This, no doubt, was the call 33 had heard. Bored with his balanced diet of maize and maple peas, tired of the pecking order of the loft and the predictability of each day – the bird had wanted out; wanted up and away. A day of high life; of food that had to be chased a little, and tasted all the better for that; of the companionship of wild things. All this went through Cal’s head, in a vague sort of way, while he watched the circling flocks.
The way she saw it, she was lucky. She wasn’t really blind – she just saw a different world from most other folks, and that put her in a unique position to do some good in the world.
You’ve got blood on your hands, and you smell of coitus.
Some die too soon. Most live too long.
So many masks. Was she the only one who had no secret life, no other self in marrow or mind?
Here was a place sacred to the dead, who were not the living ceased, but almost another species, requiring rites and prayers that belonged uniquely to them.
Spring, if it lingers more than a week beyond its span, starts to hunger for summer to end the days of perpetual promise.
The true Wonderland was not like that, he knew. It was as much shadow as sunlight, and its mysteries could only be unveiled when your wits were about used up and your mind close to cracking.
Every man is his own Mephistopheles, don’t you think?
I don’t remember nineteen,” Will said. “Or twenty, come to that. I have a very vague recollection of twenty-one – ” He laughed. “But you get to a place when you’re so high you’re not high anymore.
We’re making strange fictions of strange things inside ourselves.
This was the nadir, surely. They had no further to fall.
The winds mourn and whine was wiser than any psalm, prayer, or profession of love he’d ever heard. But.
When it was all done, Suzanna found her voice, thanking both the grave diggers and their mothers. “After all that digging,” said the eldest of the girls, “I just hope he grows.” “He will,” said her mother, with no trace of indulgence. “They always do.” On.
The great gray beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive. Here he was, buried in the belly of that smothering month, wondering if he would ever find his way out through the cold coils that lay between here and Easter.
Nobody ever just passed through; experience always left its mark.
Having a routine that bordered on stagnancy had its benefits.
He looked too drained to argue, his stare somehow unfinished, as though it had a place it wanted to rest but couldn’t find.
It was bad enough that these creatures had children and art; that they might also have vision was too dangerous a thought to entertain.
She was indeed tired, as she’d claimed, but it wasn’t the cooking that exhausted her. It was the effort of suppressing her contempt for he damn fools who were gathered in the lounge below. She’d called them friends once, these half-wits, with their poor jokes and poorer pretensions.