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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.txt

in blissful silence. "Pard, there's thousands of dollars here," said Injun Joe. "'Twas always said that Murrel's gang used to be around here one summer," the stranger observed. "I know it," said Injun Joe; "and this looks like it, I should say." "Now you won't need to do that job." The half-breed frowned. Said he: "You don't know me. Least you don't know all about that thing. 'Tain't robbery altogether -- it's revenge!" and a wicked light flamed in his eyes. "I'll need your help in it. When it's finished -- then Texas. Go home to your Nance and your kids, and stand by till you hear from me." --------------------------------------------------------- -246- "Well -- if you say so; what'll we do with this -- bury it again?" "Yes. [Ravishing delight overhead.] No ! by the great Sachem, no! [Profound distress overhead.] I'd nearly forgot. That pick had fresh earth on it! [The boys were sick with terror in a moment.] What business has a pick and a shovel here? What business with fresh earth on them? Who brought them here -- and where are they gone? Have you heard anybody? -- seen anybody? What! bury it again and leave them to come and see the ground disturbed? Not exactly -- not exactly. We'll take it to my den." "Why, of course! Might have thought of that before. You mean Number One?" "No -- Number Two -- under the cross. The other place is bad -- too common." "All right. It's nearly dark enough to start." Injun Joe got up and went about from window to window cautiously peeping out. Presently he said: "Who could have brought those tools here? Do you reckon they can be up-stairs?" The boys' breath forsook them. Injun Joe put his hand on his knife, halted a moment, undecided, and then turned toward the stairway. The boys thought of the closet, but their strength was gone. The steps came creaking up the stairs -- the intolerable distress of the situation woke the stricken resolution of the lads -- they were about to spring for the closet, when there was a crash of rotten timbers --------------------------------------------------------- -247- and Injun Joe landed on the ground amid the debris of the ruined stairway. He gathered himself up cursing, and his comrade said: "Now what's the use of all that? If it's anybody, and they're up there, let them stay there -- who cares? If they want to jump down, now, and get into trouble, who objects? It will be dark in fifteen minutes -- and then let them follow us if they want to. I'm willing. In my opinion, whoever hove those things in here caught a sight of us and took us for ghosts or devils or something. I'll bet they're running yet." Joe grumbled awhile; then he agreed with his friend that what daylight was left ought to be economized in getting things ready for leaving. Shortly afterward they slipped out of the house in the deepening twilight, and moved toward the river with their precious box. Tom and Huck

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

as though Harry was being stupid on purpose. Getting desperate, Harry asked for the train that left at eleven o'clock, but the guard said there wasn't one. In the end the guard strode away, muttering about time wasters. Harry was now trying hard not to panic. According to the large clock over the arrivals board, he had ten minutes left to get on the train to Hogwarts and he had no idea how to do it; he was stranded in the middle of a station with a trunk he could hardly lift, a pocket full of wizard money, and a large owl. Hagrid must have forgotten to tell him something you had to do, like tapping the third brick on the left to get into Diagon Alley. He wondered if he should get out his wand and start tapping the ticket inspector's stand between platforms nine and ten. At that moment a group of people passed just behind him and he caught a few words of what they were saying. " -- packed with Muggles, of course -- " Harry swung round. The speaker was a plump woman who was talking to four boys, all with flaming red hair. Each of them was pushing a trunk like Harry's in front of him -- and they had an owl. Heart hammering, Harry pushed his cart after them. They stopped and so did he, just near enough to hear what they were saying. "Now, what's the platform number?" said the boys' mother. "Nine and three-quarters!" piped a small girl, also red-headed, who was holding her hand, "Mom, can't I go..." "You're not old enough, Ginny, now be quiet. All right, Percy, you go first." What looked like the oldest boy marched toward platforms nine and ten. Harry watched, careful not to blink in case he missed it -- but just as the boy reached the dividing barrier between the two platforms, a large crowd of tourists came swarming in front of him and by the time the last backpack had cleared away, the boy had vanished. "Fred, you next," the plump woman said. "I'm not Fred, I'm George," said the boy. "Honestly, woman, you call yourself our mother? Can't you tell I'm George?" "Sorry, George, dear." "Only joking, I am Fred," said the boy, and off he went. His twin called after him to hurry up, and he must have done so, because a second later, he had gone -- but how had he done it? Now the third brother was walking briskly toward the barrier -- he was almost there -- and then, quite suddenly, he wasn't anywhere. There was nothing else for it. "Excuse me," Harry said to the plump woman. "Hello, dear," she said. "First time at Hogwarts? Ron's new, too." She pointed at the last and youngest of her sons. He was tall, thin, and gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose. "Yes," said Harry. "The thing is -- the thing is, I don't know how to -- " "How to get onto the platform?" she

Robyn-Harding-The-Drowning-Woman.txt

slip her a pair of drugstore aviators. Hazel looks about to say something else, but a muscular woman wrapped in a towel emerges from the shower. Before the woman can spot us together, Hazel is gone. 23 IT IS NOT UNTIL I am in the black Mercedes, driving toward Hazel’s waterfront home, that the magnitude of my mission hits me. If something goes wrong, I could be arrested. Or assaulted. Maybe even shot. I am a homeless person impersonating a wealthy woman. If I am found inside her home, it will not go well for me. And Hazel won’t be around to back up my story. Will they think I’ve done something to her? Kidnapped her? Disappeared her? Panic billows in my chest, but then I remember her bruises, her tears, her tales of Benjamin’s twisted sexual games. I know I have to risk it. I have to set her free. I am setting myself free, too. In just over an hour, Lee Gulliver will be gone. Her debts, the anger and grievances against her, will vanish. I push thoughts of my family from my mind, the finality of this goodbye. They let me go. They chose Teresa. As I wind my way through the tall cedars and firs, I breathe slowly through my nose. I can do this. I must do this. For Hazel and for me. The driveway to the Laval home is black, freshly paved. With a brief wave of my fingertips, I pass the security guard parked at the end of it. As Hazel instructed, I ease into a parking spot to the right of the garage. I don’t see a camera here, but when I move toward the door, I spot it and lower my gaze. The back of the house facing the road is rather unassuming, but I know the home is spectacular. Hazel has pointed to it from the beach. One night, I’d picked my way across the rocks and logs to get a better view. It is an architectural masterpiece of glass and steel, clinging precariously to the cliffside. The lights were on and I could see the high-end furnishings, but no one was inside. As I approach the entrance now, I look down, pretend to fumble with my keys. Hazel has marked the front door key with a small red dot, and I slip it into the lock. My hands tremble, but it turns easily. I open the door and step inside. It is tempting to gape at the open-plan splendor of this place. A two-story wall of glass displays the navy-blue Pacific, a backdrop to sleek white furniture, low-slung and modern with dark wood accents. But I am Hazel. She would not gawk in wonder at her own home. I casually drop my car keys into a glass bowl on the teak sideboard and move into the living room. With a casual stride, I approach the windows. Surely Hazel does this—stares out at the glorious view. I won’t attract Benjamin’s attention if I take a moment to drink it in. Whitecaps stipple

USS-Lincoln.txt

respect and admiration welled up within me. Captain Glenn Stone had exemplified the unwavering resolve that defined us as US Space-Navy officers, as leaders. He had faced the horrors of the Liquilids head-on, his crew fighting valiantly until the bitter end. It was a reminder of the price we paid for the freedoms we held dear, the sacrifices made in pursuit of Earth’s, humanity’s, survival. As the screen faded to black, leaving me in a void of darkness, a surge of determination pulsed through my veins. I would not allow Captain Stone’s sacrifice to be in vain. USS Adams, my ship, my crew, would continue the fight against the Liquilids, against the forces that threatened our very existence. But beneath that resolve, a tempest of conflicting emotions churned within me. Doubt whispered in the recesses of my mind, questioning my ability to lead, to make the decisions necessary to outwit this particular enemy. Captain Glenn Stone, as valiantly as he had fought, had not been equal to the challenge. So why would I be? Memories of past encounters with the Liquilids, both Stone’s and my own, flashed before me, a montage of chaos and destruction. Their insidious tactics, their relentless pursuit, had forced both Lincoln and Adams into the same defensive stance. The memory of Captain Stone’s final moments resonated within me. No, I couldn’t let doubt cloud my judgment. I turned in my chair and closed my eyes, blocking out replaying the echoed cries of Captain Stone’s desperate crew members. Opening my eyes, I met my own reflection in the diamond glass porthole window. The face that stared back at me was also weathered and weary, etched with the weight of too many sleepless nights and impossible choices. But it was also the face of a leader, one who had risen to impossible challenges before this. It was not the absence of fear that defined true leadership, but the ability to confront it head-on, to channel it into unwavering determination. With renewed purpose, I straightened my posture and lifted my gaze, my reflection transformed from one of vulnerability to one of steely resolve. The weight of the past, of Captain Stone’s sacrifice, merged with the weight of the present and future, fueling a fire within me. I couldn’t allow doubt to paralyze me, to cloud my judgment. The crew depended on my clarity of mind and unwavering determination. The hatch door to the ready room slid open, and I turned to face the entryway. The crew member who entered looked at me, her eyes filled with a mix of apprehension and something else. In that moment, I realized that without this person in my life, this struggle would be far more difficult, if not impossible. Viv’s hair was wet; she must have just gotten out of the shower. No longer donning shapeless pastel-colored scrubs, she was wearing off-duty civies. Snug-fitting jeans and a white button-down top. She took a step into the compartment. The hatch door slid shut behind her. Standing there in the dim light, her eyes sparkled. She had

Robyn-Harding-The-Drowning-Woman.txt

must have been reprimanded for his leniency because he now insists that I stay inside with the doors locked. I must trust that others are trying to find my mother, that they care as much as I do. I send a list of addresses to the care home: the dental practice my mom used to work for, her best friend’s house, the pool where she used to swim laps when I was a kid. I give them the details of Benjamin’s vacation home on Orcas Island, and his condo adjacent to the golf course in Semiahmoo. (I tell them that my mom spent time there, not that I suspect she could be held captive.) Greta Williams promises her security guards will visit the local spots on a rotating basis. She assures me that she’ll give all the addresses to the police, who will check into them when they can. But it’s not enough. I should be out there, scouring the city, looking for my mom. But I am stuck here. Trapped and powerless. A missing bulletin is placed with the local media. “A senior citizen has wandered away from her care facility in Northeast Seattle,” the news anchor says, voice tinged with professional concern. “Melanie Sinclair is sixty-seven years old and suffers from dementia.” A recent photograph of my mom, looking frail and vacant, appears in the top right corner of the screen. There is a birthday cake in front of her, aglow with candles. I wasn’t in attendance. I wasn’t allowed to go. “If you see Melanie,” the polished announcer continues, “please stay with her and call the Arbutus Care Home or Seattle Police.” If Benjamin—or Nate, or another one of my husband’s lackeys—abducted my mother he has not told me how to get her back. What does he want in exchange for my mom’s release? I can’t stop the prosecutor from coming after him; they have already built their case. Our prenup ensures I’ll get basically nothing in the divorce—although I might be able to challenge it given recent events. Is that why Benjamin took my mom? Or was it just to hurt me? To punish me. To show me that he can still get to me. I spend my captivity tearing through the house searching for clues to my mother’s whereabouts. I dig deep into closets, explore the basement crawl space, pull boxes out of the garage, and meticulously sift through them. Deep in a dusty crate, I find an unfamiliar ring of keys. There are three keys of varied shapes, but none of them are labeled. Is my mother behind a locked door somewhere? Secreted away in a storage locker? Held captive in a seedy back room? The thought makes me feel sick. When the police came with the search warrant, they went through my husband’s study, including the safe. They riffled through all the cupboards and drawers, but they were unable to find the Total Power Exchange contract. But it has to be here somewhere. If I can find it, it will at least validate our toxic

Hedge.txt

You won’t be surprised.” She was going to ask him inside for a drink, then he said, “Do you want to go for a swim?” She looked at him blankly. “In the Hudson?” “In the swimming lake. I’ve wanted to ask, and this might be my last chance.” He shrugged. “Plus, you know, we’re already wet.” Maud laughed, feeling giddy. “Why not?” she said. Gabriel headed toward the cottage. “See you in five minutes, boring, grouchy, distracted mother.” “See you in five minutes, lone wolf.” _____ They met in bathing suits, towels around their waists, and walked through the woods, flashlights swishing. The rain pattered on the oak leaves, then dwindled. Side by side, they moved deeper into a cool, shadowy world that croaked with frogs and chirped with crickets. The lake, pictured in an archival sketch with a gazebo and two bonneted women rowing a boat, was now hemmed in by weeds, but the surface was silky and inviting. Maud slipped off her towel, adjusted her suit, and lowered herself into the water. Wincing at the cold, she wondered if Gabriel noticed her body the way she’d noticed his. His chest, as she’d imagined, was muscled and sculpted, but his body wasn’t perfect. She liked that he had a slight belly. “Race you to the other side,” he said once he was in the water. “I thought this was supposed to be a relaxing dip.” “It’ll be a relaxing race. And this water is freezing. I need to move.” He dove and started to butterfly toward the opposite shore. “You’re cheating,” Maud yelled at him, laughing. “I refuse to participate.” “Fine,” he called back. “I’ll race myself.” She twisted onto her back and floated. Eventually Gabriel returned and floated too. Together, they looked up at the moon, blooming in its bed of sky. Everything would change tomorrow, Maud thought, but maybe not too much. On the drive from the airport the next morning, she stopped with the girls in Tarrytown for lunch at a tavern with time-clouded windows and a boot scraper by the door. A woman in colonial petticoats and Birkenstocks led them to a table. “Go see if you can find the mermaid,” Maud told Ella and Louise, pointing to a hearth covered in cornflower-blue-and-white Delft tile. She’d read about the building the night before to collect details that might intrigue them. In the car, she’d spilled out a history lesson about the people who first had lived by the river, the arrival of the Dutch, the Hudson River School of painting, realizing too late that Ella was wearing earbuds and hadn’t heard a thing. “What do I win?” Ella said. She’d spotted the mermaid languishing on a bed of kelp and tulips. “Lunch?” Maud said. She was so happy to be with them. She’d almost started crying when she saw them walk off the plane. Louise wore her fluorescent-orange backpack on her chest, a stuffed turtle peering its head out of the front pocket. Ella was chewing gum for her stopped-up ears, but her jaw stilled and she

Confidence_-a-Novel.txt

wallpaper a distracting tessellation of a set of pastel squares, the lights deafeningly bright, her slow-blinking secretary sheltered from us patients by a sheet of fiberglass. The clock on the wall behind me was loud, and I tapped my foot as fast as the second hand moved, scrolling through NuLife’s social media aimlessly, not to digest anything of value so much as prove to myself that I could still see my phone’s screen. I had an unread text from my mom asking how I was—it seemed impossible to respond truthfully given where I was and what I was there for. The people waiting with me had bandaged eyes or eyepatches or wore wraparound sunglasses, their heads inclined in the direction of the ticking clock. I could tell from a quick survey of the room that these people didn’t dwell in my underworld: they were all bewildered, newly blinded, unaccustomed to the dark. The mole rat doesn’t acquire its defects, it’s born with them. That made me different from them. The secretary called my name and led me back into the exam room, where I sat in the intimidating chair until Mengetsu came in, her face stern as always, my chart in her hands. “You’re back,” she said. “For a checkup,” I said. She closed my chart and sat down across from me. “Did you try the screen reader?” “Works great,” I lied. “What about the mobility aids?” I tilted my head from side to side. “Some of them.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “What’s wrong, then?” “Headaches. Sometimes my vision gets blurry. I don’t know what it is.” She crossed her legs. I felt immediately as though I’d said the wrong thing. “Headaches?” “Like a pressure behind my eyes. Or in them.” “Has anyone ever taken a look at your eyes with a tonometer?” “I don’t know what that is.” She looked momentarily at the floor, then back up at me. “Come with me into the next room.” We walked to a room that contained a machine that looked like a sophisticated device for the gouging of eyes. I was supposed to sit in the chair and slide my face into a kind of brace directly in front of what looked like the lens of a miniature microscope. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she said. “Go ahead and sit down.” I did, removing my glasses, and she instructed me to keep both eyes open as wide as possible. Then she sat behind the microscope and a flash of UV-bright white passed across my left eye, then my right. She did this a second time and a third, and by the time she was done all I could see was the afterimage of the light, which dissolved to resemble blue spots in my vision. Even with my glasses on again, I couldn’t see anything. “I need to do one more thing,” she said. “We’re going to take pictures of your eyes.” Now another massive machine with a head brace, but for this one I just needed to look at a simulated wheat

Talia-Hibbert-Highly-Suspicious.txt

if she did? Several brooding thoughts and a few pristine angles later, I switch off the engine and call Jordan back. “Hey, man,” he says, “what’s good?” Literally nothing. Except the way my mouth is still tingling with the memory of Celine’s, but even that’s bittersweet. “Just got home. You?” “Whooooa. What is that?” I frown at my house. Lights are on. Everyone’s home. “What’s what?” “That voice, bruh. Who killed your cat?” “I don’t have a cat.” They play with dead animals, and I really don’t need that energy in my life. “Meeting didn’t go too well, huh?” Actually, I didn’t mention this to Cel, but my meeting did go well. It went very well. My score for the practice expedition was 4.79. If I work as hard in Glen Finglas, and take my weakest trait into account—commitment, apparently, probably because I couldn’t stop messing about with Raj or staring at Celine—I could be one of the top three Explorers. I could win. “I think…I have a real chance at the scholarship,” I admit, the words rushing out on a sigh. “Uh. Did I miss something? Is that…bad?” “No. No, it’s good,” except no it’s not because oh my God, I don’t even care right now. I don’t feel the slightest spark of excitement, and it’s not only because I’m upset about Celine. When I check in with my feelings, I find a mountain of dread at the idea that I’m one step closer to making this law degree happen because— I know what it feels like to want something so badly, it eats at you. I know how greedy I really am, how much I need. And now I know how it feels to go without. I tap the handbrake, just to make sure it’s on, and say, “I don’t want to study law. It would be fine. But that’s not enough.” As soon as the words are released, it’s like a too-tight belt around my waist loosens by a single notch. I breathe a little deeper and stare at my house. I can see the back of Dad’s head through the living room window. The belt cinches tight again. “Damn,” Jordan says. “Okay.” We sit in silence for a moment. “What do you want to do instead?” “Um.” I’ve never admitted this to anyone else—but no, I told Celine, and she didn’t laugh or produce any of the other cruel and unlikely reactions my brain was convinced I would get. She just…supported me. She told me I could do anything. So before I can second-guess it, I tell Jordan, “I’ve been trying to write a book.” “With the amount you read, that makes perfect sense.” Hold on. “I spill my tortured forbidden guts and all you can say is it makes sense?” Jordan bursts out laughing. “Writing a book is your most tortured and forbidden secret? I love you, man. Don’t ever change.” “It’s ridiculous. Do you know how many copies the average book sells a year? It’s in the low hundreds, Jordan. Depressingly low.” I’m trying to avoid

Katherine-Center-Hello-Stranger.txt

if—and this likelihood was really only occurring to me now, as I sat there—without his lab coat on and out of the context of the clinic, I truly couldn’t tell him apart from anyone else? It was more than possible. How mortifying would that be? I thought about the woman on Facebook who’d called her face blindness “a superpower.” What would she be doing right now? She wouldn’t be sitting here nervously ripping up a paper napkin, her stomach cold with dread as she questioned her value as a human being. Hell, no! She would put her shoulders back, embrace the uncertainty, surf that tsunami of self-doubt like a badass, and find a way to make it fun. At the very least, she wouldn’t give up on herself before she’d even tried. You’ve got this, I pep-talked myself as I started mutilating a new napkin. You know what to do. And with that, I did know what to do: Just smile—and positively radiate warmth and availability—at every single man who walked in through the Bean Street doors as if he were my future husband. Not my usual strategy in life. But not that hard to do, either. I mean, Dr. Addison had a job to do here, too—right? He would recognize me. Sure, I looked a little different with my hair up and my passionfruit lips. But I could rely on him to know me when he saw me. Anyway, I’d just have to put my faith in destiny. What was meant to be was meant to be. Except maybe it wasn’t meant to be … because an hour—an actual hour—went by, and Dr. Addison didn’t show up. There’s a very specific slow-burn heartbreak to getting stood up as the realization slowly comes into focus: No one’s coming. In that one interminable hour of looking up each time the doors opened and watching every single one of them sweep on past me like we were total strangers—which we must have been—I felt myself wilting like a time-lapse version of a neglected houseplant. It was the lethal combination of the hope with the disappointment, I decided. I’d walked in, all fresh and bright with my green leaves lifted high toward the sun … and it took only an hour to render me flopped sideways, limp and melted over the edge of my pot. Emotionally, I mean. The point is, untold numbers of innocent napkins gave their lives during that hour of waiting. All for nothing. At the one-hour mark, with no text from him, I called it. I was done here. I stood up, feeling like the whole room of people must be watching me and shaking their heads, and started picking up all the napkin shreddings off the table—deliberately, self-consciously. Careful not to screw this up, too. But that’s when the outside door opened again, and this time a breeze burst in with it, and that breeze sent the napkin pieces scattering off the table onto the floor—all my efforts destroyed, as so often happened, by some totally unrelated outside force. And

Cold People.txt

later, when the winds had calmed down, they’d departed, leaving behind the rotten husk of an airplane which no person could tolerate for another minute. Roped together in a procession, stumbling through the darkness, guided by the stars, they’d set up temporary camps, about to embark on one of the most famous expeditions in human history – the walk to the South Pole. The South Pole Station was the nearest base on the East Antarctica Ice Sheet, the largest ice sheet on the planet, three thousand metres thick, two thousand eight hundred metres above sea level – a once pristine desert plain now scorched, scratched and scarred by the Exodus. It was by far the smallest of the Antarctica bases, housing only one hundred and fifty scientists during the summer and fifty during the winter, nowhere near the scale of McMurdo Station over eight hundred miles away. People had continuously occupied the geographic South Pole since November 1956, and during those decades the base had evolved from a small science station to a geodesic dome fifty metres wide, with supply depots and fuel tanks. Separate from the main base building were remote science facilities including the Atmospheric Research Observatory and an observatory for astrophysics. Even with this expansion it was fanciful that such a small scientific base could form any kind of meaningful refugee settlement for the world’s population, even with the supply drops, including emergency shelters, prefabricated laboratories, crates of dried food, bundles of clothes, millions of vitamin pills and thermal sleeping bags. The flat ice around the station had been transformed by these drops into an expressway of sliding steel freight containers, thousands of them with parachutes still attached, dragged across the ice by the powerful winds. Yotam’s group had slowly journeyed through this kinetic landscape of sliding crates and billowing parachutes, some of the procession crushed by crates coming out of nowhere, racing through the night like runaway trains. A sense of futility might have overcome his expedition had it not been for the aurora australis, green swirling vapour trails of lights across the sky so extraordinary everyone had presumed they were alien in origin. Under these swirls of light, they saw, framed against the witch-green sky, the modular outline of the South Pole Station. A base designed and intended to house no more than a hundred and fifty people was now the only habitable space for hundreds of miles. Even with people sleeping in the observatory, the laboratories, under the tables, on the floor, the base could provide for only ten thousand. Everyone else had been told to find their own emergency shelters from the supply drops. Controlled by the American and Chinese military, the two superpowers had agreed to work together during the Exodus, surprising many by accepting that the only chance of survival was one of co-operation and co-ordination rather than combat. The American–Chinese alliance, the forefather to the Antarctic Alliance, had scrambled to expand the base and new structures had been hastily added, temporary shelters and emergency installations. Even so, there was nowhere near the

We-Could-Be-So Good.txt

he wets a cloth and begins gently dabbing at the worst of the cuts. “Why’d he do it?” Andy knows as soon as he’s spoken that it’s the wrong question. There’s no good answer, and it sounds like he’s asking the kid what he did to deserve a beating. Sal snatches the cloth from Andy’s hand and begins wiping his face himself. “Oh, the usual. I’m a f—” He breaks off. “The usual things. Don’t tell Uncle Nick.” Andy can fill in the blank perfectly well. “Nick can keep a secret.” Sal scowls. “I mean don’t tell him that anyone calls me that. I’m not—Jesus. People just say those things when they don’t like you. What are you, new?” Obviously, Andy knows all this. He’s heard that word and all the rest of them. But this is the first time since he could reasonably apply them to himself that he’s thought about them as generic insults. He tries not to look like he’s reeling. “Do your parents know where you are?” “I ran away, genius. No, they don’t know.” Andy is in over his head. “I’m going to call Nick.” He goes over to the phone and dials the Chronicle switchboard and a minute later learns that Nick isn’t in the office anymore. He isn’t surprised—Nick had planned to go to City Hall. “Right,” Andy said. “We need to call your parents.” Sal gets to his feet and heads for the door. “Hear me out,” Andy says. “I’m afraid that your father is going to send some of his cop buddies over here and get your uncle in trouble for, I don’t know, kidnapping you or something.” “And telling my dad exactly where I am will prevent that how?” He sounds ticked off, but his eyes are suspiciously shiny. Andy has the sense that one wrong word will send him either into tears or back out onto the street. Andy has no answer for Sal, though. All he knows is that under no circumstances should any cop enter this apartment. The sheets alone would get them arrested. Andy’s things are scattered all over Nick’s bedroom. Jesus. Okay. He has to think. “We’re going to go next door and say hi to my girlfriend and then all three of us are going out to get pizza.” He figures Linda ought to at least get a slice or two out of this. “Why don’t you wash your face and take a couple of aspirin while I see if she’s home.” He knocks on Linda’s door, sending up a silent prayer to any nearby deities that she’s home. She answers the door in her usual state: hair piled on top of her head, overalls paint-spattered. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he gushes. “Which is great because you’re my girlfriend now.” “Oh boy. This’ll be good.” Inside, he explains. “But what I need now,” he concludes, “is for you to have Sal over for ten minutes while I clear Nick’s apartment of, uh, incriminating evidence.” Linda blinks, apparently unfazed. “Send him over.” Sal grudgingly goes

Hound of the Baskervilles.txt

of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two black- clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit sub- dued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Elizabethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette. "My word, it isn't a very cheerful place," said Sir Henry. "I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early to-night, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning." I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest. And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall. Chapter 7 The Stapletons of Merripit House The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of us by our first experience of Baskerville Hall. As Sir Henry and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before. "I guess it is ourselves

The-Scorched-Throne-1-Sara-Hashe.txt

debris. I wondered what it looked like. I wondered why in a world ripe with monsters and magic, only he could see me so clearly. “Good night, Suraira.” They summoned the Champions at midday. We had two hours from then to reach the cliffside on the other end of the forest. The first three Champions to cross Ayume Forest and climb to the top of the bluff would move to the second trial. I followed the rest of the Champions down the damp, winding tunnel. Each step added a fresh wave of anxiety. The tunnel would take us to the edge of Ayume. Slightly ahead, Diya walked with her shoulders pulled back. Water droplets clung to her shorn hair. Timur and Mehti spoke in low tones, and I stared at the back of Timur’s head until he glanced over. He waved, pointing at Mehti with a coconspiratorial eye roll. I smiled back. The Lukub Champion would die today. Someone cleared their throat pointedly. Diya slowed to match my pace. “Do you think they have an alliance?” She nodded at Timur and Mehti. It seemed more likely Mehti had trapped Timur in conversation, and the Lukub Champion’s politeness kept him captive. “Why? Are you suggesting you and I form one?” Diya scoffed. “What value could an alliance with you provide?” “Now, Diya. How did you know insults were the way to my heart?” Instead of a snide retort, Diya pinched her nose. “Do you smell that?” She glared at Timur. “It’s coming from the Lukubi.” I snorted. Her antipathy for everything Lukub had no bounds. From the gloom ahead, five narrow sets of steps ended the tunnel. Five steps for five Champions. Everywhere we went, Jasad followed. Diya took the steps to my right, Mehti to my left. “May we share the Awaleen’s fortitude and see each other again in joy,” Timur said. I prodded around the thin canvas covering the opening, rising to the top step. The other Champions copied my position, palms pressed to the canvas. “For Baira!” Timur bellowed, and leapt through the canvas. A beam of sunlight poured into the tunnel from the new opening. “For Kapastra!” Mehti shouted, vanishing after him. Dania and I glanced at each other in silent understanding. I peeled a corner of the canvas back and peeked around. When I couldn’t find any animals or waiting threats, I nodded at Diya. “Would you like to dramatically fling yourself first, or shall I?” “I hope Ayume has a taste for empty air,” she said. “It will find plenty between their ears.” Diya pulled her knees to her chest and drew herself through the opening. I tightened my stomach and vaulted up. The sun blazed overhead, stinging my cheeks. The cheerful conditions clashed with the smell assaulting my nose. Sweet decay with a rotten edge. I had doused many a cloth with an identical-smelling substance during my route, including the one I used to put Zeinab’s mother to sleep. Ayume’s assault began with its very air. We were permitted to bring only a small dagger with

