Often people who are very ill, but are near their birthday, seem to wait until it’s passed before dying. I.
He was right, of course. Bloody man, he was almost always right.
I had come to the conclusion – based on experience – that the only real way of learning to write a novel was probably to write a novel.
The simple act of writing Fraser’s name had given him a sense of connexion, and he realized that the desperate need for such connexion was what had driven him to write it.
And it was, as Dougal explained, convenient to the pillory, a homely wooden contraption that stood on a small stone plinth in the center of the square, adjacent to the wooden stake used – with thrifty economy of purpose – as whipping post, maypole, flagstaff and horse tether, depending upon requirements.
If ever you find yourself in the midst of paradox, you can be sure you stand on the edge of truth,” his adoptive father had told him once. “You may not know what it is, mind,” he’d added with a smile. “But it’s there.
My sobs lessened and I began to calm myself, leaning tiredly into the curve of his shoulder. No wonder he was so good with horses, I thought blearily, feeling his fingers rubbing gently behind my ears, listening to the soothing, incomprehensible speech. If I were a horse, I’d let him ride me anywhere.
I was becoming slightly bored.
But I do know. At the same Time, I cannot be sure how the Things that I know will come about. Am I meant to be in some Way Part of this? Should I hold back, will that somehow damage or prevent the Success of our Desires? I often wish I could discuss these Questions with your Husband, though Presbyterian that he is, I think he would find them even more unsettling than I do. And in the end, it does not matter. I am what God has made me, and must deal with the Times in which He has placed me.
Snow was falling, and winter had come; the season of fire. Candles and hearth fire, that lovely, leaping paradox, that destruction contained but never tamed, held at a safe distance to warm and enchant, but always, still, with that small sense of danger.
Mmphm,” he said. “Hell of a choice, there. A stick up the cock, or a finger up the backside, eh?
The man that takes her in unholy embrace will have his privates blasted like a frostbitten apple,” he said, with relish, “and his soul will burn forever in hell.” He bared his teeth at his grandfather, and drew back his hand. “Like this.” The beechwood teeth landed in the midst of the fire with a plop, and at once began to sizzle.
Women, as he had explained to me at the paddock, have no natural appreciation for horses, and are therefore difficult to talk to.
Jamie,” he gasped. “We met the Watch near the mill. Waiting for us. They knew we were coming.
While my mind might object to being taken on a bare rock next to several sleeping soldiers, my body plainly considered itself the spoils of war and was eager to complete the formalities of surrender.
In that case, maybe we shouldn’t be disturbing you,” said a soft American voice. “Oh, I forgot,” said Claire, half-turning to the girl who had stood out of sight in the corner of the porch. “Roger Wakefield – my daughter, Brianna.
I couldn’t think how long it had been since I had read a novel. And in the daytime! Feeling pleasantly wicked, I sat by the open window in my surgery and resolutely entered a world far from my own.
Well, my mother told me I’d be some lassie’s choice one fine day.” He reached down a hand and helped me up. “I told her,” he continued, “that I thought it was the man’s part to choose.” “And what did she say to that?” I asked. “She rolled her eyes and said ‘You’ll find out, my fine wee cockerel, you’ll find out.’ ” He laughed. “And so I have.
And the light was gone, and the air failed them. And so they lay down in the dark to die.
Really rather fascinating, you know,” he confided, and I recognized, with an internal sigh, the song of the scholar, as identifying a sound as the terr-whit! of a thrush. Harking to the call of a kindred spirit, Frank at once settled down to the mating dance of academe, and they were soon neck-deep in archetypes.