The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning.
A fresh breeze lifted Winnie’s hair, and from somewhere in the village behind them a dog barked.
And Winnie, laughing at him, lost the last of her alarm. They were friends, her friends. She was running away after all, but she was not alone. Closing.
And soon they were rolling on again, leaving Treegap behind, and as they went, the tinkling little melody of a music box drifted out behind them and was lost at last far down the road.
That’s what us Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so’s we can’t move on. We ain’t part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing.
Wordy! I enjoy description – I like words, and words are the tools that writers use, just like paint is the tool that artists use. I think words are fun, and I have a lot of fun using them. I know that a lot of kids think my stories start very slowly, and I expect that’s true. But that’s the way I like to read stories, so when I’m writing them I can do what I want! I say that to kids in schools, and they are very generous – they say, “That’s true. You can do what you want. It’s your story.
Mae Tuck must never go to the gallows. Whatever happened to the man in the yellow suit, Mae Tuck must not be hanged. Because if all they had said was true, then Mae, even if she were the cruelest of murderers and deserved to be put to death – Mae Tuck would not be able to die.
Life’s got to be lived, no matter how long or short,” she said calmly. “You got to take what comes. We just go along, like everybody else, one day at a time.
And finally she had sobbed the only truth there was into her mother’s shoulder, the only explanation: the Tucks were her friends. She had done it because – in spite of everything, she loved them.
Now, remember Winifred, don’t bite your fingernails. Don’t interrupt when someone else is speaking, and don’t go down to the jailhouse at midnight to change places with Prisoners.
And then sometimes it comes over me and I wonder why it happened to us. We’re plain as salt, us Tucks. We don’t deserve no blessings – if it is a blessing. And, likewise, I don’t see how we deserve to be cursed, if it’s a curse. Still – there’s no use trying to figure why things fall the way they do. Things just are, and fussing don’t bring changes.
He looked solid, like an oar, whereas Jesse – well, she decided, Jesse was like water: thin, and quick.
She’s gone,” he answered.
Sitting relaxed with his back against the trunk was a boy, almost a man. And he seemed so glorious to Winnie that she lost her heart at once.
He bent and put his lips to the spurt, drinking noiselessly, and then he sat up again and drew his shirt sleeve across his mouth. As he did this, he turned his face in her direction – and their eyes met. For a long moment they looked at each other in silence, the boy with his arm still raised to his mouth. Neither of them moved. At last his arm fell to his side. “You may as well come out,” he said, with a frown.
Mae Tuck, and her husband, and Miles and Jesse, too, had all looked exactly the same for eighty-seven years.
You’ve got nothing that lasts, you know. That’s not the first town that ever stood there. There was one before that, and one before that, and one before that one, on back for 900 years. But this tree has stood here all along. What do you make of that, boy?
The shriek cut thinly though the drizzling dimness, holding for a long moment. At last it broadened and dropped to the old.
Waktulah satu-satunya yang kita miliki dalam jumlah yang banyak.
She had wanted to cough as soon as it occurred to her that she mustn’t, and she passed a long hour trying to swallow away the tickle that perversely constricted her throat.
And then his throat closed. For it was there. He had wanted it to be there, but now that he saw it, he was overcome with sadness.