Quietly-Hostile.txt

buffer I had between myself and the satanic churning and howling in the adjoining room was the sound of a simulated box fan whirring inside my phone. I follow a bunch of Instagram accounts that are just pictures and the occasional close-up video of whales doing whale shit, like drifting or feeding or surfacing or playing. And because I try to stay off the bad places on the internet, I spend a lot of time watching people argue about sports or clips of whales on BBC Earth, weeping because I get to be on the same planet as both wide receivers who can run twenty-three miles per hour and also seventy-year-old humpback whales. This is some stoner shit, for real, but have you ever just sat and thought about how there is an animal as big as a city bus and we’re alive at the same time as them, and we can look at videos of them doing things? Yes, I am absolutely out of my fucking mind, but also, while you’re on land reading this, there’s a hundred-foot-long, 400,000-pound blue whale in the ocean right now about to eat forty million krill and migrate from Antarctica to the tropics probably! Isn’t that amazing? I like to take a couple gummies and, while they kick in, lie on my back in the dark with a fan blowing on my face, window open even in the winter, and remain very still with some gentle water sounds going in my headphones and imagine myself lying on a raft in the middle of the pitch-black ocean, feeling the waves created by a whale swimming six thousand feet below me. Then I imagine her swimming up and up and up until she’s porpoising right alongside me. It sends a shiver up my spine and chills through my whole body because, yo, what would you freaking do if a whale was just cruising next to your soft human body? It makes me want to cry in both wonder and terror, eyes squeezed shut picturing a clear sky full of twinkling stars, lapping waves surrounding my body as the THC surfs my bloodstream. It’s literally the scariest but also a kind of sexual (?) feeling, imagining being eye to eye with the largest creature on the planet and being completely at its mercy and it just smoothly circles your flimsy little raft. This is my favorite way to drift off to sleep. I YEARN FOR THE CHILLNESS OF WHALES. oh, so you actually don’t wanna make a show about a horny fat bitch with diarrhea? okay! A popular basic-cable network optioned my first book, and I almost got to make it into a real TV show. ALMOST. ACT 1 EXT. EVANSTON STREET—DAY We open on a wide shot of a street in Evanston, Illinois, the motherland, the place of my birth, the place where I’d wait in line for a gyro from Cross-Rhodes right now if it weren’t cold-ass winter. I don’t know if we could’ve actually shot this pilot in Evanston for real because I learned from

Things Fall Apart.txt

her. Okonkwo ate the food absent-mindedly. 'She should have been a boy,' he thought as he looked at his ten-year-old daughter. He passed her a piece of fish. "Go and bring me some cold water," he said. Ezinma rushed out of the hut, chewing the fish, and soon returned with a bowl of cool water from the earthen pot in her mother's hut. Okonkwo took the bowl from her and gulped the water down. He ate a few more pieces of plantain and pushed the dish aside. "Bring me my bag," he asked, and Ezinma brought his goatskin bag from the far end of the hut. He searched in it for his snuff-bottle. It was a deep bag and took almost the whole length of his arm. It contained other things apart from his snuff-bottle. There was a drinking horn in it, and also a drinking gourd, and they knocked against each other as he searched. When he brought out the snuff-bottle he tapped it a few times against his knee-cap before taking out some snuff on the palm of his left hand. Then he remembered that he had not taken out his snuff-spoon. He searched his bag again and brought out a small, flat, ivory spoon, with which he carried the brown snuff to his nostrils. Ezinma took the dish in one hand and the empty water bowl in the other and went back to her mother's hut. "She should have been a boy," Okonkwo said to himself again. His mind went back to Ikemefuna and he shivered. If only he could find some work to do he would be able to forget. But it was the season of rest between the harvest and the next planting season. The only work that men did at this time was covering the walls of their compound with new palm fronds. And Okonkwo had already done that. He had finished it on the very day the locusts came, when he had worked on one side of the wall and Ikemefuna and Nwoye on the other. "When did you become a shivering old woman," Okonkwo asked himself, "you, who are known in all the nine villages for your valour in war? How can a man who has killed five men in battle fall to pieces because he has added a boy to their number? Okonkwo, you have become a woman indeed." He sprang to his feet, hung his goatskin bag on his shoulder and went to visit his friend, Obierika. Obierika was sitting outside under the shade of an orange tree making thatches from leaves of the raffia-palm. He exchanged greetings with Okonkwo and led the way into his obi. "I was coming over to see you as soon as I finished that thatch," he said, rubbing off the grains of sand that clung to his thighs. "Is it well?" Okonkwo asked. "Yes," replied Obierika. "My daughter's suitor is coming today and I hope we will clinch the matter of the bride-price. I want you to be there." Just then Obierika's son, Maduka, came into

The Foxglove King.txt

darkening atrium. One of the monks struck out with a dagger; the sharp edge sliced through Bastian’s eyebrow, sheeting blood and shocking him into enough stillness to be subdued, arms twisted behind his back. The shadow of the moon moved closer to the low-hanging sun. The Presque Mort who held Lore steered her toward August’s throne. The Sainted King stood motionless and aloof, hands behind his back. Another Presque Mort—the one from the leak, walking almost normally on a prosthetic foot—approached the dais and handed the King a dagger, cast in silver and scrolled over with gold. It matched his throne, a marriage of night and day, sun and moon. “It was always meant to be this way,” he said quietly, pitched so only Lore and Bastian could hear. “Mortem and Spiritum, bound together, held by the same person. The age of many gods is past; now, there’s only room for one.” “So you decided it should be you?” Lore’s voice was harsh, made hoarse by the way the Presque Mort held on to her hair, her neck stretched forward like an offering. She had to strain to see August, fingering his fine knife. “Apollius decided it should be someone in our family.” August shrugged. “He chose incorrectly, when deciding on the specific person, but that can be easily remedied. When we are one—when I become His avatar, His vessel— He will understand.” The Presque Mort hauled Bastian up on the platform as he spat and cursed, twisting in their grip like a cat. His flailing fists had connected with more than one of them—the Mort who held his arms had a rapidly blackening eye, and a bruise bloomed on another’s cheek as his hand tangled in Bastian’s hair and wrenched his head back, just like Lore’s. Bastian squinted through the blood from his head wound, chest heaving, teeth bared. August sighed as he looked at his son, always the disappointed father. In return, Bastian laughed, quick and sharp. “How fitting,” he snarled. “You always did have to do things as ostentatiously as possible.” The King shook his head. A streak of sorrow crossed his face, quick and bright as a passing comment, made more terrible for how genuine it was. “It never could’ve been you,” he murmured. “No matter what Anton’s vision said.” “Because I’m not pious enough?” There was no chance of escape; still, Bastian fought against the Mort holding him, muscles straining. “Would it be me if I’d killed my own people and farmed their bodies for an army?” “I didn’t kill them, Bastian.” The sorrow on August’s face turned cold. “That’s one sin you can’t lay at my feet.” His eyes turned to Lore, slow and deliberate. Her throat closed. Her mind did, too, shuttering itself against some impossible realization. Mortem couldn’t do something like that. Mortem couldn’t kill an entire village and leave the bodies perfectly intact. No mere channeler could do such a thing. No mere channeler. “Now.” August raised his knife as the room slid closer and closer to darkness, closer and closer to the

Moby Dick; Or, The Whale.txt

or the far away King's Mills; how much more natural, I say, that under such circumstances these ships should not only interchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and sociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of course, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose captains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to each other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to talk about. For the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on board; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a date a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and thumb-worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound ship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the cruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost importance to her. And in degree, all this will hold true concerning whaling vessels crossing each other's track on the cruising-ground itself, even though they are equally long absent from home. for one of them may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and now far remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the people of the ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling news, and have an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all the sympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar congenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared privations and perils. Nor would difference of country make any very essential difference; that is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case with Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number of English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when they do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them; for your Englishman is rather .. <p 238 > reserved, and your Yankee, he does not fancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English whalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the American whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his nondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this superiority in the English whalemen does really consist, it would be hard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill more whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this is a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the Nantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows that he has a few foibles himself. So, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the whalers have most reason to be sociable --and they are so. Whereas, some merchant ships crossing each other's wake in the mid-Atlantic, will oftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition, mutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies in Broadway; and all the

The Mysteries of Udolpho.txt

the heavier when it arrives: I will endeavour to teach them resignation by my example.' The physician was affected; he promised to obey her, and told St. Aubert, somewhat abruptly, that there was nothing to expect. The latter was not philosopher enough to restrain his feelings when he received this information; but a consideration of the increased affliction which the observance of his grief would occasion his wife, enabled him, after some time, to command himself in her presence. Emily was at first overwhelmed with the intelligence; then, deluded by the strength of her wishes, a hope sprung up in her mind that her mother would yet recover, and to this she pertinaciously adhered almost to the last hour. The progress of this disorder was marked, on the side of Madame St. Aubert, by patient suffering, and subjected wishes. The composure, with which she awaited her death, could be derived only from the retrospect of a life governed, as far as human frailty permits, by a consciousness of being always in the presence of the Deity, and by the hope of a higher world. But her piety could not entirely subdue the grief of parting from those whom she so dearly loved. During these her last hours, she conversed much with St. Aubert and Emily, on the prospect of futurity, and on other religious topics. The resignation she expressed, with the firm hope of meeting in a future world the friends she left in this, and the effort which sometimes appeared to conceal her sorrow at this temporary separation, frequently affected St. Aubert so much as to oblige him to leave the room. Having indulged his tears awhile, he would dry them and return to the chamber with a countenance composed by an endeavour which did but increase his grief. Never had Emily felt the importance of the lessons, which had taught her to restrain her sensibility, so much as in these moments, and never had she practised them with a triumph so complete. But when the last was over, she sunk at once under the pressure of her sorrow, and then perceived that it was hope, as well as fortitude, which had hitherto supported her. St. Aubert was for a time too devoid of comfort himself to bestow any on his daughter. CHAPTER II I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul. SHAKESPEARE Madame St. Aubert was interred in the neighbouring village church; her husband and daughter attended her to the grave, followed by a long train of the peasantry, who were sincere mourners of this excellent woman. On his return from the funeral, St. Aubert shut himself in his chamber. When he came forth, it was with a serene countenance, though pale in sorrow. He gave orders that his family should attend him. Emily only was absent; who, overcome with the scene she had just witnessed, had retired to her closet to weep alone. St. Aubert followed her thither: he took her hand in silence, while she continued to weep; and it was some moments

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.txt

the centuries of her family's and England's history. But she screwed herself up to the work in hand, since she could not get out of it, and answered-- "I came to see your mother, sir." "I am afraid you cannot see her--she is an invalid," replied thepresent representative of the spurious house; for this was Mr Alec, the only son of the lately deceased gentleman. "Cannot I answer your purpose? What is the business you wish to see her about?" "It isn't business--it is--I can hardly say what!" "Pleasure?" "Oh no. Why, sir, if I tell you, it will seem---" Tess's sense of a certain ludicrousness in her errand was now so strong that, notwithstanding her awe of him, and her general discomfort at being here, her rosy lips curved towards a smile, much to the attraction of the swarthy Alexander. "It is so very foolish," she stammered; "I fear can't tell you!" "Never mind; I like foolish things. Try again, my dear," said he kindly. "Mother asked me to come," Tess continued; "and, indeed, I was in the mind to do so myself likewise. But I did not think it would be like this. I came, sir, to tell you that we are of the same family as you." "Ho! Poor relations?" "Yes." "Stokes?" "No; d'Urbervilles." "Ay, ay; I mean d'Urbervilles." "Our names are worn away to Durbeyfield; but we have several proofs that we are d'Urbervilles. Antiquarians hold we are,--and--and we have an old seal, marked with a ramping lion on a shield, and a castle over him. And we have a very old silver spoon, round in the bowl like a little ladle, and marked with the same castle. But it is so worn that mother uses it to stir the pea-soup." "A castle argent is certainly my crest," said he blandly. "And my arms a lion rampant." "And so mother said we ought to make ourselves beknown to you--as we've lost our horse by a bad accident, and are the oldest branch o' the family." "Very kind of your mother, I'm sure. And I, for one, don't regret her step." Alec looked at Tess as he spoke, in a way that made her blush a little. "And so, my pretty girl, you've come on a friendly visit to us, as relations?" "I suppose I have," faltered Tess, looking uncomfortable again. "Well--there's no harm in it. Where do you live? What are you?" She gave him brief particulars; and responding to further inquiries told him that she was intending to go back by the same carrier who had brought her. "It is a long while before he returns past Trantridge Cross. Supposing we walk round the grounds to pass the time, my pretty Coz?" Tess wished to abridge her visit as much as possible; but the young man was pressing, and she consented to accompany him. He conducted her about the lawns, and flower-beds, and conservatories; and thence to the fruit-garden and greenhouses, where he asked her if she liked strawberries. "Yes," said Tess, "when they come." "They are

Silvia-Moreno-Garcia-Silver-Nitr.txt

was doing a piece about Abel’s career it might fly, but I’m looking for this one movie and this one fucked-up German who wrote it and I’m not having any luck.” “Don’t panic yet. Urueta is going to give you the interview you need sooner or later.” “He doesn’t like us.” “He got a little tense, but Urueta loves talking. He wouldn’t shut up about Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and how he had cocktails with them several times when Burton was shooting The Night of the Iguana. He’s an old soldier sharing war stories. He wants to be heard.” “Not by me anymore. Not if Enigma is involved. This is bullshit.” Editing was changing. The Moviola and the Steenbeck machines were yielding space to video monitors, tapes, and computers. Beyond the Yellow Door was an item from another era; it enchanted her with its antiquated film stock and post-synchronized sound: it was like meeting a gentleman in a tweed suit and a monocle these days. She wanted the story about its troubled production. She wanted to discover its secrets, and there was nothing to be known. In her mind, the picture she had assembled of the film was vanishing, like decomposing celluloid. “What isn’t! Listen, hang in there. I’ll soften the old man. Be ready to come over on Saturday.” “Yeah, yeah,” she muttered without enthusiasm. Friday instead of going to the Cineteca she headed to the archives at Lecumberri. She found more of the same: stubs, film capsules, a few reviews. An old issue of Cinema Reporter dated 1960 provided her with the only significant piece of material she was able to dig up: a black-and-white photo showing Ewers. The picture in fact showed four people. Two of them she identified easily. Abel Urueta had his trademark scarf, and Alma Montero, although older, was recognizable from the publicity photos from her silent era years. A pretty, young woman in a strapless dress was new to Montserrat. She had the air and smile of a socialite if not an actress. The fourth person was a man in a dark suit. They sat with Alma at the forefront, the lens more interested in her, then Abel, the girl, and finally the man at the farthest end of the table almost an afterthought. The occasion must have been a birthday celebration or a big event, for there was confetti in Alma’s hair. The caption read: “Film star Alma Montero, director Abel Urueta and his fiancée Miss Clarimonde Bauer, and Mr. Wilhelm Ewers enjoy an evening at El Retiro.” The story that accompanied the picture was a stub and useless filler, like everything else she’d found, but at least the image made a ghost tangible. Because until that moment she had begun to believe there was no Ewers. He had evaded her, but at least she was able to contemplate the reality of the man. Yet stubbornly, as if he had known he was being sought, the man in the picture appeared almost out of frame, his head inclined, so that you couldn’t get

A-Living-Remedy.txt

financial aid letters arrived on the same afternoon, and I opened the envelopes with shaking hands to learn that I’d been offered what amounted to a free freshman year at three schools. I had to count the zeros several times before I could believe it. “You did it,” my mother said. She tried to smile, but we both wound up crying instead. As we celebrated, I wasn’t thinking about how lonely I might feel, or how much I would miss my family. I couldn’t comprehend what it would mean to attain that first foothold in a world they would be unable to follow me into. I didn’t know that I would spend my early months on campus feeling as though I’d wandered into another country, surrounded by students who never had to worry about buying books or finding somewhere to go when the dorms closed for a holiday. When I was informed that the terms of my scholarship required me to send regular letters to rich donors, Daddy-Long-Legs-style, and attend luncheons where scholarship recipients would meet and express gratitude to our benefactors face-to-face, I didn’t blink. As an adoptee, I had long known what it was to be considered lucky, and to be expected to be thankful for it. Years later, when I described some of these rituals to a friend who also owed her education to need-based financial aid, she said dryly, “Tell me that you’re a poor first-generation college student without telling me that you’re a poor first-generation college student.” I laughed, but my instinct was to tell her that I hadn’t been poor—it wasn’t a term I associated with my family, nor one my parents had ever used. If we were poor, wouldn’t I have struggled more? If we were poor, wouldn’t I have known? Not long after, I found my first Free Application for Federal Student Aid, carefully filled out by my mother. At seventeen, I wouldn’t have paid much attention to our annual household income, or the fact that it amounted to considerably less than what my freshman year would cost. All I would have focused on was that our expected family contribution was zero. Although many people identify as middle-of-the-road, middle-class, average Americans, there are differences between a working-class and a middle-class existence, and these differences can be far from subtle. If you grow up as I did and happen to be very fortunate, as I was, your family might sacrifice much so that you can go to college. You’ll feel grateful for every subsequent opportunity you get, for the degrees and open doors and better-paying jobs (if you can find them), even as an unexpected, sometimes painful distance yawns between you and the place you came from—and many will expect you to express that gratitude, using your story or your accomplishments to attack those who weren’t so lucky. But in this country, unless you attain extraordinary wealth, you will likely be unable to help your loved ones in all the ways you’d hoped. You will learn to live with the specific, hollow guilt of those

Of Human Bondage.txt

culture. They wandered up to the castle, and sat on the terrace that overlooked the town. It nestled in the valley along the pleasant Neckar with a comfortable friendliness. The smoke from the chimneys hung over it, a pale blue haze; and the tall roofs, the spires of the churches, gave it a pleasantly medieval air. There was a homeliness in it which warmed the heart. Hayward talked of _Richard Feverel_ and _Madame Bovary_, of Verlaine, Dante, and Matthew Arnold. In those days Fitzgerald's translation of Omar Khayyam was known only to the elect, and Hayward repeated it to Philip. He was very fond of reciting poetry, his own and that of others, which he did in a monotonous sing-song. By the time they reached home Philip's distrust of Hayward was changed to enthusiastic admiration. They made a practice of walking together every afternoon, and Philip learned presently something of Hayward's circumstances. He was the son of a country judge, on whose death some time before he had inherited three hundred a year. His record at Charterhouse was so brilliant that when he went to Cambridge the Master of Trinity Hall went out of his way to express his satisfaction that he was going to that college. He prepared himself for a distinguished career. He moved in the most intellectual circles: he read Browning with enthusiasm and turned up his well-shaped nose at Tennyson; he knew all the details of Shelley's treatment of Harriet; he dabbled in the history of art (on the walls of his rooms were reproductions of pictures by G. F. Watts, Burne-Jones, and Botticelli); and he wrote not without distinction verses of a pessimistic character. His friends told one another that he was a man of excellent gifts, and he listened to them willingly when they prophesied his future eminence. In course of time he became an authority on art and literature. He came under the influence of Newman's _Apologia_; the picturesqueness of the Roman Catholic faith appealed to his esthetic sensibility; and it was only the feat of his father's wrath (a plain, blunt man of narrow ideas, who read Macaulay) which prevented him from 'going over.' When he only got a pass degree his friends were astonished; but he shrugged his shoulders and delicately insinuated that he was not the dupe of examiners. He made one feel that a first class was ever so slightly vulgar. He described one of the vivas with tolerant humour; some fellow in an outrageous collar was asking him questions in logic; it was infinitely tedious, and suddenly he noticed that he wore elastic-sided boots: it was grotesque and ridiculous; so he withdrew his mind and thought of the gothic beauty of the Chapel at King's. But he had spent some delightful days at Cambridge; he had given better dinners than anyone he knew; and the conversation in his rooms had been often memorable. He quoted to Philip the exquisite epigram: "_They told me, Herakleitus, they told me you were dead_." And now, when he related again the picturesque little anecdote

Katherine-Center-Hello-Stranger.txt

I was consumed with rage? Or maybe getting consumed with rage was part of getting over it … Fine then. No more moping, no more weeping, no more pining for the future I’d lost hold of. It was time to be okay. For real. The anger was very healing—burning through me with a purifying fire. Sue approved. When she returned from her kidnapping elopement a few days later, we gave the Joe debacle one last, long hearty evening of processing, decided it was a lucky near miss for me, made a list of guys Witt could set me up with, and spent the rest of the night brainstorming what the hell, now, I should do with my career. Sue voted for “textile designer” because she thought I had a way with color. But we also considered interior designer, knitting-store owner, and boutique hotelier in the Swiss Alps. The other big news was that Sue’s parents were throwing her an elopement party. “They’re not mad that you got married without them?” “Nope,” Sue said, like that question had been bananas. “They love him. My mom knitted him a sweater with a heart on it.” Apparently, Sue’s mom thought the kidnapping elopement was very romantic. And she thought Witt was a sweet boy and a good provider. And she was a huge fan of Canada. Turned out, Mrs. Kim and Sue had been planning a little welcome-home wedding celebration during Sue’s entire cross-Canada train ride—texting pictures of flower arrangements and table settings back and forth—and her mom already had everything worked out for the Friday night after the newlyweds returned. “Wow,” I said. “Between me and your mom, you barely had time to enjoy your kidnapping.” “I managed,” Sue said. “Witt’s just lucky to get any time with you at all,” I said. Sue agreed. “By the way,” she said. “My mom wants to know if we can borrow your rooftop.” “It’s not my rooftop,” I said. “It’s her rooftop.” “So it’s okay?” “Of course it’s okay.” “Good,” Sue said. “Because it’s all already arranged.” * * * ON THE FRIDAY of the Kims’ party, three astonishing things happened all at once. One: I got a letter from the North American Portrait Society letting me know that even though my portrait had not won the competition on the night of the show, it had drawn the highest bid of the night in the auction—raising over a thousand dollars for their scholarship program. The email listed the winning bidder as one Mr. Young Kim. Who just happened to be out on my rooftop as I was reading the email, helping his wife arrange banquet tables for the party. I walked out to confront him, Peanut trailing after me. “Mr. Kim,” I called out, my voice full of both scolding and affection. “What were you thinking, bidding on my portrait?” He and Mrs. Kim were unfolding a tablecloth together, and it fluttered in the breeze before they smoothed it down and turned to me. They made their faces very innocent. “We like it,” Mr. Kim said.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.txt

when my companion answered in a gruff monosyllable she gave such a start that the lamp nearly fell from her hand. Colonel Stark went up to her, whispered something in her ear, and then, pushing her back into the room from whence she had come, he walked towards me again with the lamp in his hand. "'Perhaps you will have the kindness to wait in this room for a few minutes,' said he, throwing open another door. It was a quiet, little, plainly furnished room, with a round table in the centre, on which several German books were scattered. Colonel Stark laid down the lamp on the top of a harmonium beside the door. 'I shall not keep you waiting an instant,' said he, and vanished into the darkness. "I glanced at the books upon the table, and in spite of my ignorance of German I could see that two of them were treatises on science, the others being volumes of poetry. Then I walked across to the window, hoping that I might catch some glimpse of the country-side, but an oak shutter, heavily barred, was folded across it. It was a wonderfully silent house. There was an old clock ticking loudly somewhere in the passage, but otherwise everything was deadly still. A vague feeling of uneasiness began to steal over me. Who were these German people, and what were they doing living in this strange, out-of-the-way place? And where was the place? I was ten miles or so from Eyford, that was all I knew, but whether north, south, east, or west I had no idea. For that matter, Reading, and possibly other large towns, were within that radius, so the place might not be so secluded, after all. Yet it was quite certain, from the absolute stillness, that we were in the country. I paced up and down the room, humming a tune under my breath to keep up my spirits and feeling that I was thoroughly earning my fifty-guinea fee. "Suddenly, without any preliminary sound in the midst of the utter stillness, the door of my room swung slowly open. The woman was standing in the aperture, the darkness of the hall behind her, the yellow light from my lamp beating upon her eager and beautiful face. I could see at a glance that she was sick with fear, and the sight sent a chill to my own heart. She held up one shaking finger to warn me to be silent, and she shot a few whispered words of broken English at me, her eyes glancing back, like those of a frightened horse, into the gloom behind her. "'I would go,' said she, trying hard, as it seemed to me, to speak calmly; 'I would go. I should not stay here. There is no good for you to do.' "'But, madam,' said I, 'I have not yet done what I came for. I cannot possibly leave until I have seen the machine.' "'It is not worth your while to wait,' she went on. 'You can pass through the door;

Dracula.txt

of things. Van Helsing had been silent all dinner time, but when we had lit our cigars he said, "Lord. . ., but Arthur interrupted him. "No, no, not that, for God's sake! Not yet at any rate. Forgive me, sir. I did not mean to speak offensively. It is only because my loss is so recent." The Professor answered very sweetly, "I only used that name because I was in doubt. I must not call you `Mr.' and I have grown to love you, yes, my dear boy, to love you, as Arthur." Arthur held out his hand, and took the old man's warmly. "Call me what you will," he said. "I hope I may always have the title of a friend. And let me say that I am at a loss for words to thank you for your goodness to my poor dear." He paused a moment, and went on, "I know that she understood your goodness even better than I do. And if I was rude or in any way wanting at that time you acted so, you remember,"-- the Professor nodded--"You must forgive me." He answered with a grave kindness, "I know it was hard for you to quite trust me then, for to trust such violence needs to understand, and I take it that you do not, that you cannot, trust me now, for you do not yet understand. And there may be more times when I shall want you to trust when you cannot, and may not, and must not yet understand. But the time will come when your trust shall be whole and complete in me, and when you shall understand as though the sunlight himself shone through. Then you shall bless me from first to last for your own sake, and for the sake of others, and for her dear sake to whom I swore to protect." "And indeed, indeed, sir," said Arthur warmly. "I shall in all ways trust you. I know and believe you have a very noble heart, and you are Jack's friend, and you were hers. You shall do what you like." The Professor cleared his throat a couple of times, as though about to speak, and finally said, "May I ask you something now?" "Certainly." "You know that Mrs. Westenra left you all her property?" "No, poor dear. I never thought of it." "And as it is all yours, you have a right to deal with it as you will. I want you to give me permission to read all Miss Lucy's papers and letters. Believe me, it is no idle curiosity. I have a motive of which, be sure, she would have approved. I have them all here. I took them before we knew that all was yours, so that no strange hand might touch them, no strange eye look through words into her soul. I shall keep them, if I may. Even you may not see them yet, but I shall keep them safe. No word shall be lost, and in the good time I shall give

