bolts of white-hot energy and slashing stakes flying in the turbulant air.

I reach out and trace the dragon relic on his back, my fingers lingering on the raised silver scars, and he stiffens. They're all short, thin lines, too precise to be a whip, no rhyme or reason to their pattern but never intersecting. 'What happened?' I whisper, holding my breath. 'You really don't want to know.' He's tense, but doesn't move away from my touch. 'I do.' They don't look accidental. Someone hurt him deliberately maliciously, and it makes me want to hunt the person down and do the same to them. His jaw flexes as he looks over his shoulder, and his eyes meet mine. I bite my lip, knowing this moment can go either way. He can shut me out like always or he can actually let me in. 'There's a lot of them,' I murmur, dragging my fingers down his spine. 'A hundred and seven.' He looks away. The number makes my stomach lurch, and then my hand pauses. A hundred and seven. That's the number Liam mentioned. 'That's how many kids under the age of majority carry the rebellion relic.' 'Yeah.' I shift so I can see his face. 'What happened, Xaden?' He brushes my hair back, and the look that passes is over his face is so close to tender that it makes my heart stutter. 'I saw the opportunity to make a deal,' he says softly. 'And I took it.' 'What kind of deal leaves you with scars like that?' Conflict rages in his eyes, but then he sighs. 'The kind where I take personal responsibility for the loyalty of the hundred and seven kids the rebellion's leaders left behind, and in return, we're allowed to fight for our lives in the Riders Quadrant instead of being put to death like our parents.' He averts his gaze. 'I chose the chance of death over the certainty.' The cruelty of the offer and the sacrifice he made to save the others hits like a physical blow. I cradle his cheek and guide his face back to mine. 'So if any of them betray Navarre...' I lift my brows. 'Then my life is forfeit. The scars are a reminder.' It's why Liam says he owes him everything. 'I'm so sorry that happened to you.' Especially when he wasn't the one who led the rebellion. He looks at me like he sees into the very depths of who I am. 'You have nothing to apologise for.

Is this kind of . . . boring for you?” I asked him, feeling self-conscious. “What?” His hand that was resting on my hip tensed. He almost looked offended. I brushed imaginary lint from his shoulder. “I mean, you know, just kissing.” “This is better than anything I’ve ever done.” His voice was soft and sincere. He pushed the long bangs from my eyes. “Besides, have you ever snogged yourself, luv? It’s brilliant.” I laughed, hiding my face in his neck, and he chuckled, too. “Why?” he asked, playing with my hair. “Are you bored? Seeing as how you’ve kissed so many lads now and all?” I whipped my head up. “Ew, I don’t even want to talk about that. Those were gross and sloppy and—” “No details please.” “All right. How about this . . . I could kiss you all night, Kaidan Rowe.” “That’s my plan,” he said. We leaned in and stopped an inch away, interrupted by a persistent beeping coming from down the hall. My heart jumped before I placed the sound. “Brownies in bed?” I asked. He actually stiffened and looked pained. “What’s wrong? Do you have a no-food-in-bed policy?” “No. You’re just . . . turning me on with the whole Betty Crocker bit.” His eyes blurred as he seemed to be imagining something. I couldn’t picture anything sexy about me cooking. I hit him with a pillow and he held up his palms in surrender. “Maybe I’ll bring a glass of ice water in case I need to douse you,” I said, standing to go. “Hurry back,” he called. “I’ll just be here . . . dreaming of you in an apron and oven mitt.” I giggled at the absurdity of it. “You’re so easy,” I muttered. His laughter followed me down the hall, and I basked in it. 

I glance around the set—everyone is buzzing like worker bees getting ready for the shot. Cordelia’s getting primped and powdered by a makeup girl, Vanessa is speaking with a few of the cameramen, and the convertible I’m supposed to drive is just sitting there . . . all by its lonesome. And look at that—someone left the keys in the ignition. Stealthily, I sidle up to Sarah. “Have you ever driven in a convertible?” She looks up sharply, like she didn’t see me approach. “Of course I have.” My hands slide into my pockets and I lean back on my heels. “Have you ever been in a convertible driven by a prince?” Her eyes are lighter in the sun, with a hint of gold. They crinkle as she smiles. “No.” I nod. “Perfect. We do this in three.” Now she looks nervous. “Do what?” I spot James across the way, eyes scanning the crowd—far enough away that he’ll never get over here in time. “Three . . .” “I don’t know what you mean.” “Two . . .” “Henry . . .” “One.” “I . . .” “Go, go, go!” “Go where?” she asks, loud enough to draw attention. So I wrap my arm around her waist, lift her off her feet, carry her to the car, and swing her up and into the passenger seat. Then, I jump into the driver’s side. “Shit!” James curses. But then the engine is roaring to life. I back out, knocking over a food service table, and the tires screech as I turn around and drive across the grounds . . . toward the woods. “The road is that way!” Sarah yells, the wind making her long, dark hair dance and swirl. “I know a shortcut. Buckle up.” We fly into the woods, sending a flurry of leaves in our wake. The car bounces and jostles, and I feel Sarah’s hand wrapped around my arm—holding on. It feels good. “Duck.” “What?” I push her head down and crouch at the same time, to avoid getting whipped in the face by the low-branch of a pine tree. After we’re past it, Sarah sits up, owl-eyed, and looks back at the branch and then at me. I smirk. “If you wanted me to push your head down, love, you could’ve just said so.” “You’re insane!” I hit the gas hard, swerving around a stump. “What? You’re the only one who gets to make dirty jokes?” We have a sharp turn coming up ahead. I lay my arm across Sarah’s middle. “Hold on.

