Page 75 (1/1)
And yet the longer he stood there, skulking in the shadows, the hts seemed wholly unrelated to, and hence beyond the reach of, the idea of his sleeping fae, as if his vision were collapsing He stepped away from his house and by the time he reached the base of the Wall, he knehat he had to do He felt an overwhel as a bath of water, as he ascended the ladder, which connected with Firing Platfor Platform Nine was known as the odd-ularity in the shape of the Wall to accommodate the power trunk, it was not visible from either of the adjacent platforms It was the worst duty, the loneliest duty, and this here Jih her e more specific than a naht But these feelings, of soht, were diffused by other, more personal recri asked to step down as First Captain As Soo had discovered in the hours since the inquest, this was not an entirely unwelcoun to take their toll-and she would’ve had to step down eventually But getting herself fired was hardly the way she wanted to do it She’d gone straight hoood two hours Forty-three years old, nothing ahead of her but nights on the catwalk and the odd dutiful h but who’d run out of things to say to her about a thousand years ago; the Watch was all she had Cort was in the stables like always, and for a h it was just as well he wasn’t, since he probably would have just stood there with that helpless look on his face, notcompletely beyond his powers of expression (Three dead babies inside her-three!-and he’d never knohat to say even then But that was years ago)
She had no one to blame but herself That was the worst part about it Those stupid books! Soo had coh the bins where Walter kept the stuff nobody wanted It was all because of those stupid books! Because once she’d cracked the binding on the first one-she’d actually sat down on the floor to read, folding her legs under her like a Little in circle-she’d felt herself being sucked down into it, like water down a drain ("Why, if it isn’t Mr Talbot Carver," exclai rustling ball gown, her eyes wide in an expression of frank alar in the hallway in his dusty riding breeches, the fabric sainst his virile for here while my father is away?") Belle of the Ball by Jordana Mixon; The Passionate Press, Irvington, New York, 2014 There was a picture of the author inside the back cover: a s on a bed of lacy pillows Her arms and throat were bare; atop her head was perched a peculiar, disklike hat-a hat not large enough even to keep the rain off
By the time Walter Fisher had appeared by the bin, Soo had read to chapter three; the sound of his voice was so intrusive, so alien to her experience of the words on the pages, that she actually ju inquisitively You see as it’s you, Walter went on, I can let you have the whole box for an eighth Soo should have bargained, that’s what you did with Walter Fisher, the price was never the price; but in her heart she’d already bought them Okay, she said, and hoisted the box off the floor You’ve got yourself a deal
The Lieutenant’s Lover, Daughter of the South, The Hostage Bride, A Lady at Last: never in all her life had Soo read anything like these books Whenever Soo iht was synonyines and televisions and kitchen stoves and other things ofbut did not know the purpose of She supposed it had also been a world of people, too, all kinds of people, going about their business in the day-to-day But because these people were gone, leaving behind only the ruined ht of And yet the world she found between the covers of these books did not appear so very different from her own The people rode horses and heated their hoht, and thisher mind to the stories, which were happy stories of love There was sex, too, lots of sex, and it wasn’t at all like the sex she kneith Cort It was fiery and passionate, and soes to get to one of these scenes, though she didn’t; she wanted to ht one to the Wall that night, the night the girl had appeared That was her big mistake Soo hadn’tthe book around in her pouch all day, hoping for a free otten, not exactly; but certainly it hadn’t been Soo’s intention, as things had occurred, that she should decide to make a quick visit to the Armory-where, alone in the quiet with no one to see her, she had pulled it out and started to read The book she’d brought was Belle of the Ball (she’d read thees for the second ti the stairs to find the arrogant and mutton-whiskered Talbot Carver, her father’s rival, whom she loved but also hated-Soo found herself instantly reliving the pleasures of her first discovery, a feeling e that Charlene and Talbot, after , would find each other in the end That was the best thing about the stories in the books: they always ended well
These were Soo’s thoughts when, twenty-four hours later, busted from First Captain, Belle of the Ball still stashed in her pouch (why couldn’t she just leave the da behind her and turned to see Ji Platforloat, or apologize, or soh he was hardly one to talk, Soo thought bitterly, not showing up at First Bell
Jimht was inhabited by dreams In the houses and barracks, in the Sanctuary and Infir souls of First Colony, alighting here and there, like wafting spirits
Some, like Sanjay Patal, had a secret drea all their lives Sometimes they were aware of this drearound river, constantly flowing, thattheir daylight hours with its presence, as if they alking in torlds at the sa sirl, alone in the dark Sohtmares-what Sanjay did not remember, had never remembered, was the part of the dream that involved the knife-and sometimes the dream wasn’t like a dream at all; it washelplessly into the night
Where did they come from? What were theymore-intimations of a hidden reality, an invisible plane of existence that revealed itself only at night? Why did they feel like memories, and not just ht, did the entire population of First Colony seem to lapse into this dreamer’s world?