Costanza-Casati-Clytemnestra.txt

twisted, his daggers abandoned in the dust. He retrieves his sword carefully, cleaning it on his tunic. She wonders if it was his father’s but doesn’t ask. Instead, she picks up her own knife and says, “You look different when you fight.” “So do you.” His head is bent, and his profile is handsome in the golden light of the torch. How do I look different? she wants to ask, but he is quicker. “Who gave you that knife?” “My mother,” she says. “It is the sharpest blade I’ve ever touched.” She holds it out for him to see. As he caresses the blade with his finger, she adds, “But you are not afraid of a little sharpness, are you?” He looks up at her, and she holds his gaze. Leon was right. He is like a wounded animal, ready to bite at the first provocation. But he is no rabid dog—rabid dogs are weak because they are mad. Aegisthus isn’t mad. He is strong and manipulative, his rage boiling inside him but always kept at bay. He is more like a wolf, showing his teeth to those who come too close. He smiles. “Sometimes it is better to bleed than to feel nothing at all.” * * * She avoids dinner and goes to the bathhouse to clean herself. Her tunic is dusty, her hair messy and tangled. The lamps are already lit, streams of light in the quiet darkness. She takes off her chiton, brushing her fingers against her stomach, the fading cuts on her arms. There is an edge to her. The water of the bath is cold, and she shivers. “My queen.” A voice chirping in the darkness, like a bird at sunrise. Aileen. Her steps come closer, soft as raindrops. “Lord Aegisthus came to eat and you weren’t there,” she says, “so I thought I would find you here.” “Warm the water, Aileen,” Clytemnestra orders. Aileen hurries to light the fire, her shadow on the wall small and sharp. The water grows warmer, wrapping Clytemnestra like a sheepskin. Aileen starts scrubbing her with soap. Clytemnestra offers her hands and arms, and Aileen touches the soap to the soft inside of her elbow. “Chrysothemis couldn’t sleep last night,” she says. “She has been having bad dreams again.” Clytemnestra looks at her face in the shadows. Aileen never had children of her own, but maybe she should have. Once, Leon suggested she was pretty, his tone casual as if to test how Clytemnestra would feel about it. She discouraged it. Two loyal servants together can’t be easily controlled. It is much more useful to pair a loyal dog with a more difficult subject to keep him under control. “Perhaps she should sleep with you tonight,” Aileen continues. “She is fourteen years old. She is a woman now, not a child, and she needs to behave like one.” Aileen doesn’t speak, but her eyes are sad. Clytemnestra knows she disapproves. One night, a year or so after Iphigenia’s murder, she had the gall to tell her that she was too

Confidence_-a-Novel.txt

couldn’t be real with her. It was only real with me. “Oh my god!” Jamie called me the next morning. “Thornton!” “Quieter,” I said, cotton mouthed. “Sorry, oh my god, sorry,” she laughed. “You must be so hungover.” “Yep, I really am. What’s up?” “Troy and I hooked up last night. It was fucking incredible.” I had to muster enthusiasm. That was key. “Oh my god, girl!” She laughed too loudly and for too long. “I think I am literally in heaven right now. How did you find this Adonis?” Fuck you, I thought. “I swear I just attract beautiful men,” I said. She laughed again. “You really do, honey! Like, wow!” Orson spent every night at Jamie’s and she paid for everything: new clothes, new shoes, dinners out. I missed him, but I liked seeing him in brand-name clothes when he got home every morning. And I knew he was mine during the day. I knew that Jamie would never know him like I did. How could she? To her, he was Troy, a fictional once-homeless busker who wanted to become a professional musician. Troy told Jamie that he would love to get just ten minutes in a recording studio. He could really show those producers who he was. Jamie listened to his album-in-progress, which just happened to be about a “wake-up-to-you girl” with “sun-shocked curls.” She cried a little as he played. Was it about her, she wanted to know? Yes, of course it was. He was in love with her. A few months in, he sheepishly admitted that he wanted to record in private before taking anything to a professional studio. But, unfortunately, that would require his own space and his own equipment, which he just didn’t have. Jamie flashed a bleached smile and wagged her sun-shocked curls and told him it was no problem, she actually knew a place in her same neighborhood that she was considering buying anyway. Her dad wanted her to invest because renting was just throwing money away. Would Troy like to live there? She would buy it and he could stay there. She just wanted him to be happy. Troy cried. This was the first time anyone had really seen him. This was the first time he’d really been taken care of. He promised to love Jamie for the rest of her life. She bought the condo, which was worth close to a million dollars, and filled it with recording equipment. He recorded a demo of his album, Love and Grace, and was all ready to show it to producers when he got cold feet. He began to have nightmares. He lost his interest in sex. He was depressed, and there was nothing Jamie could do to cheer him up. So she paid for therapy, and Troy was diagnosed with major depressive disorder, and he was placed on an SSRI that he cheeked and spit into the toilet. At therapy, Orson was a model patient in every way except when it came to telling the truth. He told the therapist Troy’s story and

Alex-Hay-The-Housekeepers.txt

Mr. Shepherd’s armchair, the under-footmen guarding the door, face flushed, eyes defiant. He looked puzzled, wrong-footed entirely. It’s beginning, Alice thought, skin tingling. The petticoats were stashed in her wardrobe, the labels ironed beautifully into the hems. Things in the household began to fall apart the moment Mrs. King left. The breakfast service ran late, the fresh flowers were abandoned in the front hall, one of the still-room shelves collapsed, the electrolier in the front hall started spitting and blinking, and someone saw a pair of rats entering the cellar. One of the house-parlormaids ran downstairs, out of breath, red in the face. “Didn’t you hear the bell? Madam’s asking for the sewing maid. At once.” Alice glanced up. “Me?” she said. * * * Alice took the electric lift. It was in an iron cage, and the other servants always struggled to close the gate, but she never did. Some people just couldn’t work their way around machines. Alice punched a glass button and the cage jerked violently. She felt its teeth clenching, locking, and then it rose slowly through the house. It hummed as it went, an uneasy sound. The hall expanded and then disappeared beneath her. The air changed, grew sweeter, and Alice glided upward to a different realm altogether, one blanketed in a cream-and-gold hush. The bedroom floor. Alice had never felt carpets like this before entering Park Lane. They were so rich, so new. They seemed to suck at her feet. The doors were mirrored and looked as if they’d been glazed with syrup. She adored the bedroom floor. It made her teeth tingle, as if her mouth were filled with sugar. It was heavenly, the home of angels. She waited at the end of the passage, smoothing her apron, listening to the clocks. Straightened her cap. The household machinery tensed, every clock hand poised, straining, ready. “Wait for Madam in the passage,” the house-parlormaid had warned her. “Don’t go and knock. She hates that.” Until now, Miss de Vries had been an entirely remote figure. Nearby, certainly: really only a few feet away if Madam was in the bedroom and Alice was in the dressing room. But she was attended by other servants. Alice observed her, studied her daily movements. She didn’t talk to her at all. The Bond Street seamstresses managed all the fittings for Madam’s ball dress. Alice despised it. It was black, per instruction, suitable for mourning. But the sleeves were fussy, heavy, and the lace looked almost antique in its design. The seamstresses worked section by section, sending parts up to Park Lane for Alice to finish. Hackwork, really, the kind of thing she could do with her eyes closed. Yet she found herself unpicking their stitches, remaking the lines, softening the gown’s edges. Trying to make it elegant. Sometimes, when she was hanging about for the latest delivery, Alice would make sketches of the gown that she’d design for Madam. Something with a little pep to it, something with a little go. Something to make people stare. Thunk. The clocks marked

Five On A Treasure Island.txt

man unbolted the door at top and bottom. Dick was glad that he had slipped along to bolt the door, for if he hadn't done that before the men had come they would have known that Julian and George had escaped, and would have been on their guard. The man opened the door and stepped inside. The second man followed him. Dick crept as close as he dared, waiting for the third man to go in too. Then he meant to slam the door and bolt it! The first man swung his torch round and gave a loud exclamation. "The children are gone! How strange! Where are they?" Two of the men were now in the cave- and the third stepped in at that moment. Dick darted forward and slammed the door. It made a crash that went echoing round and round the caves and passages. Dick fumbled with the bolts, his hand trembling. They were stiff and rusty. The boy found it hard to shoot them home in their sockets. And meanwhile the men were not idle! As soon as they heard the door slam they spun round. The third man put his shoulder to the door at once and heaved hard. Dick had just got one of the bolts almost into its socket. Then all three men forced their strength against the door, and the bolt gave way! Dick stared in horror. The door was opening! He turned and fled down the dark passage. The men flashed their torches on and saw him. They went after the boy at top speed. Dick fled to the well-shaft. Fortunately the opening was on the opposite side, and he could clamber into it without being seen in the light of the torches. The boy only just had time to squeeze through into the shaft before the three men came running by. Not one of them guessed that the runaway was squeezed into the well-shaft they passed! Indeed, the men did not even know that there was a well there. Trembling from head to foot, Dick began to climb the rope he had left dangling from the rungs of the iron ladder. He undid it when he reached the ladder itself, for he thought that perhaps the men might discover the old well and try to climb up later. They would not be able to do that if there was no rope dangling down. The boy climbed up the ladder quickly, and squeezed round the stone slab near the top. The other children were there, waiting for him. They knew at once by the look on Dick's face that he had failed in what he had tried to do. They pulled him out quickly. "It was no good," said Dick, panting with his climb. "I couldn't do it. They burst the door open just as I was bolting it, and chased me. I got into the shaft just in time." "They're trying to get out of the entrance now!" cried Anne, suddenly. "Quick! What shall we do? They'll catch us all!" "To the boat!"

Ulysses.txt

Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. (HE SNEEZES) Amen! BLOOM: (ABSENTLY) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis. VIRAG: (HIS MOUTH PROJECTED IN HARD WRINKLES, EYES STONILY FORLORNLY CLOSED, PSALMS IN OUTLANDISH MONOTONE) That the cows with their those distended udders that they have been the the known ... BLOOM: I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (HE REPEATS) Spontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (PROFOUNDLY) Instinct rules the world. In life. In death. VIRAG: (HEAD ASKEW, ARCHES HIS BACK AND HUNCHED WINGSHOULDERS, PEERS AT THE MOTH OUT OF BLEAR BULGED EYES, POINTS A HORNING CLAW AND CRIES) Who's moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is Gerald. O, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? (HE MEWS) Puss puss puss puss! (HE SIGHS, DRAWS BACK AND STARES SIDEWAYS DOWN WITH DROPPING UNDERJAW) Well, well. He doth rest anon. (he snaps his jaws suddenly on the air) THE MOTH: I'm a tiny tiny thing Ever flying in the spring Round and round a ringaring. Long ago I was a king Now I do this kind of thing On the wing, on the wing! Bing! (HE RUSHES AGAINST THE MAUVE SHADE, FLAPPING NOISILY) Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats. (FROM LEFT UPPER ENTRANCE WITH TWO GLIDING STEPS HENRY FLOWER COMES FORWARD TO LEFT FRONT CENTRE. HE WEARS A DARK MANTLE AND DROOPING PLUMED SOMBRERO. HE CARRIES A SILVERSTRINGED INLAID DULCIMER AND A LONGSTEMMED BAMBOO JACOB'S PIPE, ITS CLAY BOWL FASHIONED AS A FEMALE HEAD. HE WEARS DARK VELVET HOSE AND SILVERBUCKLED PUMPS. HE HAS THE ROMANTIC SAVIOUR'S FACE WITH FLOWING LOCKS, THIN BEARD AND MOUSTACHE. HIS SPINDLELEGS AND SPARROW FEET ARE THOSE OF THE TENOR MARIO, PRINCE OF CANDIA. HE SETTLES DOWN HIS GOFFERED RUFFS AND MOISTENS HIS LIPS WITH A PASSAGE OF HIS AMOROUS TONGUE.) HENRY: (IN A LOW DULCET VOICE, TOUCHING THE STRINGS OF HIS GUITAR) There is a flower that bloometh. (VIRAG TRUCULENT, HIS JOWL SET, STARES AT THE LAMP. GRAVE BLOOM REGARDS ZOE'S NECK. HENRY GALLANT TURNS WITH PENDANT DEWLAP TO THE PIANO.) STEPHEN: (TO HIMSELF) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my. Expect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Deasy or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (HE TOUCHES THE KEYS AGAIN) Minor chord comes now.

Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

to fields. These were not the tidy hillsides I was used to, but riddled with lumps, volcanic rock in haphazard garments of moss. And if that wasn’t enough to disorient the eye, the sea kept sending waves of mist over the coastland. I reached the edge of the village and found the little footpath up to the cottage—the terrain was so steep that the path was a series of switchbacks. The cottage itself rested precariously upon a little alcove in the mountainside. It was only about ten minutes beyond the village, but that was ten minutes of sweaty inclines, and I was panting by the time I reached the door. It was not only unlocked, but contained no lock at all, and when I pushed it open, I found a sheep. It stared at me a moment, chewing at something, then sauntered off to rejoin its fellows as I politely held the door. Shadow gave a huff but was otherwise unmoved—he’s seen plenty of sheep in our rambles in the countryside around Cambridge, and looks upon them with the gentlemanly disinterest of an aging dog. Somehow the place felt even colder than the outdoors. It was as simple as I had imagined, with walls of hearteningly solid stone and the smell of something I guessed to be puffin dung, though it could also have been the sheep. A table and chairs, dusty, a little kitchen at the back with a number of pots dangling from the wall, very dusty. By the hearth with its woodstove was an ancient armchair that smelled of must. I was shivering, in spite of the uphill trunk-dragging, and I realized I had neither wood nor matches to warm that dingy place, and perhaps more alarmingly, that I might not know how to light a fire if I did—I had never done so before. Unfortunately, I happened to glance out the window at that moment and found that it had begun to snow. It was then, as I stared at the empty hearth, hungry and cold, that I began to wonder if I would die here. Lest you think me a newcomer to foreign fieldwork, let me assure you this is not the case. I spent a period of months in a part of Provence so rural that the villagers had never seen a camera, studying a river-dwelling species of Folk, les lutins des rivières. And before that there was a lengthy sojourn in the forests of the Apennines with some deer-faced fate and half a year in the Croatian wilderness as an assistant to a professor who spent his career analysing the music of mountain Folk. But in each case, I had known what I was getting into, and had a student or two to take care of logistics. And there had been no snow. Ljosland is the most isolated of the Scandinavian countries, an island situated in the wild seas off the Norwegian mainland, its northern coastline brushing the Arctic Circle. I had accounted for the awkwardness of reaching such a place—the long and uncomfortable voyage

The Call of the Wild.txt

life nor sign of life-- only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches. And through another winter they wandered on the obliterated trails of men who had gone before. Once, they came upon a path blazed through the forest, an ancient path, and the Lost Cabin seemed very near. But the path began nowhere and ended nowhere, and it remained mystery, as the man who made it and the reason he made it remained mystery. Another time they chanced upon the time-graven wreckage of a hunting lodge, and amid the shreds of rotted blankets John Thornton found a long-barrelled flint-lock. He knew it for a Hudson Bay Company gun of the young days in the Northwest, when such a gun was worth its height in beaver skins packed flat, And that was all--no hint as to the man who in an early day had reared the lodge and left the gun among the blankets. Spring came on once more, and at the end of all their wandering they found, not the Lost Cabin, but a shallow placer in a broad valley where the gold showed like yellow butter across the bottom of the washing-pan. They sought no farther. Each day they worked earned them thousands of dollars in clean dust and nuggets, and they worked every day. The gold was sacked in moose-hide bags, fifty pounds to the bag, and piled like so much firewood outside the spruce-bough lodge. Like giants they toiled, days flashing on the heels of days like dreams as they heaped the treasure up. There was nothing for the dogs to do, save the hauling in of meat now and again that Thornton killed, and Buck spent long hours musing by the fire. The vision of the short-legged hairy man came to him more frequently, now that there was little work to be done; and often, blinking by the fire, Buck wandered with him in that other world which he remembered. The salient thing of this other world seemed fear. When he watched the hairy man sleeping by the fire, head between his knees and hands clasped above, Buck saw that he slept restlessly, with many starts and awakenings, at which times he would peer fearfully into the darkness and fling more wood upon the fire. Did they walk by the beach of a sea, where the hairy man gathered shell- fish and ate them as he gathered, it was with eyes that roved everywhere for hidden danger and with legs prepared to run like the wind at its first appearance. Through the forest they crept noiselessly, Buck at the hairy man's heels; and they were alert and vigilant, the pair of them, ears twitching and moving and nostrils quivering, for the man heard and smelled as keenly as Buck. The hairy man could spring up into the trees and travel ahead as fast as on the ground, swinging by the arms from limb to limb, sometimes a dozen feet apart, letting go and

Hannah Whitten - The Foxglove King-Orbit (2023).txt

match the glare he leveled at her. “Are you calling Mari a liar?” “I have no reason to believe she’s not,” Gabe said. The fight was gone from his voice now; it’d just been there to strike the flint. Now there was a blaze, and he kept himself expressionless, as if he was above it. “She’s a poison runner.” “So was I,” Lore snarled. Gabe cocked his head. “And see how loyal you’ve been to the crown that rescued you from your life of crime?” She slapped him. The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, just as jarring. Gabe’s head wrenched to the side, the impression of her fingers blooming scarlet across his cheek, but he stayed silent, turning back to face her as soon as inertia allowed. Behind the couch, Bastian did nothing. His eyes stayed on Lore, narrowed and calculating. “It could be a trap.” Still in that low, expressionless voice, even as Gabe’s face burned a stinging red from the impact. “Your old friends could be trying to lure you into the catacombs.” “Why would they do that?” He didn’t know about what was down there. Who. If someone wanted her back in the catacombs, it wouldn’t be Val or Mari. “They have papers from August. They’re privateers now. Does that change your estimation? Make them seem more loyal?” “No,” Gabe said. “Just more easily bought.” “And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Duke Remaut?” His one eye blazed, as if some deep ember within him had finally sparked. Bastian spoke up, voice quiet but carrying. “I think this is about more than a desire to protect our latent necromancer, isn’t it, Gabriel?” Gabe glanced at him, and then away. It would’ve been dismissive if not for the fury clear on his face. “The Church forbids entering the catacombs without special dispensation,” Bastian continued. “Which I doubt we’re going to get. I understand, friend. You feel as though you have plenty of sins already, and don’t want to stack another on top of your hoard.” Something like contempt bled through his casual tone. “What would Anton say to that?” A muscle feathered in Gabe’s jaw. He said nothing. “Lore and I will go,” Bastian said, with the air of a conversation decidedly closed. “I know the way to the stone garden; we’re both smart enough to make it there without being caught. We’ll figure out what’s going on, and the tatters of your honor won’t be further shredded. I know how dearly you hold them.” Gabe was silent, still as the man Lore had turned to stone. He stared at the fire like it could tell him something as Bastian straightened and made to leave. “Tomorrow night,” Bastian called over his shoulder at Lore as he pulled the door open. “I’ll meet you here.” Then he was gone, slipping into the shadows of the hallway. The Bleeding God’s Heart sconce on the opposite wall had gone out completely, candle wax dripping over the golden arms like melting bone. When Bastian was gone, Gabe looked at her.

The-Housekeepers.txt

a dark red crest. Her heart started beating faster. Papa had always taught her the art of patience. Of suppressing one’s whims, curtailing one’s deepest desires. I would make a fine ascetic, she thought dryly. I would make a splendid nun. “William,” she said. “You must tell me. Was there something between you and Mrs. King?” The air tilted. His expression became guarded. People said that William was very beautiful. They praised her for it, as if she had something to do with it, as if she’d won him at an auction. Perhaps she had. But his eyes had no effect on her. “I only ask,” she said, “for the sake of the household. I am accountable for its reputation.” He stood there, trussed up in cream silk and his afternoon livery, groomed and manicured. He flushed. “Do you mind, Madam, if I keep my counsel on that matter?” “Yes,” she said lightly, “I do.” She stretched, reaching for the post tray. “You were spotted with Mrs. King in the garden the other day. Not a very sensible thing to do, given your recent indiscretions.” His voice was tight. “Spotted by whom, Madam?” She flipped the envelopes over, picked up the smallest one first, the most uninteresting. “That’s not a denial.” He said nothing. She glanced up. “By me, if you must know.” She took out the card: So pleased to accept, Yours &c, Captain and Mrs. C. Fox-Willoughby. “I’m forever looking out of the window and seeing things I oughtn’t.” His eyes became blank, indecipherable. Good, she thought. He’s rattled. “Will that be all, Madam?” “No, I don’t think so.” Next envelope. She smiled. “I have a proposition for you.” He said nothing. She approved of that, too. It was best to remain composed in the face of disagreeable things. “I may soon find myself,” she said, “in need of a new household. You take my meaning?” William’s eyes narrowed, just a fraction. “I did hear that Lord Ashley is coming tonight, Madam.” “Too clever of you. Yes, he is. And it has come to my attention that Lord Ashley does not keep a butler on Brook Street. Rather a deficiency, to my mind. One I’d take care to correct.” He didn’t say the obvious thing. He didn’t ask, What about Shepherd? He had clearly guessed the answer. Shepherd belonged to her father, and the world was ticking on. It needed new people. New energy. “I suppose I’d better think about it, Madam,” he said. She shook her head. “No, you’d better tell me this instant.” His face darkened. She saw it: his pride, wounded. It pleased her immensely. Men were like that: so easy to prick. “What’s the matter?” she said softly. “Have you made other plans?” Footsteps. The door opened. One of the under-footmen peered in. “Madam,” he said. “Lady Montagu has just arrived.” Miss de Vries felt a jolt. “So early?” “Yes’m.” “Very well.” She rose. “That’ll be all, William.” He gave her another long look, pressed his lips together, as if making up his mind about something.

David Copperfield.txt

would have won her. But, through all these causes combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of adoration for him before he left the house that night. He stayed there with me to dinner - if I were to say willingly, I should not half express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis's room like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even now, in the remembrance. We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs, unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth, hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case. 'Of course,' he said. 'You'll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall sleep at the hotel.' 'But to bring you so far,' I returned, 'and to separate, seems bad companionship, Steerforth.' 'Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?' he said. 'What is "seems", compared to that?' It was settled at once. He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started forth, at eight o'clock, for Mr. Peggotty's boat. Indeed, they were more and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception, and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If anyone had told me, then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was worthless to him, and next minute thrown away - I say, if anyone had told me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my indignation would have found a vent! Probably only in an increase, had that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands towards the old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully, than it had sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty's door. 'This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?' 'Dismal enough in the dark,' he said: 'and the sea roars as if it were hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?' 'That's the boat,' said I.

David Copperfield.txt

had been thought to be, was a Moral! - that was her word. She was evidently still afraid of Miss Betsey, for she sent her grateful duty to her but timidly; and she was evidently afraid of me, too, and entertained the probability of my running away again soon: if I might judge from the repeated hints she threw out, that the coach-fare to Yarmouth was always to be had of her for the asking. She gave me one piece of intelligence which affected me very much, namely, that there had been a sale of the furniture at our old home, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were gone away, and the house was shut up, to be let or sold. God knows I had no part in it while they remained there, but it pained me to think of the dear old place as altogether abandoned; of the weeds growing tall in the garden, and the fallen leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I imagined how the winds of winter would howl round it, how the cold rain would beat upon the window-glass, how the moon would make ghosts on the walls of the empty rooms, watching their solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave in the churchyard, underneath the tree: and it seemed as if the house were dead too, now, and all connected with my father and mother were faded away. There was no other news in Peggotty's letters. Mr. Barkis was an excellent husband, she said, though still a little near; but we all had our faults, and she had plenty (though I am sure I don't know what they were); and he sent his duty, and my little bedroom was always ready for me. Mr. Peggotty was well, and Ham was well, and Mrs.. Gummidge was but poorly, and little Em'ly wouldn't send her love, but said that Peggotty might send it, if she liked. All this intelligence I dutifully imparted to my aunt, only reserving to myself the mention of little Em'ly, to whom I instinctively felt that she would not very tenderly incline. While I was yet new at Doctor Strong's, she made several excursions over to Canterbury to see me, and always at unseasonable hours: with the view, I suppose, of taking me by surprise. But, finding me well employed, and bearing a good character, and hearing on all hands that I rose fast in the school, she soon discontinued these visits. I saw her on a Saturday, every third or fourth week, when I went over to Dover for a treat; and I saw Mr. Dick every alternate Wednesday, when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to stay until next morning. On these occasions Mr. Dick never travelled without a leathern writing-desk, containing a supply of stationery and the Memorial; in relation to which document he had a notion that time was beginning to press now, and that it really must be got out of hand. Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread. To render his visits the more

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.txt

night, so we drew on our ulsters and wrapped cravats about our throats. Outside, the stars were shining coldly in a cloudless sky, and the breath of the passers-by blew out into smoke like so many pistol shots. Our footfalls rang out crisply and loudly as we swung through the doctors' quarter, Wimpole Street, Harley Street, and so through Wigmore Street into Oxford Street. In a quarter of an hour we were in Bloomsbury at the Alpha Inn, which is a small public-house at the corner of one of the streets which runs down into Holborn. Holmes pushed open the door of the private bar and ordered two glasses of beer from the ruddy-faced, white-aproned landlord. "Your beer should be excellent if it is as good as your geese," said he. "My geese!" The man seemed surprised. "Yes. I was speaking only half an hour ago to Mr. Henry Baker, who was a member of your goose club." "Ah! yes, I see. But you see, sir, them's not our geese." "Indeed! Whose, then?" "Well, I got the two dozen from a salesman in Covent Garden." "Indeed? I know some of them. Which was it?" "Breckinridge is his name." "Ah! I don't know him. Well, here's your good health landlord, and prosperity to your house. Good-night. "Now for Mr. Breckinridge," he continued, buttoning up his coat as we came out into the frosty air. "Remember, Watson that though we have so homely a thing as a goose at one end of this chain, we have at the other a man who will certainly get seven years' penal servitude unless we can establish his innocence. It is possible that our inquiry may but confirm his guilt but, in any case, we have a line of investigation which has been missed by the police, and which a singular chance has placed in our hands. Let us follow it out to the bitter end. Faces to the south, then, and quick march!" We passed across Holborn, down Endell Street, and so through a zigzag of slums to Covent Garden Market. One of the largest stalls bore the name of Breckinridge upon it, and the proprietor a horsy-looking man, with a sharp face and trim side-whiskers was helping a boy to put up the shutters. "Good-evening. It's a cold night," said Holmes. The salesman nodded and shot a questioning glance at my companion. "Sold out of geese, I see," continued Holmes, pointing at the bare slabs of marble. "Let you have five hundred to-morrow morning." "That's no good." "Well, there are some on the stall with the gas-flare." "Ah, but I was recommended to you." "Who by?" "The landlord of the Alpha." "Oh, yes; I sent him a couple of dozen." "Fine birds they were, too. Now where did you get them from?" To my surprise the question provoked a burst of anger from the salesman. "Now, then, mister," said he, with his head cocked and his arms akimbo, "what are you driving at? Let's have it straight, now." "It is straight enough. I should like to

Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

most of the courtly fae are given to on occasion. I once met a Manx man whose daughter had taken her own life after a year and a day spent in some horrific faerie kingdom so lovely that its beauty became as addictive as opiates. Others have endured torments and returned so changed their families barely recognize them. But in Auður’s manner and expression, its scrubbed-clean quality, I found something I’d never encountered before. And for all my expertise, it sent a shiver of foreboding through me, a sense that perhaps, for the first time in my career, I was out of my depth. “Does she live alone?” I enquired. “She lives with her parents, as she always has.” I nodded. “May I call upon her?” “You are a guest here, and are welcome anywhere,” her aunt said, lightly and automatically, but there was a brittleness in her smile that even I could recognize, and so I retreated to the fireside. Auður continued to eat and drink only when instructed to, and when the meal was complete, she sat with her head slumped and her hair in her face until her aunt took her home. “Is she always like that?” I said. Thora gave me a brief, sharp look, then nodded. “That child would carve out her own heart if someone ordered her to.” There was a cold sweat upon my brow. “What did they do to her?” “What did they do?” Thora repeated. “Did you not see? She’s hollow. There’s less substance there than the shadow of a ghost. But at least she returned.” The words had an emphasis that made me swallow. “And how many others did not?” Thora did not look at me. “Your dinner is growing cold,” she said, and there was something beneath the pleasantness in her voice that I did not dare challenge. When Shadow and I returned to the cottage, we found the embers still hot in the woodstove, a fact that filled me with an ill-fated pride. I decided I would read for a time at the fireside, if only to put Auður from my mind, for she had unsettled me more than I cared to admit. Reaching into the wood box brought me swiftly down to earth, though, for I found only two logs remaining. I chewed my lip, shivering lightly. I recalled Krystjan’s reference to the woodshed, and wished, abruptly, that I had taken Finn’s advice and “settled in” instead of spending the day charging hither and thither about the countryside. There are times when my scholarly enthusiasm gets the better of me, but I have never had cause to regret this so deeply before. Well, there was nothing for it. I lit the lantern and thrust myself back out into the snow. Fortunately, the woodshed was easily located, tucked beneath the eaves. My heart sank, however, when I looked within. The wood had not been cut into logs, but piled up in huge chunks that would never fit into my humble stove. I was shivering in earnest now. Shadow, perfectly comfortable