HAVE YOU EVER sailed in a longship? Not a stubby, robust knörr laden with trade goods and wallowing like a packhorse across the sea, but a sleek, deathly quick, terror-stirring thing – a dragon ship. Have you ever stood at the bow with the salt wind whipping your hair as Rán’s white-haired daughters cream beneath the beast’s strong, curving chest? Have you travelled the whale road with wind-burnt warriors whose rare skill with axe and sword is a gift from mighty Óðin, Lord of War? Men whose death work feeds the wolf and the eagle and the raven? I have done all this. It has been my life and though it would make those skirt-wearing White Christ followers sick with disgust (and fear, I shouldn’t wonder) I have been happy with my lot. For some men are born closer to the gods than others. By the well of Urd, beneath one of the roots of the great life tree Yggdrasil, the Norns, those sisters of fate, of present and future, take the threads of men’s lives and weave them into patterns full of pain and suffering, glory and riches, and death. And their ancient fingers must have tired at the spinning of my life.

You’re missing the whole point, by the way.” “What’s the whole point, Peter?” He clears his throat. “That day in McClaren’s basement. You were my first kiss too.” Abruptly I stop laughing. “I was?” “Yeah.” I stare at him. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” “I don’t know. I guess I forgot. Also it’s embarrassing that I made up a girl. Don’t tell anybody!” I’m filled with a glowy kind of wonder. So I was Peter Kavinsky’s first kiss. How perfectly wonderful! I throw my arms around him and lift my chin expectantly, waiting for my good-night kiss. He nuzzles his face against mine, and I feel gladness for the fact that he has smooth cheeks and barely even needs to shave. I close my eyes, breathe him in, wait for my kiss. And he plants a chaste peck on my forehead. “Good night, Covey.” My eyes fly open. “That’s all I get?” Smugly he says, “You said earlier that I’m not that good at kissing, remember?” “I was kidding!” He winks at me as he hops in his car. I watch him drive away. Even after a whole year of being together, it can still feel so new. To love a boy, to have him love you back. It feels miraculous. I don’t go inside right away. Just in case he comes back. Hands on my hips, I wait a full twenty seconds before I turn toward the front steps, which is when his car comes peeling back down our street and stops right in front of our house. Peter sticks his head out the window. “All right then,” he calls out. “Let’s practice.” I run back to his car, I pull him toward me by his shirt, and angle my face against his--and then I push him away and run backward, laughing, my hair whipping around my face. “Covey!” he yells. “That’s what you get!” I call back gleefully. “See you on the bus tomorrow!

You never told me how everyone liked the sirupskake." "It was splendid!" she said, her smile returning. "Your fa- my husband asked that you bake another one soon for me to bring him." Freya was always tripping over her words like that. Anna did the same thing herself. She chalked it up to wanting to say so much in a short amount of time. She was like a pot of melting chocolate: the words bubbled over. "Did he like the candied oranges I placed on top?" "Yes! He said he'd never seen it done that way before." Anna shrugged. "I love to put my own spin on recipes. I like to be unique, if you haven't noticed." "I have." Freya smiled. "I think my husband would enjoy meeting you. You and I have a similar joyful spirit, while he"- she sighed- "carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, I'm afraid. Much like my daughter." Freya talked about her daughter a lot but unfortunately never brought her along for visits. From what Anna knew, the girl seemed whip smart and serious. Anna wished she could meet her so she could shake her up a bit. Everyone needed to let their hair down sometimes. Plus it would be nice to have a friend close to her own age.

But paging through it for the first time while actually sitting on the trail was less reassuring than I’d hoped. There were things I’d overlooked, I saw now, such as a quote on page 6 by a fellow named Charles Long, with whom the authors of The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California heartily agreed, that said, “How can a book describe the psychological factors a person must prepare for … the despair, the alienation, the anxiety and especially the pain, both physical and mental, which slices to the very heart of the hiker’s volition, which are the real things that must be planned for? No words can transmit those factors …” I sat pie-eyed, with a lurching knowledge that indeed no words could transmit those factors. They didn’t have to. I now knew exactly what they were. I’d learned about them by having hiked a little more than three miles in the desert mountains beneath a pack that resembled a Volkswagen Beetle. I read on, noting intimations that it would be wise to improve one’s physical fitness before setting out, to train specifically for the hike, perhaps. And, of course, admonishments about backpack weight. Suggestions even to refrain from carrying the entire guidebook itself because it was too heavy to carry all at once and unnecessary anyway—one could photocopy or rip out needed sections and include the necessary bit in the next resupply box. I closed the book. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Of ripping the guidebook into sections? Because I was a big fat idiot and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, that’s why. And I was alone in the wilderness with a beast of a load to carry while finding that out. I wrapped my arms around my legs and pressed my face into the tops of my bare knees and closed my eyes, huddled into the ball of myself, the wind whipping my shoulder-length hair in a frenzy.

