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The child Victoria pressed her forehead to the s as if her only child had been born dead and still

Tabitha wrinkled her nose as she bustled the children in froht Their clothes sed and exhausted and hollow-looking, which was not right at all for four young folk who had been playing in the sun all day! What they had been about they would not say, nor how they had been gone so long, nor how they had found their way home in the dark In fact, all four were silent asShe sent the girls and Branwell to scrub their cheeks and dress for supper and perhaps play with their wooden soldiers a bit if being away from them for an afternoon had soured them so The fish would not be ready for a three quarters of an hour—an eternity for minds like theirs Tabitha drew on her woolen shawl and went out into the gloaed behind, probably to watch some silver worm chew the earth or skip a rhythm on the cobblestones

It would be spring soon, green snapped in the air though the yews in the churchyard gave no hint of bud Tabitha spied a golden head—and no bonnet, the la the one where love bade her, to the sisters lost before she’d ever known them Anne stood before three headstones on the slope next the rey, and half buried in the heath; the children’s poorup its foot, Maria’s still bare

Tabitha and Anne lingered around the the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass

“How anyone can ever iine unquiet slumber for our dear sleepers in that quiet earth I shall never know,” Tabitha said finally, and drew Anne in to the great candlelit house

The Red Girl

A few years ago I fell in love with Red Riding Hood I know it sounds silly but you can’t help who you love You see a girl in a cafe with a bowl of soup and a coat drawn up around her face and there’s so and hooked, and while you’re wondering about her it just happens inside you, like cancer

She didn’t really wear red all the time It was more like purple or brown A lurid, bruised color When I asked her about it, she would wave her hand as if trying to clear smoke from the air

“Oh, Catherine,” she breathed Whenever she said , “it’s just, you know…transcription errors”

She never liked that I was a writer She didn’t trust writers—she said they just wanted to s her up I said I didn’t, but it wasn’t true and she knew it I lay there the first night with her, my head on her breast, her dark, hard nipple near my mouth, and I said I wasn’t like the others, I would keep her secrets, I wouldn’t try to tell her story the way everyone else did, the way I’d done with Snow White and Rapunzel and all those other girls She was better than the other girls, and I was kinder than the other writers She brushed my hair over my ear and drew up her battered old hood around her perfect face, as if putting on an old war helmet

Sleeping with so with a person, and also sleeping with a o out and the flashbulbs would pop Not so nized her

Here are so Hood:

She doesn’t speak German

She is left-handed

She prefers pan au chocolat in the s, with milk and tea