Lisa-See-Lady-Tan_s-Circle-of-Women.txt

husband was a boy, his father kept thousands of concubines. His favorite was Consort Wan. The Chunghua emperor lost all interest in his wife, Empress Wu, who had already given him a son. Meanwhile, the consort struggled to get pregnant.” Empress Zhang’s voice lowers as she reveals what few outside the palace know. “Every time Consort Wan heard that another concubine was with child, she had that woman poisoned or secretly gave her herbs so she would miscarry. Empress Wu realized she and her son could be targets of the consort as well, and they went into hiding. Eunuchs and others protected them. When the emperor died, my husband ascended the throne. Consort Wan disappeared. No one has heard of her again.” While the story is from a previous generation, it’s a reminder that Empress Zhang is attuned to palace intrigue and won’t permit it. She looks around, taking in the women in her presence. “My husband is a follower of Confucius, Buddhism, and Taoism. He believes in rectitude and obedience. To honor his mother and all she did to protect him, he sets an example for the rest of the country—not just here in the palace. This is why today you find no concubines, consorts, or secondary wives in the Great Within.” Having the opportunity to oversee the empress’s birth is without doubt a great honor, even if it doesn’t come with the same rewards Meiling will receive. (This is as it should be. Meiling will be actively involved in the delivery, while I will attend only when the empress requests my presence or if a complication should arise.) I’ll admit I wish I liked Empress Zhang more than I do. Although she can recite history and her place in it, I find her shallow. She’s tantalized by a new purchase or gift, but her enchantment is short-lived. She immediately wants something else that’s exotic or priceless—another multilayered headdress bedecked with jewels, a figurine of the Goddess Guanyin carved in ivory, a pair of life-sized marble lions. She enjoys the foods that come to the palace as tribute, but then needs my help with her resulting indigestion and sleeplessness. And yet… She is still just a woman. She’s as nervous about giving birth to her first child—who we all hope will be a son and the future emperor—as Meiling, a midwife with much experience. I’m a doctor, but I find both women look to me more for my personal experience, having gone through labor and successfully brought into the world three babies, albeit girls, than for the herbs they should take. “Doctor Tan.” I shake myself out of my thoughts. “Yes, Compassionate One?” “What ingredients does your family use for making mother’s soup?” Empress Zhang asks. She’s questioned me about this many times these past weeks, hoping, I believe, that I’ll name something that will require her to dispatch men to find a rare ingredient. She is the embodiment of One eye on the dish in front of her and one eye on the saucepan. “Everyone makes mother’s soup a little

Hound of the Baskervilles.txt

but he hesitated and then came back. "You've been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I can for you in return. I know something, Sir Henry, and perhaps I should have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I found it out. I've never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man. It's about poor Sir Charles's death." The baronet and I were both upon our feet. "Do you know how he died?" "No, sir, I don't know that." "What then?" "I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman." "To meet a woman! He?" "Yes, sir." "And the woman's name?" "I can't give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her initials were L. L." "How do you know this, Barrymore?" "Well, Sir Henry, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had usually a great many letters, for he was a public man and well known for his kind heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to turn to him. But that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one letter, so I took the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey, and it was addressed in a woman's hand." "Well?" "Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was cleaning out Sir Charles's study -- it had never been touched since his death -- and she found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a page, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end of the letter and it said: 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o clock. Beneath it were signed the initials L. L." "Have you got that slip?" "No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it." "Had Sir Charles received any other lettefs in the same writting?" "Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone." "And you have no idea who L. L. is?" "No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands upon that lady we should know more about Sir Charles's death." "I cannot understand, Barrymore, how you came to conceal this important information." "Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us. And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Charles, as we well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake this up couldn't help our poor master, and it's well to go

The-One.txt

they waited. “Subtle car,” Jonah says as a tall man with slicked-back hair steps out of the Ferrari. The attorney smooths his suit before striding toward the house. Ethan folds a stick of gum into his mouth before climbing out of the car. The same housekeeper opens the door after Carr’s attorney rings the bell. This time, she holds the door open for Ethan and Jonah to follow. Ethan eyes the security camera above the front entry before going inside, thinking of Sloane’s visit after her award gala. The detectives move behind the attorney through the mansion’s main level, following in a trail of his strong cologne. While Jonah appears to take in the home’s opulent surroundings, Ethan’s thoughts are consumed with Sloane, envisioning her in this house—with Carr. An image of Sloane laughing in Carr’s arms before they stripped off each other’s clothes inundates his mind when Ethan enters a formal dining room with views of Lake Washington. Carr stands from the table and shakes hands with his attorney. Ethan stares at the app founder. He’s dressed in a button-down shirt with his brown wavy hair neatly combed back. Despite his wife dying yesterday, the billionaire’s eyes look fresh—more well-rested than Ethan’s. Jonah extends his hand. “I’m Detective Nolan from Seattle Homicide.” Carr accepts his handshake. “Brody Carr.” He swings his hand toward Ethan. Ethan clears his throat and encloses his grip around the billionaire app founder’s, wanting to throw a punch at his jaw. “And I’m Detective Marks.” Carr sits beside his attorney at the twelve-seat dining table. If he’s aware of Ethan being Sloane’s husband, his face shows no recognition of it. Ethan and Jonah sit opposite. Carr is bigger than he looked in his online photos. His muscular chest and arms protrude beneath his fitted shirt. Ethan pictures them wrapped around Sloane before forcing the image from his mind. “We’re very sorry for your loss,” Jonah starts. Ethan eyes Carr’s broad shoulders. It would have been easy for him to overpower his wife beneath the water, no matter how strong a swimmer she was. Carr nods. “Thank you.” Beyond the bay windows at the end of the table, Ethan spots a float plane beside a huge yacht on Brody’s dock. Was it Carr’s money Sloane was drawn too? But he knows that’s not it. Sloane is the most fiercely independent person he’s ever known and despises how her mother was always financially dependent on men. Ethan returns his attention to Carr across the table. Knowing Sloane wasn’t wooed by his wealth only makes him feel worse. It means there was something deeper between them. “We’re here because we’re opening an investigation into your wife’s death,” Jonah says. Carr glances at his attorney. “Why is that?” “How was your relationship with your wife? You were separated, correct?” Carr waits for his lawyer to give him a nod of approval. “Yes, we’ve been separated for two months. But we were working things out.” By sleeping with my wife. Ethan feels the urge to flip the table over and take Carr’s

The-One.txt

“All right. The patient coming in is a thirty-two-year-old female found unresponsive while diving near Alki Beach.” “Diving?” Evelyn nods. “That’s what the medic said. Actually, he called it freediving. She still had a weak pulse after her husband dragged her to shore but lost it shortly after the medics arrived.” The room suddenly feels cold. “She’s intubated,” Evelyn adds. “And they’re running a full code. At least the water is cold; it should give her a chance. Anyway, thank you, I could really use a Sprite.” “Hey, Logan,” Evelyn says as she moves past the treatment room. “Sloane is taking the new one for me. I’m going on break.” “Okay.” He heads toward the ambulance entrance. “You coming, Dr. Marks?” She follows him without a word. When she reaches the sliding doors, she hears the ambulance in the distance. Logan turns. “So, Evelyn told you what happened to the patient coming in?” “She said she was…freediving?” He nods. “Evelyn said she got caught in some kelp, apparently. By the time her husband untangled her, she’d been underwater for several minutes.” A knot forms in Sloane’s stomach as she pictures Brody pulling his wife’s limp body ashore. It can’t be. “And get this. When I checked to see if the patient’s been admitted to our system, I saw her name is Chelsea Carr.” Sloane fights the urge to vomit as Logan steps toward her. “Oh, yeah.” Logan waves a hand through the air. “I forgot you don’t keep up with celebrity news. Chelsea Carr’s a model who married that guy who created The One,” he continues. “I saw online they recently moved to Seattle. You think it’s her?” The sirens grow louder. Sloane stares at the lights pulling into the parking lot beyond the glass doors. Sloane feels numb. This cannot be happening. Logan shrugs when Sloane doesn’t respond. “I know, probably not.” The ambulance pulls to a stop, and Logan presses a button to open the doors. Sloane stands frozen in place as the medics pull the stretcher out of the back of the ambulance, relieved to see Brody Carr is nowhere in sight. “We’re taking her to treatment room six,” Logan says as they wheel her inside. One of the medics bags a breath through her endotracheal tube in between compressions. Two IV bags hang from a metal pole attached to the stretcher, pumping fluid into a vein in her arm. “When we arrived and hooked her up to the cardiac monitor, she was in bradycardia with a heart rate of ten,” one of the medics tells Sloane. “But by the time we got her intubated, it was gone. We started compressions and gave three rounds of code meds and a saline bolus on the way here.” He continues to recap their resuscitation efforts as Sloane compares the lifeless woman before her to the image on the wall of Brody’s bedroom. She follows alongside as the medics maneuver the stretcher swiftly through the hallway, unable to tear her eyes from Chelsea’s long blonde hair and mottled, pale-gray skin. She recalls

1984.txt

head. O'Brien had sat down beside the bed, so that his face was almost on a level with Winston's. 'Three thousand,' he said, speaking over Winston's head to the man in the white coat. Two soft pads, which felt slightly moist, clamped themselves against Winston's temples. He quailed. There was pain coming, a new kind of pain. O'Brien laid a hand reassuringly, almost kindly, on his. 'This time it will not hurt,' he said. 'Keep your eyes fixed on mine.' At this moment there was a devastating explosion, or what seemed like an explosion, though it was not certain whether there was any noise. There was undoubtedly a blinding flash of light. Winston was not hurt, only prostrated. Although he had already been lying on his back when the thing happened, he had a curious feeling that he had been knocked into that position. A terrific painless blow had flattened him out. Also something had happened inside his head. As his eyes regained their focus he remembered who he was, and where he was, and recognized the face that was gazing into his own; but somewhere or other there was a large patch of emptiness, as though a piece had been taken out of his brain. 'It will not last,' said O'Brien. 'Look me in the eyes. What country is Oceania at war with?' Winston thought. He knew what was meant by Oceania and that he himself was a citizen of Oceania. He also remembered Eurasia and Eastasia; but who was at war with whom he did not know. In fact he had not been aware that there was any war. 'I don't remember.' 'Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Do you remember that now?' 'Yes.' 'Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Since the beginning of your file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (140 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:52 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt life, since the beginning of the Party, since the beginning of history, the war has continued without a break, always the same war. Do you remember that?' 'Yes.' 'Eleven years ago you created a legend about three men who had been condemned to death for treachery. You pretended that you had seen a piece of paper which proved them innocent. No such piece of paper ever existed. You invented it, and later you grew to believe in it. You remember now the very moment at which you first invented it. Do you remember that?' 'Yes.' 'Just now I held up the fingers of my hand to you. You saw five fingers. Do you remember that?' 'Yes.' O'Brien held up the fingers of his left hand, with the thumb concealed. 'There are five fingers there. Do you see five fingers?' 'Yes.' And he did see them, for a fleeting instant, before the scenery of his mind changed. He saw five fingers, and there was no deformity. Then everything was normal again, and the old fear, the hatred, and the bewilderment came crowding back again. But there had been a moment--he did not know how long, thirty seconds, perhaps--of luminous certainty, when each new suggestion of O'Brien's

Emma.txt

to take leave. "I shall hear about you all," said he; that is my chief consolation. I shall hear of every thing that is going on among you. I have engaged Mrs. Weston to correspond with me. She has been so kind as to promise it. Oh! the blessing of a female correspondent, when one is really interested in the absent!--she will tell me every thing. In her letters I shall be at dear Highbury again." A very friendly shake of the hand, a very earnest "Good-bye," closed the speech, and the door had soon shut out Frank Churchill. Short had been the notice--short their meeting; he was gone; and Emma felt so sorry to part, and foresaw so great a loss to their little society from his absence as to begin to be afraid of being too sorry, and feeling it too much. It was a sad change. They had been meeting almost every day since his arrival. Certainly his being at Randalls had given great spirit to the last two weeks--indescribable spirit; the idea, the expectation of seeing him which every morning had brought, the assurance of his attentions, his liveliness, his manners! It had been a very happy fortnight, and forlorn must be the sinking from it into the common course of Hartfield days. To complete every other recommendation, he had almost told her that he loved her. What strength, or what constancy of affection he might be subject to, was another point; but at present she could not doubt his having a decidedly warm admiration, a conscious preference of herself; and this persuasion, joined to all the rest, made her think that she must be a little in love with him, in spite of every previous determination against it. "I certainly must," said she. "This sensation of listlessness, weariness, stupidity, this disinclination to sit down and employ myself, this feeling of every thing's being dull and insipid about the house!-- I must be in love; I should be the oddest creature in the world if I were not--for a few weeks at least. Well! evil to some is always good to others. I shall have many fellow-mourners for the ball, if not for Frank Churchill; but Mr. Knightley will be happy. He may spend the evening with his dear William Larkins now if he likes." Mr. Knightley, however, shewed no triumphant happiness. He could not say that he was sorry on his own account; his very cheerful look would have contradicted him if he had; but he said, and very steadily, that he was sorry for the disappointment of the others, and with considerable kindness added, "You, Emma, who have so few opportunities of dancing, you are really out of luck; you are very much out of luck!" It was some days before she saw Jane Fairfax, to judge of her honest regret in this woeful change; but when they did meet, her composure was odious. She had been particularly unwell, however, suffering from headache to a degree, which made her aunt declare, that had the ball taken

Costanza-Casati-Clytemnestra.txt

Every man’s honor, every woman’s life belongs to him. Yes, I was powerful. Yes, I ruled with your father, but I wasn’t free. None of us are.” “What about my honor?” Clytemnestra snarls. “You can’t begin to contemplate the things I have endured because of the king’s wishes. There is no honor in being raped, no honor in being beaten. If you think there is, you are a fool.” Leda draws a deep breath. Cold air seeps into their bones, and Clytemnestra waits for her mother to ask for forgiveness, even though she knows it wouldn’t be enough. But Leda says, “I never told you how I came to marry your father.” I do not care, Clytemnestra wants to say. It is too late for your stories. But her tongue feels heavy in her mouth, like a stone. “You remember when I told you about Hippocoon and how he overthrew your father? Before Heracles helped him retake the throne, Tyndareus ran away with Icarius. They begged many kings for hospitality until they were welcomed by your grandfather Thestius, my father. Thestius fed and treated Tyndareus as if he were his own, but he asked for something in return.” “A marriage,” Clytemnestra says. “Yes, a marriage. I was young, disobedient, and my father’s favorite. I thought myself hard to love, but Thestius liked that I was rebellious. When he came to me to propose the marriage, I said yes. I thought it my chance to make him proud and happy. “Our winter festival came, when the girls had to dance for the goddess Rhea. It was my favorite moment of the year—we wore dresses and masks of feathers and ran in the forest where the spirits hide. We sang to the stars, asking for warmth in the winter and rains in the summer. Your father watched me. His skin was dark and warm, and I thought that was a taste of the sunny land he came from. I let him touch the feathers of my dress, and he said I was the most beautiful bird he had ever seen. The forest heard him, because soon nightingales were singing. I followed the sound, leading Tyndareus away from the torches into the thick part of the forest where long branches make everything a secret. The morning after, he asked me to marry him.” Leda doesn’t look at her as she talks. Her eyes are fixed outside the window, on the woods in the distance, the trees swaying with the wind. Clytemnestra looks at her hands. “Your marriage was the result of a political alliance, but that doesn’t mean you know how I felt.” “That is true.” Her hand grabs Clytemnestra’s wrist and she feels the strength her mother once had, the boldness. “If I could go back, I would change everything. I would stand beside you and defy your father.” Her eyes brim with sadness. “But if you are truly like me and you find it hard to forgive, I hope you will come to understand that it has been hard for me too.” The

1984.txt

170) [1/17/03 5:04:51 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt 'What was it?' he said in surprise. 'A rat. I saw him stick his beastly nose out of the wainscoting. There's a hole down there. I gave him a good fright, anyway.' 'Rats!' murmured Winston. 'In this room!' 'They're all over the place,' said Julia indifferently as she lay down again. 'We've even got them in the kitchen at the hostel. Some parts of London are swarming with them. Did you know they attack children? Yes, they do. In some of these streets a woman daren't leave a baby alone for two minutes. It's the great huge brown ones that do it. And the nasty thing is that the brutes always----' 'DON'T GO ON!' said Winston, with his eyes tightly shut. 'Dearest! You've gone quite pale. What's the matter? Do they make you feel sick?' 'Of all horrors in the world--a rat!' She pressed herself against him and wound her limbs round him, as though to reassure him with the warmth of her body. He did not reopen his eyes immediately. For several moments he had had the feeling of being back in a nightmare which had recurred from time to time throughout his life. It was always very much the same. He was standing in front of a wall of darkness, and on the other side of it there was something unendurable, something too dreadful to be faced. In the dream his deepest feeling was always one of self-deception, because he did in fact know what was behind the wall of darkness. With a deadly effort, like wrenching a piece out of his own brain, he could even have dragged the thing into the open. He always woke up without discovering what it was: but somehow it was connected with what Julia had been saying when he cut her short. 'I'm sorry,' he said, 'it's nothing. I don't like rats, that's all.' 'Don't worry, dear, we're not going to have the filthy brutes in here. I'll stuff the hole with a bit of sacking before we go. And next time we come here I'll bring some plaster and bung it up properly.' Already the black instant of panic was half-forgotten. Feeling slightly ashamed of himself, he sat up against the bedhead. Julia got out of bed, pulled on her overalls, and made the coffee. The smell that rose from the saucepan was so powerful and exciting that they shut the window lest anybody outside should notice it and become inquisitive. What was even better than the taste of the coffee was the silky texture given to it by the sugar, a thing Winston had almost forgotten after years of saccharine. With one hand in her pocket and a piece of bread and jam in the other, Julia wandered about the room, glancing indifferently at the bookcase, pointing out the best way of repairing the gateleg table, plumping herself down in the ragged arm-chair to see if it was comfortable, and examining the absurd twelve-hour clock with a sort of tolerant amusement. She brought the glass paperweight

Titanium-Noir.txt

and I let him have it. “Mr. Nugent, I may or may not know where that item you are looking for is, but I will tell you up-front that I do know why you want it. I know what it means.” Silence. “Your friend Mr. Zoegar, he was of the opinion that you and I could not trust one another. I took that to mean you would never trust me, but now it seems you sought to have me do something with consequences far beyond what you led me to believe. That is not the act of a friend, sir. Now, this situation we are all in is complex and delicate, and right now I feel a broad disaffection with almost all parties to the negotiation. We can proceed on that basis into the next stage, or you and I can step together a little more. I’m right here offering you the opportunity to restore the goodwill between us. What do you say?” “Mr. Zoegar would use the word ‘consilience’ to describe what you propose, Mr. Sounder. A jumping together of destinies.” “Well, for the next half hour, I won’t make any firm decisions about which way my destiny is going to jump. After that, I’ll figure I’m on my own, and things could get untidy.” There’s a pause during which I assume Lyman Nugent considers the state of my affairs before they become untidy: a scientist murdered under an alias, a cage match, a gunshot wound, a dead lounge singer, a dead police officer, an exploded police station, stolen internal organs containing encrypted nuclear grade kompromat, and now my would-be murderer, my ex-girlfriend’s cousin and by definition one of the most powerful men in the world, mutilated, bleeding and pissed off on my office carpet. Figure Nugent likes all that even less than I do. “I shall be delighted to accept your kind invitation, Mr. Sounder. See you in twenty minutes or so.” “See you then.” He hangs up, and I turn and look down at Maurice Tonfamecasca. “Fuck you, Sounder.” “Maurice, you came to my house. Now you’ve got nineteen minutes to persuade me we can forge an eternal friendship. After that it’s out of my hands.” Maurice smack-talks me for eighteen straight minutes and ten seconds. When Zoegar and a few friends arrive with a stretcher and carry him down the stairs, he smack talks them, too. When he sees Lyman Nugent in the backseat of the car, for a moment I think he’s not going to react at all, and then he looks at me, at Nugent, at me again, then he stares at Nugent and he starts to make a weird noise, like a bull choking. I figure that is the sound of a man who is used to counting his lifespan in centuries remembering what it feels like to be ephemeral. There’s no room for Maurice in the car, and in any case the lowing noise he’s making doesn’t sit well with Doublewide, so they put Maurice in a trailerbox, and Zoegar offers me the front

Of Human Bondage.txt

the exact words of the quarrel they had had. He had to force himself back to his book. He went out for a walk. The streets on the South side of the river were dingy enough on week-days, but there was an energy, a coming and going, which gave them a sordid vivacity; but on Sundays, with no shops open, no carts in the roadway, silent and depressed, they were indescribably dreary. Philip thought that day would never end. But he was so tired that he slept heavily, and when Monday came he entered upon life with determination. Christmas was approaching, and a good many of the students had gone into the country for the short holiday between the two parts of the winter session; but Philip had refused his uncle's invitation to go down to Blackstable. He had given the approaching examination as his excuse, but in point of fact he had been unwilling to leave London and Mildred. He had neglected his work so much that now he had only a fortnight to learn what the curriculum allowed three months for. He set to work seriously. He found it easier each day not to think of Mildred. He congratulated himself on his force of character. The pain he suffered was no longer anguish, but a sort of soreness, like what one might be expected to feel if one had been thrown off a horse and, though no bones were broken, were bruised all over and shaken. Philip found that he was able to observe with curiosity the condition he had been in during the last few weeks. He analysed his feelings with interest. He was a little amused at himself. One thing that struck him was how little under those circumstances it mattered what one thought; the system of personal philosophy, which had given him great satisfaction to devise, had not served him. He was puzzled by this. But sometimes in the street he would see a girl who looked so like Mildred that his heart seemed to stop beating. Then he could not help himself, he hurried on to catch her up, eager and anxious, only to find that it was a total stranger. Men came back from the country, and he went with Dunsford to have tea at an A. B. C. shop. The well-known uniform made him so miserable that he could not speak. The thought came to him that perhaps she had been transferred to another establishment of the firm for which she worked, and he might suddenly find himself face to face with her. The idea filled him with panic, so that he feared Dunsford would see that something was the matter with him: he could not think of anything to say; he pretended to listen to what Dunsford was talking about; the conversation maddened him; and it was all he could do to prevent himself from crying out to Dunsford for Heaven's sake to hold his tongue. Then came the day of his examination. Philip, when his turn arrived, went forward to the examiner's

Rachel-Lynn-Solomon-Business-or-Pleasure.txt

I haven’t been together 24/7, I haven’t felt truly alone in a while. If we’re not in the same room, then I’m usually working on his book. Whether he’s next to me or not, he’s always in my head. That has to be the explanation for why I’m feeling this odd attachment to him. I simply haven’t talked to another single guy in weeks. When he doesn’t join me and doesn’t send any texts, I head back, picking up two mugs of hot cocoa in the lobby before going up to our room. I knock once, just to make sure he knows I’m coming in. And nothing in the world could prepare me for what I see next. Finn’s sitting in one of the armchairs, grinning into his laptop camera and holding up a peace sign. “What up, Mason, this is Finn Walsh, and I just wanted to say that you’re going to absolutely crush your Spanish exam next week, just like Caleb, Meg, Alice, and I crushed that horde of banshees that—” “What are you doing?” I’ve never seen a grown man look so frightened. He jumps a literal half foot before smashing his laptop shut with more force than is necessary. “Oh god,” he says, burying his head in his hands. “You weren’t supposed to see that.” My eyes flick between him and the closed laptop. Trying to hold back a laugh, I ask, “Are you filming a Cameo?” Finn nods miserably. “It’s embarrassing. I don’t get that many requests, but I try to do a decent job with the ones that do come in.” “I’m sure they’re great.” “You’re trying really hard not to laugh right now, aren’t you?” “So hard.” When he opens his laptop back up, I notice he’s wearing gray sweatpants. I don’t know what it is about them, but they can instantly take a guy from a six to a ten, and Finn was already far beyond a six. “Come out in the snow with me,” I say. “We can at least take some cute photos of you hauling firewood for your Instagram to fawn over.” We bundle in the warmest coats we brought, Finn’s red hair spiking out from beneath a wool beanie. “This is real snow.” There’s some amount of awe in my voice as we traipse through it. The inn is surrounded by a forest, the snow still mostly untouched by footsteps. It’s too beautiful to mind the cold. “As opposed to?” “We don’t get this in the Northwest,” I explain. “One year, I went up to Whistler with an ex, and I spent all this time planning the perfect winter outfits. Then we got there and . . . nothing. It was, like, a low of fifty-two. I was devastated.” “An ex.” Finn sounds intrigued. “Tell me more about Chandler Cohen’s dating history.” “As you know, it’s been mostly defined by all the pining.” I hug my coat tighter. “I had my first boyfriend in high school—we broke up after graduation because we were going to different schools. Then in college,

Fifty-Shades-Of-Grey.txt

I clasp my arms around his neck. “You wouldn’t.” I say breathlessly, trying to stifle my giggling. He grins. “Oh, Ana, baby, have you learned nothing in the short time we’ve known each other?” He kisses me, and I seize my opportunity, running my fingers through his hair, grasping two handfuls and kissing him back while invading his mouth with my tongue. He inhales sharply and leans back, eyes smoky but wary. “I know your game,” he whispers and slowly sinks into the cool, clear water, taking me with him as his lips find mine once more. The chill of the Mediter- ranean is soon forgotten as I wrap myself around my husband. “I thought you wanted to swim,” I murmur against his mouth. 15/551 “You’re very distracting.” Christian grazes his teeth along my lower lip. “But I’m not sure I want the good people of Monte Carlo to see my wife in the throes of passion.” I run my teeth along his jaw, his stubble tickly against my tongue, not caring a dime for the good people of Monte Carlo. “Ana,” he groans. He wraps my ponytail around his wrist and tugs gently, tilting my head back, exposing my throat. He trails kisses from my ear down my neck. “Shall I take you in the sea?” he breathes. “Yes,” I whisper. Christian pulls away and gazes down at me, his eyes warm, wanting, and amused. “Mrs. Grey, you’re insatiable and so brazen. What sort of monster have I created?” “A monster fit for you. Would you have me any other way?” “I’ll take you any way I can get you, you know that. But not right now. Not with an audience.” He jerks his head toward the shore. What? Sure enough, several sunbathers on the beach have abandoned their indiffer- ence and now regard us with interest. Suddenly, Christian grabs me around my waist and launches me into the air, letting me fall into the water and sink beneath the waves to the soft sand below. I surface, coughing, spluttering and giggling. “Christian!” I scold, glaring at him. I thought we were going to make love in the sea . . . and chalk up yet another first. He bites his lower lip to stifle his amusement. I splash him, and he splashes me right back. “We have all night,” he says, grinning like a fool. “Laters, baby.” He dives beneath the sea and surfaces three feet away from me, then in a fluid, graceful crawl, swims away from the shore, away from me. Gah! Playful, tantalizing Fifty! I shield my eyes from the sun as I watch him go. He’s such a tease . . . what can I do to get him back? While I swim back to the shore, I contemplate my options. At the sun loungers our drinks have arrived, and I take a quick sip of Coke. Christian is a faint speck in the distance. Hmm . . . I lie down on my front and, fumbling with the straps, take my bikini top off and