Gregori stepped away from the huddled mass of tourists, putting distance between himself and the guide. He walked completely erect,his head high, his long hair flowing around him. His hands were loose at his sides, and his body was relaxed, rippling with power. "Hear me now, ancient one." His voice was soft and musical, filling the silence with beauty and purity. "You have lived long in this world, and you weary of the emptiness. I have come in anwer to your call." "Gregori.The Dark One." The evil voice hissed and growled the words in answer. The ugliness tore at sensitive nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard. Some of the tourists actually covered their ears. "How dare you enter my city and interfere where you have no right?" "I am justice,evil one. I have come to set your free from the bounaries holding you to this place." Gregori's voice was so soft and hypnotic that those listening edged out from their sanctuaries.It beckoned and pulled, so that none could resist his every desire. The black shape above their head roiled like a witch's cauldron. A jagged bolt of lightning slammed to earth straight toward the huddled group. Gregori raised a hand and redirected the force of energy away from the tourists and Savannah. A smile edged the cruel set of his mouth. "You think to mock me with display,ancient one? Do not attempt to anger what you do not understand.You came to me.I did not hunt you.You seek to threaten my lifemate and those I count as my friends.I can do no other than carry the justice of our people to you." Gregori's voice was so reasonable, so perfect and pure,drawing obedience from the most recalcitrant of criminals. The guide made a sound,somewhere between disbelief and fear.Gregori silenced him with a wave of his hand, needing no distractions. But the noise had been enough for the ancient one to break the spell Gregori's voice was weaving around him. The dark stain above their heads thrashed wildly, as if ridding itself ot ever-tightening bonds before slamming a series of lightning strikes at the helpless mortals on the ground. Screams and moans accompanied the whispered prayers, but Gregori stood his ground, unflinching. He merely redirected the whips of energy and light, sent them streaking back into the black mass above their heads.A hideous snarl,a screech of defiance and hatred,was the only warning before it hailed. Hufe golfball-sized blocks of bright-red ice rained down toward them. It was thick and horrible to see, the shower of frozen blood from the skies. But it stopped abruptly, as if an unseen force held it hovering inches from their heads. Gregori remained unchanged, impassive, his face a blank mask as he shielded the tourists and sent the hail hurtling back at their attacker.From out of the cemetery a few blocks from them, an army of the dead rose up. Wolves howled and raced along beside the skeletons as they moved to intercept the Carpathian hunter. Savannah. He said her name once, a soft brush in her mind. I've got it, she sent back instantly.Gregori had his hands full dealing with the abominations the vampire was throwing at him; he did't need to waste his energy protecting the general public from the apparition. She moved out into the open, a small, fragile figure, concentrating on the incoming threat. To those dwelling in the houses along the block and those driving in their cars, she masked the pack of wolves as dogs racing down the street.The stick=like skeletons, grotesque and bizarre, were merely a fast-moving group of people. She held the illusion until they were within a few feet of Gregori.Dropping the illusion, she fed every ounce of her energy and power to Gregori so he could meet the attack.

How is it you speak? What sound is there here?” “You must listen to my voice,” she told me, “and not to my words. What do you hear?” I did as she had instructed me, and heard the silken sliding of the sheet, the whisper of our bodies, the breaking of the little waves, and the beating of my own heart. A hundred questions I had been ready to ask, and it had seemed to me that each of the hundred might bring the New Sun. Her lips brushed mine, and every question vanished, banished from my consciousness as if it had never been. Her hands, her lips, her eyes, the breasts I pressed—all wondrous; but there was more, perhaps the perfume of her hair. I felt that I breathed an endless night … . Lying upon my back, I entered Yesod. Or say, rather, Yesod closed about me. It was only then that I knew I had never been there. Stars in their billions spurted from me, fountains of suns, so that for an instant I felt I knew how universes are born. All folly. Reality displaced it, the kindling of the torch that whips shadows to their corners, and with them all the winged fays of fancy. There was something born between Yesod and Briah when I met with Apheta upon that divan in that circling room, something tiny yet immense that burned like a coal conveyed to the tongue by tongs. That something was myself.

Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf As soon as Wolf began to feel That he would like a decent meal, He went and knocked on Grandma’s door. When Grandma opened it, she saw The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin, And Wolfie said, “May I come in?” Poor Grandmamma was terrified, “He’s going to eat me up!” she cried. And she was absolutely right. He ate her up in one big bite. But Grandmamma was small and tough, And Wolfie wailed, “That’s not enough! I haven’t yet begun to feel That I have had a decent meal!” He ran around the kitchen yelping, “I’ve got to have a second helping!” Then added with a frightful leer, “I’m therefore going to wait right here Till Little Miss Red Riding Hood Comes home from walking in the wood.” He quickly put on Grandma’s clothes, (Of course he hadn’t eaten those). He dressed himself in coat and hat. He put on shoes, and after that He even brushed and curled his hair, Then sat himself in Grandma’s chair. In came the little girl in red. She stopped. She stared. And then she said, “What great big ears you have, Grandma.” “All the better to hear you with,” the Wolf replied. “What great big eyes you have, Grandma.” said Little Red Riding Hood. “All the better to see you with,” the Wolf replied. He sat there watching her and smiled. He thought, I’m going to eat this child. Compared with her old Grandmamma She’s going to taste like caviar. Then Little Red Riding Hood said, “But Grandma, what a lovely great big furry coat you have on.” “That’s wrong!” cried Wolf. “Have you forgot To tell me what BIG TEETH I’ve got? Ah well, no matter what you say, I’m going to eat you anyway.” The small girl smiles. One eyelid flickers. She whips a pistol from her knickers. She aims it at the creature’s head And bang bang bang, she shoots him dead. A few weeks later, in the wood, I came across Miss Riding Hood. But what a change! No cloak of red, No silly hood upon her head. She said, “Hello, and do please note My lovely furry wolfskin coat.

in Howard was in one of those moods during which crazy ideas sound perfectly sensible. A bullish, handsome man with decisive eyebrows and more hair than he could find use for, Lin had a great deal of money and a habit of having things go his way. So many things in his life had gone his way that it no longer occurred to him not to be in a festive mood, and he spent much of his time celebrating the general goodness of things and sitting with old friends telling fat happy lies. But things had not gone Lin’s way lately, and he was not accustomed to the feeling. Lin wanted in the worst way to whip his father at racing, to knock his Seabiscuit down a peg or two, and he believed he had the horse to do it in Ligaroti.1 He was sure enough about it to have made some account-closing bets on the horse, at least one as a side wager with his father, and he was a great deal poorer for it. The last race really ate at him. Ligaroti had been at Seabiscuit’s throat in the Hollywood Gold Cup when another horse had bumped him right out of his game. He had streaked down the stretch to finish fourth and had come back a week later to score a smashing victory over Whichcee in a Hollywood stakes race, firmly establishing himself as the second-best horse in the West. Bing Crosby and Lin were certain that with a weight break and a clean trip, Ligaroti had Seabiscuit’s measure. Charles Howard didn’t see it that way. Since the race, he had been going around with pockets full of clippings about Seabiscuit. Anytime anyone came near him, he would wave the articles around and start gushing, like a new father. The senior Howard probably didn’t hold back when Lin was around. He was immensely proud of Lin’s success with Ligaroti, but he enjoyed tweaking his son, and he was good at it. He had once given Lin a book for Christmas entitled What You Know About Horses. The pages were blank. One night shortly after the Hollywood Gold Cup, Lin was sitting at a restaurant table across from his father and Bing Crosby. They were apparently talking about the Gold Cup, and Lin was sitting there looking at his father and doing a slow burn.

What, may I ask, does your one truck contain if not gowns?” Inspiration struck, and Elizabeth smiled radiantly. “Something of great value. Priceless value,” she confided. All faces at the table watched her with alert fascination-particularly the greedy Sir Francis. “Well, don’t keep us in suspense, love. What’s in it?” “The mortal remains of Saint Jacob.” Lady Eloise and Lady Mortand screamed in unison, Sir William choked on his wine, and Sir Francis gaped at her in horror, but Elizabeth wasn’t quite finished. She saved the coup de grace until the meal was over. As soon as everyone arose she insisted they sit back down so a proper prayer of gratitude could be said. Raising her hands heavenward, Elizabeth turned a simple grace into a stinging tirade against the sins of lust and promiscuity that rose to crescendo as she called down the vengeance of doomsday on all transgressors and culminated in a terrifyingly lurid description of the terrors that awaited all who strayed down the path of lechery-terrors that combined dragon lore with mythology, a smattering of religion, and a liberal dash of her own vivid imagination. When it was done Elizabeth dropped her eyes, praying in earnest that tonight would loose her from her predicament. There was no more she could do; she’d played out her hand with all her might; she’d given it her all. It was enough. After supper Sir Francis escorted her to her chamber and, with a poor attempt at regret, announced that he greatly feared they wouldn’t suit. Not at all. Elizabeth and Berta departed at dawn the following morning, an hour before Sir Francis’s servants stirred themselves. Clad in a dressing robe, Sir Francis watched from his bedchamber window as Elizabeth’s coachman helped her into her conveyance. He was about to turn away when a sudden gust of wind caught Elizabeth’s black gown, exposing a long and exceptionally shapely leg to Sir Francis’s riveted gaze. He was still staring at the coach as it circled the drive; through its open window he saw Elizabeth laugh and reach up, unpinning her hair. Clouds of golden tresses whipped about the open window, obscuring her face, and Sir Francis thoughtfully wet his lips.