In the Sanctuary, one of the three J’s, Little Jane Rahter of Belle and Rey Ra found hily alone at the power station, and troubled by dark urges he could neither contain nor express, was, at thathi of a bear Jane had just turned four years old The bears she kneere the ones in books and in stories Teacher told-large, entle faces were the seat of a benign animal wisdom-and that was true of the bear in her drea Jane had never seen an actual bear, but she had seen a viral She was a the Littles of the Sanctuary who had actually beheld the viral Arlo Wilson with her own eyes She had been rising from her cot, which was positioned in the last row, farthest from the door-she was thirsty and had meant to ask Teacher for a cup of water-when he had burst through thein a great shattering of glass andpractically on top of her She had thought at first it was a man, because it seemed like a man, with aany clothes, and there was so different about hilow He was looking at her in a sad way-his sadness seeestively bearlike-and Jane was about to ask hilowed like that when she heard a cry behind her and turned to see Teacher racing toward them She passed over Jane like a cloud, the blade she kept hidden in a sheath beneath her billowing skirt clutched in her outstretched hand, one ar it down upon him like a hammer The next part Jane did not see-she had dropped to the floor and begun to scra sound and the thud of so-"Over here!" so, "look over here!"-and then rown-ups, ofJane knew she was being pulled from under her cot and whisked with all the other Littles up the stairs by a wo (Only later did she realize that this wo events, nor had Jane told anyone what she’d seen Teacher was nowhere around; so and Bart Fisher-hispering that she was dead But Jane didn’t think she was To be dead was to lie down and sleep forever, and the woman whose airborne leap she had witnessed did not seehtly tired Just the opposite: at that moment, Teacher had seerace and strength that Jane had never experienced-that even nohole night later, excited and embarrassed her Hers was a compact existence of compact movements, a place of order and safety and quiet routine There were the usual squabbles and hurt feelings, and days when Teacher seeeneral the world Jane kneas bathed in an essential ; it radiated from her person in a blush of maternal warmth, as the rays of the sun heated the air and earth; but now, in the perplexing afterli secret about this woman who had so selflessly cared for all of the she’d seen was love It could be nothing less than the force of love that had lifted Teacher into the air, into the waiting arht was the radiance of royalty He was a bear-prince who had come to take her away to his castle in the forest So perhaps that here Teacher had gone off to now, and why all the Littles had been moved upstairs: to wait for her When she returned to thehtful identity as a queen of the forest revealed, they would be brought back downstairs to the Big Roorand party
These were the stories Jane was telling herself as she fell asleep in a roo their various drea of the prior night’s events, she was ju Rooh thethis tih the door, which seemed small and far away, and he was different than he’d been the night before, fat and woolly like the bears in books, lu his wise and friendly way toward her on all fours When he reached the foot of Jane’s bed he sat on his haunches and gradually drew hireat se, paddled hands It was a wonderful thing to see, strange and yet expected, like a present Jane had always believed would arrive, and her four-year-old’s heart wasHe stood in this htful expression, then said to Jane, who had continued her happy bouncing, addressing her in the rich, masculine tone of his woodland home, Hello, Little Jane I’m Mister Bear I have come to eat you up
This ca in her stoh-but the bear did not react, and as the ated, she noticed there were other aspects to his person, disturbing aspects: his clahich eed in white curves from his mittlike paws; his wide and powerful jaws; his eyes, which did not seem friendly or wise anymore but dark with unknowable intention Where were the other Littles? Why was Jane alone in the Big Room? But she wasn’t alone; Teacher was in the drea beside the bed She looked as she always looked, though there was soue about the features of her face, as if she earing a ed Teacher He’s already eaten all the other Littles Be good and stop that ju so Mister Bear can eat you up I-don’t-want-to, Jane replied, still bouncing, for she did not want to be eaten-a request that see, but even so I-don’t-want-to Iyou nicely, Little Jane I a to count to three I-don’t-want-to, Jane repeated, applying the greatest possible vigor to her defiant bouncing I-don’t-want-to Do you see? said Teacher, turning to the bear, who had continued his upright vigil at the foot of the cot She raised her pale arms in exasperation Do you see now? This is what I have to put up with, all day long It’s enough to make a person lose herto be Don’t say I didn’t warn you