Talia-Hibbert-Highly-Suspicious.txt

Mason shouts. “Brad’s having sex!” Great: my brother has arrived, right on schedule, to ruin my life. I jerk away from Celine, stomp over to the slightly ajar door (that absolute pervert freak), and shove it wide open. Mason’s already running downstairs. I turn around. Celine’s eyes are wide and unfocused, her chest is heaving, and for a second, I forget to be pissed because I’m very pleased with myself. “Hey,” I murmur. She blinks hard, presses her lips together, and stands up. “Crap. We should…go downstairs.” “Probably.” I’m going to creep into Mason’s room tonight and smother him while he sleeps. As we head out onto the landing, our elbows touch. Something zips up my stomach. Cel slides me a scandalized sideways look and rubs her arm like I just bit her. My own arm tingles. “I really like you.” “Shhh.” She widens her eyes meaningfully at me and leads the way downstairs. “I don’t want your dad to hear!” Aw. She’s so easily embarrassed but trust me; Dad’s going to love this. Celine is one of his favorite people. Still, I keep my mouth shut because she’s spooked, and I know feelings aren’t her thing. We just had a moment and now she needs space. (God, I’m so mature. Someone should make a note of this.) We reach the kitchen in adult silence and find Dad chopping spring onions at the island while staring at us with raised eyebrows (which is very poor kitchen safety; eyes on the knife, Dad). “Hi,” I say. His eyebrows somehow get higher. “Obviously,” I announce, “Mason is a liar.” Mason, who is eating a rice cake over the sink, says, “Mo am mot.” Crumbs spray across the front of his red Notts Forest shirt. I eye him in disgust. “How are we related?” He flips black curls out of his narrowed eyes. “You’re afopded.” Dad sighs heavily. “Mason, don’t talk with your mouth full, stop tormenting your brother, and go upstairs.” Mason snorts and heads for the door. “By the way,” Dad calls after him, “you’re not going to no party tonight.” Mason whirls around. “What?” “Remember our discussion,” Dad reminds him, “about what good men do and do not say about ladies?” Aha! Yes! I remember this! He is so screwed. “I wasn’t talking about Celine!” Mason wails. “I was talking about Brad!” “But you were talking about Celine,” I say solemnly. “You were violating her bodily autonomy with misogynistic lies for your own ends, Mason. You were treating her as collateral damage in a war between brothers. Mum is going to be so disappointed in you when she gets home.” Mason sputters. Celine looks very much like she is biting her tongue bloody, trying not to laugh. Dad seems amused, but he rolls his eyes and says, “That’s enough, thank you, Bradley. Mason, go upstairs.” Mason huffs and stomps away. “Now,” Dad says seriously, doing that I Am Being Parental thing he does with his face. “You two. What’s going on?” He’s asking a direct question and meeting my eyes. I try

The Call of the Wild.txt

for the Yeehats. They scattered far and wide over the country, and it was not till a week later that the last of the survivors gathered together in a lower valley and counted their losses. As for Buck, wearying of the pursuit, he returned to the desolated camp. He found Pete where he had been killed in his blankets in the first moment of surprise. Thornton's desperate struggle was fresh-written on the earth, and Buck scented every detail of it down to the edge of a deep pool. By the edge, head and fore feet in the water, lay Skeet, faithful to the last. The pool itself, muddy and discolored from the sluice boxes, effectually hid what it contained, and it contained John Thornton; for Buck followed his trace into the water, from which no trace led away. All day Buck brooded by the pool or roamed restlessly about the camp. Death, as a cessation of movement, as a passing out and away from the lives of the living, he knew, and he knew John Thornton was dead. It left a great void in him, somewhat akin to hunger, but a void which ached and ached, and which food could not fill, At times, when he paused to contemplate the carcasses of the Yeehats, he forgot the pain of it; and at such times he was aware of a great pride in himself,--a pride greater than any he had yet experienced. He had killed man, the noblest game of all, and he had killed in the face of the law of club and fang. He sniffed the bodies curiously. They had died so easily. It was harder to kill a husky dog than them. They were no match at all, were it not for their arrows and spears and clubs. Thenceforward he would be unafraid of them except when they bore in their hands their arrows, spears, and clubs. Night came on, and a full moon rose high over the trees into the sky, lighting the land till it lay bathed in ghostly day. And with the coming of the night, brooding and mourning by the pool, Buck became alive to a stirring of the new life in the forest other than that which the Yeehats had made, He stood up, listening and scenting. From far away drifted a faint, sharp yelp, followed by a chorus of similar sharp yelps. As the moments passed the yelps grew closer and louder. Again Buck knew them as things heard in that other world which persisted in his memory. He walked to the centre of the open space and listened. It was the call, the many- noted call, sounding more luringly and compellingly than ever before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was dead. The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him. Hunting their living meat, as the Yeehats were hunting it, on the flanks of the migrating moose, the wolf pack had at last crossed over from the land of streams and

Alex-Hay-The-Housekeepers.txt

the elbow. And I could snap you in two pieces and all. Mrs. Bone grinned like an idiot, and matched Cook’s pace: slow, slow, slow. * * * “And here’s your room,” said Cook, banging the door open. “You’ll be sharing with Sue.” Mrs. Bone could see an urchin peering at her from the shadows, wide-eyed and holding on to the washbasin for dear life. She looked pale and scaly, wracked by storms. Mrs. Bone felt her skin crawling. She hated sharing a bed. “All right, Sue?” said Cook. “All right,” replied the girl, voice husky. Mrs. Bone disliked the name Sue. It always made her feel edgy, as if there were static in her hair. Her own little girl had been called Susan. She tried to breathe it away. Cook fiddled with the water jug and the pail, straightening them, then straightening them again. “It’s lights-out at eleven, once you’ve put away the irons. Then we lock up.” Mrs. Bone frowned. “Lock up?” Cook was serene, halfway out the door. “We’ll be locking your bedroom doors at night.” Mrs. Bone banged her bag down on the bed. It managed a sorrowful sort of half bounce. “Nobody’s locking me in anywhere,” she said before she could help it. Mrs. Bone could hear bodies moving next door, girls coming in and out of their rooms. The light paused at the tiny window, unwilling to cross the threshold. She looked down at the purple-stained boards and saw grooves in the paintwork, nicks and cuts and spoiled varnish, as if someone had been dragging the furniture across the floor, barring the door. “We’ve had a lot of unpleasantness this month,” said Cook. “And it’s Madam’s orders.” Mrs. Bone could feel her heart thumping slowly, steadily. Madam. She repeated the name in her head. It made her feel the nearness of her own flesh and blood, the presence of Danny in the walls. She looked at the door and thought, He’s got me in a cage. “Well,” she said, with a monumental effort, “if them’s the rules.” Cook wrinkled her nose. “Good. Now put your things away, and report downstairs. Any questions?” Mrs. Bone imagined her prize, the vast booty glittering and clinking in the house beneath her. She pictured herself standing on top of Aladdin’s cave, filled to the brim with treasures. That was all that mattered: not her own memories, her own feelings. She sucked in her cheeks and practically curtseyed. “Oh, no, Cook,” she said. “Everything’s lovely.” 9 On the other side of town, Mrs. King and Hephzibah were holding rehearsals. Rather, Hephzibah was holding them. Mrs. King was there to keep the doors locked and a keen eye out for blabbers. She was glad of the distraction. Knowing Mrs. Bone was inside Park Lane, poking holes in the plan, making up her mind whether to invest or not, was putting Mrs. King on edge. She didn’t like loose threads. “Thank heavens you’re going with Hephzibah,” Winnie had said. “Why?” said Mrs. King. “You’d have a marvelous time. Hephzibah adores showing off for

The-Housekeepers.txt

herself from Cook, and the other servants, and make an immediate examination of the house. The lower offices were sufficiently warren-like that she could sneak upstairs without being observed. She entered the front hall first. It felt satisfying to start somewhere forbidden. There was a cathedral-like hush, light coming down through a glass dome above. Palms and ferns in great vases. A floor made of white marble. Gold on the door panels and crystal in the doorknobs. A lot of very disgusting and expensive things that Mrs. Bone rather liked: paintings of nude ladies, foxes stuffed till their eyes popped, stags screaming silently from their plinths. It wasn’t exactly the size of the place that caught her breath. It was the curve to it, the way it flowed upward, all glass and iron and light. It seemed frosted, iced, a lickable, kissable house. Her envy made her skin grow hot. The hall was connected to the gardens by a long, colonnaded passage and several glass-fronted doors. She remembered it from the schematics engraved on the soup tureen. Good, she thought. Easy access. But she wanted to inspect the garden exits properly. Remembering the maps Winnie had drawn up for her, she crept back downstairs. She sidled through the kitchen passage, passed the sculleries, pantries, laundry rooms, larders, still rooms, dry rooms, inched around the edge of the kitchen and into the mews, and scuttled straight for the mews door. She tested the handle. Not locked. She glanced back at the house. This was a clear run from the gardens. Helpful. Gently, keeping her eyes peeled for onlookers, she opened the mews door, and backed out into the lane. “Mrs. Bone.” Mrs. Bone’s heart jumped. “Christ alive.” Winnie Smith was hidden in the ivy. “I beg your pardon. Did I startle you?” Winnie peered at her, her cabbage-colored dress covered in detritus from the wall. “Nobody startles me,” said Mrs. Bone, catching her breath. “What d’you want?” “I come here to collect Alice’s daily report. I thought you might wish to share your first remarks.” “Oh, it’s remarks you want, is it? Heavens, let me just fetch my magnifying glass and look at my notes.” Mrs. Bone tutted. “I’ve only been here five minutes. Give me a whole day at least.” Winnie frowned, and Mrs. Bone sighed, lowering her voice. “Look, the way I see it, I’m going to be cooped up in the kitchens, shoved up the back stairs, or locked in the attics. If I’m going to assess this place, then you need to find me a reason to get into the good part of the house.” Winnie hesitated. “I’m sure you’ll find a way,” she said. Mrs. Bone gripped Winnie’s wrist. “I’m not going to be boiled like a load of old petticoats in the laundry room. You can find the way.” Winnie shook her off. “Very well,” she said, voice hardening. She paused to consider it. “They’d allow the daily woman upstairs if there was a cleaning job that the other girls couldn’t manage. Rough work, you know.” “I’m

David Copperfield.txt

in the night,' said Peggotty, 'when she asked me for some drink; and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient smile, the dear! - so beautiful! 'Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me, how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a happy man in hers. "Peggotty, my dear," she said then, "put me nearer to you," for she was very weak. "Lay your good arm underneath my neck," she said, "and turn me to you, for your face is going far off, and I want it to be near." I put it as she asked; and oh Davy! the time had come when my first parting words to you were true - when she was glad to lay her poor head on her stupid cross old Peggotty's arm - and she died like a child that had gone to sleep!' Thus ended Peggotty's narration. From the moment of my knowing of the death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the parlour. What Peggotty had told me now, was so far from bringing me back to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest. The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom. CHAPTER 10 I BECOME NEGLECTED, AND AM PROVIDED FOR The first act of business Miss Murdstone performed when the day of the solemnity was over, and light was freely admitted into the house, was to give Peggotty a month's warning. Much as Peggotty would have disliked such a service, I believe she would have retained it, for my sake, in preference to the best upon earth. She told me we must part, and told me why; and we condoled with one another, in all sincerity. As to me or my future, not a word was said, or a step taken. Happy they would have been, I dare say, if they could have dismissed me at a month's warning too. I mustered courage once, to ask Miss Murdstone when I was going back to school; and she answered dryly, she believed I was not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very anxious to know what was going to be done with me, and so was Peggotty; but neither she nor I could pick up

Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

know how,” Lilja said, and I went red and began to sputter, to hear it all spelled out so bluntly. “Oh! Don’t be silly,” Aslaug said simply, and gave me a hug. “We are as good as family now.” Then she went back to bustling about as if nothing had changed. As if it was nothing, what she’d said. Lilja smiled and squeezed my arm. “Some cake?” I nodded dumbly. Lilja pushed me into a chair and passed me a plate of cake, and I ate it. It was very good. The bottle of wine was polished off by Mord, who had spent most of the evening quietly beaming at everyone, particularly when they asked after his son, and telling the same story over and over, about how Ari had taken to putting unexpected objects into his mouth, including the tail of their longsuffering cat. No one seemed to mind. By the time all the hvitkag was gone, I was quite weary, and the clamour of so much company was not helping matters. To my relief, Wendell chose that moment to begin herding everyone out of the cottage, and one by one they went, donning cloaks and boots and wading out cheerfully into the blowy weather, curls of snowflakes spinning through the cottage in their wakes. Wendell glared at the snow and pressed the door closed with a grimace. “One more,” he said grimly, and I didn’t have to ask what he meant. Though I was not as relieved to be leaving Ljosland as he was—what I felt was a complicated tangle of things, topmost of which was melancholy. I would miss Lilja and Margret and the others. When had that ever happened before? I was beginning to wonder if the faerie king had changed me somehow. “Wendell,” I said as he neurotically adjusted the doormat, “I believe I know why the king’s spell—why it took when it did.” He raised his eyebrows. It was interesting—he was not exactly unattractive in this form, when you actually stopped to parse his appearance. It was mostly that he was muted, yet this did nothing to affect his natural grace, or indeed his ego. “Well.” I fumbled the words as I thought back to that night. “I was going to— After you asked me about—well—” “After I asked you to marry me,” he said in a tone I thought louder than necessary. “Yes,” I said, trying my hardest to keep my voice ordinary, as if we were talking about our research. I felt ridiculous. Any sane person would have already turned down his proposal. If there is one thing about which the stories, regardless of origin, agree, it is that marrying the Folk is a very bad idea. Romance generally is a bad idea where they are concerned; it hardly ever ends well. And what about my scientific objectivity? It is looking very tattered of late. “I—that night—I was thinking about it. And I suppose that’s my answer. That I would like to—well, continue thinking about it.” He gazed at me with an unreadable expression.

A Day of Fallen Night.txt

in the sanctuary for burial in Askrdal. Wulf said, ‘Was I really the only one who lived?’ ‘It appears so. The rest were burned, drowned or frozen. I sent divers and ships to look.’ He closed his eyes. ‘The Plague of Ófandauth is spreading,’ Einlek said. ‘The Nameless One brought a sickness from the Womb of Fire, a plague that beset the people of Yikala. It must have returned. Whatever attacked our king, we can be sure it serves our enemy. We will fight.’ ‘Nothing could defeat it, sire. No blade could have pierced its hide.’ ‘And no Hróthi dies a feather death,’ Einlek said firmly. ‘You were my uncle’s retainer. Now he is dead, you may leave with honour – or you can swear to me. A son of Hróth deserves a hall.’ Wulf clenched his jaw, his eyes aching. ‘If you accept, sail to Ascalun,’ Einlek said. ‘My cousin has relinquished her birthright to me, and for that, I owe her succour. You were on the Conviction. You can swear that Queen Sabran is dead, which will strengthen Glorian’s legitimacy. You can help her, Wulf.’ ‘You want me to go back on the Ashen Sea.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Sire, I don’t know if I can.’ ‘Don’t let that fear take root, or you’ll never move again.’ Einlek leaned forward, his knuckles blanching on the throne. ‘Hear me. Glorian is only sixteen, and she is now the divine head of Virtudom. She must have iron in her bones, and I must make it clear to those who circle her that Hróth will defend its beloved princess. You and your lith can help me do that.’ Glorian could wield a sword. She was strong. But Wulf had seen her gentleness, her hunger for approval. The nobles would smell opportunity in a young queen, yet to find her voice. ‘You can go home, tell your family you’re alive. Lift their sorrow,’ Einlek said. ‘First, will you pledge to me, and to the Queen of Inys?’ Wulf took several moments to restrain a violent shudder – a shudder with deep, tangled roots, born of a feeling still unnamed. Keeping hold of the crutch, he bent to one knee. ‘My king,’ he whispered, ‘as the Saint is my witness, I will.’ **** The ship did not look seaworthy; nothing in the harbour did. Grey waves crashed against weak hulls, and sails threatened to catch afire. Wulf hirpled towards a birling, the Wave Steed. The tastes of salt and bile swashed in his mouth. A Hróthi fighter could not fear the sea. Yet his palms sweated, and his stomach clenched. ‘Wulf?’ He looked up in a haze. Three people were waiting to board the Wave Steed, bundled in heavy furs. Karlsten, Thrit and Sauma – all that remained of his lith. It was Thrit who had called out to him. When Sauma saw, she stared, her lips parting. ‘Wulf,’ she breathed. Karlsten turned. His face ripened with anger, but Wulf was too weary to care. Before either of them could speak, Thrit stepped forward. His expression was guarded,

The Silmarillion.txt

counsel of Trin the Noldor built a mighty bridge over the Narog from the Doors of Felagund, for the swifter passage of their arms. Then the servants of Angband were driven out of all the land between Narog and Sirion eastward, and westward to the Nenning and the desolate Falas; and though Gwindor spoke ever against Trin in the council of the King, holding it an ill policy, he fell into dishonour and none heeded him, for his strength was small and he was no longer forward in arms. Thus Nargothrond was revealed to the wrath and hatred of Morgoth; but still at Trin's prayer his true name was not spoken, and though the fame of his deeds came into Doriath and to the ears of Thingol, rumour spoke only of the Black Sword of Nargothrond. *** In that time of respite and hope, when because of the deeds of the Mormegil the power of Morgoth was stemmed west of Sirion, Morwen fled at last from Dor-lmin with Nienor her daughter, and adventured the long journey to Thingol's halls. There new grief awaited her, for she found Trin gone, and to Doriath there had come no tidings since the Dragon-helm had vanished from the lands west of Sirion; but Morwen remained in Doriath with Nienor as guests of Thingol and Melian, and were treated with honour. Now it came to pass, when four hundred and ninety-five years had passed since the rising of the Moon, in the spring of the year, there came to Nargothrond two Elves, named Gelmir and Arminas; they were of Angrod's people, but since the Dagor Bragollach they dwelt in the south with Crdan the Shipwright. From their far journeys they brought tidings of a great mustering of Orcs and evil creatures under the eaves of Ered Wethrin and in the Pass of Sirion; and they told also that Ulmo had come to Crdan, giving warning that great peril drew nigh to Nargothrond. 'Hear the words of the Lord of Waters!' said they to the King. 'Thus he spoke to Crdan the Shipwright: 'The Evil of the North has defiled the springs of Sirion, and my power withdraws from the fingers of the flowing waters. But a worse thing is yet to come forth. Say therefore to the Lord of Nargothrond: Shut the doors of the fortress and go not abroad. Cast the stones of your pride into the loud river, that the creeping evil may not find the gate."' Orodreth was troubled by the dark words of the messengers, but Trin would by no means hearken to these counsels, and least of all would he suffer the great bridge to be cast down; for he was become proud and stern, and would order all things as he wished. Soon afterwards Handir Lord of Brethil was slain, for the Orcs invaded his land, and Handir gave them battle; but the Men of Brethil were worsted, and driven back into their woods. And in the autumn of the year, biding his hour, Morgoth loosed upon the people of Narog

Maame.txt

had to turn it down. The girl I’d be sharing with was too pretty.” A man with a worryingly lifelike parrot on his shoulder edges past me, but it’s central London on the weekend, so I don’t bat an eyelid. “You’ll have to walk me through that reasoning, Shu.” “She won’t admit it, but Lydia’s got a … what’s the British way to say it? My gran would say ‘sticky eye.’” “Wandering eye?” “Yeah, maybe. Anyway, I don’t want to feel insecure in my own home when my girlfriend’s round,” she says. “If only you were ready to move out, then we could find a nice two-bed place and have a good time from the start. You know to take your shoes off when you come in and I already know why your hair’s a hundred times shorter after you wash it.” I stop in the street. “Are you saying I’m not threateningly pretty?” “When you make an effort, yeah, but I got nothing to worry about ’cos you’re so innocent. When Lyd was looking at your chest, you told her where you got your jumper from.” “I thought she liked the button design.” “She did not.” “Maybe she did.” Shu sighs, which means she’s rolling her eyes. “Are you ready to move out or what?” I pause outside the church building. A warm, jealous pang hits my chest as I briefly think about what it would be like being responsible for only myself, for spending my time however I want. I immediately feel guilty and shake my head; it’s not Dad’s fault he needs me. “I like being at home. I don’t think that’ll change any time soon,” I say. Shu knows Dad has Parkinson’s, but she’s unaware of how serious it is. She regularly asks how Dad is and I always respond “Fine” and she hears the silent “… you know, considering,” but she doesn’t ask for specifics. Not because she doesn’t care, but because she’s just as private as I am—maybe more so. I think she asks herself, if the roles were reversed, would she want someone asking all the time? The answer is no. Shu sighs again. “Fine, fair. Enjoy church.” “Thanks. Love you.” She laughs and it’s a burst of energy. “You always gotta say it,” she says. “Why can’t you end a conversation without saying it?” “Just say you love me too and hang up.” “Yeah, you too.” * * * When Mum’s here, I join her at a small Pentecostal church in Croydon. There the pastor can easily make eye contact with any person from the pulpit and everyone knows too much about each other. When Mum’s in Ghana, I go to a church in central London. I found out about it because Shu goes here, not weekly, but “when I can, innit.” I liked that they called themselves a contemporary Christian church and that hundreds attend each sermon, guaranteeing anonymity. I attended one Sunday, alone because I preferred mornings whilst Shu preferred the evenings, and liked it enough to keep returning. The sermons are

The Hunger Games.txt

trying to keep straight when we’re supposedly friends and when we’re not. At least when we get into the arena, I’ll know where we stand. “Don’t. Don’t let’s pretend when there’s no one around.” 99 “All right, Katniss,” he says tiredly. After that, we only talk in front of people. On the third day of training, they start to call us out of lunch for our private sessions with the Gamemakers. District by dis- trict, first the boy, then the girl tribute. As usual, District 12 is slated to go last. We linger in the dining room, unsure where else to go. No one comes back once they have left. As the room empties, the pressure to appear friendly lightens. By the time they call Rue, we are left alone. We sit in silence until they summon Peeta. He rises. “Remember what Haymitch said about being sure to throw the weights.” The words come out of my mouth without per- mission. “Thanks. I will,” he says. “You . . . shoot straight.” I nod. I don’t know why I said anything at all. Although if I’m going to lose, I’d rather Peeta win than the others. Better for our district, for my mother and Prim. After about fifteen minutes, they call my name. I smooth my hair, set my shoulders back, and walk into the gymnasium. In- stantly, I know I’m in trouble. They’ve been here too long, the Gamemakers. Sat through twenty-three other demonstrations. Had too much to wine, most of them. Want more than any- thing to go home. There’s nothing I can do but continue with the plan. I walk to the archery station. Oh, the weapons! I’ve been itching to get my hands on them for days! Bows made of wood and plas- tic and metal and materials I can’t even name. Arrows with feathers cut in flawless uniform lines. I choose a bow, string it, 100 and sling the matching quiver of arrows over my shoulder. There’s a shooting range, but it’s much too limited. Standard bull’s-eyes and human silhouettes. I walk to the center of the gymnasium and pick my first target. The dummy used for knife practice. Even as I pull back on the bow I know some- thing is wrong. The string’s tighter than the one I use at home. The arrow’s more rigid. I miss the dummy by a couple of inch- es and lose what little attention I had been commanding. For a moment, I’m humiliated, then I head back to the bull’s-eye. I shoot again and again until I get the feel of these new wea- pons. Back in the center of the gymnasium, I take my initial posi- tion and skewer the dummy right through the heart. Then I sever the rope that holds the sandbag for boxing, and the bag splits open as it slams to the ground. Without pausing, I shoulder-roll forward, come up on one knee, and send an ar- row into one of the hanging lights high above the gymnasium floor. A shower of sparks bursts

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.txt

very moment the words I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the Vl'hurg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries. Eventually of course, after their Galaxy had been decimated over a few thousand years, it was realized that the whole thing had been a ghastly mistake, and so the two opposing battle fleets settled their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our own Galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark. For thousands more years the mighty ships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the first planet they came across - which happened to be the Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time, but that we are powerless to prevent it. "It's just life," they say. A short aircar trip brought Arthur and the old Magrathean to a doorway. They left the car and went through the door into a waiting room full of glass-topped tables and perspex awards. Almost immediately, a light flashed above the door at the other side of the room and they entered. "Arthur! You're safe!" a voice cried. "Am I?" said Arthur, rather startled. "Oh good." The lighting was rather subdued and it took him a moment or so to see Ford, Trillian and Zaphod sitting round a large table beautifully decked out with exotic dishes, strange sweetmeats and bizarre fruits. They were stuffing their faces. "What happened to you?" demanded Arthur. "Well," said Zaphod, attacking a boneful of grilled muscle, "our guests here have been gassing us and zapping our minds and being generally weird and have now given us a rather nice meal to make it up to us. Here," he said hoiking out a lump of evil smelling meat from a bowl, "have some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious if you happen to like that sort of thing." "Hosts?" said Arthur. "What hosts? I don't see any ..." A small voice said, "Welcome to lunch, Earth creature." Arthur glanced around and suddenly yelped. "Ugh!" he said. "There are mice on the table!" There was an awkward silence as everyone looked pointedly at Arthur. He was busy staring at two white mice sitting in what looked like whisky glasses on the table. He heard the silence and glanced around at everyone. "Oh!" he said, with sudden realization. "Oh, I'm sorry, I wasn't quite prepared for ..." "Let me introduce you," said Trillian. "Arthur this is Benji mouse." "Hi," said one of the mice. His whiskers stroked what must have been a touch sensitive panel on the inside of the whisky-glass like affair, and it moved forward slightly. "And this is Frankie mouse." The

The House of the Seven Gables.txt

forsaken as we are, some pew-door will be opened to us!" So Hepzibah and her brother made themselves, ready--as ready as they could in the best of their old-fashioned garments, which had hung on pegs, or been laid away in trunks, so long that the dampness and mouldy smell of the past was on them,--made themselves ready, in their faded bettermost, to go to church. They descended the staircase together,--gaunt, sallow Hepzibah, and pale, emaciated, age-stricken Clifford! They pulled open the front door, and stepped across the threshold, and felt, both of them, as if they were standing in the presence of the whole world, and with mankind's great and terrible eye on them alone. The eye of their Father seemed to be withdrawn, and gave them no encouragement. The warm sunny air of the street made them shiver. Their hearts quaked within them at the idea of taking one step farther. "It cannot be, Hepzibah!--it is too late," said Clifford with deep sadness. "We are ghosts! We have no right among human beings,--no right anywhere but in this old house, which has a curse on it, and which, therefore, we are doomed to haunt! And, besides," he continued, with a fastidious sensibility, inalienably characteristic of the man," it would not be fit nor beautiful to go! It is an ugly thought that I should be frightful to my fellow-beings, and that children would cling to their mothers' gowns at sight of me!" They shrank back into the dusky passage-way, and closed the door. But, going up the staircase again, they found the whole interior of the house tenfold, more dismal, and the air closer and heavier, for the glimpse and breath of freedom which they had just snatched. They could not flee; their jailer had but left the door ajar in mockery, and stood behind it to watch them stealing out. At the threshold, they felt his pitiless gripe upon them. For, what other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self! But it would be no fair picture of Clifford's state of mind were we to represent him as continually or prevailingly wretched. On the contrary, there was no other man in the city, we are bold to affirm, of so much as half his years, who enjoyed so many lightsome and griefless moments as himself. He had no burden of care upon him; there were none of those questions and contingencies with the future to be settled which wear away all other lives, and render them not worth having by the very process of providing for their support. In this respect he was a child, --a child for the whole term of his existence, be it long or short. Indeed, his life seemed to be standing still at a period little in advance of childhood, and to cluster all his reminiscences about that epoch; just as, after the torpor of a heavy blow, the sufferer's reviving consciousness goes back to a moment considerably behind the accident that stupefied him. He sometimes told

Tessa-Bailey-Unfortunately-Yours.txt

walked faster, wanting to get home. Something inside her was healing at a rapid rate, not only because of this love stampede that had totally trampled her beneath its hooves. But because she’d pushed for exactly what she needed and deserved. She’d accepted nothing less and the reward . . . It reminded her of the wild blooms that burst from all corners of the road-side stand. Colorful. Beautiful. Every time she looked at one of the bouquets, she saw something new, something different. She’d spent a long time on one side of a wall, with her fear of rejection, and August had been behind a different one. They couldn’t see each other until they’d both climbed over and met in the middle. In a sea of flowers. Or grapes, as it were. “What’ll it be? The roses or the lilies?” Natalie’s head came up, a puzzled expression on her face. She hadn’t narrowed it down to two options yet. Was the flower vendor speaking to her? A gentleman she hadn’t noticed before had approached from the opposite end of the shoulder. Wait . . . she recognized the man. It was August’s CO. Commander Zelnick. What was he doing back in St. Helena? The commander glanced at Natalie from the corner of his eye and nodded politely, but he obviously didn’t recognize her—and no wonder. Last time she met the man, she’d been in a skirt and blouse with perfectly coiffed hair and makeup. Currently, she was in a loose pair of boyfriend jeans, a tank top, and no bra, with sunburned cheeks, and she looked like she’d just been through a wind tunnel. She approached the CO slowly, intending to reintroduce herself and ask what had brought him back to St. Helena, but he spoke to the vendor first. “I’m not sure. I met her only once, but I think she’s more the roses type.” Was it possible . . . he was here to visit August and those flowers were for her? More than possible. It was likely. Who else could this man know in a town where he didn’t reside? As the flower salesman went about wrapping the roses in paper, Natalie approached, clearing her throat softly. “Excuse me, Commander Zelnick. It’s me. Natalie. August’s wife.” There was no way to stop the smile that spread across her mouth after saying those words, so she simply let it grow and held out her hand for a shake. “I think you’re buying me flowers?” After a moment of clear confusion, he merely looked chagrined. “I’m sorry.” He shook her hand once, firmly. “I didn’t recognize you.” I don’t recognize myself these days. At least all the new, good parts. Natalie nodded. “I thought as much.” She gestured to her dusty jeans. “We’ve spent some time out working in the vineyard today, cultivating the soil. I ran to the store to grab some ingredients for dinner—more than enough for three. I assume you’re on your way to see August?” “I am. Have to keep a soldier on his toes.” He