Let go.” “Make me let you go.” She looked at Arin. Whatever he saw in her eyes loosened his hands. “Kestrel,” he said more quietly, “I have been whipped before. Lashes and death are different things.” “I won’t die.” “Let Irex set my punishment.” “You’re not listening to me.” She would have said more, but realized that his hands still rested on her shoulders. A thumb was pressing gently against her collarbone. Kestrel caught her breath. Arin startled, as if out of sleep, and pulled away. He had no right, Kestrel thought. He had no right to confuse her. Not now, when she needed a clear mind. Everything had seemed so simple last night in the close dark of the carriage. “You are not allowed,” Kestrel said, “to touch me.” Arin’s smile was bitter. “I suppose that means we are no longer friends.” She said nothing. “Good,” he said, “then you can have no reason for fighting Irex.” “You don’t understand.” “I don’t understand your godforsaken Valorian honor? I don’t understand that your father would probably rather see you gutted than live with a daughter who turned away from a duel?” “You have very little faith in me, to think that Irex would win.” He raked a hand through his short hair. “Where is my honor in all this, Kestrel?” They locked eyes, and she recognized his expression. It was the same one she had seen across the Bite and Sting table. The same one she had seen in the pit, when the auctioneer had told Arin to sing. Refusal. A determination so cold it could blister the skin like metal in winter. She knew that he would stop her. Perhaps he would be cunning about it. Maybe he would go to the steward behind her back, tell him of the theft and challenge, and ask to be brought before the judge and Irex. If that plan didn’t suit Arin, he would find another. He was going to be a problem.

Aunt Lotty had gone, and Laura and Mary were tired and cross. They were at the woodpile, gathering a pan of chips to kindle the fire in the morning. They always hated to pick up chips, but every day they had to do it. Tonight they hated it more than ever. Laura grabbed the biggest chip, and Mary said: “I don’t care. Aunt Lotty likes my hair best, anyway. Golden hair is lots prettier than brown.” Laura’s throat swelled tight, and she could not speak. She knew golden hair was prettier than brown. She couldn’t speak, so she reached out quickly and slapped Mary’s face. Then she heard Pa say, “Come here, Laura.” She went slowly, dragging her feet. Pa was sitting just inside the door. He had seen her slap Mary. “You remember,” Pa said, “I told you girls you must never strike each other.” Laura began, “But Mary said--” “That makes no difference,” said Pa. “It is what I say that you must mind.” Then he took down a strap from the wall, and he whipped Laura with the strap. Laura sat on a chair in the corner and sobbed. When she stopped sobbing, she sulked. The only thing in the whole world to be glad about was that Mary had to fill the chip pan all by herself. At last, when it was getting dark, Pa said again, “Come here, Laura.” His voice was kind, and when Laura came he took her on his knee and hugged her close. She sat in the crook of his arm, her head against his shoulder and his long brown whiskers partly covering her eyes, and everything was all right again. She told Pa all about it, and she asked him, “You don’t like golden hair better than brown, do you?” Pa’s blue eyes shone down at her, and he said, “Well, Laura, my hair is brown.” She had not thought of that. Pa’s hair was brown, and his whiskers were brown, and she thought brown was a lovely color. But she was glad that Mary had had to gather all the chips.

Jack took two steps towards the couch and then heard his daughter’s distressed wails, wincing. “Oh, right. The munchkin.” He instead turned and headed for the stairs, yawning and scratching his messy brown hair, calling out, “Hang on, chubby monkey, Daddy’s coming.” Jack reached the top of the stairs. And stopped dead. There was a dragon standing in the darkened hallway. At first, Jack swore he was still asleep. He had to be. He couldn’t possibly be seeing correctly. And yet the icy fear slipping down his spine said differently. The dragon stood at roughly five feet tall once its head rose upon sighting Jack at the other end of the hallway. It was lean and had dirty brown scales with an off-white belly. Its black, hooked claws kneaded the carpet as its yellow eyes stared out at Jack, its pupils dilating to drink him in from head to toe. Its wings rustled along its back on either side of the sharp spines protruding down its body to the thin, whip-like tail. A single horn glinted sharp and deadly under the small, motion-activated hallway light. The only thing more noticeable than that were the many long, jagged scars scored across the creature’s stomach, limbs, and neck. It had been hunted recently. Judging from the depth and extent of the scars, it had certainly killed a hunter or two to have survived with so many marks. “Okay,” Jack whispered hoarsely. “Five bucks says you’re not the Easter Bunny.” The dragon’s nostrils flared. It adjusted its body, feet apart, lips sliding away from sharp, gleaming white teeth in a warning hiss. Mercifully, Naila had quieted and no longer drew the creature’s attention. Jack swallowed hard and held out one hand, bending slightly so his six-foot-two-inch frame was less threatening. “Look at me, buddy. Just keep looking at me. It’s alright. I’m not going to hurt you. Why don’t you just come this way, huh?” He took a single step down and the creature crept forward towards him, hissing louder. “That’s right. This way. Come on.” Jack eased backwards one stair at a time. The dragon let out a warning bark and followed him, its saliva leaving damp patches on the cream-colored carpet. Along the way, Jack had slipped his phone out of his pocket and dialed 9-1-1, hoping he had just enough seconds left in the reptile’s waning patience. “9-1-1, what’s your emergency?” “Listen to me carefully,” Jack said, not letting his eyes stray from the dragon as he fumbled behind him for the handle to the sliding glass door. He then quickly gave her his address before continuing. “There is an Appalachian forest dragon in my house. Get someone over here as fast as you can.” “We’re contacting a retrieval team now, sir. Please stay calm and try not to make any loud noises or sudden movements–“ Jack had one barefoot on the cool stone of his patio when his daughter Naila cried for him again. The dragon’s head turned towards the direction of upstairs. Jack dropped his cell phone, grabbed a patio chair, and slammed it down on top of the dragon’s head as hard as he could.