In the Lives of Puppets.txt

again, and I will remove your legs entirely.” The android glared at the ceiling. “It’ll be the l-last thing you d-do.” “Do you make such promises to all the pretty girls you meet?” Nurse Ratched asked. “I am not interested. Perhaps we could have had something, but I have since reassessed my opinion of you. Would you like to hear what I think?” “N-no.” “Oh. That is too bad because I am going to tell you anyway. You are—” “We’re not going to hurt you,” Vic said quietly. His knuckles popped as he squeezed his hands together. “My broom,” Rambo said. He beeped sadly as he nudged the two pieces on the ground. “You monster. What did it ever do to you besides hit you?” “Wh-where am I?” Vic glanced at him before looking away. The eyes, once dead and unseeing, were now trained on him, filled with a spark Vic had never seen before. “The forest.” “Wh-wh-what forest?” Vic frowned. “The big one. The one near the Scrap Yards.” He didn’t know how else to explain it. Surely, that would tell the android all he needed to know. It was just the forest. It should have been enough. It wasn’t. “Where is this f-forest?” “It does not have a name,” Nurse Ratched said. “At least not one I could find. Though, if my calculations are correct, the forest is located in a place that used to be known as Ory-Gone. Such a strange name. Speaking of strange names, you do not remember yours.” The android’s mouth tightened. “N-no.” “I expected as much. Your memories were wiped when you were decommissioned.” “He’s like us,” Rambo said nervously. He circled the table, giving it a wide berth as if he thought the android would come after him once more. “He doesn’t remember before coming to the forest.” “He is not like us,” Nurse Ratched said. “We are wonderful. He is a terrible patient. Stay still.” The android gave up struggling as Nurse Ratched loomed over him. “This will not hurt,” she said. “I need to make sure you are not going to explode and kill us all.” Her scanner came to life, the light starting at the android’s head and working its way down his body. It paused at his chest before continuing to his hips, legs, and feet. “There. See? That was not so bad. Here. Have a lollipop. Error. Lollipop distributor is—my word. We really need to fix that. Victor. I demand that you find me treats so that I may give them to my patients.” “Victor,” the android said, and Vic felt a chill run down his spine. “Your d-designation is V-victor.” “He can retain information,” Nurse Ratched said. “Good. That means the processing through his biochip is still mostly intact. Yes, he is Victor. I am Nurse Ratched. My main function is to provide medical care to preserve life at any cost. The tiny shrieking annoyance below us is Rambo. He assists by keeping everything clean.” Rambo waves his arms. “We’re all equally important. Hooray!” “Decommissioned,” the android said,

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

back through the wall, back through the Leaky Cauldron, now empty. Harry didn't speak at all as they walked down the road; he didn't even notice how much people were gawking at them on the Underground, laden as they were with all their funny-shaped packages, with the snowy owl asleep in its cage on Harry's lap. Up another escalator, out into Paddington station; Harry only realized where they were when Hagrid tapped him on the shoulder. "Got time fer a bite to eat before yer train leaves," he said. He bought Harry a hamburger and they sat down on plastic seats to eat them. Harry kept looking around. Everything looked so strange, somehow. "You all right, Harry? Yer very quiet," said Hagrid. Harry wasn't sure he could explain. He'd just had the best birthday of his life -- and yet -- he chewed his hamburger, trying to find the words. "Everyone thinks I'm special," he said at last. "All those people in the Leaky Cauldron, Professor Quirrell, Mr. Ollivander...but I don't know anything about magic at all. How can they expect great things? I'm famous and I can't even remember what I'm famous for. I don't know what happened when Vol-, sorry -- I mean, the night my parents died." Hagrid leaned across the table. Behind the wild beard and eyebrows he wore a very kind smile. "Don' you worry, Harry. You'll learn fast enough. Everyone starts at the beginning at Hogwarts, you'll be just fine, just be yerself. I know it's hard. Yeh've been singled out, an' that's always hard. But yeh'll have a great time at Hogwarts -- I did -- still do, 'smatter of fact." Hagrid helped Harry on to the train that would take him back to the Dursleys, then handed him an envelope. "Yer ticket fer Hogwarts, " he said. "First o' September -- King's Cross -- it's all on yer ticket. Any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter with yer owl, she'll know where to find me...See yeh soon, Harry." The train pulled out of the station. Harry wanted to watch Hagrid until he was out of sight; he rose in his seat and pressed his nose against the window, but he blinked and Hagrid had gone. CHAPTER SIX -- THE JOURNEY FROM PLATFORM NINE AND THREE-QUARTERS Harry's last month with the Dursleys wasn't fun. True, Dudley was now so scared of Harry he wouldn't stay in the same room, while Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn't shut Harry in his cupboard, force him to do anything, or shout at him -- in fact, they didn't speak to him at all. Half terrified, half furious, they acted as though any chair with Harry in it were empty. Although this was an improvement in many ways, it did become a bit depressing after a while. Harry kept to his room, with his new owl for company. He had decided to call her Hedwig, a name he had found in A History of Magic. His school books were very interesting. He lay on his bed reading

The-Lost-Bookshop.txt

that method of plotting a course for one’s life any more correct? I recalled something Lucinda had said to me before I left; that it didn’t matter whether the decision you made was right or wrong, as long as you made it. That’s what moved you along in life. In fact she had used the word ‘journey’ because she was still in her earth mother phase. Buying gifts was never exactly a forte of mine. A horrible panic always set in, followed by a gaping realisation that I knew absolutely nothing about the interior life of the person I was buying the present for. So I stuck to books as a rule. You couldn’t go wrong with a book. That wasn’t strictly true. I once bought my father a book about problem drinking, which he chose to use as kindling for the fire. But this time, I knew exactly what gift to get. ‘Would you like it gift-wrapped?’ the shop assistant asked. I nodded and took my debit card from my wallet, slotting it into the handheld machine. ‘Oh, can you just try popping it in again? Sometimes it does this,’ he said graciously. I popped it in again. Again it was declined. ‘Actually, I think I’ll put this on my credit card instead,’ I said, as if it was a choice. They’d wasted no time in cutting my funding, I realised. But as I watched him wrap the box in black paper with gold flourishes, I knew I would have robbed a bank (well, metaphorically) to get her this. I arrived at the house just after eight and, like I always did, I took a quick check around the side, just in case. Just in case what, Henry? That the bookshop with the manuscript inside has suddenly reappeared? I threw my eyes heavenward and shook my head. ‘Utter fantasist,’ I muttered to myself as I walked up the steps to the front door. I stopped mid-stride as I saw movement in the window. It was Martha in a sapphire blue evening gown cut low at the back, framing the large tattoo on her skin. Her bright blonde hair was styled in a braid that she wore like a crown around her head. I felt my knees weaken. It was no use. No matter how much I talked myself out of it when I was alone, as soon as I saw her, all of the feelings came flooding back. Then I saw him, the same guy I’d seen with her at Trinity. He was telling some anecdote that had everyone in stitches. He was older and balding, but clearly he had something I didn’t. ‘Reliability?’ a voice said, reading my mind. I looked up to find Madame Bowden standing in the front doorway, walking stick in one hand, cigarette in the other. ‘How long have you been there?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Are you coming inside, Mr Field?’ ‘Actually, I don’t think I can,’ I said. ‘I’ve just realised, um, I have a previous engagement. Perhaps you could give her this?’ I asked,

Rachel-Lynn-Solomon-Business-or-Pleasure.txt

Sucking lightly, and then harder as he fills me with a finger. After a few pumps, he slides upward again, stroking and rubbing and tracing and Jesus. Christ. I clutch him tighter because it’s all so good, even when he stumbles. Especially when he hears my breath catch and starts moving faster. Especially when he reaches over to the nightstand for the vibrator. But he doesn’t place it between my thighs right away. Instead, he flicks the ON switch and gives me a wicked smile. He leans in, lowering it to my mouth, holding it there for a few moments. The vibrations humming through me are a pleasant sensation, if a little ticklish. Then he sweeps it down to my neck. The silicone pulses across my skin in slow, increasingly satisfying bursts. “That’s—that’s really nice,” I say, and he grins like he knew just how nice it would feel. When he reaches my breasts, he teases them for a few moments before pressing the vibrator hard against one nipple, and then the other. My back arches, every muscle in my core clenching. Lower. Please. There’s a slight tickle as he moves the vibrator along my stomach, but it’s not nearly as strong as the anticipation. My body wants pleasure from him so badly, wants to shiver and tighten against him before exploding. My hips thrust forward, trying my best to urge him a little farther south. He sees exactly what I’m doing but doesn’t take the bait. “You said to go slow,” he whispers, drawing it upward, away from the one place I want it. A whine slips from my throat. “Fuck slow. Don’t make me beg you.” He just laughs, continuing his teasing. My stomach. Back up to my breasts. Down to my navel. I love it. I hate it. I want to throttle him and push his head between my thighs at the same time. “I might like to hear you beg,” he says. Finally, finally, he takes a break only to slick the vibe with lube, and when he settles it between my legs, I let out a sigh of relief. Followed immediately by a gasp. He kicks the speed up a notch. A stream of obscenities falls from my mouth as he alternates speed, pressure, location. All of it incredible. “Don’t stop,” I say when he finds exactly the right spot. “God— please—” “No way in hell,” he’s quick to reassure me, his own breaths coming faster. Shallower. I feel it, the heat building at the base of my spine. It’s going to happen this time, with him—I’m certain of it. I bury a fist in the sheets. He seems to read my mind and ups the speed once more, until nothing exists except my body and this feeling and the way his brow furrows with determination as he adjusts his weight so he can lean into me harder. Faster. Yes. Something rips open inside me, a moan tearing from my chest. It’s an exquisite release, one that makes me shake and whimper and clutch his hair. He

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.txt

singled out Trillian from the crowd. Trillian was a gird that Zaphod had picked up recently whilst visiting a planet, just for fun, incognito. She was slim, darkish, humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd little nob of a nose and ridiculously brown eyes. With her red head scarf knotted in that particular way and her long flowing silky brown dress she looked vaguely Arabic. Not that anyone there had ever heard of an Arab of course. The Arabs had very recently ceased to exist, and even when they had existed they were five hundred thousand light years from Damogran. Trillian wasn't anybody in particular, or so Zaphod claimed. She just went around with him rather a lot and told him what she thought of him. "Hi honey," he said to her. She flashed him a quick tight smile and looked away. Then she looked back for a moment and smiled more warmly - but by this time he was looking at something else. "Hi," he said to a small knot of creatures from the press who were standing nearby wishing that he would stop saying Hi and get on with the quotes. He grinned at them particularly because he knew that in a few moments he would be giving them one hell of a quote. The next thing he said though was not a lot of use to them. One of the officials of the party had irritably decided that the President was clearly not in a mood to read the deliciously turned speech that had been written for him, and had flipped the switch on the remote control device in his pocket. Away in front of them a huge white dome that bulged against the sky cracked down in the middle, split, and slowly folded itself down into the ground. Everyone gasped although they had known perfectly well it was going to do that because they had built it that way. Beneath it lay uncovered a huge starship, one hundred and fifty metres long, shaped like a sleek running shoe, perfectly white and mindboggingly beautiful. At the heart of it, unseen, lay a small gold box which carried within it the most brain-wretching device ever conceived, a device which made this starship unique in the history of the galaxy, a device after which the ship had been named - The Heart of Gold. "Wow", said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn't much else he could say. He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press. "Wow." The crowd turned their faces back towards him expectantly. He winked at Trillian who raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes at him. She knew what he was about to say and thought him a terrible showoff. "That is really amazing," he said. "That really is truly amazing. That is so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it." A marvellous Presidential quote, absolutely true to form. The crowd laughed appreciatively, the newsmen gleefully punched buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics and the

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

raised his hat in acknowledgement. --Freedom! Cranly repeated. But you are not free enough yet to commit a sacrilege. Tell me would you rob? --I would beg first, Stephen said. --And if you got nothing, would you rob? --You wish me to say, Stephen answered, that the rights of property are provisional, and that in certain circumstances it is not unlawful to rob. Everyone would act in that belief. So I will not make you that answer. Apply to the jesuit theologian, Juan Mariana de Talavera, who will also explain to you in what circumstances you may lawfully Kill your king and whether you had better hand him his poison in a goblet or smear it for him upon his robe or his saddlebow. Ask me rather would I suffer others to rob me, or if they did, would I call down upon them what I believe is called the chastisement of the secular arm? --And would you? --I think, Stephen said, it would pain me as much to do so as to be robbed. --I see, Cranly said. He produced his match and began to clean the crevice between two teeth. Then he said carelessly: --Tell me, for example, would you deflower a virgin? --Excuse me, Stephen said politely, is that not the ambition of most young gentlemen? --What then is your point of view? Cranly asked. His last phrase, sour smelling as the smoke of charcoal and disheartening, excited Stephen's brain, over which its fumes seemed to brood. --Look here, Cranly, he said. You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do. I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use-- silence, exile, and cunning. Cranly seized his arm and steered him round so as to lead him back towards Leeson Park. He laughed almost slyly and pressed Stephen's arm with an elder's affection. --Cunning indeed! he said. Is it you? You poor poet, you! --And you made me confess to you, Stephen said, thrilled by his touch, as I have confessed to you so many other things, have I not? --Yes, my child, Cranly said, still gaily. --You made me confess the fears that I have. But I will tell you also what I do not fear. I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave whatever I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, a lifelong mistake, and perhaps as long as eternity too. Cranly, now grave again, slowed his pace and said: --Alone, quite alone. You have no fear of that. And you know what that word means? Not only to be

Wuthering Heights.txt

Don't make more mischief. My brother is coming; be quiet!---Hush, Isabella! Has anybody hurt you?" "There, there, children; to your seats," cried Hind- ley, bustling in. "That brute of a lad has warmed me nicely. Next time, Master Edgar, take the law into your own fists; it will give you an appetite." The little party recovered its equanimity at sight of the fragrant feast. They were hungry after their ride, and easily consoled, since no real harm had befallen them. Mr. Earnshaw carved bountiful platefuls, and the mistress made them merry with lively talk. I waited behind her chair, and was pained to behold Catherine, with dry eyes and an indifferent air, commence cutting up the wing of a goose before her. "An unfeeling child," I thought to myself; "how lightly she dismisses her old playmate's troubles! I could not have imagined her to be so selfish." She lifted a mouthful to her lips, then she set it down again; her cheeks flushed, and the tears gushed over them. She slipped her fork to the floor, and hastily dived under the cloth to conceal her emotion. I did not call her unfeeling long, for I perceived she was in purgatory throughout the day, and wearying to find an opportunity of getting by herself, or paying a visit to Heathcliff, who had been locked up by the master, as I discovered, on endeavouring to introduce to him a private mess of victuals. In the evening we had a dance. Cathy begged that he might be liberated then, as Isabella Linton had no partner. Her entreaties were vain, and I was appointed to supply the deficiency. We got rid of all gloom in the excitement of the exercise, and our pleasure was in- creased by the arrival of the Gimmerton band, muster- ing fifteen strong---a trumpet, a trombone, clarionets, bassoons, French horns, and a bass viol, besides singers. They go the rounds of all the respectable houses, and receive contributions every Christmas, and we esteemed it a first-rate treat to hear them. After the usual carols had been sung, we set them to songs and glees. Mrs. Earnshaw loved the music, and so they gave us plenty. Catherine loved it too, but she said it sounded sweet- est at the top of the steps, and she went up in the dark; I followed. They shut the house door below, never noting our absence, it was so full of people. She made no stay at the stairs' head, but mounted farther to the garret where Heathcliff was confined, and called him. He stubbornly declined answering for a while; she per- severed, and finally persuaded him to hold communion with her through the boards. I let the poor things con- verse unmolested, till I supposed the songs were going to cease, and the singers to get some refreshment; then I clambered up the ladder to warn her. Instead of find- ing her outside, I heard her voice within. The little monkey had crept by the skylight of one garret, along the roof, into the skylight of

How to Sell a Haunted House.txt

without reservation, without hesitation, but Louise wasn’t born knowing how to do that for someone else. These stuffed animals were how she had first learned to love something that couldn’t always love you back. They were how she had learned to take care of something that relied on you completely. They had been training wheels for her heart, and now it was Poppy’s turn. It was up to Poppy to keep them clean and loved and warm and, one day, maybe Poppy would pass them on to her children, or her godchildren, or her best friend’s children, or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d get tired of them before then. But no matter what, Louise had done her part. It was up to Poppy now. — They had Uncle Freddie’s funeral in October. Louise and Poppy flew in for it and stayed with Aunt Honey, which thrilled her to no end. At first, Louise thought Aunt Honey’s warmth was all an act, so she waited until one night after Poppy had gone to bed and poured them both another glass of wine. “I want to apologize for what happened in your room that night at the hospital,” Louise started. Aunt Honey blew a raspberry. “I don’t even remember,” she said, waving one hand in front of her face. “I was doped up on drugs. Let’s talk about something that’s actually interesting. Do you think Constance is having another baby? Does she look pregnant to you? She’s not drinking.” It had taken forever to get a judge to sign an exhumation license to dig up Freddie’s empty casket and rebury his remains, and there had been a lot of other legal hurdles to clear, but finally, sixty-eight years after his death, the Joyner-Cook-Cannon family gathered in the graveyard at Stuhr’s and laid Uncle Freddie to rest beside his sister. They gathered around the green open-sided tent in the cemetery, standing by the newly dug hole in the family plot, and everyone had a blast. Aunt Gail led the prayers, and Mark hired a bagpiper to play “Amazing Grace” for reasons no one could comprehend, and even Barb showed up. “Look at her, she’s like a delicious miniature muffin!” Barb said, lifting Poppy in her arms and mashing their cheeks together. “I want to eat her up!” Louise could tell Poppy had no clue who Barb was, but she liked the attention, so she accepted the hug and treated her like another aunt. It reminded Louise of the way her mom had so easily accepted other people’s attention. She remembered how at ease that had always seemed to make them feel. Each of them threw a handful of dirt on Freddie’s coffin, and somehow Brody managed to slip and fall in the hole, although, fortunately, he didn’t break anything, and as the service wound down, it turned out that Constance happened to have a bunch of cans of hard seltzer and two bottles of wine in her minivan, and people poured one into the other, and the funeral home didn’t seem to be telling them

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.txt

this time it was a background to a news announcement. The news was always heavily edited to fit the rhythms of the music. "... and news brought to you here on the sub-etha wave band, broadcasting around the galaxy around the clock," squawked a voice, "and we'll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere ... and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys. And of course, the big news story tonight is the sensational theft of the new Improbability Drive prototype ship by none other than Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox. And the question everyone's asking is ... has the big Z finally flipped? Beeblebrox, the man who invented the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, ex-confidence trickster, once described by Eccentrica Gallumbits as the Best Bang since the Big One, and recently voted the Wort Dressed Sentinent Being in the Known Universe for the seventh time ... has he got an answer this time? We asked his private brain care specialist Gag Halfrunt ..." The music swirled and dived for a moment. Another voice broke in, presumably Halfrunt. He said: "Vell, Zaphod's jist zis guy you know?" but got no further because an electric pencil flew across the cabin and through the radio's on/off sensitive airspace. Zaphod turned and glared at Trillian - she had thrown the pencil. "Hey," he said, what do you do that for?" Trillian was tapping her fingers on a screenful of figures. "I've just thought of something," she said. "Yeah? Worth interrupting a news bulletin about me for?" "You hear enough about yourself as it is." "I'm very insecure. We know that." "Can we drop your ego for a moment? This is important." "If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now." Zaphod glared at her again, then laughed. "Listen," she said, "we picked up those couple of guys ..." "What couple of guys?" "The couple of guys we picked up." "Oh, yeah," said Zaphod, "those couple of guys." "We picked them up in sector ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha." "Yeah?" said Zaphod and blinked. Trillian said quietly, "Does that mean anything to you?" "Mmmmm," said Zaphod, "ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha. ZZ 9 Plural Z Alpha?" "Well?" said Trillian. "Er ... what does the Z mean?" said Zaphod. "Which one?" "Any one." One of the major difficulties Trillian experienced in her relationship with Zaphod was learning to distinguish between him pretending to be stupid just to get people off their guard, pretending to be stupid because he couldn't be bothered to think and wanted someone else to do it for him, pretending to be outrageously stupid to hide the fact that he actually didn't understand what was going on, and really being genuinely stupid. He was renowned for being amazingly clever and quite clearly was so - but not all the time, which obviously worried him, hence the act. He proffered people to be puzzled rather than contemptuous. This above all appeared to Trillian to be genuinely stupid, but she

Rachel-Lynn-Solomon-Business-or-Pleasure.txt

expecting Finn to have such a strong reaction, but his eyes instantly light up. “Yes! I love that.” My fingers fly across the keyboard as we talk more about his transition from Reno to LA, and he tells me about the first time he got recognized in public. “I was at a Ralphs in the Valley, waiting in line to buy an absolutely horrific array of groceries,” he says. “Pop-Tarts, frozen Red Robin onion rings, a whole tray of fancy cheeses I was going to eat by myself—that’s what happens when you’re twenty and living alone for the first time. These two girls who couldn’t have been more than a few years younger than I was couldn’t stop staring, and I was convinced they were judging me for what I was buying, so I kept trying to shield my basket from them. It wasn’t until we were out in the parking lot that they asked if I was Finn Walsh, and I was so shocked that I forgot where I’d parked my car. Walked around in a daze for fifteen minutes, just trying to find it.” “What was that like?” I ask, grinning at the mental image. “The getting recognized, and the living alone for the first time.” “Surreal. To be honest, I’m still not used to it. And not just because it’s less frequent these days. When the show was on, I had to go incognito just about everywhere—sunglasses, a hat, the works. Now I don’t bother with any of it. The rare times it happens, I’m always convinced, like, one of the Stranger Things kids is behind me and that’s who they’re really staring at.” That seems accurate, based on what I’ve observed so far. No one seems to know him unless they know him, unless they’re in that world. “And I guess I should clarify—I had a couple roommates at first, but they worked restaurants in the evenings and auditioned during the day, so I almost never saw them. At the end of season one, I moved into my own apartment. And I loved it. I’d already been fairly self-sufficient for a while, so once I got all the Pop-Tarts out of my system, I was cooking pretty regularly. And I went back to Reno to see my mom whenever I could.” The sound of my keyboard continues to fill the space between us. “I’d love to hear more about your family,” I say tentatively, because I haven’t forgotten what he said about his dad, and the fact that he doesn’t mention going back to see him. Another few taps of his pen along the table. “Let’s see . . . you already know they got divorced when I was in high school. My mom used to do hospital billing, but now she’s a rabbi.” I gasp. “Are you serious? That’s amazing. We can put that in the book, right? Please don’t tell her I eat pork.” “She wouldn’t judge,” he says. “And you’ll actually meet her in a few weeks. We’ll spend some time at my old house

Pride And Prejudice.txt

formerly passed some years of her life, and where they were now to spend a few days, was probably as great an object of her curiosity, as all the celebrated beauties of Matlock, Chatsworth, Dovedale, or the Peak. Elizabeth was excessively disappointed; she had set her heart on seeing the Lakes; and still thought there might have been time enough. But it was her business to be satisfied -- and certainly her temper to be happy; and all was soon right again. With the mention of Derbyshire, there were many ideas connected. It was impossible for her to see the word without thinking of Pemberley and its owner. ``But surely,'' said she, ``I may enter his county with impunity, and rob it of a few petrified spars without his perceiving me.'' The period of expectation was now doubled. Four weeks were to pass away before her uncle and aunt's arrival. But they did pass away, and Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, with their four children, did at length appear at Longbourn. The children, two girls of six and eight years old, and two younger boys, were to be left under the particular care of their cousin Jane, who was the general favourite, and whose steady sense and sweetness of temper exactly adapted her for attending to them in every way -- teaching them, playing with them, and loving them. The Gardiners staid only one night at Longbourn, and set off the next morning with Elizabeth in pursuit of novelty and amusement. One enjoyment was certain -- that of suitableness as companions; a suitableness which comprehended health and temper to bear inconveniences -- cheerfulness to enhance every pleasure -- and affection and intelligence, which might supply it among themselves if there were disappointments abroad. It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire, nor of any of the remarkable places through which their route thither lay; Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenelworth, Birmingham, &c. are sufficiently known. A small part of Derbyshire is all the present concern. To the little town of Lambton, the scene of Mrs. Gardiner's former residence, and where she had lately learned that some acquaintance still remained, they bent their steps, after having seen all the principal wonders of the country; and within five miles of Lambton, Elizabeth found from her aunt that Pemberley was situated. It was not in their direct road, nor more than a mile or two out of it. In talking over their route the evening before, Mrs. Gardiner expressed an inclination to see the place again. Mr. Gardiner declared his willingness, and Elizabeth was applied to for her approbation. ``My love, should not you like to see a place of which you have heard so much?'' said her aunt. ``A place too, with which so many of your acquaintance are connected. Wickham passed all his youth there, you know.'' Elizabeth was distressed. She felt that she had no business at Pemberley, and was obliged to assume a disinclination for seeing it. She must own that she was tired of great houses; after

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

the compartment and tipped it onto an empty seat. "Hungry, are you?" "Starving," said Harry, taking a large bite out of a pumpkin pasty. Ron had taken out a lumpy package and unwrapped it. There were four sandwiches inside. He pulled one of them apart and said, "She always forgets I don't like corned beef." "Swap you for one of these," said Harry, holding up a pasty. "Go on -- " "You don't want this, it's all dry," said Ron. "She hasn't got much time," he added quickly, "you know, with five of us." "Go on, have a pasty," said Harry, who had never had anything to share before or, indeed, anyone to share it with. It was a nice feeling, sitting there with Ron, eating their way through all Harry's pasties, cakes, and candies (the sandwiches lay forgotten). "What are these?" Harry asked Ron, holding up a pack of Chocolate Frogs. "They're not really frogs, are they?" He was starting to feel that nothing would surprise him. "No," said Ron. "But see what the card is. I'm missing Agrippa." "What?" "Oh, of course, you wouldn't know -- Chocolate Frogs have cards, inside them, you know, to collect -- famous witches and wizards. I've got about five hundred, but I haven't got Agrippa or Ptolemy." Harry unwrapped his Chocolate Frog and picked up the card. It showed a man's face. He wore half-moon glasses, had a long, crooked nose, and flowing silver hair, beard, and mustache. Underneath the picture was the name Albus Dumbledore. "So this is Dumbledore!" said Harry. "Don't tell me you'd never heard of Dumbledore!" said Ron. "Can I have a frog? I might get Agrippa -- thanks -- " Harry turned over his card and read: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE CURRENTLY HEADMASTER OF HOGWARTS Considered by many the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling. Harry turned the card back over and saw, to his astonishment, that Dumbledore's face had disappeared. "He's gone!" "Well, you can't expect him to hang around all day," said Ron. "He'll be back. No, I've got Morgana again and I've got about six of her...do you want it? You can start collecting." Ron's eyes strayed to the pile of Chocolate Frogs waiting to be unwrapped. "Help yourself," said Harry. "But in, you know, the Muggle world, people just stay put in photos." "Do they? What, they don't move at all?" Ron sounded amazed. "weird!" Harry stared as Dumbledore sidled back into the picture on his card and gave him a small smile. Ron was more interested in eating the frogs than looking at the Famous Witches and Wizards cards, but Harry couldn't keep his eyes off them. Soon he had not only Dumbledore and Morgana, but Hengist of Woodcroft, Alberic Grunnion, Circe, Paracelsus, and Merlin. He finally tore his eyes away from the druidess Cliodna,

Hell Bent.txt

the stone around the doorway blackened and smoking, as if the building had exhaled a deep sooty breath. The fire on the hedges and grass had been extinguished—flattened by Turner’s roots. The mighty oak. As she watched, they seemed to retract. Her snakes had vanished too. She couldn’t untangle the mess of fear and triumph she felt. The magic had worked, but what were its limits? They wouldn’t be safe until those demons were back in their jar with the lid screwed on tight, and just how were they going to manage that? And how were they going to explain this to the Praetor and the board? She’d been bold enough claiming Il Bastone was her house, but she wasn’t even a member of Lethe anymore. “Find the others,” said Turner. “I’ll talk to the hose haulers. I called it in and I’m still police even if you’re both…” “Banished?” offered Alex. It was possible the Praetor wouldn’t even realize they’d been at Il Bastone since the fire had started outside. But if he took more than a cursory glance inside, he was going to see the leftovers of their dinner and anything else they’d left behind. She wasn’t sure how serious Anselm had been about criminal trespassing and she didn’t want to find out. Mercy, Tripp, and Dawes were waiting in the alley, stamping their feet in the cold. “You’re all right?” she asked as she approached. “Alex,” said Tripp, bracing his hands on her shoulders. “That was sick. They actually ran from you! Spenser looked like he was going to shit himself.” Alex pried his hands free. “Okay, okay. But they aren’t done with us. We all need to stay alert. And you need to remember that’s not Spenser.” “Absolutely,” said Tripp with a somber nod. “Still fucking cool.” Mercy rolled her eyes. “How bad does the house look?” “It isn’t terrible,” Dawes said hoarsely. “Hopefully the firefighters will tell Turner the extent of the damage.” “You sound like shit,” said Tripp. Mercy blew out an exasperated breath. “I think what he means is that it sounds like you inhaled a lot of smoke.” “There’s an ambulance,” said Alex. “You should get checked out.” “I don’t want anyone knowing we were here,” objected Dawes. Alex didn’t like the relief she felt at that, but she was glad Turner was willing to cover for them and that Dawes was willing to go along. The firefighters and paramedics had been joined by two black-andwhites, and Alex saw Professor Walsh-Whiteley, bundled up in a long overcoat and a dapper little cap, approaching Turner, who was talking to two uniformed cops. “The Praetor’s here,” Alex said. Dawes sighed. “Should we talk to him? Try to explain?” Alex made eye contact with Turner, but he gave the faintest shake of his head. The old Alex wondered if he was covering his own ass, laying a trail of trouble that would lead away from him and directly to her and Dawes. They’d make easy scapegoats. And it was Alex who had brought them back to Il

Dracula.txt

went to look at poor Lucy. The undertaker had certainly done his work well, for the room was turned into a small chapelle ardente. There was a wilderness of beautiful white flowers, and death was made as little repulsive as might be. The end of the winding sheet was laid over the face. When the Professor bent over and turned it gently back, we both started at the beauty before us. The tall wax candles showing a sufficient light to note it well. All Lucy's loveliness had come back to her in death, and the hours that had passed, instead of leaving traces of `decay's effacing fingers', had but restored the beauty of life, till positively I could not believe my eyes that I was looking at a corpse. The Professor looked sternly grave. He had not loved her as I had, and there was no need for tears in his eyes. He said to me, "Remain till I return," and left the room. He came back with a handful of wild garlic from the box waiting in the hall, but which had not been opened, and placed the flowers amongst the others on and around the bed. Then he took from his neck, inside his collar, a little gold crucifix, and placed it over the mouth. He restored the sheet to its place, and we came away. I was undressing in my own room, when, with a premonitory tap at the door, he entered, and at once began to speak. "Tomorrow I want you to bring me, before night, a set of post-mortem knives." "Must we make an autopsy?" I asked. "Yes and no. I want to operate, but not what you think. Let me tell you now, but not a word to another. I want to cut off her head and take out her heart. Ah! You a surgeon, and so shocked! You, whom I have seen with no tremble of hand or heart, do operations of life and death that make the rest shudder. Oh, but I must not forget, my dear friend John, that you loved her, and I have not forgotten it for is I that shall operate, and you must not help. I would like to do it tonight, but for Arthur I must not. He will be free after his father's funeral tomorrow, and he will want to see her, to see it. Then, when she is coffined ready for the next day, you and I shall come when all sleep. We shall unscrew the coffin lid, and shall do our operation, and then replace all, so that none know, save we alone." "But why do it at all? The girl is dead. Why mutilate her poor body without need? And if there is no necessity for a post-mortem and nothing to gain by it, no good to her, to us, to science, to human knowledge, why do it? Without such it is monstrous." For answer he put his hand on my shoulder, and said, with infinite tenderness, "Friend John, I pity your poor bleeding

Frankenstein.txt

the overthrow so complete! Morning, dismal and wet, at length dawned and discovered to my sleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple and clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates of the court, which had that night been my asylum, and I issued into the streets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the wretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my view. I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt impelled to hurry on, although drenched by the rain which poured from a black and comfortless sky. I continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring by bodily exercise to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I traversed the streets without any clear conception of where I was or what I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear, and I hurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me: Like one who, on a lonely road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And, having once turned round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread. [Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner."] Continuing thus, I came at length opposite to the inn at which the various diligences and carriages usually stopped. Here I paused, I knew not why; but I remained some minutes with my eyes fixed on a coach that was coming towards me from the other end of the street. As it drew nearer I observed that it was the Swiss diligence; it stopped just where I was standing, and on the door being opened, I perceived Henry Clerval, who, on seeing me, instantly sprung out. "My dear Frankenstein," exclaimed he, "how glad I am to see you! How fortunate that you should be here at the very moment of my alighting!" Nothing could equal my delight on seeing Clerval; his presence brought back to my thoughts my father, Elizabeth, and all those scenes of home so dear to my recollection. I grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot my horror and misfortune; I felt suddenly, and for the first time during many months, calm and serene joy. I welcomed my friend, therefore, in the most cordial manner, and we walked towards my college. Clerval continued talking for some time about our mutual friends and his own good fortune in being permitted to come to Ingolstadt. "You may easily believe," said he, "how great was the difficulty to persuade my father that all necessary knowledge was not comprised in the noble art of bookkeeping; and, indeed, I believe I left him incredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied entreaties was the same as that of the Dutch schoolmaster in The Vicar of Wakefield: `I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat heartily without Greek.' But his affection for me at length overcame his dislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a

Moby Dick; Or, The Whale.txt

this sufficiently proclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud warrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had scoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer snuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now hunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon of the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look at the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have credited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and half believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers of the Air. Tashtego was Stubb the second mate's squire. Third among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black .. <p 118 > negro-savage, with a lion-like tread --an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended from his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called them ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to them. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler, lying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been anywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors most frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold life of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what manner of men they shipped; daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues, and erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six feet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at him; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to beg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro, Ahasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Flask, who looked like a chess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Pequod's company, be it said, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men before the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans born, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same with the American whale fishery as with the American army and military and merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the construction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say, because in all these cases the native American liberally provides the brains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No small number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the outward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews from the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the Greenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland Islands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage homewards, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling, but Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all Islanders in the Pequod, Isolatoes too,

A-Living-Remedy.txt

that takes little responsibility for the health and well-being of its citizens while urging us to blame each other—and ourselves—for our precarity under an exploitative system in which all but a small number of us stand to suffer or lose much. A country that first abandons and then condemns people without money who have the temerity to get sick, accusing them of causing their own deaths. It is still hard for me not to think of my father’s death as a kind of negligent homicide, facilitated and sped by the state’s failure to fulfill its most basic responsibilities to him and others like him. With our broken safety net, our strained systems of care and support, the deep and corrosive inequalities we have yet to address, it’s no wonder that so many of us find ourselves alone, struggling to get the help we need when we or our loved ones are suffering. What killed my father, on paper, was diabetes and kidney failure: common indeed, the eighth- and tenth-leading causes of death in the United States in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control. But failing organs, life-threatening infections, death in his sixties—these were not inevitable outcomes, nor matters of pure chance and inheritance, an avalanche of genetic misfortune. He needed access to quality health care in order to manage and treat his illnesses. He needed it throughout his life, not only in his final years, when it was granted as a crisis response only after his kidneys had failed. His mother lived longer and had greater access to life-prolonging treatment in the 1960s and 1970s than her son had in the twenty-first century. * * * For her part, for reasons I will never comprehend, my mother assigns herself some blame. She knew that he was slowing down. Should she have realized that his death was close? Had she missed important signs? If she had known more, could she have done more for him? I beg her not to think that way. It’s not her fault. She worked so hard to take care of him. I want to ask if she or Dad blamed me for being so far away. For not being able to help more. I realize that I am afraid to hear the answer, and the question seems too great a burden to add to the ones she already carries. What I feel is not pure self-recrimination—I know his illness wasn’t my fault, either. But the regret and anger I bear is a constant ache, fierce and gnawing and deep, so entwined with my grief that I cannot begin to parse where one feeling ends and another begins. 9 After my father died, his sister asked my mother when she would be shipping his body “home.” Mom was so confused that she had to repeat the question. My parents had spent all but the first few years of their married life in Oregon, and still his family considered Ohio not only Dad’s true home but his final resting place. When Mom told me this upon my arrival

The-Last-Sinner.txt

mean.” She was nodding, a smile playing upon her lips. “I have a cute story about her. . . .” Kristi managed a nod and a smile though she couldn’t give two cents about any of the felines this woman found so fascinating. Fortunately, before Dana could launch into more oh-so-fascinating anecdotes about her cats, the producer’s assistant returned. Flushed faced, she apologized. “I know this is highly irregular,” she said, then cast a disparaging glance through the door to the maze of hallways beyond. “But Mrs. Cooke, though she agreed to do the segment, is refusing to wait here in the green room, so we’ve shuffled things around and Dr. and Mrs. Cooke will be interviewed in the first segment.” She glanced from a clipboard to Kristi. “You’re next—as planned—and then, if Mr. Bigelow doesn’t arrive, there will be a segment that’s been prerecorded about the renovations to the riverboats and the final segment will be you.” She nodded at Dana Metcalf. “For the cat expo this weekend. We’ll wrap up with that.” She glanced up. “Renee-Claire and my producer have already approved the changes and we’re set to roll. Okay with you all?” “Yes, of course,” Cat Woman said. “But if you need anyone to fill in more time, I’ve got three lovely cats—one of them a prizewinner in the SFC—Southland Feline Competition—available. They’re all in the car with my husband. He could bring them in. I thought the viewers would like—” “This one’s fine,” the assistant said, pointing with her pen at Mr. Precious. “One cat.” “I know, but—” “Just one. Her.” Dana said quickly, “Mr. Precious is a he.” “Fine. Him then. I’ll be back to take you to the set at the breaks.” Jen glanced at the clock on the wall. “God, where is Tom Bigelow?” She was texting furiously on her phone again as she exited, the door shutting behind her. “Well.” Dana let out a little huff and pursed her lips. “Okay, I guess,” then to Kristi, “Mr. Precious can’t handle all this stress. He’s a real professional, though I have to be careful with him, you know.” Kristi didn’t. Nor did she care. The cat hadn’t moved an inch on his pillow and seemed content to stare at Kristi with wide green eyes. “He’s a champion breeder—oh, my God—so good. The queens? The female cats? They adore him. He’s very popular.” She was nodding and ran a finger along the fringe of the satin pillow. “And this? We call it his throne.” She actually tittered. “It’s chilled.” Nodding, she added, “Uh-huh. To protect his, you know, privates, to keep him in good shape. For the ladies.” Okay. TMI. Why were they even having this conversation? Kristi wondered if the woman was putting her on or just a bona fide kook. Either way, she wasn’t interested in Mr. Precious’s love life and quickly turned her attention to her phone to end the conversation. Like right now! Get me out of here, she thought just as the assistant brought in Tom Bigelow, the missing jazz musician

Pineapple Street.txt

made the girl’s best friend, now thirteen, testify that the dead girl had sneaked into R-rated movies. This apparently meant she was mature enough (“sexually active,” they said) at twelve that anyone could have killed her, not just the bus driver who had the nude photos. There was a man they let out on a technicality (a paperwork error) who went free in just enough time to show up, to her family’s horror, at the graveside service of the girlfriend he’d strangled. There was a boy who was not charged with involuntary manslaughter for pushing his father off a restaurant deck—because the system worked for him as it should work for everyone. When they brought him in for questioning, they gave him a blanket and hot chocolate. They understood that he was a child. There was a man who got away with it because five Black, trans women found dead in the same park in one year must have been coincidence, a sign that it was a seedy park. They never even looked for him. In the ’90s there was a case where the state declined to press charges against the family friend whose semen had been found in the mouth and vagina and anus of the murdered eleven-year-old. The state’s attorney didn’t feel there was enough evidence. The girl might have been sitting on a bed where he’d previously masturbated, and eaten some popcorn there, and gotten his semen in her mouth. “This is how we get colds,” the man said. “We touch something, we touch our face. And then a little girl goes to the bathroom, and what does she do? She wipes herself, front to back, like this.” And on live TV, in some marbled court hallway, he squatted low, swiped his hand between the legs of his suit pants. 38 The defense rested after they questioned Robbie, and the state introduced no witnesses of their own. They spent the following day making arguments, the state again saying I had influenced people, this time manipulating Beth. I would have been allowed back into the courtroom for the closing arguments, but Amy didn’t think that would be a good idea; she told me to fly home, and the whole thing ended when I was in the air somewhere over the Rockies. When I landed, I had a voicemail from Amy telling me she thought it had gone very well. Now the judge would take it all “under advisement,” and in one to six months, Amy thought, we’d hear if he’d decided to vacate the original verdict. The day I got home, I checked my email and found a note from a young woman in Salem, Oregon. You knew her when she was a student in Providence. Paula Gutierrez; I’m sure the name rings a bell. She was hoping I could get a note to Beth Docherty, thanking her for what she’d said about you on the stand. It sounded so eerily familiar, she wrote to Beth. Like you were talking about my own life. A week later, Dane Rubra forwarded

David Copperfield.txt

beset by a desire to refer to her brother Francis, struck in again: 'If Dora's mama,' she said, 'when she married our brother Francis, had at once said that there was not room for the family at the dinner-table, it would have been better for the happiness of all parties.' 'Sister Clarissa,' said Miss Lavinia. 'Perhaps we needn't mind that now.' 'Sister Lavinia,' said Miss Clarissa, 'it belongs to the subject. With your branch of the subject, on which alone you are competent to speak, I should not think of interfering. On this branch of the subject I have a voice and an opinion. It would have been better for the happiness of all parties, if Dora's mama, when she married our brother Francis, had mentioned plainly what her intentions were. We should then have known what we had to expect. We should have said "Pray do not invite us, at any time"; and all possibility of misunderstanding would have been avoided.' When Miss Clarissa had shaken her head, Miss Lavinia resumed: again referring to my letter through her eye-glass. They both had little bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds' eyes. They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like canaries. Miss Lavinia, as I have said, resumed: 'You ask permission of my sister Clarissa and myself, Mr. Copperfield, to visit here, as the accepted suitor of our niece.' 'If our brother Francis,' said Miss Clarissa, breaking out again, if I may call anything so calm a breaking out, 'wished to surround himself with an atmosphere of Doctors' Commons, and of Doctors' Commons only, what right or desire had we to object? None, I am sure. We have ever been far from wishing to obtrude ourselves on anyone. But why not say so? Let our brother Francis and his wife have their society. Let my sister Lavinia and myself have our society. We can find it for ourselves, I hope.' As this appeared to be addressed to Traddles and me, both Traddles and I made some sort of reply. Traddles was inaudible. I think I observed, myself, that it was highly creditable to all concerned. I don't in the least know what I meant. 'Sister Lavinia,' said Miss Clarissa, having now relieved her mind, 'you can go on, my dear.' Miss Lavinia proceeded: 'Mr. Copperfield, my sister Clarissa and I have been very careful indeed in considering this letter; and we have not considered it without finally showing it to our niece, and discussing it with our niece. We have no doubt that you think you like her very much.' 'Think, ma'am,' I rapturously began, 'oh! -' But Miss Clarissa giving me a look (just like a sharp canary), as requesting that I would not interrupt the oracle, I begged pardon. 'Affection,' said Miss Lavinia, glancing at her sister for corroboration, which she gave in the form of a little nod to every clause, 'mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its

The Foxglove King.txt

the gardens yesterday, his lips on her shoulder. If anyone saw her with Bastian and grass stains on her skirt, the conclusion they drew would have nothing to do with that kind of riding. When she took the prince’s proffered arm, she could feel his muscles move beneath his silken sleeve. More defined than she’d expect from a pampered royal; an incongruous roughness, like the scar through his eyebrow and the calluses on his hands. Lore and the Sun Prince strolled casually down the clear paths cut into the forest, winding trails carefully designed to look natural while being anything but. A slight breeze fluttered at Bastian’s hair, worn down, waving dark against his shoulders—just on this side of too-long to be in current fashion, though she assumed that however Bastian wore his hair was how the entire court would in a month’s time. He smelled like red wine and expensive cologne, one that Lore’s untrained nose couldn’t pick out the notes of. “I’ve petitioned my father over and over again to waive the fees associated with a vault burial,” Bastian said as they took another turn, the edge of the manicured forest appearing up ahead, “but he’s adamant that we need the money for the upcoming war with the Kirythean Empire.” Lore’s shoulders tensed, but she kept her face impassive. “Oh?” she murmured. “Does he think a war is imminent, then?” “He’s thought a war was imminent for as long as I can remember.” “The Empire has drawn steadily closer.” Close enough that she’d heard hushed talk of possible war down on the docks for years, fears of conscription and bottlenecked trade. “And yet,” Bastian said, “they’ve never invaded.” “Perhaps they’re waiting for something.” Lore kept her eyes ahead and her voice light. “Information, maybe. An opportune moment.” “Information would be difficult to acquire.” His eyes slid her way. “August only trusts a select few with military secrets. I don’t even know most of them.” She forced a laugh. “Surely that’s not true. You’re his heir.” “And how he hates that.” They ambled along quietly for a moment, Lore’s palm clammy on Bastian’s sleeve. The fabric was soft and billowing and would probably show sweaty prints when she lifted her hand away. “Imminent war or not, I think it’s deplorable to charge your citizens for a decent burial. There should at least be exceptions for extenuating circumstances.” Bastian glanced at her from the corner of her eye. “All this mess with the villages, for instance.” Her teeth clamped on the inside of her cheek, stirring her mind for a way to pry that wouldn’t seem suspicious. August had said that most of the bodies from the villages were disposed of—that had to mean burned, regardless of what their personal choices for burial had been in life. Shademount and Orlimar were both small villages where most of the citizens were subsistence farmers. According to the Tracts, you entered the Shining Realm in whatever state your body was left in, so being burned meant you didn’t enter at all. The Church wouldn’t concern

Of Human Bondage.txt

desire to enfold her once more in his arms. "Is Mrs. Miller in?" he asked joyously. "She's gone," the maid answered. He looked at her blankly. "She came about an hour ago and took away her things." For a moment he did not know what to say. "Did you give her my letter? Did she say where she was going?" Then he understood that Mildred had deceived him again. She was not coming back to him. He made an effort to save his face. "Oh, well, I daresay I shall hear from her. She may have sent a letter to another address." He turned away and went back hopeless to his rooms. He might have known that she would do this; she had never cared for him, she had made a fool of him from the beginning; she had no pity, she had no kindness, she had no charity. The only thing was to accept the inevitable. The pain he was suffering was horrible, he would sooner be dead than endure it; and the thought came to him that it would be better to finish with the whole thing: he might throw himself in the river or put his neck on a railway line; but he had no sooner set the thought into words than he rebelled against it. His reason told him that he would get over his unhappiness in time; if he tried with all his might he could forget her; and it would be grotesque to kill himself on account of a vulgar slut. He had only one life, and it was madness to fling it away. He _felt_ that he would never overcome his passion, but he _knew_ that after all it was only a matter of time. He would not stay in London. There everything reminded him of his unhappiness. He telegraphed to his uncle that he was coming to Blackstable, and, hurrying to pack, took the first train he could. He wanted to get away from the sordid rooms in which he had endured so much suffering. He wanted to breathe clean air. He was disgusted with himself. He felt that he was a little mad. Since he was grown up Philip had been given the best spare room at the vicarage. It was a corner-room and in front of one window was an old tree which blocked the view, but from the other you saw, beyond the garden and the vicarage field, broad meadows. Philip remembered the wall-paper from his earliest years. On the walls were quaint water colours of the early Victorian period by a friend of the Vicar's youth. They had a faded charm. The dressing-table was surrounded by stiff muslin. There was an old tall-boy to put your clothes in. Philip gave a sigh of pleasure; he had never realised that all those things meant anything to him at all. At the vicarage life went on as it had always done. No piece of furniture had been moved from one place to another; the Vicar ate the same things, said the same

Christina Lauren - The True Love Experiment.txt

her adorable belly follow me into the kitchen, where I’ve just pulled open my nightmare of a junk drawer to find a safety pin for the broken zipper pull. I spot the shiny foil corner of a sealed condom and pull it out from beneath an avalanche of paper clips and broken pencils. This moment feels like a perfect metaphor. “You keep condoms in your junk drawer?” “Ask that again,” I say, “and realize how funny it sounds.” She snorts behind me, and I feel a wave of protectiveness. Alice’s life has never been out of whack for even one second. When she was fifteen, she made a milestone list, complete with goals, ages, sometimes even locations: … Begin Stanford at eighteen, graduate at twenty-two, medical school at Johns Hopkins, residency in San Diego, marriage at thirty, first baby born at thirty-five… So far she hasn’t missed a single one except for maid of honor at Fizzy’s wedding at twenty-eight. (She dutifully crossed that one out with a thick black marker a few years ago and we celebrated my book hitting the New York Times list instead.) But pregnancy hasn’t been her favorite experience, and I wonder if she’s feeling even a tiny bit of what I do right now, like she’s facing a future with unknown complexity, wicked blind curves, scary blank spaces. “Have you ever felt like you’ve lost track of yourself?” She points to her big, pregnant belly. “This kid isn’t even here yet and I don’t remember who I was six months ago. Did I really used to run every morning? For fun?” “I’ve been so aimless lately,” I admit, and I’m sure it’s weird for her to hear. “I feel like this show might be a way to get back to myself. Even if it’s a colossal failure, at least it’s something different.” “I get that,” she says wistfully. “I’ve been having skydiving dreams lately.” “You?” She nods. “Sometimes I’m skydiving into an ocean of Oreos. Last night it was beer.” This makes me laugh, and I turn to wrap my arms around her middle. “Tell me I’m not making a huge mistake doing this.” “You’re not. In fact, I wrote it on my list, don’t you know? ‘Fizzy does a crazy romance reality show when she’s thirty-seven and has the time of her life.’ ” eleven FIZZY An unexpected upside to bringing a Hot DILF to my first signing in months is that readers are much less concerned with when my next book will be published and much more interested in who the giant man lingering in the background is. There were a few murmurs and glances during the Q and A portion of the event, but by the time the signing starts, every person in line is trying to figure out who the six-foot-five piece of ass over there talking to my dad is. I know this because they’re all breaking their necks trying to keep track of him as the line weaves around bookshelves. Several have come right out and asked me. My answers

Riley-Sager-The-Only-One-Left.txt

interior wall, knowing that in one second I’ll be caught, fired, sent back to a house where my father thinks I killed my mother. But just before Mrs. Baker can pull the armoire doors open, the record player suddenly skips. The music is replaced by a loud, low groan. It sounds through the entire house, starting at the first floor and moving upward, gaining volume as it goes. I know what it is. Mrs. Baker does, too, for her face darkens with concern. The groan is followed by a crack, a clatter, and several sudden, sharp jerks. It sounds like something’s smashing into the house. Inside the armoire, I’m jostled like a body in a coffin that’s just been dropped. One of the doors flies open, exposing me being knocked back and forth behind Mrs. Baker’s long black dresses. But she’s no longer there to see me. Instead, she’s throwing open the bedroom door and peering into the hall, one withered hand gripping the wall for support as all of Hope’s End bucks and heaves. As quickly as it started, everything stops. The noise. The movement. All is silent and still. Mrs. Baker disappears into the hallway, off to investigate what just happened and where. Others in the house are doing the same. I hear footfalls overhead and the sound of someone thundering down the service stairs. I stay huddled in a corner of the armoire, my heart beating a hundred times per minute. Above me, Mrs. Baker’s dresses still sway on the rack. I wait until they’ve settled before crawling out of the armoire and hurrying to Lenora’s room. She’s awake, of course, her expression alarmed and her good hand clenched around the call button. Through our adjoining door, I hear the buzz of the alarm and see the red light filling my room. “I’m here,” I say. “Are you okay?” Lenora drops the call button and taps twice on the bedspread. Her gaze then flicks to the far corner of the room, where someone stands, unnoticed by me until just now. Archie. He has the curtains pulled back and is looking out the window toward the terrace. “Looks like it’s down there,” he says. “What is?” Archie finally turns to face me. “The damage. We should go see what happened.” I already know what happened. Hope’s End just got a bit closer to tumbling into the ocean. “What are you doing in Lenora’s room?” I say. Archie and I look at each other with wary suspicion. It reminds me of a movie I watched with my mother when she was sick. Two cat burglars who interrupted each other while trying to rob the same mansion are forced to choose if they should work together or alone. They ultimately decide to trust each other. Archie makes a similar decision. “I was saying goodnight.” “Since when do you say goodnight to Lenora?” “Ever since Miss Hope first took ill,” Archie says. “Every night, I make sure to stop by and see how she’s doing.” “Let’s walk,” I say. What I really mean

Fifty-Shades-Of-Grey.txt

this time. What was he thinking? Well, if he wants a fight, I’ll give him a fight. No way am I going to let him get away with running off to see that monstrous woman whenever we have a problem. He’s go- ing to have to choose—her or me and our Little Blip. I sniffle softly, but because I’m so exhausted, I soon fall asleep. I wake with a start, momentarily disorientated . . . Oh yes—I’m in the playroom. Because there are no windows, I have no idea what time it is. The door handle rattles. “Ana!” Christian shouts from outside the door. I freeze, but he doesn’t come in. I hear muffled voices, but they move away. I exhale and check the time on my 412/551 BlackBerry. It’s seven fifty, and I have four missed calls and two voice messages. The missed calls are mostly from Christian, but there’s also one from Kate. Oh, no. He must have called her. I don’t have time to listen to them. I don’t want to be late for work. I wrap the duvet around me and pick up my purse before making my way to the door. Unlocking it slowly, I peek outside. No sign of anyone. Oh shit . . . Perhaps this is a bit melodramatic. I roll my eyes at myself, take a deep breath, and head downstairs. Taylor, Sawyer, Ryan, Mrs. Jones, and Christian are all standing in the en- trance to the great room, and Christian is issuing rapid-fire instructions. As one they all turn and gape at me. Christian is still wearing the clothes he slept in last night. He looks disheveled, pale, and heart-stoppingly beautiful. His large gray eyes are wide, and I don’t know if he’s fearful or angry. It’s difficult to tell. “Sawyer, I’ll be ready to leave in about twenty minutes,” I mutter, wrapping the duvet tighter around me for protection. He nods, and all eyes turn to Christian, who is still staring intensely at me. “Would you like some breakfast, Mrs. Grey?” Mrs. Jones asks. I shake my head. “I’m not hungry, thank you.” She purses her lips but says nothing. “Where were you?” Christian asks, his voice low and husky. Suddenly Saw- yer, Taylor, Ryan and Mrs. Jones scatter, scurrying into Taylor’s office, into the foyer, and into the kitchen like terrified rats from a sinking ship. I ignore Christian and march toward our bedroom. “Ana,” he calls after me, “answer me.” I hear his footsteps behind me as I walk into the bedroom and continue into our bathroom. Quickly, I lock the door. “Ana!” Christian pounds on the door. I turn on the shower. The door rattles. “Ana, open the damned door.” “Go away!” “I’m not going anywhere.” “Suit yourself.” “Ana, please.” I climb into the shower, effectively blocking him out. Oh, it’s warm. The healing water cascades over me, cleansing the exhaustion of the night off my skin. Oh my. This feels so good. For a moment, for one short moment, I can pretend all is well. I wash