Trying to get to 124 for the second time now, he regretted that conversation: the high tone he took; his refusal to see the effect of marrow weariness in a woman he believed was a mountain. Now, too late, he understood her. The heart that pumped out love, the mouth that spoke the Word, didn't count. They came in her yard anyway and she could not approve or condemn Sethe's rough choice. One or the other might have saved her, but beaten up by the claims of both, she went to bed. The whitefolks had tired her out at last. And him. Eighteen seventy-four and whitefolks were still on the loose. Whole towns wiped clean of Negroes; eighty-seven lynchings in one year alone in Kentucky; four colored schools burned to the ground; grown men whipped like children; children whipped like adults; black women raped by the crew; property taken, necks broken. He smelled skin, skin and hot blood. The skin was one thing, but human blood cooked in a lynch fire was a whole other thing. The stench stank. Stank up off the pages of the North Star, out of the mouths of witnesses, etched in crooked handwriting in letters delivered by hand. Detailed in documents and petitions full of whereas and presented to any legal body who'd read it, it stank. But none of that had worn out his marrow. None of that. It was the ribbon. Tying his flatbed up on the bank of the Licking River, securing it the best he could, he caught sight of something red on its bottom. Reaching for it, he thought it was a cardinal feather stuck to his boat. He tugged and what came loose in his hand was a red ribbon knotted around a curl of wet woolly hair, clinging still to its bit of scalp. He untied the ribbon and put it in his pocket, dropped the curl in the weeds. On the way home, he stopped, short of breath and dizzy. He waited until the spell passed before continuing on his way. A moment later, his breath left him again. This time he sat down by a fence. Rested, he got to his feet, but before he took a step he turned to look back down the road he was traveling and said, to its frozen mud and the river beyond, "What are these people? You tell me, Jesus. What are they?" When he got to his house he was too tired to eat the food his sister and nephews had prepared. He sat on the porch in the cold till way past dark and went to his bed only because his sister's voice calling him was getting nervous. He kept the ribbon; the skin smell nagged him, and his weakened marrow made him dwell on Baby Suggs' wish to consider what in the world was harmless. He hoped she stuck to blue, yellow, maybe green, and never fixed on red. Mistaking her, upbraiding her, owing her, now he needed to let her know he knew, and to get right with her and her kin. So, in spite of his exhausted marrow, he kept on through the voices and tried once more to knock at the door of 124. This time, although he couldn't cipher but one word, he believed he knew who spoke them. The people of the broken necks, of fire-cooked blood and black girls who had lost their ribbons. What a roaring.

In front of the mound: a mile of naked strangers. In groups of twenty, like smokes, they are directed to the other side by a man with a truncheon and a whip. It will not help to ink in his face. Several men with barrows collect clothes. There are young women still with attractive breasts. There are family groups, many small children crying quietly, tears oozing from their eyes like sweat. In whispers people comfort one another. Soon, they say. Soon. No one wails and no one begs. Arms mingle with other arms like fallen limbs, lie like shawls across bony shoulders. A loose gray calm descends. It will be soon . . . soon. A grandmother coos at the infant she cuddles, her gray hair hiding all but the feet. The baby giggles when it’s chucked. A father speaks earnestly to his son and points at the heavens where surely there is an explanation; it is doubtless their true destination. The color of the sky cannot be colored in. So the son is lied to right up to the last. Father does not cup his boy’s wet cheeks in his hands and say, You shall die, my son, and never be remembered. The little salamander you were frightened of at first, and grew to love and buried in the garden, the long walk to school your legs learned, what shape our daily life, our short love, gave you, the meaning of your noisy harmless games, every small sensation that went to make your eager and persistent gazing will be gone; not simply the butterflies you fancied, or the bodies you yearned to see uncovered—look, there they are: the inner thighs, the nipples, pubes—or what we all might have finally gained from the toys you treasured, the dreams you peopled, but especially your scarcely budded eyes, and that rich and gentle quality of consciousness which I hoped one day would have been uniquely yours like the most subtle of flavors—the skin, the juice, the sweet pulp of a fine fruit—well, son, your possibilities, as unrealized as the erections of your penis—in a moment—soon—will be ground out like a burnt wet butt beneath a callous boot and disappear in the dirt. Only our numbers will be remembered—not that you or I died, but that there were so many of us. And that we were.