Emma.txt

to be going somewhere. She promised him again and again to come--much oftener than he doubted--and was extremely gratified by such a proof of intimacy, such a distinguishing compliment as she chose to consider it. "You may depend upon me," said she. "I certainly will come. Name your day, and I will come. You will allow me to bring Jane Fairfax?" "I cannot name a day," said he, "till I have spoken to some others whom I would wish to meet you." "Oh! leave all that to me. Only give me a carte-blanche.--I am Lady Patroness, you know. It is my party. I will bring friends with me." "I hope you will bring Elton," said he: "but I will not trouble you to give any other invitations." "Oh! now you are looking very sly. But consider--you need not be afraid of delegating power to me. I am no young lady on her preferment. Married women, you know, may be safely authorised. It is my party. Leave it all to me. I will invite your guests." "No,"--he calmly replied,--"there is but one married woman in the world whom I can ever allow to invite what guests she pleases to Donwell, and that one is--" "--Mrs. Weston, I suppose," interrupted Mrs. Elton, rather mortified. "No--Mrs. Knightley;--and till she is in being, I will manage such matters myself." "Ah! you are an odd creature!" she cried, satisfied to have no one preferred to herself.--"You are a humourist, and may say what you like. Quite a humourist. Well, I shall bring Jane with me-- Jane and her aunt.--The rest I leave to you. I have no objections at all to meeting the Hartfield family. Don't scruple. I know you are attached to them." "You certainly will meet them if I can prevail; and I shall call on Miss Bates in my way home." "That's quite unnecessary; I see Jane every day:--but as you like. It is to be a morning scheme, you know, Knightley; quite a simple thing. I shall wear a large bonnet, and bring one of my little baskets hanging on my arm. Here,--probably this basket with pink ribbon. Nothing can be more simple, you see. And Jane will have such another. There is to be no form or parade--a sort of gipsy party. We are to walk about your gardens, and gather the strawberries ourselves, and sit under trees;--and whatever else you may like to provide, it is to be all out of doors--a table spread in the shade, you know. Every thing as natural and simple as possible. Is not that your idea?" "Not quite. My idea of the simple and the natural will be to have the table spread in the dining-room. The nature and the simplicity of gentlemen and ladies, with their servants and furniture, I think is best observed by meals within doors. When you are tired of eating strawberries in the garden, there shall be cold meat in the house." "Well--as you please; only don't have a great set out. And, by the bye, can I or my

Divine Rivals.txt

cleared his throat. “Why are you—” “I made lunch reservations for you and Miss Little,” Mr. Kitt said tersely. “Today. One o’clock sharp at Monahan’s. You’ll be marrying her in three weeks, and your mother thought it would be nice if the two of you spent some time together.” Roman forced himself to swallow a retort. This was the last thing he wanted to do today. But he nodded, even as he felt the life drain from him. “Yes. Thank you, Father.” Mr. Kitt gave Roman an appraising glance, as if he were surprised that Roman had given in so easily. “Good, son. I’ll see you tonight for supper.” Roman watched his father leave. He sank back to his chair and stared at the blank page in his typewriter. The dictionaries he had turned paper side out. He forced his fingers to rest on the keys but he couldn’t write a word. All he could hear was Iris’s voice, as if she were reading her letter aloud to him. You remove a piece of armor for them; you let the light stream in, even if it makes you wince. Perhaps that is how you learn to be soft yet strong, even in fear and uncertainty. One person, one piece of steel. Roman sighed. He didn’t want to be vulnerable with Elinor Little. But perhaps he should take Iris’s advice. Slowly, he began to find words to give to the page. The sun was at its zenith when a huge lorry rumbled into town. Iris was walking with Marisol down High Street, carrying baskets of goods they had just bartered for at the grocer, when the truck arrived without warning. Iris didn’t know what to think of it—its massive tires were coated in mud, its metal body dinged by bullets. It rolled in from the western road, which Iris knew led to the war front. “Oh my gods,” Marisol said with a gasp. She dropped her basket and ran, following the lorry as it drove down another road. Iris had no choice but to set down her basket and follow her. “Marisol! Marisol, what’s happening?” If Marisol heard her, she didn’t slow. Her black hair was like a pennant as she raced, as everyone around them followed suit, until a huge crowd gathered around the lorry. It parked at the infirmary, and that was when Iris, sore for breath with a stitch in her side, realized what this was. The lorry had brought a load of wounded soldiers. “Quickly, get the stretchers!” “Easy, now. Easy.” “Where’s a nurse? We need a nurse, please!” It was madness as the lorry’s back doors were opened and the wounded were carefully unloaded. Iris wanted to help. She wanted to step forward and do something—Do something! her mind screamed—but she could only stand there, frozen to the road, watching. The soldiers were dirty, smeared in grime and blood. One of them was weeping, his right leg blown off at the knee. Another was missing an arm, moaning. Their countenances were blanched in shock, creased in agony. Some

Oliver Twist.txt

Don't be afraid, Oliver, you shall come back to us again. Ha! ha! ha! We won't be so cruel as to send you away, my dear. Oh no, no!' The old man, who was stooping over the fire toasting a piece of bread, looked round as he bantered Oliver thus; and chuckled as if to show that he knew he would still be very glad to get away if he could. 'I suppose,' said the Jew, fixing his eyes on Oliver, 'you want to know what you're going to Bill's for---eh, my dear?' Oliver coloured, involuntarily, to find that the old thief had been reading his thoughts; but boldly said, Yes, he did want to know. 'Why, do you think?' inquired Fagin, parrying the question. 'Indeed I don't know, sir,' replied Oliver. 'Bah!' said the Jew, turning away with a disappointed countenance from a close perusal of the boy's face. 'Wait till Bill tells you, then.' The Jew seemed much vexed by Oliver's not expressing any greater curiosity on the subject; but the truth is, that, although Oliver felt very anxious, he was too much confused by the earnest cunning of Fagin's looks, and his own speculations, to make any further inquiries just then. He had no other opportunity: for the Jew remained very surly and silent till night: when he prepared to go abroad. 'You may burn a candle,' said the Jew, putting one upon the table. 'And here's a book for you to read, till they come to fetch you. Good-night!' 'Good-night!' replied Oliver, softly. The Jew walked to the door: looking over his shoulder at the boy as he went. Suddenly stopping, he called him by his name. Oliver looked up; the Jew, pointing to the candle, motioned him to light it. He did so; and, as he placed the candlestick upon the table, saw that the Jew was gazing fixedly at him, with lowering and contracted brows, from the dark end of the room. 'Take heed, Oliver! take heed!' said the old man, shaking his right hand before him in a warning manner. 'He's a rough man, and thinks nothing of blood when his own is up. W hatever falls out, say nothing; and do what he bids you. Mind!' Placing a strong emphasis on the last word, he suffered his features gradually to resolve themselves into a ghastly grin, and, nodding his head, left the room. Oliver leaned his head upon his hand when the old man disappeared, and pondered, with a trembling heart, on the words he had just heard. The more he thought of the Jew's admonition, the more he was at a loss to divine its real purpose and meaning. He could think of no bad object to be attained by sending him to Sikes, which would not be equally well answered by his remaining with Fagin; and after meditating for a long time, concluded that he had been selected to perform some ordinary menial offices for the housebreaker, until another boy, better suited for his purpose could be engaged. He was too well

Things Fall Apart.txt

into the obi and saluted his father, but he did not answer. Nwoye turned round to walk into the inner compound when his father, suddenly overcome with fury, sprang to his feet and gripped him by the neck. "Where have you been?" he stammered. Nwoye struggled to free himself from the choking grip. "Answer me," roared Okonkwo, "before I kill you!" He seized a heavy stick that lay on the dwarf wall and hit him two or three savage blows. "Answer me!" he roared again. Nwoye stood looking at him and did not say a word. The women were screaming outside, afraid to go in. "Leave that boy at once!" said a voice in the outer compound. It was Okonkwo's uncle, Uchendu. "Are you mad?" Okonkwo did not answer. But he left hold of Nwoye, who walked away and never returned. He went back to the church and told Mr. Kiaga that he had decided to go to Umuofia where the white missionary had set up a school to teach young Christians to read and write. Mr. Kiaga's joy was very great. "Blessed is he who forsakes his father and his mother for my sake," he intoned. "Those that hear my words are my father and my mother." Nwoye did not fully understand. But he was happy to leave his father. He would return later to his mother and his brothers and sisters and convert them to the new faith. As Okonkwo sat in his hut that night, gazing into a log fire, he thought over the matter. A sudden fury rose within him and he felt a strong desire to take up his machete, go to the church and wipe out the entire vile and miscreant gang. But on further thought he told himself that Nwoye was not worth fighting for. Why, he cried in his heart, should he, Okonkwo, of all people, be cursed with such a son? He saw clearly in it the finger of his personal god or chi. For how else could he explain his great misfortune and exile and now his despicable son's behaviour? Now that he had time to think of it, his son's crime stood out in its stark enormity. To abandon the gods of one's father and go about with a lot of effeminate men clucking like old hens was the very depth of abomination. Suppose when he died all his male children decided to follow Nwoye's steps and abandon their ancestors? Okonkwo felt a cold shudder run through him at the terrible prospect, like the prospect of annihilation. He saw himself and his fathers crowding round their ancestral shrine waiting in vain for worship and sacrifice and finding nothing but ashes of bygone days, and his children the while praying to the white man's god. If such a thing were ever to happen, he, Okonkwo, would wipe them off the face of the earth. Okonkwo was popularly called the "Roaring Flame." As he looked into the log fire he recalled the name. He was a flaming fire. How then could he have

The Mysteries of Udolpho.txt

restrain her sensibility, so much as in these moments, and never had she practised them with a triumph so complete. But when the last was over, she sunk at once under the pressure of her sorrow, and then perceived that it was hope, as well as fortitude, which had hitherto supported her. St. Aubert was for a time too devoid of comfort himself to bestow any on his daughter. CHAPTER II I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul. SHAKESPEARE Madame St. Aubert was interred in the neighbouring village church; her husband and daughter attended her to the grave, followed by a long train of the peasantry, who were sincere mourners of this excellent woman. On his return from the funeral, St. Aubert shut himself in his chamber. When he came forth, it was with a serene countenance, though pale in sorrow. He gave orders that his family should attend him. Emily only was absent; who, overcome with the scene she had just witnessed, had retired to her closet to weep alone. St. Aubert followed her thither: he took her hand in silence, while she continued to weep; and it was some moments before he could so far command his voice as to speak. It trembled while he said, 'My Emily, I am going to prayers with my family; you will join us. We must ask support from above. Where else ought we to seek it--where else can we find it?' Emily checked her tears, and followed her father to the parlour, where, the servants being assembled, St. Aubert read, in a low and solemn voice, the evening service, and added a prayer for the soul of the departed. During this, his voice often faltered, his tears fell upon the book, and at length he paused. But the sublime emotions of pure devotion gradually elevated his views above this world, and finally brought comfort to his heart. When the service was ended, and the servants were withdrawn, he tenderly kissed Emily, and said, 'I have endeavoured to teach you, from your earliest youth, the duty of self-command; I have pointed out to you the great importance of it through life, not only as it preserves us in the various and dangerous temptations that call us from rectitude and virtue, but as it limits the indulgences which are termed virtuous, yet which, extended beyond a certain boundary, are vicious, for their consequence is evil. All excess is vicious; even that sorrow, which is amiable in its origin, becomes a selfish and unjust passion, if indulged at the expence of our duties--by our duties I mean what we owe to ourselves, as well as to others. The indulgence of excessive grief enervates the mind, and almost incapacitates it for again partaking of those various innocent enjoyments which a benevolent God designed to be the sun-shine of our lives. My dear Emily, recollect and practise the precepts I have so often given you, and which your own experience has so often shewn you to be wise. 'Your sorrow is useless.

The Foxglove King.txt

flailing fists had connected with more than one of them—the Mort who held his arms had a rapidly blackening eye, and a bruise bloomed on another’s cheek as his hand tangled in Bastian’s hair and wrenched his head back, just like Lore’s. Bastian squinted through the blood from his head wound, chest heaving, teeth bared. August sighed as he looked at his son, always the disappointed father. In return, Bastian laughed, quick and sharp. “How fitting,” he snarled. “You always did have to do things as ostentatiously as possible.” The King shook his head. A streak of sorrow crossed his face, quick and bright as a passing comment, made more terrible for how genuine it was. “It never could’ve been you,” he murmured. “No matter what Anton’s vision said.” “Because I’m not pious enough?” There was no chance of escape; still, Bastian fought against the Mort holding him, muscles straining. “Would it be me if I’d killed my own people and farmed their bodies for an army?” “I didn’t kill them, Bastian.” The sorrow on August’s face turned cold. “That’s one sin you can’t lay at my feet.” His eyes turned to Lore, slow and deliberate. Her throat closed. Her mind did, too, shuttering itself against some impossible realization. Mortem couldn’t do something like that. Mortem couldn’t kill an entire village and leave the bodies perfectly intact. No mere channeler could do such a thing. No mere channeler. “Now.” August raised his knife as the room slid closer and closer to darkness, closer and closer to the eclipse’s totality. “Let’s begin.” Lore expected the knife to flash down to Bastian’s exposed throat; the way he thrashed made it clear he did, too. But the Presque Mort holding the Sun Prince didn’t pull his head back farther to make his neck an easier target. Instead he and the other monk wrestled one arm out from behind Bastian’s back, thrust it forward to present his palm to his father. The scarred lines of half a sun gleamed red in the fading light. The Presque Mort holding Lore did the same—twisted her hand out from behind her, the hand the Night Sisters had burned the moon into eleven years ago today. Lore tried to curl it into a fist, but the monk forced her fingers backward, almost to the breaking point. It was quick. August carved Bastian’s hand first, fast and brutal, blood rushing from his son’s palm to patter on the floor, joining what still leaked from his head wound. Then Lore; she gritted her teeth against a scream as the dagger point dug into her flesh, sheared through life and heart lines to add to an old scar. Half a sun, arcing up from the points of her crescent moon. She knew without looking that Bastian’s palm would match, a moon sliced beneath his sun, their two scars fit into one symbol. Life and death, light and dark. Through the atrium window above, the sky slipped into totality, two celestial bodies momentarily mirroring their new scars before the moon covered the sun. Dropping

Oliver Twist.txt

said Mr. Bumble. 'How dare you mention such a thing, sir? And how dare you encourage him, you insolent minx? Kiss her!' exclaimed Mr. Bumble, in strong indignation. 'Faugh!' 'I didn't mean to do it!' said Noah, blubbering. 'She's always a-kissing of me, whether I like it, or not.' 'Oh, Noah,' cried Charlotte, reproachfully. 'Yer are; yer know yer are!' retorted Noah. 'She's always a-doin' of it, Mr. Bumble, sir; she chucks me under the chin, please, sir; and makes all manner of love!' 'Silence!' cried Mr. Bumble, sternly. 'Take yourself downstairs, ma'am. Noah, you shut up the shop; say another word till your master comes home, at your peril; and, when he does come home, tell him that Mr. Bumble said he was to send a old woman's shell after breakfast to-morrow morning. Do you hear sir? Kissing!' cried Mr. Bumble, holding up his hands. 'The sin and wickedness of the lower orders in this porochial district is frightful! If Parliament don't take their abominable courses under consideration, this country's ruined, and the character of the peasantry gone for ever!' With these words, the beadle strode, with a lofty and gloomy air, from the undertaker's premises. And now that we have accompanied him so far on his road home, and have made all necessary preparations for the old woman's funeral, let us set on foot a few inquires after young Oliver Twist, and ascertain whether he be still lying in the ditch where Toby Crackit left him. CHAPTER XXVIII LOOKS AFTER OLIVER, AND PROCEEDS WITH HIS ADVENTURES 'Wolves tear your throats!' muttered Sikes, grinding his teeth. 'I wish I was among some of you; you'd howl the hoarser for it.' As Sikes growled forth this imprecation, with the most desperate ferocity that his desperate nature was capable of, he rested the body of the wounded boy across his bended knee; and turned his head, for an instant, to look back at his pursuers. There was little to be made out, in the mist and darkness; but the loud shouting of men vibrated through the air, and the barking of the neighbouring dogs, roused by the sound of the alarm bell, resounded in every direction. 'Stop, you white-livered hound!' cried the robber, shouting after Toby Crackit, who, making the best use of his long legs, was already ahead. 'Stop!' The repetition of the word, brought Toby to a dead stand-still. For he was not quite satisfied that he was beyond the range of pistol-shot; and Sikes was in no mood to be played with. 'Bear a hand with the boy,' cried Sikes, beckoning furiously to his confederate. 'Come back!' Toby made a show of returning; but ventured, in a low voice, broken for want of breath, to intimate considerable reluctance as he came slowly along. 'Quicker!' cried Sikes, laying the boy in a dry ditch at his feet, and drawing a pistol from his pocket. 'Don't play booty with me.' At this moment the noise grew louder. Sikes, again looking round, could discern that the men who had given chase were already

To Kill a Mockingbird.txt

took us." I remembered something. "Yessum, and she promised me I could come out to her house some afternoon. Atticus. I'll go next Sunday if it's all right, can I? Cal said she'd come get me if you were off in the car." "You may not." Aunt Alexandra said it. I wheeled around, startled, then turned back to Atticus in time to catch his swift glance at her, but it was too late. I said, "I didn't ask you!" For a big man, Atticus could get up and down from a chair faster than anyone I ever knew. He was on his feet. "Apologize to your aunt," he said. "I didn't ask her, I asked you-" Atticus turned his head and pinned me to the wall with his good eye. His voice was deadly: "First, apologize to your aunt." "I'm sorry, Aunty," I muttered. "Now then," he said. "Let's get this clear: you do as Calpurnia tells you, you do as I tell you, and as long as your aunt's in this house, you will do as she tells you. Understand?" I understood, pondered a while, and concluded that the only way I could retire with a shred of dignity was to go to the bathroom, where I stayed long enough to make them think I had to go. Returning, I lingered in the hall to hear a fierce discussion going on in the livingroom. Through the door I could see Jem on the sofa with a football magazine in front of his face, his head turning as if its pages contained a live tennis match. "...you've got to do something about her," Aunty was saying. "You've let things go on too long, Atticus, too long." "I don't see any harm in letting her go out there. Cal'd look after her there as well as she does here." Who was the "her" they were talking about? My heart sank: me. I felt the starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, and for the second time in my life I thought of running away. Immediately. "Atticus, it's all right to be soft-hearted, you're an easy man, but you have a daughter to think of. A daughter who's growing up." "That's what I am thinking of." "And don't try to get around it. You've got to face it sooner or later and it might as well be tonight. We don't need her now." Atticus's voice was even: "Alexandra, Calpurnia's not leaving this house until she wants to. You may think otherwise, but I couldn't have got along without her all these years. She's a faithful member of this family and you'll simply have to accept things the way they are. Besides, sister, I don't want you working your head off for us- you've no reason to do that. We still need Cal as much as we ever did." "But Atticus-" "Besides, I don't think the children've suffered one bit from her having brought them up. If anything, she's been harder on them in some ways than a mother would have

Jane Eyre.txt

of free action I should, under similar circumstances, have accorded them. I left Moor House at three o'clock P. M., and soon after four I stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield. Amid the silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great distance. It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless! It stopped as I beckoned. I entered not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation. Once more on the road to Thornfield I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home. It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours. I had set out from Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields, and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern north-midland moors of Morton!), met my eye like the lineaments of a once familiar face. Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was sure we were near my bourne. "How far is Thornfield Hall from here?" I asked of the hostler. "Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields." "My journey is closed," I thought to myself. I got out of the coach, gave a box I had into the hostler's charge, to be kept till I called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going; the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt letters," The Rochester Arms." My heart leaped up; I was already on my master's very lands. It fell again; the thought struck it: "Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you know; and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, toward which you hasten, who besides him is there? His lunatic wife; and you have nothing to do with him; you dare not speak to him or seek his presence. You have lost your labor you had better go no further," urged the monitor. "Ask information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek; they can solve your doubts at once. Go up to that man and inquire if Mr. Rochester be at home." The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on it. I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair. To prolong doubt was to prolong hope. I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star. There was the stile before me the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted, with a

Kalynn-Bayron-Youre-Not-Supposed.txt

knocking me over. The men behind us also stop, raising their gaze to the surrounding woods. “What the hell is that?” the gray-haired man asks. Agonized screams ring through the camp. They echo in the dark, and it takes me a moment to realize Kyle must have cued up the sound effects. The hidden speakers cycle through screams and menacing footsteps. The sounds seem to be coming from every direction. Bezi takes my hand and pulls me toward the showers, and we’re mounting the front steps before the men give chase again. We slam the door shut and wedge a trash can under the handle. With a loud bang, the men collide with the door. The can scrapes across the ground, and the gray-haired man slips his arm through the crack in the door and attempts to move it. I reach in my pocket and pull out the half-empty can of bear spray. I angle it toward the opening in the door and empty the canister directly into the faces of the two men. They immediately start to cough and gag, and I scramble back as a residual cloud of the noxious gas wafts into the shower building. My throat burns and my eyes water uncontrollably. Bezi coughs so hard, she almost vomits. I run to the sink and turn on the water, flushing my eyes and mouth. There’s a loud bang, and I spin around to see the angry faces of both men as they shove the door open a little more. My mind runs in circles. The windows in the shower room are for venting only. They’re high and narrow and impossible to climb through. There’s no back door. “What—what do we do?” Bezi stammers, a trail of spittle hanging from her chin, the whites of her eyes bloodshot. I flush my eyes again, but my vision is blurry, my throat raw. “Push harder!” screams the gray-haired man. “I’ll kill her!” My face feels like it’s been exposed to an open flame, but in the wash of pain and fear, my nights of playing the final girl at Camp Mirror Lake give me a way out. “The trapdoor,” I say. Bezi wipes her face with her shirt. “Huh?” “Come on.” I grab her and duck into the last stall. There’s no toilet there, just a rusted metal wall locker with a sign that says Storage hanging on the front. “We’re gonna hide?” Bezi asks. “They already know we’re in here!” I pull open the door and stare down into the darkened hole below. I push Bezi toward it, and she quickly shimmies down the ladder that leads to the second hidden tunnel. This one goes from the showers to the arts-and-crafts lodge on the south side of the camp. The tunnel is twice as long and unlit, but it’s the only option we have. The sound of wood splintering splits the air, and the two men fall into the shower building, tripping over themselves and shouting. The gray-haired man rushes me before I can get down the ladder and into

After Death.txt

You the man, Aleem. I respect you, but shit. This here’s another weird idea, bro, like your explodin’ salt.” They proceed a few steps into the upstairs hall, something crunching underfoot, before Aleem stops and slowly brooms the light from baseboard to baseboard. All is dry here. The stain is worn off the tongue-in-grove hardwood, and the planks are cupped. Hundreds of dead beetles lay in regiments like a vast defeated army under a thin shroud of gray dust. No one could pass this way without leaving a trail of disturbed dust and scattered bugs. Leading the way down the stairs to the swamp, Aleem says, “I know you heard of the Bible.” “Heard about the ’cyclopedia, too. So what?” “An apple off the tree of knowledge, it’s a Bible story.” “Since when you read the Bible?” “Never done. But when I was little, Grandma Verna she told me some Bible stories.” “Your same Grandma Verna she runs upper-class whores on the Westside?” “Who has two Grandma Vernas?” Aleem says as he steps into the dismal waters on the ground floor. “That mean old woman, got them implant teeth could crack a walnut, wears more diamonds than Tiffany ever sold, why she poundin’ a Bible?” “She don’t pound it. She just finds it entertainin’. Like Goliath the giant.” “The seven-foot wrestler, tattoo of a snake comin’ out his belly button.” “I’m talkin’ the first Goliath. Check it out, man. He was ten feet tall.” As they slosh through the party debris where once commerce was conducted and busy workers supported families by supplying something real and nourishing, Kuba says, “This Goliath, he live in a castle between the tree of knowledge and the tree of salt?” Speedo Hickam is waiting for them just outside the front door. In his long black raincoat and hood, he reminds Aleem of a nun, too soft to endure hard weather like a man. “We found somethin’.” “What somethin’?” “You gotta see. Over at Whole Fruit.” As the three head toward the largest building in the complex, Kuba says, “Another thing, with all respect, nobody ever been ten feet tall.” Aleem says, “Speedo, you know about Goliath?” “He a wrestler, bites the heads off baby chicks?” “That’s him,” Kuba confirms. “Ain’t real chicks,” Speedo says. “They’s marshmallow chicks like them at Easter.” “Real as real can be,” Kuba insists. “You want to think so, that’s cool with me,” Speedo says. “Grandma Verna she say the way it happened, this shrimp David figures he can jack up Goliath, bring him down. Goliath he picks up little Davey, loads him in a fuckin’ big slingshot, and splatters him all over the side of the temple.” “What temple?” Speedo asks. “Don’t matter what temple. Important thing is David been taught a moral lesson.” At Whole Fruit, Jason, Hakeem, and Carlisle are waiting just outside the big opening that once was filled by a roll-up door. When Jason directs his light at what they found beyond the threshold, Kuba declares, “No tooth fairy left it. Bitch is here somewhere.” Aleem can

Alex-Hay-The-Housekeepers.txt

in. They came in crocodile formation, leaving their opera cloaks and mantles and shawls behind in their motors. They entered with flushed faces, feasting their eyes on the house and on each other. They wore ruffs, headdresses, sleeves the size of hot-air balloons, hoopskirts, powdered wigs, boots with curled toes—really, London knew how to do a costumed ball. In several cases they were already three sheets to the wind. Good, thought Mrs. King. She had changed into her own costume in a tent in the garden, alongside the other entertainments. A Roman tunic-dress of white cotton, the waist armored and plated in gold, a scarlet cloak thrown over the shoulders. White patent leather boots, gold buckles, toes plated with metal. She echoed when she moved. Mr. Whitman himself had dressed her. “Can you breathe?” he murmured as he fastened her mask. It was made of copper, light and beveled, the metal warm against her skin. “Perfectly,” she told him. She didn’t need to look at herself in the glass. She buttoned her gloves, hearing the crack of new leather. “Our fine empress,” Mr. Whitman said, and he sent her on her way. The orchestra had taken up position in the ballroom, playing a waltz at full tilt. Buglers and trumpeters stood at the top of the stairs, blasting an intermittent tattoo every time a clutch of guests reached the saloon floor. The band in the street pounded their drums, sounding cowbells and gongs for good measure, and the whole thing made Mrs. King’s head ache. Even better, she thought. The air was perfumed so thickly with orchids that the scent got stuck in the back of her throat. The gigantic wall of red peonies rose all the way up the stairs. “Mrs. King?” One of the waiters they’d hired had glided up to her, eyes averted. “Yes?” “Message for you, from one of the ladies.” “Go on.” “She says, ‘You’ve got something up your little bird.’” “I beg your pardon?” “That’s the message, Mrs. King.” She ignored it: she’d spotted William by the ballroom doors, as straight-backed as a Beefeater, brushed and shimmering in white tie and tails. His eyes were blank. How do we do it? Mrs. King wondered. It almost bewildered her. The bowing and scraping and the chores that made mincemeat of your dignity: carrying trays, answering call bells. You unraveled yourself, polishing butter knives, waiting for something to happen to your life. It had felt like a stomach punch when she turned thirty-five. I’m never, never, ever going backward, she told herself. She would be like a shark: forward motion or death, nothing else. “Nice stockings,” she said, sidling up to William. His eyes widened. She wondered if he would struggle to recognize her voice, muffled behind her mask, but he knew her at once. He controlled his expression, but his tone betrayed his astonishment. “Dinah?” he said. “Don’t make a fuss,” she murmured, standing close. She could feel the heat of him, and she knew he could feel hers. “What are you doing here?” “I might need