I shoot up out of my chair. “It’s Bree. Hide the board!” Everyone hops out of their chairs and starts scrambling around and bumping into each other like a classic cartoon. We hear the door shut behind her, and the whiteboard is still standing in the middle of the kitchen like a lit-up marquee. I hiss at Jamal, “Get rid of it!” His eyes are wide orbs, head whipping around in all directions. “Where? In the utensil drawer? Up my shirt?! There’s nowhere! That thing is huge!” “LADY IN THE HOUSE!” Bree shouts from the entryway. The sound of her tennis shoes getting kicked off echoes around the room, and my heart races up my throat. Her name is pasted all over that whiteboard along with phrases like “first kiss—keep it light” and “entwined hand-holding” and “dirty talk about her hair”. Yeah…I’m not sure about that last one, but we’ll see. Basically, it’s all laid out there—the most incriminating board in the world. If Bree sees this thing, it’s all over for me. “Erase it!” Price whispers frantically. “No, we didn’t write it down anywhere else! We’ll lose all the ideas.” I can hear Bree’s footsteps getting closer. “Nathan? Are you home?” “Uh—yeah! In the kitchen.” Jamal tosses me a look like I’m an idiot for announcing our location, but what am I supposed to do? Stand very still and pretend we’re not all huddled in here having a Baby-Sitter’s Club re-enactment? She would find us, and that would look even worse after keeping quiet. “Just flip it over!” I tell anyone who’s not running in a circle chasing his tail. As Lawrence flips the whiteboard, Price tells us all to act natural. So of course, the second Bree rounds the corner, I hop up on the table, Jamal rests his elbow on the wall and leans his head on his hand, and Lawrence just plops down on the floor and pretends to stretch. Derek can’t decide what to do so he’s caught mid-circle. We all have fake smiles plastered on. Our acting is shit. Bree freezes, blinking at the sight of each of us not acting at all natural. “Whatcha guys doing?” Her hair is a cute messy bun of curls on the top of her head and she’s wearing her favorite joggers with one of my old LA Sharks hoodies, which she stole from my closet a long time ago. It swallows her whole, but since she just came from the studio, I know there is a tight leotard under it. I can barely find her in all that material, and yet she’s still the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen. Just her presence in this room feels like finally getting hooked up to oxygen after days of not being able to breathe deeply. We all respond to Bree’s question at the same time but with different answers. It’s highly suspicious and likely what makes her eyes dart to the whiteboard. Sweat gathers on my spine. “What’s with the whiteboard?” she asks, taking a step toward it. I hop off the table and get in her path. “Huh? Oh, it’s…nothing.” She laughs and tries to look around me. I pretend to stretch so she can’t see. “It doesn’t look like nothing. What? Are you guys drawing boobies on that board or something? You look so guilty.” “Ah—you caught us! Lots of illustrated boobs drawn on that board. You don’t want to see it.” She pauses, a fading smile hovering on her lips, and her eyes look up to meet mine. “For real—what’s going on? Why can’t I see it?” She doesn’t believe my boob explanation. I guess we should take that as a compliment? My eyes catch over Bree’s shoulder as Price puts himself out of her line of sight and begins miming the action of getting his phone out and taking a picture of the whiteboard. This little show is directed at Derek, who is standing somewhere behind me. Bree sees me watching Price and whips her head around to catch him. He freezes—hands extended looking like he’s holding an imaginary camera. He then transforms that into a forearm stretch. “So tight after our workout today.” Her eyes narrow.

Honest to God, I hadn’t meant to start a bar fight. “So. You’re the famous Jordan Amador.” The demon sitting in front of me looked like someone filled a pig bladder with rotten cottage cheese. He overflowed the bar stool with his gelatinous stomach, just barely contained by a white dress shirt and an oversized leather jacket. Acid-washed jeans clung to his stumpy legs and his boots were at least twice the size of mine. His beady black eyes started at my ankles and dragged upward, past my dark jeans, across my black turtleneck sweater, and over the grey duster around me that was two sizes too big. He finally met my gaze and snorted before continuing. “I was expecting something different. Certainly not a black girl. What’s with the name, girlie?” I shrugged. “My mother was a religious woman.” “Clearly,” the demon said, tucking a fat cigar in one corner of his mouth. He stood up and walked over to the pool table beside him where he and five of his lackeys had gathered. Each of them was over six feet tall and were all muscle where he was all fat. “I could start to examine the literary significance of your name, or I could ask what the hell you’re doing in my bar,” he said after knocking one of the balls into the left corner pocket. “Just here to ask a question, that’s all. I don’t want trouble.” Again, he snorted, but this time smoke shot from his nostrils, which made him look like an albino dragon. “My ass you don’t. This place is for fallen angels only, sweetheart. And we know your reputation.” I held up my hands in supplication. “Honest Abe. Just one question and I’m out of your hair forever.” My gaze lifted to the bald spot at the top of his head surrounded by peroxide blonde locks. “What’s left of it, anyway.” He glared at me. I smiled, batting my eyelashes. He tapped his fingers against the pool cue and then shrugged one shoulder. “Fine. What’s your question?” “Know anybody by the name of Matthias Gruber?” He didn’t even blink. “No.” “Ah. I see. Sorry to have wasted your time.” I turned around, walking back through the bar. I kept a quick, confident stride as I went, ignoring the whispers of the fallen angels in my wake. A couple called out to me, asking if I’d let them have a taste, but I didn’t spare them a glance. Instead, I headed to the ladies’ room. Thankfully, it was empty, so I whipped out my phone and dialed the first number in my Recent Call list. “Hey. He’s here. Yeah, I’m sure it’s him. They’re lousy liars when they’re drunk. Uh-huh. Okay, see you in five.” I hung up and let out a slow breath. Only a couple things left to do. I gathered my shoulder-length black hair into a high ponytail. I looped the loose curls around into a messy bun and made sure they wouldn’t tumble free if I shook my head too hard. I took the leather gloves in the pocket of my duster out and pulled them on. Then, I walked out of the bathroom and back to the front entrance. The coat-check girl gave me a second unfriendly look as I returned with my ticket stub to retrieve my things—three vials of holy water, a black rosary with the beads made of onyx and the cross made of wood, a Smith & Wesson .9mm Glock complete with a full magazine of blessed bullets and a silencer, and a worn out page of the Bible. I held out my hands for the items and she dropped them on the counter with an unapologetic, “Oops.” “Thanks,” I said with a roll of my eyes. I put the Glock back in the hip holster at my side and tucked the rest of the items in the pockets of my duster. The brunette demon crossed her arms under her hilariously oversized fake breasts and sent me a vicious sneer. “The door is that way, Seer. Don’t let it hit you on the way out.” I smiled back. “God bless you.” She let out an ugly hiss between her pearly white teeth. I blew her a kiss and walked out the door. The parking lot was packed outside now that it was half-past midnight. Demons thrived in darkness, so I wasn’t surprised. In fact, I’d been counting on it.

I saw her as soon as I pulled into the parking lot. This beautiful woman with a gigantic smile on her face was just about bouncing up and down despite the orthopedic boot she had on her foot as she waved me into a parking space. I felt like I’d been hit in the gut. She took my breath away. She was dressed in workout clothes, her long brown hair softly framing her face, and she just glowed. I composed myself and got out of the car. She was standing with Paul Orr, the radio host I was there to meet. Local press had become fairly routine for me at this point, so I hadn’t really given it much thought when I agreed to be a guest on the afternoon drive-time show for WZZK. But I had no idea I’d meet her. Paul reached out his hand and introduced himself. And without waiting to be introduced she whipped out her hand and said, “Hi! I’m Jamie Boyd!” And right away she was talking a mile a minute. She was so chipper I couldn’t help but smile. I was like that little dog in Looney Toons who is always following the big bulldog around shouting, “What are we going to do today, Spike?” She was adorable. She started firing off questions, one of which really caught my attention. “So you were in the Army? What was your MOS?” she asked. Now, MOS is a military term most civilians have never heard. It stands for Military Occupational Specialty. It’s basically military code for “job.” So instead of just asking me what my job was in the Army, she knew enough to specifically ask me what my MOS was. I was impressed. “Eleven Bravo. Were you in?” I replied. “Nope! But I’ve thought about it. I still think one day I will join the Army.” We followed Paul inside and as he set things up and got ready for his show, Jamie and I talked nonstop. She, too, was really into fitness. She was dressed and ready for the gym and told me she was about to leave to get in a quick workout before her shift on-air. “Yeah, I have the shift after Paul Orr. The seven-to-midnight show. I call it the Jammin’ with Jamie Show. People call in and I’ll ask them if they’re cryin’, laughin’, lovin’, or leavin’.” I couldn’t believe how into this girl I was, and we’d only been talking for twenty minutes. I was also dressed in gym clothes, because I’d been to the gym earlier. She looked down and saw the rubber bracelet around my wrist. “Is that an ‘I Am Second’ bracelet? I have one of those!” she said as she held up her wrist with the band that means, “I am second after Jesus.” “No, this is my own bracelet with my motto, ‘Train like a Machine,’ on it. Just my little self-motivator. I have some in my car. I’d love to give you one.” “Well, actually, I am about to leave. I have to go work out before my shift,” she reminded me. “You can have this one. Take it off my wrist. This one will be worth more someday because I’ve been sweating in it,” I joked. She laughed and took it off my wrist. We kept chatting and she told me she had wanted to do an obstacle course race for a long time. Then Paul interrupted our conversation and gently reminded Jamie he had a show to do. He and I needed to start our interview. She laughed some more and smiled her way out the door.